[ { "id": 209987, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 246, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "224\n\nbest titles there? To this last question the answer is certainly \"No\". Either I did not happen to pick up the best book on a particular subject when I was in search of a quotation or, and this was often the case, the best book turned out not to be very quotable. Some authors' styles do not lend themselves to excerpting, not because they are bad but because they are more cumulative than 'dashing'. I think it was Somerset Maugham who described one of his characters as the kind of man you wouldn't mind being marooned for years with but couldn't stand the prospect of one afternoon with. Quotable authors have to scintillate a little, but it doesn't mean that their whole books are good, and vice versa.\n\nNo, the list is also not a representative sample. Too much has been written on too many China topics to hope for that. So the answer to my first question must presumably be \"Not very good\". It is at best an \"interesting\" and \"fun\" list. Partly to redress it I appended a short list of 'Suggestions for Further Reading' to Ancestral Images Again. I could not presume to attempt a definitive list of the most important books on Chinese culture, and discerning readers will doubtless have spotted already that I have made little effort to cover the large realm of capital-C Culture, but let me add here some other important and useful books which I think ought to be on a general list:\n\nBodde, Derk and Morris, Clarence, Law in Imperial China, Harvard University Press, 1967.\n\nBuchanan, K. The Transformation of the Chinese Earth, London, 1970.\n\nBuck, Pearl S, The Good Earth, London, 1931.\n\nChang, K. C., (ed.), Food in Chinese Culture, New Haven, 1977.\n\nEndacott, G. B. and Birch, Alan, Hong Kong Eclipse, Hong Kong, 1978.\n\nFreedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, London, 1966.\n\nHawkes, David, The Story of the Stone, Penguin Books, 1973+ (series still in progress).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211218, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "254\n\nTHE HONG KONG HISTORY PROJECT\n\nThis note is based on a taped recording of the meeting of the Society, 22 May 1984, when this subject was discussed by James Hayes, David Faure, and Patrick Hase, with questions and comments from the speakers and the floor.\n\nJames Hayes\n\nThis evening, we are going to hear about the \"Hong Kong History Project\". This aims at rescuing something of the social, economic, and political history of the communities of this area before 1841, and indeed right up to the eve of the modernization of the New Territories in the 1970s.\n\nThe late Maurice Freedman, who was Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and then at Oxford University before his death in 1975, said that until the 1950s, Hong Kong was almost totally neglected by all manner of social scientists. It was regarded as of no importance to scholarship, being viewed as \"no more than the railway route into Guangdong\". Thereafter, a few mainly overseas scholars, people who were mostly anthropologists engaged on researching doctoral dissertations, came now and then to Hong Kong. This continued, and is going on at the present time. Among the first of them was our member Barbara Ward — unfortunately for us, she died at the beginning of this year — who went to study the boat people of Kau Sai in 1952. She was followed by Hugh Baker and Bob Groves, who came in the early 1960s to work in Sheung Shui and Tai Po Market, and there were one or two others before that. They were the pioneers of the anthropological study of Hong Kong's past and present, and its social history, too. You will note that the researchers mainly came from outside. Neither Chinese nor European staff of the University of Hong Kong were interested in the subject, and it also took some time for people at the Chinese University established in the 1960s to become aware of local history.\n\nI want now to say something about my own interest in the subject, how it began, and its relevance for the efforts made later", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 264, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "240\n\nIS THERE A STRUCTURE OF CHINESE RURAL SOCIETY? A REVIEW ARTICLE\n\nIn recent years, it has been trendy to criticize lineage theory, not only in the overall anthropological literature but also in the sinological literature as well. In the sinological literature, the lineage model as developed most systematically in the work of Maurice Freedman has proven to be a useful tool for both anthropologists and historians not so much in the study of Chinese kinship itself but also in the ramifications of the basic model for the study of diverse aspects of Chinese history and society. Criticisms of the lineage model in recent years by anthropologists and historians in the China field have been many. Their diverse perspectives reflect to a great degree diverse readings of Freedman's original thesis.\n\nDavid Faure's The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong is in this regard a major attempt to cast our understanding of lineage and village in Chinese society in different light based upon his extensive fieldwork in Hong Kong's New Territories and intensive analysis of local historical materials pertaining to the nature of traditional customs and institutions. Perhaps to his credit, he has amassed in the space of a short monograph an incredibly dense ethnographic description of different varieties of local organization found in the traditional New Territories in the context of its historical development in order to put forth an equally dense conclusion about the nature of lineage society in traditional China. However, in spite of his commendable attempt to put forth a radically different view of the history of Chinese local society, I find his ethnographic and historical synthesis flawed and his critique of the theoretical literature grossly misdirected. Nonetheless, the wealth of data produced does suggest in my opinion a radically different interpretation that makes Faure's initial \"critique\" mild by comparison, and I hope to expound upon these points more fully in the latter half of this paper.\n\nAs Faure states on the first page of his preface, his book began modestly, as a preliminary attempt to outline the political history of the New Territories of Hong Kong until about 1900, that is to say, \"the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211569, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 286, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "DAVID FAURE'S REJOINDER:\n\nThere is much in this review that I dislike how can Chun take me to task, on the one hand, for dabbling in Anthropology, and on the other hand, conclude that I think “local history can be understood simply by looking at events and personages as they take place on the ground”?\n\nHowever, let me answer the several criticisms that I think touch on some of the major issues. First, Chun thinks I do not have a salient criticism of Freedman's thesis. Let me reiterate that much as we have learnt from Freedman, I found him wanting for not being able to incorporate village religion into his lineage framework, and for being sloppy in his use of terms such as \"local lineage\", \"higher-level lineage\" and \"clan\". I think my argument for the importance of \"settlement rights\" salvages his concept of the \"local lineage\".\n\nSecond, Chun does not present here accurately my argument concerning the grandiose freestanding ancestral halls built in the official style. I do not argue that there was a \"period\" of the \"Five Great Clans” not even in the eastern portion of the New Territories. I think the linkage of lineage groups across settlement, and the adoption of a code of conduct that included the compilation of written genealogies and that was consistent with officially prescribed standards, took root as a change in style that began in the sixteenth century and gradually worked its way from the richer and more powerful lineages to the poorer ones. This process took fully three centuries, and during this period different territorial groups dominated different parts of the eastern New Territories. In a nutshell, Lung Yeuk Tau (Tang surname) was overlord of all this area, with minor concessions to the Haus of Hung Leng and Ho Sheung Heung, up to the end of the Ming dynasty, The Lius of Sheung Shui sprang into prominence in the early Qing, nibbling into former Tang terrain, while possibly some time in the eighteenth century, the Hung Leng Haus lost their holdings. Of the other two surnames in the “Five”, the Fan Ling P'aangs did not achieve prominence until the nineteenth century, and while the Tai Hang Mans were taken into account by Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui and Ho Sheung Heung when the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance was formed in the early Qing (possibly eighteenth century), its influence declined subsequently until it became a party of the Kau Yeuk, along with the P'aangs, that founded Tai Po new market in the late nineteenth century. This history notwithstanding, my argument is quite simply that the ancestral worship one sees the villagers practise", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213215, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "16\n\nKirchmann transferred his tavern to Silbermann. The Land We Live In passed through a succession of proprietors with German, Jewish or Polish sounding names, Gustav Neubrunn, Moritz and Adolph Freimann, Bernat Cohen, Moses Tchetchilnızkı and lastly David Freeman. The Tavern was closed in 1912. The licensees of two other establishments suggest Jewish proprietorship: The Central Hotel, 1890 to 1906, Isaac Samuel Greenstein, 1907 to 1912, Ichel Gruman; and the Globe Hotel, 1894 to 1909, Isydor Silbermann, the nephew of Tevil, Ephraim Fischel Zellermayer 1910, and Adolph Weingarten 1911 and 1912. Both the Central and the Globe were closed in 1913.\n\nMrs. Petersen and the German Hotel Trade\n\nIn 1911 Frederich Reichmann, a German national, sought an interim injunction from the court to restrain Mrs. Uschmann and her husband from operating the Station Hotel in Kowloon. Mr. Reichmann charged that Mrs. Uschmann had broken a contract they had signed in November 1909, when he purchased from her for $30,000 her interest and good will in the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road Central. The contract contained a clause preventing her from conducting in Hong Kong the business of innkeeping, publican or restaurant. The purpose of the clause was to prevent her from attracting to a new establishment the German trade. A summary of evidence presented in court provides information on the background of both the parties in the case. Mrs Uschmann claimed in her defence that the good will of the Station Hotel was the property of her husband, Robert Albrecht Uschmann, and that she was only his assistant. She had been connected with establishments licensed to sell spirits for some twenty or twenty-five years. She became the proprietress of the Thomas' Hotel on the south side of Queen's Road between Ice House and Duddell Streets. The hotel when she took it over had become bankrupt and was closed. No good will went with the transaction. Mr. O E. Owen, then proprietor of the Grand Carlton Hotel, but a former employee of Mrs. Uschmann in 1904 when she and her former husband, Mr. R.A. Matthaey, were operating the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon, stated to the court that it was his opinion \"that the Station Hotel would compete with the Grand\" (Mrs. Uschmann had changed the name of the Thomas' Hotel to the Oriental Hotel and Mr. Reichmann, in turn, had changed it to the Grand Hotel) because of her \"long association with the hotel business and her intimate knowledge of the German community.\" In fact, \"The German customers used to call her 'Mother' as a pet name\" (HKT 6 June 1911).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213351, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "156\n\nintellectual and historical traditions. Thus they were able to push the study of Hong Kong history to new frontiers.\n\nThe Hong Kong History Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong\n\nResearch was pursued with great energy at the Chinese University, and a history project its members began in 1978 may be said to have marked a turning point in the development of the study of local history.\n\nAimed at saving whatever historical information that might still be found, the Project included Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Kwan Li-hung, David Faure, Bernard Luk, Tam Yu-yim and Barbara Ward, and teams of students. They began by gathering historical inscriptions in temples and ancestral halls, and then went on to interviewing villagers for what they remembered of the villages. Villagers were also asked to come forward with whatever documents they had. Soon, gathering documentary materials and interviewing became complementary. The research teams worked on one district at a time, first concentrating on Sha Tin and Sai Kung, then Lam Tsuen and in 1982, Tsuen Wan, though members would approach other villages in the New Territories whenever the opportunity arose. Their search yielded rich fruits because they cast their nets wide - they sought materials that earlier researchers had not considered relevant. Thus documents such as village regulations, land deeds and accounts, ritual and ceremonial texts, scholars' handbooks, textbooks and almanacs, clan records and so forth were gathered, and these were able to throw new light on important, and yet hitherto neglected, aspects of village life - daily life, farming and subsistence, sickness and death, family life, marketing, intervillage organizations, internal village organization, \n\n22\n\nThe project must have seemed like a massive raid by scholars into the New Territories, and its benefit to other scholars is incalculable. Many of the manuscripts and books were deposited in public libraries. Inscriptions copied were published in three volumes as Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, now standard reference. The wealth in information supplied by these inscriptions is overwhelming, and Maurice Freedman noted that, together with land deeds, genealogies and other records, they formed the basic sources for an understanding of the New Territories. The exercise was all the more timely since, in face of Hong Kong's rapid development, it was possible that many of the inscriptions might have been lost had the project not been undertaken at that time. 24", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214724, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "103\n\n1997, Introduction, the Anthropology of Contemporary Hong Kong.' Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, eds. Grant Evans and Maria Tam, Curzon\n\nFreedman, Maurice\n\n1979, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', The Study of Chinese Society, Stamford University Press\n\nGrout, GCW and James Hayes\n\n1971, 'Ceremonies of Propitiation Carried Out in Connection with Road Works in the New Territories, in 1960', JHKBRAS, vol. 11\n\nHayes, James\n\n1965, 'A Ceremony to Propitiate the Gods at Tong Fuk, Lantau, 1958', JHKBRAS, Vol. 5, Notes and Queries\n\n1983, The Rural Committees of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes, Oxford University Press\n\n1998, February 26, letter to the Author\n\nHong Kong Government\n\n1960, A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories\n\nHong Kong Standard\n\n1990, March 23, ‘A Million to Bury Village Ghosts'\n\nLeung, Chor-on\n\n1992, 'Blessings Are Not For All', The Hong Kong Anthropologist\n\nLo, Raymond\n\n1992, Feng Shui and Destiny, Tynron Press, England\n\nMyers, John T\n\n1975, 'A Hong Kong Spirit-Medium Temple', JHKBRAS, vol. 15\n\nPhillips, David P, Todd E., Ruth and Lisa M Wagner\n\n1993, November 6, 'Psychology and Survival', The Lancet, vol. 342, Britain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]