[ { "id": 204329, "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-1961", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n93\n\nThe climax of the dramatic struggle between No-cha and his father Li Ching may be summed up here:\n\nLi Ching, hearing that No-cha had come again with his magic arms, was infuriated. He mounted his black horse and came out to meet No-cha with his halberd with crescent-shaped blade. The fighting had not lasted many minutes when Li Ching was in a profuse perspiration and had to flee for his life. No-cha pursued him with desperate efforts and nearly caught him when Mu-cha, the second son of Li Ching and disciple of the Immortal P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra), came on the scene. Although they were brothers they had not known each other before and No-cha had to tell Mu-cha the whole story. Mu-cha rebuked No-cha and called him a patricide, and defended the father with his precious sword. No-cha hurled his golden brick in the air which fell on the back of Mu-cha and hurt him. No-cha resumed his pursuit, and as Li Ching, being exhausted, did not wish to be overtaken by his son, he drew his sword and was about to commit suicide when he was stopped by a Taoist who was no other than the Wên-shu Kuang-fa Tien-tsun (Mañjusri) who was invited to come by Immortal T'ai-i to give No-cha an impressive lesson. Wên-shu now hid Li Ching in his grotto and seized the naughty hero with his \"Dragon-concealing Stake\"--which was also called \"Seven Precious Golden Lotuses\"--which in a mist of dust fastened No-cha's neck and feet with three golden rings and bound him to a golden stake. Wên-shu ordered Chin-cha, his disciple and No-cha's eldest brother, to beat No-cha black and blue with a staff until T'ai-I himself appeared. At the intercession of T'ai-i, No-cha was released and both father and son were brought before the two Taoist masters. T'ai-i rebuked the father for his petty-minded action and told him to go home. After Li Ching's\n\nAfter Li Ching's retreat, he instructed No-cha not to bear any grudge against his father and charged him to return to the grotto in Mt. Ch'ien-yuan on the pretext that he would stay with Wên-shu and play chess. No-cha, raging with anger, taking advantage of the absence of the two masters, pursued his father again. When Li Ching was in danger of falling into the hand of the son, another Taoist, the Jan-têng Tao-jên (Dipamkara) of the Yüan-chüeh Cave on the Vulture Peak, appeared on the scene as if by accident. He sheltered Li Ching behind, and when No-cha demanded single combat with his father, he increased Li Ching's strength by spitting on him and touching him on the back. Li Ching was then able to get the upper hand in the fighting and No-cha was defeated. No-cha was beside himself with rage. He jumped aside suddenly and tried to pierce Jan-têng with his spear, but the thrust was repelled by a white lotus flower emitted from the latter's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204475, "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-1962", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "96\n\n5\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nSee a tablet in the Chow-Wong School at Kam Tin.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n'Lockhart's figures, given in Appendixes 3 and 5 to his Report are not exact, and he has emphasised his sketchy estimate of the land population \"in default of any reliable statistics possessed by the Chinese Government\" and said he had been unable to obtain even an estimate of the boat people Papers 1899 pp. 187,189. Taking areas within my own detailed knowledge I have found that villages established long before 1898 have not been included in the returns or else have been linked with other villages without special mention, The population figures for the Islands, in particular, are not above suspicion and are probably greater than shown in Appendix 5.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 189.\n\nPapers 1899 p. 189.\n\n10 Universal ownership was clearly shown by the land survey which followed the lease of 1898. This was carried out by surveyors and staff on loan from the Government of India, and was followed by a registration of titles which was enlivened by land courts which sat to determine possession in disputed cases. The survey sheets and the Crown Rent Rolls which form the schedules to them can be found in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration and they are a valuable record of land ownership and land classification at the time of the lease.\n\nAt Shek Pik and Fan Pui in 1958 out of sixty-six families four owned between 3-4 acres, nine between 2-3 acres, nineteen between 1-2 acres, fourteen owned between a half to one acre, twelve owned between a quarter to a half, and eight between 10 to 25 acres. Except a few late arrivals, therefore, every family owned land of its own. The position was much the same as in 1898.\n\nThe same was true of Wei Hai Wei, of which Johnston wrote Lion & Dragon, p. 148, \"Whatever the faults of the Chinese social system may be there is no doubt that in Wei Hai Wei it very largely accounts for the complete absence of pauperism (though no one is rich) for the orderliness of the people (nearly everyone has a stake in the land and has nothing to gain and everything to lose from disorder), for the uninterrupted succession of father and son in the homesteads, and for the long pedigrees attested by family graveyards and ancestral tablets\".\n\n11 See Johnston Lion and Dragon pp. 134-54. I have compared customary deeds of sale and mortgage from the New Territory between the years 1898 and 1958 with those cited by him and find that they invariably follow the same form (see especially Johnston pp. 144-145). These deeds are known as white deeds (as in Ching times) and had not been put through the formal process of registration in the District Office which would turn them into legal documents; or, as formerly in Ching days, in the Magistrate's yamen when they became red deeds (RI #). They were common until the Pacific war and even now are occasionally known to be drawn up in addition to the Memorial registering the conveyance in the Land Office. To select an example at random here is one from Shek Pik on Lantau Island dated the second year of the Republic (1913) which reads", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205062, "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-1966", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n13\n\nHis luck ran out, however, in 1807, when he was caught in a typhoon off Luzon. Part of his fleet was destroyed and Cheng himself drowned.\n\nLeadership of the pirate fleet fell to Cheng's wife, a kind of early nineteenth-century Dragon Lady, who may have accompanied her husband on his forays. Her chief lieutenant was a young Hsin Hui buccaneer by the name of Chang Pao-tsai. Unkind rumour had it that Chang was more than the lady's \"chief lieutenant\".\n\nUnder the leadership of Chang and the wife of Cheng I, the pirate fleet expanded its activities. It was divided into three divisions, each with a commander. Raids on coastal shipping were carried out with dispatch and precision, each division having been assigned specific areas of the coast. By 1810, Chang's fleet numbered six to seven hundred vessels, manned by as many as thirty to forty thousand men.\n\nNor were they concerned with just coastal shipping. No village or town along the coast was safe. Chang was apparently able to land elements of his navy at will at any bay or harbour from Mirs Bay to Hainan and as far up the river as Whampoa. There are differing accounts as to what his methods and motives really were. Some accounts, probably somewhat romanticized, make Chang out to be a kind of Chinese nautical Robin Hood, landing his men and appearing at village gates only to replenish their supplies of food and water, treating the people with kindness and honesty and refraining from terror. On the other hand, local histories record that more than one village was left in ashes and more than a little blood was spilled.\n\nWhatever way Chang Pao-tsai carried on his raids, the fact remains that the Ch'ing government was powerless against him. Time and again units of the Imperial fleet were sent in search of Chang's navy, only to return empty-handed and usually badly mauled. Once, in 1809, the Imperial navy did succeed in trapping a portion of Chang's fleet off Lantau, but clever seamanship and greater and more efficient firepower enabled him to break through without much damage.\n\nFinally, in 1810, the authorities resorted to the old political expedient... \"if you can't beat 'em, join 'em\". Governor-General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205063, "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-1966", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "14\n\nJOHN J. NOLDE\n\nPai Ling sent an emissary to Chang and his lady friend, offering him a post in government and the Dragon Lady a handsome pension if they would retire. Chang, in the meantime, had fallen out with some of his own lieutenants, and after a certain amount of negotiation he agreed to the government's terms. He agreed to disband his fleet and turn over most of his ships and equipment to the Imperial authorities. His men were to return to peaceful occupations. He was rewarded with an official position and actually took part in, perhaps led, several expeditions against those former comrades-in-arms who refused to surrender. The Lady received her pension and was reported living in Canton as late as 1830-1831.\n\nNow, aside from the more romantic aspects of this story, the point is that these raids were a major fact of life along the South China coast during these years. Local histories are full of accounts of the activities of Chang and his fleet, the Hsiang-shan hsien chih, especially, devoting many pages to his exploits.\n\nFurthermore, it seems fairly certain that many of Chang's men did not turn to peaceful pursuits after 1810. Many organized fleets of their own and continued their marauding, though on a reduced scale. While Chang's \"surrender\" may have broken the back of the pirate activity for a time, it would seem that by the 1820's piratical activity was again a major problem. Local histories record many instances of pirates extorting money from villagers along the Canton River. The Canton Register of July, 1829 reported that \"the rivers of the province are infested with pirates who force trading boats to purchase passes of them\". In the early 1830's pirate fleets attacked native craft near Macao Roads. The Chinese Repository of December, 1832 reported on a new class of pirate boat which, manned by crews of sixty to seventy men, kidnapped and carried off wealthy individuals for ransom. In the same issue the journal reported that a pirate fleet of thirty to forty sail \"was prowling off Macao. Its chief was said to be the son of a famous pirate.\"\n\nIn the interior things seemed to be in even more chaotic state, partly due to the activity of the ex-pirates now turned bandit and partly due to an increase in brigandage per se. English-language journals published at Macao in the 1820's and 30's commented repeatedly on \"parties of armed bandits\", \"vagabonds and ban-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205271, "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-1967", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "26\n\nJEN YU-WEN\n\nout and the local people made facsimiles of the originals and preserved them from generation to generation in order to commemorate the glory of their ancestors. Moreover, in the Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th month) every year since then, they have placed the parasols on the racing boats, called huang-chou1 (Imperial boats). Before the boat race started, the gentry and elders of the villages used to kneel and kow-tow to the royal gifts to pay respect to the Sung Emperor. Sung Hsueh-p'eng says that the custom was perpetuated for many years.10 Less than a month after the landing of the royal party, the Dragon Boat Festival was observed. It can be imagined what a delightful day the boy Emperor Tuan Tsung (Shih) and his small brother Wei Wang (Ping) had in watching the races, along with the Queen Mother and many dignitaries, generals, and ministers, and, of course, the local people who were particularly happy to have such distinguished guests participating in their annual festival.\n\nIV. SUNG WONG TOI (Sung Huang Tai-Man)\n\nThe most important site which furnishes the key to our study of the Kuan-fu Travelling Palace of Southern Sung is a small mound near the seashore, north of Ma-tau-kok. It can be definitely located and is recorded in the Hsin-an Gazetteer, other literature, and maps. Besides, there were three Chinese characters engraved on one of the great rocks there, which many of us have seen with our own eyes.\n\nThe small mound was called Sacred Hill1 (see map). This name was probably given to it by the Hong Kong Government when it took over the territory in 1858, as no Chinese literature recorded such a name, and even Hong Kong people of the older generation, including Sung Hsueh-p'eng, did not know of it. On the top of the mound were two large rocks, one on the northern side, the other on the southern. The characters Sung Wong Toi1 were engraved on the western face of the northern rock in the Yuan Dynasty, long after the royal party departed from Kowloon and after the Mongols conquered the Southern Sung.\n\nThe characters were horizontally inscribed, being uniformly 20 inches in width and respectively 26, 22½, and 27 inches in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205828, "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-1969", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "128\n\nARMANDO DA SILVA\n\naccessibility, seasonal demand, and tonic quality. The Chinese names are in colloquial Cantonese:\n\nArtemisia vulgaris (ng yuet ngai AX) is a traditionally sacred medicinal plant. Sprigs of artemisia are hung on doorways on the festival day of tuen yeung (), that day associated with glutinous rice dumplings and dragon-boat races; hence the colloquial name \"fifth moon artemisia\". A powder is made from this and is used in moxa (ngai yung *). For medicinal use the sprigs are ground and sprinkled into warm rice wine to make a fragrant tonic drink, which allegedly relieves upset stomach.\n\nAmaranthus spinosus (lak yuen tsoi ). The roots and leaves of this plant are boiled in water and the infusion used in the treatment of piles. A soup is made by boiling the leaves and the shoots and the decoction is drunk as a yuet hei reliever. It is also considered a diuretic drink. Although this plant is not cultivated, it is often sold as a vegetable in vegetable stalls.\n\nHylocereus undatus (pa wong fa re£) is a seashore plant of the cactus family. The silk tassels from the flowers are dried and used to make a cough medicine. The tassels may also be boiled as a vegetable and cooked with pieces of pork to make soup. See Plate 10.\n\nVitex trifolia (pak fei muk yee ¶). This is another beach plant whose leaves and vines are boiled to make a poultice for bruises. The leaves are ground and drunk with warm rice wine. This is a favourite medicinal plant among the Tanka boat-people.\n\nBreynia fruticosa (hak min shun i) is a hillside plant whose leaves are boiled in water to make an infusion for the cleansing of sores. To complete the treatment a poultice of its leaves is applied to the sores.\n\nMelastoma sanguineum (long kau lei #Ƒ) is a styptic simple. Its leaves are both ground and drunk with warm rice wine, and are also used as a styptic poultice.\n\nPolygonum chinenses (fo tan mo ★★). The leaves are fried with honey and eaten as a treatment for dysentery. The leaves can also be made into a poultice to relieve rheumatic pain and for treating foot sores and arm boils,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206062, "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-1970", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n137\n\nsettled in the hills and along the coasts of our region. They themselves acknowledge that they are the latest comers into the region, and that they have migrated from exclusively Hakka-speaking country between Kwangtung, Fukien and Kiangsi provinces. The Hakka of those parts declare that they migrated from North China and this tradition is confirmed in every way by scholars, often Hakka themselves, who have collated separate family histories. From these studies it is possible to know that the Hakka did not migrate south of Kiangsi before the 10th century A.D. and we can infer from this that their appearance in this region was several centuries later.\n\n7\n\nFrom the evidence of their names we can begin to distinguish two kinds of inhabitants--one pure Chinese and one of non-Chinese origin. But on the other hand there is much negative evidence that could be brought forward. In the first place in customs and religion the Tanka and Hoklo seem to follow Chinese tradition; they have the same reverence for ancestors, the same surnames, they marry and bury the dead with the same ceremonies. They have an identical calendar of feast days, and their dialects, Cantonese and Fukienese, have nothing either in place-names, or vocational expressions or any other vocabulary which might contain archaisms to suggest that they ever used another language.\n\nIn the second place there is absolutely no apparent evidence that the Tanka and Hoklo are of the same extraction. They do not look alike physically and they do not intermarry nor mix freely in spite of being in close contact with one another. Indeed, the Tanka are much more akin to the Cantonese in outward appearance, and but for a difference of pronunciation it would be almost impossible to distinguish between them.\n\nIn the third place, the Hakka and Punti differ in their religious customs on one important point. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by the Punti, Tanka and Hoklo on the 5th day of the 5th moon every year. The Hakka do not keep this feast. The importance of the Dragon Boat Festival as a clue to origins of culture will be described in a later section of this article.\n\nHowever there is one broad distinction which can be made. In their differences in occupation and dwellings the population divides\n\n7 For instance, Lo Hsiang Ling (#); K'o Chia Yen Chiu (3 RMX).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206071, "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-1970", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "146\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\npeoples. They too are an ancient population living on the seaboard without any trace of their earlier habitat. But as we have seen in the first chapter they have been so overwhelmed by the force of Chinese culture that not a trace remains of their original customs. However it is proposed to show that some aspects of their life might suggest a connection with the \"Indonesians\", however far fetched the theory may be,\n\nThe Tanka boats must be of recent design, and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples, even as late as the Portuguese. The eyes painted on the prows of Hoklo boats may also point to earlier contacts, although it is possible that this custom evolved quite independently. What seems more likely to be the survival of an earlier boat is the “dragon boat” or huge canoe used by the Tanka, Punti and Hoklo in their yearly festival.\n\nThis festival occurs on the 5th of the 5th month when the 'dragon' constellation is highest in the sky and celebrates the death of a poet Chü Yûan who drowned himself in a river in Hunan because his King would not take his advice. But it is difficult to understand the connection between the poet and the rather war-like parade of boats accompanied by the beating of a drum and throwing of rice into the waters. In fact, the festival appears more likely to be an annual sacrifice to a fishing god, or in places where rice culture depends upon irrigation caused by floods, to an agricultural god. Its distribution (in connection with the Chü Yuan legend) is confined to South China and to Szechuan. In Fukien, besides the poet a famous general is sometimes commemorated. Remembering the tendency of all religions to adapt new gods to old customs, we may be justified in discounting Chü Yuan from the festival's origin,\n\nThe regatta is formed by a number of very long canoes paddled to the rhythm of a drum beaten in the middle of the boat by some forty to eighty half naked men. It is unlike any other Chinese feast and the canoe and style of paddling are more reminiscent of Polynesian methods than of Chinese. Similar regattas exist all over the Indonesian regions; in Pnom-penh, for instance, it is almost identical (see accompanying illustrations),* and the first mention of the feast in Chinese literature occurs in books written\n\n* Plates 17-18.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206072, "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-1970", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n147\n\nabout the customs of Southern peoples published during our era. Another point worth mentioning is the resemblance between the dragon boat and boats in scenes of everyday life depicted on bronze drums found in Tonkin. These drums were made by the natives under the tuition of their Chinese masters. One of them shows the picture of a long thin boat with a dragon's head being paddled by its crew with a drum in the middle.\n\nAnother possible survival of Indonesian culture might be seen in the matshed dwelling in our region. It is unnecessary to build matsheds in a place where typhoons occur so frequently and where there is an abundance of stone, and the explanation can only be given that matshed dwellers have no tradition of building in stone. The Indonesians are invariably matshed dwellers, they do not even use stone walls as protection. In many places they build houses on stilts. This however may be an independent custom on either side, although it should be noted that among some peoples of Indo-China there are identical huts on stilts akin to those of the Tanka and of the water population in the West river regions.\n\nAgain remembering the phenomenon that one religion can take on the divinities of another, we cannot ignore the possibility that the Tanka worship of Tin Hau (A1⁄2, i.e., the Heavenly Queen) their principal saint is an adaptation of an earlier aboriginal goddess. The original Tin Hau lived in Fukien and kept a lighthouse to guide sailors to port. She was officially canonised by the Chinese Board of Rites at the request of local officials but there was a much earlier goddess known among the Indonesians who could avert storms or drought. Temples to her existed in the Tonkin delta at the beginning of our era. It is not likely that the Tanka adopted the enthusiastic worship of such a late personage as Tin Hau without some tradition behind it.\n\nHowever we can never be certain that the Tanka are of Indonesian stock. Whether or not the Indonesians have left descendants, it is certain that they were the founders of maritime commerce in the Far East. Using perhaps canoes and coasting in such stages as for instance from Swabue to Lamma Island,\n\n8 續齊諧記 and 越地記, both Han dynasty books.\n\n9 V. Goloubew-Le Peuple de Dong-Son. (Hanoi.)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206086, "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-1970", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH \n\n161 \n\nV. THE TANG16 FAMILY \n\nThe task of opening the larger valleys to cultivation was not undertaken on a scale until the Sung dynasty (960 to 1278). Until that time there may have been cultivation by the garrisons, by Chinese peasants or by the Yao tribes which are believed to have lived in the region, but there is no record of any land tenure until the eleventh century when a new peasant immigration occurred which marks a revolution in the history of this region.\n\nThe immigration was by Chinese of a northern type who brought with them a particularly strong tradition which has lasted until this day. The first to arrive were a family surnamed Tang who are at the present time the largest landowners and it is they whom we must consider the founders of the Punti population.\n\nThe Tang genealogy shows that they are descended from a general of the later Han dynasty whose home was in Honan. His descendants came south into Hunan in the sixth century A.D. and at the beginning of the 10th century they appear in Kiangsi. Their migration into Kwangtung is therefore along much the same route as the later Hakka population took.\n\nHence it becomes clear why the Punti and Hakka populations, in spite of differences in language and a wide gap in time between their arrivals in the region, have such identical customs, architecture and outward appearance. They are both of the same Northern Chinese stock and belong to successive waves of migration which followed the same route. The Punti who arrived earlier, when the differences between their own dialect and Cantonese were less marked, took over or modified for their own use the Cantonese dialect. Their long sojourn in the south with probable inter-marriage may have altered their features to some extent, and either on the route of migration or in the region itself, they adopted the dragon boat festival. These are the only differences between them and the later Hakka population.\n\nThe migration of the Tang family was probably due to the pressure that was being exerted throughout the course of the Sung dynasty by the Tartar invaders. Whilst it was continuing and \n\n16: 鄧", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206110, "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-1970", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n185 \n\nNot far from the main Tin Hau Temple, on rocks formerly in the sea but now built around and beyond by boat squatters' huts, is another smaller temple to the same goddess. This is known locally as the Hoi Shum Temple, or 'Temple in the Midst of the Sea'. It has interestingly decorated pillars and altar slabs, and a half-obliterated inscription shows that it was constructed in 1845, four years after the British occupation of Hong Kong Island. However, the tablet states that, like the Tam Kung Temple, (see below) there was an open air altar to Tin Hau for some time before local people subscribed for the temple building. Nowadays this temple seems neglected and little used, perhaps because it may have been patronised mostly by smaller sampan fishermen who have now been forced into land employment by economic factors. \n\nFurther along the street, is Ah Kung Ngam-Grandfather's (or Ancestor's) Rocky Hill. This used to be a lonely place by the shore. In the 1901 census it had a population of 213 of whom 159 were males-probably mostly quarrymen and land-based fishermen. Here is situated the large temple to Tam Kung. This was built in 1905. At first sight this late date is rather curious, because old residents of Ah Kung Ngam state that Shau Kei Wan people venerate this god above Tin Hau and his festival is the event of the year for local residents, land and sea alike, celebrated both in Shau Kei Wan proper and round the corner in Ah Kung Ngam.* However, this is partly explained by the tablet commemorating the construction of the temple. This states that for an unstated number of years there had been an image of Tam Kung (brought over from Kowloon) but no structure. This temple contains major shrines to two other gods, Wong Tai Sin and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother. There are models of a sailing junk and a dragon boat inside the building, the former apparently dating back to 1905, and the latter to 1961. \n\nAt the far end of Ah Kung Ngam, having passed timber and boat yards on the sea front and squatter and ordinary factories of all kinds on the other side of the road we come eventually to \n\n* This is equally so at the present day. A night visit to the area at this year's festival showed opera performances on land and sea and many dinner parties in progress, whilst the amount of debris at the temple after the day's worshipping had to be seen to be believed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206404, "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-1971", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nin frames hung on the walls. A portrait of Sir Robert Ho Tung's mother and a photograph of his wife appear in the older of these two memorial halls. \n\nThe Tam Kung Temple at Happy Valley \n\nThis temple, which seems to have been removed here about 1900, was formerly located at Wong Nei Chung Village and was the local village temple. The village of Wong Nei Chung was one of the main villages of Hong Kong Island and its existence pre-dated the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. It was eventually removed in the 1920s to make way for the present development of Wong Nei Chung and Blue Pool Road. The present race course was formerly the paddy fields belonging to this village. \n\nThis temple is in fact dedicated to two gods, Pak Tai, (11) the god of the north and Tam Kung, (342) a Kwangtung worthy. Other gods worshipped in the temple include the Goddess of Mercy (left of the main altar) and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother (right of the altar). Up some steps and behind the main building is another altar in which there is an image of Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven. To the right of this altar are some memorial tablets which have been put there by relatives of dead persons for regular worshipping rites to be carried out in return for a small initial sum. You will note that one of these contains bone ashes in a small porcelain jar. \n\nTin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay \n\nThis is by far the oldest of the three temples we shall visit today. The structure, apart from some later repairs, dates mainly from a last major reconstruction in 1868, and the bell is dated 1747. There are various items of temple furniture inside and outside the temple bearing dates in the Tao Kwong (1821-51) and Tung Chi (1862-74) periods, including a very good pair of large stone lions dated 1845. Inside the temple the major items of interest are the carved granite altars which date from the 1860s and are worthy of close inspection. \n\nThe temple is dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and has long been famous for attracting large numbers of boat people on this goddess' festival in the fourth moon. Unlike most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206639, "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-1972", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n181\n\nHe has also been seen as a typical standing image of a civil mandarin, when the only method of identifying him was by the title painted on his stand or pedestal. In Kalgan, as will be described below, he is depicted naked with claws, beak and wings.\n\nIn some temples, the images of deities known not to be T'ai Sui or Ying Ch'iao, are called T'ai Sui by the temple keepers, and are prayed to as T'ai Sui. Some of these misidentifications are even to be seen perched on wads of hell money. The best example of this are the distinctive images of the boat people of the Pearl River and Southern Kwangtung province which are to be seen in Singapore and Ipoh, labelled as T'ai Sui, and standing on hell-money. One of these seen in Hong Kong is an image of the Pearl River boat people, normally called the Dragon and Tiger General (*). This is an image of a young man with his right arm raised holding a sword, and his left arm hanging by his side. He wears a robe of green with an animal's face as a stomacher, and with a dragon under his left foot and a tiger under his right. On one instance only, as is to be seen in the photograph, he is to be seen labelled the \"Tai Sui who flew back\" () and is standing on a pile of hell-money. (Plate 18)\n\nFather Doré says that images of T'ai Sui in the Yangtse Valley have six arms, are bald with ear tufts, and three eyes; they wear Taoist crowns and hold in their six hands two swords, a ball and flames, a spear, and a branch of a tree.\n\nThere are thirty-six deities painted as murals on the walls of one Singapore temple, most of whom are Heavenly Masters (A B). Amongst them is Yin Ch'iao, standing, dressed in armour, but with a bare chest and with six arms holding the usual items. Marshal Yin Ch'iao appears, therefore, to be one of the 24 Heavenly Generals and also one of the 36 Heavenly Masters.\n\nIn several works he is given 10 assistants, the last four being the gods of the year, the month, the day and the hour. Their names are given as follows:\n\nLi Ping (李丙) Hwang Ch'eng-i (黃承乙)\n\nChou Teng (周登) and Liu Hung (劉洪)\n\nAll were said to have been slain at the famous battle between good and ... described in The Deification of the Gods, at Wan Hsien Chen (萬仙陣).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206808, "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-1973", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\n79\n\nthe Pear-Garden Opera School, the Ch'aochow actors and puppe-teers have backstage a tablet or image of Feng-huo-yuan T’ien-yuan-shuai. Feng, the First Heavenly Commander. His biography can be found on page 125 of E.T.C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, and reads as follows: \"Tien Hung-i, his real name, was the second of three brothers, Hsun-liu and Chih-piao who, during the K'ai-yuan Period (AD 713-742) of the T'ang Dynasty became famous court musicians....\n\n\"They were such skilled players that even clouds stopped to listen to them, and the la-mei hua (very fragrant flowers which open only in the coldest part of the winter) blossomed. The Emperor having fallen ill, saw them in a dream playing the mandolin and violin, and was promptly restored to health. As a reward he bestowed on them the title of Marquis.\n\nA ravaging epidemic having broken out, the Grand Master of the Taoists sought the musicians' aid. T'ien Yuan-shuai had a large shen-chou, spirit-boat, built, and called together a million spirits, whom he instructed to beat drums placed on it, whereupon all the demons came out of the city to listen to the music, and were seized and expelled by the musician and the Taoist Grand Master. This is said to be the origin of the dragon-boats to be seen everywhere in China on the fifteenth day of the first moon,\n\nChang Ta-shih having recognised his great ability and power, memorialized the Emperor, who canonized the three brothers as Marquises, and all the members of their family and near relatives were given posthumous titles.\"\n\nThis account indicates clearly the Feng was chosen as a patron: namely for the beauty of his music and its magical power of exorcising the evil spirits. It shows a very basic approach to music and brings to mind the many opera and puppet-performances which are staged by the Ch'aochowese at all festivals and ceremonies that deal with ghosts of which the main one is the Ta-chiu in the 7th lunar month. As a contrast it is interesting to know that the Peking opera actors have chosen T'ang Ming Huang, who already in his life time was a patron of opera as a sophisticated entertainment of the court.\n\nAnother interesting characteristic of Ch'aochow puppets (though not unique to them) is the ceremonies required to cleanse the theatre stage. Besides the veneration of the patron saint the ceremony of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207096, "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-1974", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n161\n\nAnother ancestral hall, built by the Tang family was less fortunate. The story goes that in the 1st year of Ka Hing (✯✯) A.D. 1796 of Ts'ing dynasty, the sons of Tang Yue Cheung (**) decided to build an ancestral hall worthy to house the tablet of their illustrious ancestress, the princess. So they built a house of “kak muk” (**) in T’aai Họng (✯✯✯) village, and in shape the house was like a king's palace. At that time the district magistrate of Sun On was a man nicknamed “Hungry Bug\" on account of his habit of collecting \"squeeze\" wherever he could. When he heard of the new building being erected in Kam T'in, and how magnificent it was, he scented a chance to make money. So he sent a message to the Tangs to say he would like to inspect their new acquisition.\n\nThe Tangs were much dismayed; being familiar with the character of their district officer they knew quite well the object of his visit, they did not want to pull down the house yet its very existence was an indication of their wealth and prosperity. In the village of Lung Kwat T'au (#) where the villagers are Tangs too, being descendants of the first son of the princess, there was a portrait of the princess and the Tangs of Kam T'in borrowed it and hung it up in the entrance of the hall. When the district officer saw it he was filled with awe, and hastily made obeisance to it. He was so impressed that he dared not demand money from the descendants of so distinguished a lady, and after making a show of being pleased he stayed one night, and then took his departure.\n\nEventually the picture had to be returned to its rightful owners, and the Kam T’in men fearing further trouble, pulled the hall down, but the foundation stones, overgrown with weeds and grass can still be seen.\n\nThe legends of Kam T'in are curiously mixed up with tales of buried treasure. One story tells how at the end of the Ming dynasty the Tangs wished to build an ancestral hall for the tablet of their eleventh ancestor, Tang Kwong Yue ( ). Tang Ping Yee (*) (a grandson of Tang Kwong Yue) and eight of Tang Ping Yee's cousins chose what was, according to one \"Fung shui\" man, a very lucky day to put up the central beam of the house, but a few days later they found that the beam was putting forth shoots. The people considered this to be a bad omen, so they consulted a more reliable fortune-teller, who declared that the day had been a lucky day, but for building boats, not houses! The people at once pulled down the beam, the time happened to be the season of the dragon boat festival, and the villages decided to make the discarded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207097, "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-1974", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "162 \n\nSUNG HOK-PANG \n\nbeam into a new dragon boat. When it was launched into the water, a strange thing happened. The boat flew up into the air, and immediately a great quantity of treasure, gold, silver and precious stones fell into the boat from the sky. When it was full the boat came down to the water, and the people were able to empty it. Then it flew into the air again, and came down again with fresh supplies of treasure. This happened many times until there were untold riches for the Tangs. A few years later, they chose another lucky day and erected a new beam and the hall was completed and given the name Loi Shing Tong1. It still exists in Shui T'au Village2, on the left-hand side of Hung Shing Kung (plate 20, figure I. H.K.N., VI, Nos. 3 and 4. “Hung Shing Kung,—the oldest temple in old Ch'an T'in.\") under the name of Ts'z T'ong Tsai (small ancestral hall).3 \n\nThen followed many years of prosperity for Kam T'in until times of trouble came to all the countryside and the family had to abandon the village temporarily on account of bandits. Before leaving Kam T'in, however, they buried there what remained of the treasure. This story was handed down from generation to generation more as legend than true fact. During the Ham Fung4 (咸豐) years, 1851-1861, of Ts'ing dynasty, a man called Tang Paak Luk (鄧伯祿) of Kam Hing Wai (錦慶圍) farmed the land where the treasure was supposed to be buried. One day he sent a labourer, Ch'an A Faat (陳亞發) to work in the particular field, and in the evening Ch'an returned to the farmer's house with a gold rope which he declared he had dug up. Everyone was very pleased at first, but gradually it appeared that bad luck had come with the rope. The farm beasts began to sicken, many died and then the farmer's family became ill. So the rope was re-buried without more ado, and prosperity was at once restored to Tang Paak Luk. \n\nAnother story is of a very poor farmer who at a different time rented the same ground. One day he dug up a brick that shone brightly in the sun. As he examined it, thinking it must be silver, he carelessly dropped it on his foot, and broke his big toe. Being too poor to pay for a doctor or even to buy curatives, the farmer gave the brick to his wife to break up, and they found that it was without doubt real silver. So the wife was able to buy medicine and consult a doctor with the aid of the brick, but it was not until all the brick \n\n1 Plate 31 at rear of this Volume.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207100, "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-1974", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n165\n\nthat he owned so much sugar that it would be possible for him to place jars of sugar touching each other all the way from his village to Kam T'in. Tang answered \"Fix the price of each jar of sugar and I will undertake to put the required amount in each jar from one village to the other!\" All the onlookers applauded and called on the two men to make good their boasts. Tang went home and consulted with his mother how to raise the necessary money but she begged him not to do it, because, she said, thieves would certainly hear of it and it would be impossible to guard the jars. So Tang decided that the best way out of the difficulty was to arrange another dinner together and apologize to T'o.\n\nThe other story tells how a notorious robber named Faan Ha On (L) tried for three years to break into Tang's house with the idea of robbing him, but without success. Tang, who like many rich men was particularly nervous of thieves, had his house very well guarded and barred. One day when Tang was in Kam T'in Market he walked straight into Faan by mistake, and with such force that his head was quite bruised. The thief was abject in his apologies and Tang, not knowing who he was, asked his name. When he heard that this was the famous robber, Tang was afraid, fearing to be kidnapped, but Faan assured him that he intended no harm. “For three years I have tried to rob your house,\" he confessed, \"but I have found it too well guarded and even your roof is impenetrable. If you do not believe me go and look for all the stones that I threw away from the dried persimmons I ate, as I lay hidden waiting and watching for an opportunity to enter your door! But there is always a chance still of a careless servant leaving your door open and to make your house even more secure you should build a series of goose-houses round it. Geese are better than dogs, when a stranger comes they will always give the alarm.\" So Tang went home, much impressed, and did what the robber had suggested, even to sending a servant to collect the persimmon stones which are said to have weighed 50 catties. But when later on he tried to find Faan Ha On to show his gratitude to him he was told that he had been killed by a cat, the reason being, the people said, that he had, in a previous existence been a rat!\n\nThe most unaccountable story of all is that of the \"Ngan To Laan (i) silver coins run away from their old home” which is reputed to have happened in the 32nd year of Kwong Sui (1906) of Ts'ing dynasty. On the dragon boat festival day of that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207541, "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-1975", "page_number": 309, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n301 \n\nsampan an elderly woman with thinning hair dressed in black with an empty red \"mei dai\" was urging the polers on with a straw fan, and another middle-aged woman was also pretending to pole the sampan along. They were all exerting themselves to the utmost and generally behaving in an extreme manner with exaggerated gestures and shouting as they went along. Another boat accompanied them with only one person \"poling\" it. When they reached the boat anchorage, the gonging continued, and the two women on the roof began to shadow-box and then to grapple and wrestle with one another. Eventually the elderly woman went down on to the fore-deck, and then she and the woman on the top deck began to push and pull at one of the poles in a vigorous manner until eventually the woman on the roof herself came down on to the fore-deck. There was a brief interval during which some of the younger polers then engaged in mock fights which were almost obscene in their intention. Then the elderly woman and the other began their mock fighting again and eventually collapsed together struggling on the deck and went in under the cover of the sampan. At one stage an empty red bucket was, it seemed, symbolically emptied over the front of the sampan.\n\nIn the middle of all this there was a wedding ceremony, and I think that all the preceding activities were connected with it. But I was particularly struck by the frenzied, almost ecstatic and unseemly behaviour of the women.\n\n(II) 31st January, 1975 \n\nAbout a week later after the ceremony described in my note of 5th January 1975, I witnessed a similar ceremony but this time performed by the owners of intermediate-size boats.\n\nThe ceremony followed a similar pattern, but in this case there were two actual sampans without motors, which were propelled by a team of oarsmen, using small poles rather than oars and manipulated in a rhythmic way rather like the way a dragon boat paddle is manipulated. Both teams of rowers, six in each boat, were dressed in a sort of deep blue uniform, and one team consisted of young women and the other of older women. When they reached what I assumed to have been a wedding boat, it was contrived that the older women reached the target first, and that they then together with the women on the boat tried to keep off the young women. These attempts lasted for quite some considerable time with much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207550, "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-1975", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "310\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof the assistance given to Chang T'ien Shih (*) the First Master of Orthodox Taoist folk-religion, by the Three Jesters when they played their music, attracted and led the evil spirits (as the Pied Piper led the rats) to the spirit boat on which they were shanghaied, whereupon the epidemic immediately ended.\n\nNow we know from many sources, in addition to our own observations, that the rite for expelling pestilence performed by the Fukienese of Taiwan and South East Asia consists of a ceremony at which the spirits of the Wang Yeh encourage the demons of pestilence to board a paper boat which is set fire to and pushed out midstream. These Fukienese pestilence gods, the Wang Yeh (*), an heterodox cult of folk religion, although they are worshipped as one on altars, can be classified into two types. The first is the large group of musicians or scholars, varying from 36 to 360, who in legend died at the whim of an Emperor and were deified; the second group are individual spirit generals bearing family surnames, said to be either blood brothers or close friends. These appear individually or in groups of up to six on altars. Wang Yeh from both groups have identical roles, the prevention of epidemics. Most Chinese with whom I have discussed these Wang Yeh, although they subconsciously realized it existed, had not considered this separation into two groups. They had unconsciously accepted the multitude of blood brothers with their individual surnames as individual musicians or scholars from the large group. Du Bose6, incidentally, heard another legend which described one single Fukienese deity, the Wang Yeh, as a scholar who sacrificed himself and saved the village from a demon-infested public well.\n\nThe Wang Yeh festival of expelling the pestilence demons usually takes place during the fourth month, when sickness is (or was) rife. In South East Asia and in Taiwan individual images of Wang Yeh (seated, unarmed and bearded generals) are taken down to the water's edge during the launching ceremony, and occasionally a wooden image is actually launched aboard a more substantial miniature boat, and wherever it lands a temple is supposed to be built to house the deity, thereby spreading the cult.\n\nChief Marshal T'ien is not the localized cult deity Miss Werle believed him to be. He has appeared not only in Ch'aochow and\n\n6 H. C. du Bose: The Dragon, Image & Demon. Partridge & Co., London, 1886.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207971, "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-1977", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "179\n\nAmong smaller villages, arrangements for co-operation often extended beyond the village itself. Hang Hau and nearby Seung Sz Wan, for instance, were closely involved in each other's celebrations. When there were celebrations in one village, members of the other village could come without invitation.44 Inter-village co-operative arrangements of one sort or another were sufficiently strong for most of the smaller villages to identify themselves as being parts of permanent village alliances. Tai Mong Tsai, Tai Po Tsai, Shek Hang, Tit Kim Hang, Tam Wat, Wong Mo Ying, Ping Tun, and She Tau formed the Paat Heung (Eight Villages); Nam Shan included also Fu Yung Pit, Kak Hang Tun, Keng Pang Ha, and Lung Mei; Pak Tam Chung included Pak Tam, Tsak Yue Wu, Wong Keng Tei, Sheung Yiu, Wong Yi Chau, and Tsam Chuk Wan; and Ngong Wo, Wo Liu, Shan Liu, Tai Wan, Tso Wo Hang, Sha Ha, Nam A, Wong Chuk Yeung, Long Keng, and O Tau formed the Shap Heung (Ten Villages). The Paat Heung had a joint school in Tai Mong Tsai; the Pak Tam Chung villages jointly worshipped the Great King earthgod near Sheung Yiu; the Shap Heung had its joint school in Tai Wan, and used to maintain collectively the T'in Hau Temple at Wong Chuk Yeung (now ruined). The larger villages, e.g. Ho Chung, Mang Kung Uk, Sha Kok Mei, Nam Wai, Tseng Lan Shue, and Pak Kong, were apparently not parties to such alliances, but regarded themselves as forming complete units in themselves.45\n\nInter-village disputes were not common, but there were some long-standing ones. Sha Kok Mei disputed with Nam Shan over tree-cutting rights. Nam Wai and Ho Chung fought over a quarrel that had started when the cows of one village damaged the crops of the other.46\n\nFestivals and customs\n\nThe major festivals in the village were the New Year, and the T'in Kei (birthday of Nui Woh, the Earth Goddess), Ts'ing Ming (spring worship at the ancestral graves), Dragon Boat, Tsat Tse (Seven Sisters), Mid-Autumn, Double-Ninth (autumn worship at the ancestral graves), and Tung Chi (winter solstice) festivals, the temple festivals of the local temples (in this area Ch'e Kung, T'in Hau, Koon Yam, and Hung Shing), the festivals of the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208360, "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-1978", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "68\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nsymbolic statement which parallels the set of technical acts which cluster together into the agricultural phase of sowing. Just as the graves are cleaned and repaired, the seed beds are cleaned and repaired.44 In the same light, the offerings on the grave make sense as a statement parallel to sowing. Meat and wine were offered to the graves and rice was offered to the seed beds. The grave offerings were probably shared between the dead and those who were presenting them. In Yuanjiang it was called to 'drink wine on the grave'. If these suggestions are correct, do they fit in an interesting way with our earlier reasoning? At any rate they lead us to a new and puzzling juxtaposition: graves are not only mountains, they are also seedbeds.\n\n5. Money trees.\n\nThe other important feature of the spring grave worship was the erection of bamboo top-branches with paper money or paper strips hung on the twigs. This kind of ritual arrangement has a certain Southeast Asian flavour, but here we shall resist all temptations to make comparisons in this broader perspective. Here we deal with Chinese ritual phenomena in their Chinese setting.\n\nI have discussed the sign of bamboo elsewhere,45 and from its contextual appearance in rituals in the lake area of Hubei and Hunan I induced the conclusion that it had ambiguous connotations to productive force and ‘driving-away' power. When the sweeping of the graves implied that they were swept with bamboo twigs, this may have entailed some sort of 'driving-away' or purification. A reminiscent practice is that of Jiangling where, on the 24th day of the twelfth moon, the doorways were swept with bamboo branches.46 It would, then, be possible to argue that the bamboos erected on the graves gave protection to the graves or the dead. But if so, what about paper money and paper strips? The latter are in all probability a version of the former. But what does it mean to hang paper money on bamboo branches?\n\nA similar arrangement is mentioned in the essay Wuling jingdu lue. It is said that during the dragon boat races in the fifth moon there were special small boats on the river; their task was to supply the competitors with food and wine. Each of these small boats was equipped with two trees in which 'yellow money' had been hung. They also had 'multicoloured scrolls', drummers and flutists.47", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208364, "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-1978", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "GÖRAN AIJMER\n\nfor wine are used, jiu H, and it's 'sweet wine'. It is hard to tell from the data whether different kinds of wine were used on different occasions. More generally, we may remember that wine is manufactured from rice; in fact, it is rice transmuted into liquid form.\n\n7. Food\n\nFood was sacrificed and eaten on the graves after they had been swept. Again, the lack of detailed data makes it difficult to interpret the presenting of food as a ritual act. Some notes could be observed here. In Yiyang people ate 'stalks and grass', which, being unusual food, probably signified 'non-rice' or 'non-food'.65 We are told that in Anxiang officials prepared 'cattle'. The term may have a more narrow sense of 'beef'. Meat seems to have been paired with rice wine in many sacrifices throughout the area: on the Lantern Festival (in the first moon) in Jiangling, on Earth God Day in Wuling and Zhongxiang,7 on the Dragon Boat Festival (in the fifth moon) in the Yozhou prefecture (around Baling), and Yunmeng #,68 on Zhongyuan (in the seventh moon) in Wuling,69 and on Churia, New Year Eve, in Jiangling, Hanzhou, Jingshan, Chongyang, and Yingshan.70\n\nAgain, in the temple dedicated to General Goan in Mienyang, mentioned above, the offerings on the 13th day of the fifth moon consisted of 'cattle' meat and sweet wine. A chronicler mentions that in Tauyuan, at mourning, there was an 'excess' of slaughtering.71\n\nIf we assume that the wide category of sheng-cattle-indicates that cows, oxen and buffalos, and such bovine animals were of primary interest as slaughtering animals on Qingming (although pigs may have been included in the category), it may be interesting to associate that circumstance not only with the excessive slaughtering which was part of the mourning practices in Tauyuan, but also with the display of a clay oxen at the Lichum 'Establishment of Spring' festival around the 5th of February in the solar calendar.72 In Chongyang the 5th day of the fifth moon was called niu ri ✈ a Ox Day. Then the buffalos or cows were fed, and it was not allowed to whip the beasts or swear at them on this day.73 These practices seem all to have a close link with agriculture.74\n\nThe fact that cattle was modelled in clay seems to indicate that the nature of cattle was earthly. The breaking of the clay oxen may,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208372, "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-1978", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "80\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\n8 D. H. Perkins, Agricultural Development in China 1368-1968. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969, p. 47.\n\n9 Göran Aijmer, 'A Structural Approach to Chinese Ancestor Worship'. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde 124, pp. 91-98, 1968, and The Dragon Boat Festival on the Hupeh-Hunan Plain, Central China. A Study in the Ceremonialism of the Transplantation of Rice. Statens Etnografiska Museum, Monograph Series, No. 9. Stockholm, 1964.\n\n10 Several terms are used: *, **, *, ; it is hard to tell whether they signify different types of graves.\n\n11 GJTSJC VI:1259, ##† 1b.\n\n12 TRAŁ. Records of Changde Prefecture. Auth. A, 1813. Juan 13:4a. Wuling is the capital of this prefecture.\n\n13 ****, juan 3:8a, quoting older edition.\n\n14 # Records of Yuanjiang County. 1807-1819. Juan 18:2b.\n\nJuan 18:2b.\n\n益陽縣\n\n154, juan 2:9b,\n\n16 CM, juan 11:2b.\n\n17 ***. Records of Anxiang County. Eds. ## et al., 1748, no pagination.\n\n風俗考\n\n18 GJTSJC VI:1130, £## 1b.\n\n19 GJTSJC VI:1142, ## 3a.\n\n20 GJTSJC VI:1120, #2b.\n\n21 GJTSJC VI:1120, ‡ 4b.\n\n風俗考 BB\n\n22 GJTSJC VI:1116, + 4b.\n\n23 GJTSJC VI:1223, 2a.\n\n24 A#. Records of Wuling County, Auths, $ et al., 1862-63. Juan 7:4b.\n\n25 GJTSJC VI:1142 ### 2a.\n\n26 GJTSJC VI:1120 * 2a.\n\n27 eums, juan 11:12b, quoting 'old record' — presumably an earlier edition of the gazetteer.\n\n28 Sometimes there is also an autumnal she ri, but the present case certainly refers to a spring offering.\n\n29 GJTSJC VI:1120 $ 2b.\n\n風俗考\n\n30 GJTSJC VI:1120 ## 4b.\n\n31 GJTSJC VI:1166 ## 4b.\n\n32 GJTSJC VI:1120\n\n33 GJTSJC VI:1259\n\n34 GJTSJC VI:1223 #‡ 6b.\n\n# 2ab.\n\n# 1b, 2a.\n\n風俗考\n\n35 GJTSJC VI:1142 ## 1b.\n\n36 For a general survey of the architectural features of Chinese tombs, see Magdalene von Dewall, 'Grab und Totenbrauch in China.' Tribus, no. 25, November 1976, pp. 31-81.\n\n37 Harry A. Franck: Roving through Southern China. New York & London: The Century Co., 1925, p. 64.\n\n38 On Tongshan, see GJTSJC VI:1120, A#‡ 6b, and on Wuling, GJTSJC VI:1255, 1, 7ab.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208373, "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-1978", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n81\n\n39 See Maurice Freedman: Geomancy. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1968. London\n\n1.15.\n\n40 Aijmer, A Structural Approach...p. 95,\n\n41 GJTSJC VI:1223 *** 126.\n\n42 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 33. London: Athlone Press, 1966.\n\n1* For instance, Lewis Hodous provides an account in his Folkways in China, London: Arthur Probstain, 1929, p. 92. Hodous draws mainly on his long Fujian experience.\n\n44 Aijmer, A Structural Approach\n\np.96.\n\n45 Aijmer, The Dragon Boat Festival, p. 77f.\n\n46 GJTSJC VI:1193, &$ 26.\n\n47 GJTSJC II:51, 6a. A Similar arrangement occurred in Youxian, GJTSJC II:51, 19b.\n\n48 Aijmer, The Dragon Boat Festival, pp. 78f.\n\n49 There were probably several kinds of paper money in use. The yellow kind referred to above was in all likelihood the 'gold variety. As our sources do not carry information in detail on this subject we must leave such further implications aside.\n\n50 I have notes from Gongan (GJTSJC VI:1193, * 36), Hanzhou (VI:1130, 風俗长 Ib), Zhongxiang (VI:1142: #6# 1b, 2b), Jingshan (VI:1142, & 3a) Chongyang (VI:1120 † 4a, 5a), and Tongshan (VI:1120, Afb† 6a).\n\n51 I have found notes from Baling (GJTSJC VI: 1223, K## 2b, ennt juan 11:6a), Wuchang (GJTSJC VI:1120, ✩ 26), Chongyang (VI:1120, £#* 46), Tongshan (VI:1120, ### 6b) and Yingshan (VI:1166, BB‡ 4b).\n\n52 Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society. pp. 140f.\n\n53 Other names for this festival used in the region are Yulan dahui, 王蘭大會 Yulan penhui 盂蘭盆會,and Duwang dahui 度亡大會\n\nAll are Buddhist terms.\n\n54 I have, at present, no information from the Dongting area on the handling of paper money at funerals, for instance.\n\n55 GJTSJC VI:1223, # 2b.\n\n56 GJTSJC VI:1193, £&$ 26.\n\n57 GJTSJC VI:1142, R&* 3a.\n\n58 GJTSJC VI:1193, # 2a.\n\n59 GJTSJC VI:1259, 6 2a.\n\n60 GJTSJC VI:1130, &‡ 2a.\n\n61 GJTSJC VI:1120, K✩‡ 4b.\n\n62 GJTSJC VI:1166, ### 46.\n\n63 GJTSJC VI:1142, ‡ 4a.\n\n64 GJTSJC VI:1142, &* 2ab.\n\n65 mm, juan 2:96.\n\n66 GJTSJC VI:1193, R 2a.\n\n67 GJTSJC VI:1259, ✩ lb; 1142, * 2a.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208374, "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-1978", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "82\n\n68 GJTSJC II:51, 19b.\n\nGÖRAN AUMER\n\n69 GJTSJC VI:1259, RG 2a.\n\n70 GJTSJC VI:1193, 風俗考 26; 1130, 風俗考 2a; 1142, 風俗考 38; 1120, 風俗考 5a; 1166, 風俗考 5a.\n\n71 GJTSJC VI: 1259, + 2ab. For two interesting discussions on foodstuffs as part of offering rituals, and in terms of cooked and raw food, see Emily M. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973, pp. 167-170, and Arthur P. Wolf: Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors, pp. 131-182 in Arthur P. Wolf (ed.), Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1974.\n\n72 Chroniclers report this custom from Hanzhou (GJTSJC VI:1130, 1b), Jingshan (VI:1142, 3a), Zhongxiang (VI:1142, 6b), Chongyang (VI:1120, 4a), and Yingshan (VI:1166, 3b, 4a).\n\n73 GJTSJC VI:1120, 4a.\n\n74 A local tradition from Daye (GJTSJC VI: ... 17a) tells of a persecuted jiao dragon that turned itself into an ox island in a river; this was henceforth called Bull Island. A similar transmutation is mentioned in a legend referring to the Yuan River; see E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh Ltd. 1932, p. 116f.\n\n75 In Tongshan, there was an idea of a pair of Earth Gods, She Gong and She Mu. I have no other evidence for ideas of a female counterpart in the Dongting area; GJTSJC VI:1120, 6b.\n\n76 GJTSJC VI:1193, 2a. This may be compared to the use of a mixture of rice and red beans, sometimes contained in a pot, on other ritual occasions; see Aijmer, The Dragon Boat Festival, p. 76.\n\n77 GJTSJC VI:1259, 1b.\n\n78 GJTSJC VI:1142, 2a.\n\n79 GJTSJC VI:1259, 1b.\n\n80 #Ma juan 3: 8a. 風俗考\n\n81 GJTSJC VI:1120, 4b.\n\n82 GJTSJC VI:1142, 4b.\n\n83 GJTSJC VI:1120, 3a.\n\n## 4b.\n\n84 GJTSJC VI:1166, 4b. 風俗考\n\n85 GJTSJC VI:1193, 2a. 荆楚歲時記 Seasons in Jing and Chu. Auth. Tsung Lin\n\n86, juan 13:4a.\n\n87 GJTSJC VI:1130, 1b. 風俗考\n\n88 GJTSJC VI:1120, 4b.\n\n89 GJTSJC VI:1120, 2b.\n\n90 Aijmer, A Structural Approach... p. 95.\n\n91 GJTSJC VI:1142, 1b, 2b.\n\n92 荊楚歲時記 7b. 風俗考 16, 2b. M16\n\n93 GJTSJC VI:1142, 2a.\n\n94 loc. cit.\n\n95 GJTSJC VI:1166, 5b. Records of the ... Ed: MELAR‡ n.d.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208881, "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-1980", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n15\n\nIn single-room and larger temples the major altar, which faces the entrance, may be either one large space reaching from side wall to side wall or it can be divided into three, five or more individual altars with, on occasions, a separate altar or two constructed down the side walls. (Plate 6).\n\nIn quite a number of traditional temples the main hall is divided longitudinally by partition walls from floor to ceiling. These stretch a short distance into the main hall from the rear wall of the temple, one on either side of the main altar. The two side altars are therefore outside the partitions, and in practice these partition walls serve to isolate the side altars.\n\nIn many traditional temples several major deities, and even a few minor deities, have a side hall dedicated entirely to themselves and their attendants. These include the God of Loyalty and Literature Guan Di; the fertility goddess Jin Hua Niang Niang; the bodhisattva Guan Yin and the wealth god Cai Bo Xing Jun. It is not necessarily a down-grading of the importance of the deity but a late recognition and addition to the temples' complement. A great many side hall altars contain a group of unconnected and unidentifiable minor images around the major and identifiable deity's image, all placed there over the years by zealous devotees.\n\nA side hall in one temple contained the lone image of the Earth God on the only altar, although the characters above the altar read Jin Hua Niang Niang. Presumably over the years the images of this fertility Goddess and her attendants had been removed and replaced by the image of the Earth God without the title above the altar being changed.\n\nThe temple incinerator, and the temple keeper's kiosk or counter from which he sells charm papers and incense, are usually in one or other of the side halls or courts between side halls.\n\nSide halls also contain large ritual items such as the temple bell, drum and the removable head and tail from the village dragon boat, and in one of the side halls of most Boat People's temples replicas of early junks (some 8' to 10' in length) also gather dust in the gloom. These model junks are used only on festival days when offerings are placed on the decks. The devotees thank Tian Hou for good catches over the previous year and request similar benefits for the coming year.\n\nThe roofs of traditional temples consist of interlocking tiles resting on lathes supported by strong cross beams. The latter are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208891, "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-1980", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n25\n\nSeveral temples have large stone lions outside the entrance or just inside the main doors to guard the temple from demons.\n\nBoat Peoples' land temples used to have a pair of masts more than twice as high as the temple with a small red wooden crow's nest on each, some six feet from the top24. These are said to be the repository of the spirit of the dragon of the nearby hill or island peak which protects the local inhabitants from the depredations of evil spirits. Nowadays, only one temple seems to have them, the Hong Sheng temple at the old landing stage on Ap Lei Chau.\n\nLarge triangular and colourful flags flown outside temples tend to identify the temple as a Chaozhou community temple. These flags bear the title of the main deity, the name of the temple and a spirit medium operates there, another flag in grey and black is flown, bearing an Eight Trigram diagram together with magical signs and symbols.\n\nDating of temples\n\nAbout the only way that temples can be dated with any reasonable accuracy is from the plaque near the entrance listing the subscribers to the initial construction, from the temple bell inscription25 or from the dates on the ancestral tablets of the founders of the temple on the temple altar.\n\nFrom a very general examination of bells and chimes, several dozen bear dates between 1700 and 1840, that is post-Ming dynasty but pre-British occupation. One or two bells date back to the period immediately post-Ming and a further couple are dated within this century. The older traditional temples were probably rededicated post-Ming, or were built and dedicated post-Ming, mainly in the period following the rescinding by the Kang Xi Emperor of the order enforcing the removal of all who lived within 50 li (18.3 miles) from the coast during the period of intense pirate and anti-government activity along the China coast in the 1660s.26\n\nProbably the earliest recorded date for the construction of a temple is the stone carving dated AD 1274 behind the Tian Hou temple in Joss House Bay. In AD 1012 Lin Daoyi, a trader from Fujian province, wrecked during a storm, was washed up on Tung Lung Island and built a temple dedicated to Tian Fei (as Tian Hou was then called) in thanksgiving. The temple was destroyed by a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208957, "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-1980", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n87\n\nvalley surrounded by hills in the east, north and south forming an armchair embracing it. It is located at the crosspoint where the breath of the azure dragon and the white tiger meet. The entire valley is fed by flowing streams like the sinews and veins within a body. It is also the confluence of meandering tributaries before the main river runs off to the sea. According to a geomancer who never saw Kam Tin, \"It is said [in the geomancy classics] that the Dragon [Water Dragon, not the same as the Azure Dragon] follows the watercourse, and the meeting-place of waters is the meeting-place of the dragons, where the virtues of hills and streams are united and the grass ever green.\" He continued, \"In the distance there should be groups of mountains with streams of water encircling them; in front a stretch of level plain, a pond, or lake. In the wider circuit, the space should be large enough for 10,000 horses, and the watercourse be sufficient to admit a dragon [large] boat... If the expanse be wide, children and grandchildren will multiply and be strong. From the top of the hill the view should extend for miles, with mountains and streams interspersed.\"16 Such vivid and precise description of the geographical features of Kam Tin by a fung-shui professor who never saw the place can only lead to the conclusion that the siting of Kam Tin was done piously in accordance with the geomancy canons. Moreover, \"the place where the flow out being low, with no hill or high embankment to obstruct the escape of good influences, a pagoda is erected to check these influences and throw them back over the land.”17 Indeed a fung-shui pagoda called Man Ch'eung Kok was erected near where I Tai College now stands in Shui-tau hamlet.* By the year 1850, \"the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them passed the highest government examination and a census taken that year showed that there were more than 1,800 males living...\"18 But the family experienced a decline in population and wealth after the pagoda was torn down and the course of the river was altered to accommodate three fish ponds and buildings of a school that blocked the view of the village.19 This mistake was remedied by repairing the banks of the river in 1930 and family membership was said to be on the increase again.\n\nFig. 2 in the original version of this article, published in Asian Architect and Builder, October 1979, which contains many other drawings and diagrams not reproduced here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209239, "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-1981", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "128 \n\nTA. ACTON \n\nare organised into four regional federations, whose four elected chairmen become important people indeed, and sit on the Hong Kong Government's Fish Marketing Advisory Board. The co-operatives and the regional committees have their meetings in a friendly, informal way in the Liaison Officer's office, whose job description includes a duty to \"convince troublesome committees or members to observe the ordinance and by-laws.” — fortunately, rarely necessary. \n\n30 \n\nIn addition, the Liaison Officers encourage mechanisation, training classes (also held in their offices), sensible insurance, the \"Keep Hong Kong Clean\" campaign, and have the duty \"to assist the fishermen in the organisation of festival opera performances, dragon boat races, and other recreation activities.\" 31 \n\n32 \n\nOne major effect, however, of the development, assisted by F.M.O. loans to credit societies and individuals, of a more capital-intensive, mechanised fishing industry, is a sharp decline in the number of persons actually required to man it or make a living at fishing, especially over the past 10 years. In 1971 there were around 50,000 working fishermen in Hong Kong. *2 By 1979 that number had fallen to around 35,700,13 Those with sufficient initial capital to catch the boat of modernization have done so, and now, though working on water, actually live in houses ashore, whether in Aberdeen or new villages on remote islands. It is those who were too poor to mechanise who still live on their old, leaky boats, going ashore to work in factories, sweatshops or street markets. The Shui-sheung-yan community of the early '50s has become polarised into rich and poor, between well-to-do active fishermen, living on land, and poor ex-fishermen, living on boats until they can secure resettlement. \n\nThe F.M.O. schools system, by making available alternative careers to the children of fishermen, has facilitated, and lessened the pain of this reduction of manpower. \n\nIn all other fields, however, the commitment of the F.M.O. is to active fishermen rather than ex-fishermen. Little connection is made between their work and that of the poorest Shui-sheung-yan. Indeed, Government spokesmen, talking of the poor boat-dwellers often refer to them as \"squatters\", implying that they are not true \"Shui-sheung-yan\" at all, but land-people who have moved into leaky boats typhoon shelters like Yaumatei simply to find somewhere to live or perhaps even to jump the queue for public housing. (This view was not, however, borne out by a survey carried out by students for a community \n\n¦ \n\n¦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209244, "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-1981", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n133\n\ngroups of men receiving trophies for rowing, for fishing, or for winning the San Miguel beer-drinking championship. Dragons from the head of dragon boats are also hanging up; the club is very strong on participation in the dragon boat races. A much-used ping-pong table occupies one end of the room; at the other sits a caretaker amid piles of plastic heels: he does a little cobbling on the side. In a nearby restaurant the club holds numerous dinners, where guests are entertained with Chinese opera singing, and modern pop songs. Both present and ex-fishermen attend these dinners; it was estimated that at one I attended no more than 10 percent of those present were still active fishermen, (though this estimate discounted women and children and guests present, such as the San Miguel brewery representative.) Probably a greater proportion belonged to active fishing families.\n\nBefore the war, Mr. Thirlwall said, there had been no policy for the boat-people, and they had been very socially isolated. From his lighthouse he had befriended them, dressed wounds, and had come to prefer their society to that of the uptight land-based Hong Kong Chinese. After the war, the pace of social change had been very fast, bewildering many older people. The fishing industry had contracted, and despite his local efforts there was very little solidarity among the fishermen, and that they were not represented as a community in the government process. Challenged as to whether the Regional Co-operative Federations did not do this job, he responded that the credit societies were just concerned with the operation of the better-off boats; they did not concern themselves with the slow loss of small anchorages to land reclamation, the difficulties of getting settlement without becoming an illegal squatter. It was said that all the boat-people were keen to settle: why then did the Marine Department have to refuse all fresh registrations of houseboats? In fact a community was being broken up, and many of the members of his clubs in Stanley and Chai Wan were no longer active fishermen. But they would defend their rights to be part of the Shui-sheung-yan community. He did not use the word “Tanka”, however, (“In fact, I hate it\"), because it was used by land people to oppress them.\n\nThese two clubs in fact bridged the gap between the well-to-do active fishermen and the poor ex-fishermen, partly because of the very evident affection in which Mr. Thirlwall was held by all sections of the community. The clubs were, in fact, an exception to the general rule among the boat-people, not economic organisations, but quasi-ethnic ones, following a very common Hong Kong Chinese pattern, that of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209962, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "199\n\nA pair of Chinese drums, each with writhing dragons, with colours still surprisingly bright considering their age, is on show. There are Chinese caricatures of British soldiers and a red lion rears on the ensign which flew from a piquet boat in the attack on Chusan in 1842.\n\nThe regiment was one of those honoured by being allowed to carry the China dragon on its badge and it still features today, with the word \"China\" underneath, on the buttons and badges of the Border Regiment. The museum has a good collection of belt plates and cap badges bearing the dragon.\n\nThere is an interesting Chinese map, epaulettes and medals of the First China War. A banner seized by the 55th now in Kendal Church is the subject of a separate note.\n\nMore modern memories of Hong Kong are housed in the museum of the Middlesex Regiment, in Bruce Castle, Tottenham, London. The museum was closed for re-organisation when I visited but I was kindly shown the relevant items in the collection. The role of this distinguished regiment in the 1941 battle for Hong Kong is well known. There are several weapons which were used in the battle. One machine gun was buried to prevent its capture by the Japanese and it was recovered after the Allied victory. A Japanese machine gun is also held.\n\nThere is a framed menu card which was used on the regiment's Albuhera Day, 10th May 1943, in a Hong Kong prison-of-war camp. Sketched on the front is a guard tower and those present have signed their names. A Japanese flag bears the Rising Sun. Other reminders of POW life are the 1st Battalion's bugle which was used in Hong Kong, and later in Japanese prison camps and a small wireless set which was used secretly in the prison-of-war camp here. For refusing to divulge its whereabouts Colonel L.A. Newnham was tortured and executed. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross.\n\nThe museum also has a small flat fan with a pagoda painted on it which belonged to Captain Kyodo Shigeru of the Lisbon Maru. A poignant reminder of the incident is a sketch which shows the stern of the ship already under water and the decks crowded with desperate men. The drawing was kept for over two years concealed in a bamboo stick by Major C.M.M. Man,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210466, "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-1985", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "54\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nwould engage a Taoist priest to come down to his junk and perform a ceremony known as Changing the Gods (woon shan). This, which involved spilling the blood of a domestic fowl, was believed to provide cleansing from pollution and open the way for good fortune.\n\nThe annual ritual cycle began with the New Year and proceeded almost immediately to the public festival for the 'birthday' of the local tutelary deity, Hung Shing Kung, on the 13th day of the 2nd lunar month. These two occasions were the ritual highlights of the year. Quickly in their wake came Ch'ing Ming, fixed by the Chinese solar calendar at a date corresponding with April 6th and falling therefore usually in the third lunar month. This was one of the two special occasions for the commemoration of a family's departed members. The third month saw also the festival to T'in Hau, the so-called Queen of Heaven, protectress of all seamen, celebrated biennially with Chinese opera at the neighbouring village of Lung Shuen Wan and annually in a large number of other places in the Colony.\n\nIn the fourth month there was a festival at the temple of T'am Kung in Shaukiwan to which a few Kau Sai people sometimes went to watch the plays, and on the fifth day of the fifth month the Dragon Boat festival. Kau Sai had once had a Dragon Boat of its own which, I was told, on one memorable occasion even came in first in the 'regatta' held in those days at Aberdeen and attended by H.E. the Governor. But that was back in the 'twenties. Later, Kau Sai people merely looked on at the Dragon Boat races held elsewhere, or sometimes 'fielded' a scratch 'team' for the fun of the thing at Sai Kung. All boat families also made offerings at the temple on the Double Fifth which was also widely used as a kind of dividing mark in the calendar: hired crew, for example, were usually engaged or laid off at New Year and the Dragon Boat festival.\n\nIn the sixth lunar month was held the festival for Koon Yam, 'Goddess of Mercy', observed in all her many temples but attended particularly by Kau Sai residents at the village of Pak Sha Wan, near Sai Kung. (The fact that this village was also the site of that Kau Sai New Village to which the landsmen were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210517, "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-1985", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "105 \n\nhands on board. The total number was 31, of whom 5 were women. The returns I have for 1970 list no paid employees at all.\n\nAs might be expected, most hired hands were young, 25 of the 31 being under 30 years of age, and only 3 over 40. Interestingly enough 2 of these 3 were females, both of them women with sons also employed on the same boats. The other 3 women were wives of hired men.\n\nOnly 13 fokis were genealogically related to their employers, 8 being affines, 4 agnates and 1 a matrilateral kinsman. About half-a-dozen were described to me as sons of well-known neighbours. For the rest I have no information. Recruitment, which took place at Chinese New Year and around the Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th lunar month) was normally through the local \"grapevine\", or, much less commonly, by written advertisement posted at one or other of the shops in Shaukiwan or Sai Kung which specialised in this kind of thing. Applicants answered the advertisements by approaching the shopkeepers who, already known to the prospective employers, then acted as “introducers\" (gaay siew yan, introduce man recommended). At New Year 1952 Chung Fuk Hei recruited two new fokis in this way, one of his previous employees having left to join a more congenial boat family in Kau Sai, the other (a poor relation) having been sacked for laziness (and gluttony: Fuk Hei was continually grumbling about the number of bowls of rice his employees managed to put away in a day).\n\nHired men received full board and lodging on the boats on which they worked, and a money wage which in most cases worked out at about 4% of the value of the catch. Women received board and lodging, too, and a sum of about $H.K.15 a month. On some boats the 4% share was paid at irregular intervals as money came in and convenience dictated; on others, more regularly. Usually payments were handed over about once a week or twice a month. The share was always calculated on the gross total takings before the deduction of any other expenses. It was several times explained to me that it would not be fair (mm gung doe, lit: not right reach, or mm gung ping, lit: not right level) for fokis to have to share in the expenses. Thus while", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210519, "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-1985", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "107\n\nnot been living at the time in Fuk Shun's house. My informants were the man's sister and her daughter (i.e. the offending Fuk Hap's sister-in-law and niece, sister and niece also to the foki concerned). My notes continue as follows:\n\nI said, later, wouldn't the unfairly treated one walk out? Mrs. FS and DM said No, neither he nor the others knew there was a differentiation when the money was actually given out. Now none dares speak out, but the undercurrent of dissatisfaction is very strong. Reason for not speaking out? Ones who get more fear they may get less: one who gets less fears others may also get less and blame him. Both fear being sworn out (naau, or laau, to scold, revile).\n\nThere were no other sanctions than gossip, and, of course, a refusal to continue the engagement beyond the next New Year or Dragon Boat festival.\n\nOn engagement many hired men asked for advances on their wages. Some obtained as much as two or three hundred dollars or even more in this way, and as a result received relatively little on pay days until the debt was paid off. There was no generally accepted way of doing this, arrangements for subtracting (kau: deduct) so much on each occasion being made individually by each foki with his employer. Fokis were notoriously hard up, but they tended also to be flamboyant spenders when they did have money. At Chinese New Year in particular, when, like almost all other paid workers in Hong Kong, they enjoyed double pay and several days holiday, they spent lavishly on clothes, hair styling, watches and fountain pens, girls, cinemas, theatres and gambling. Leung Shui Hei, one of Chung Fuk Her's fokis whose wages are described above came back from a spending spree in Kowloon on the eve of Chinese New Year 1953 and settled down to 3½ days' hard gambling in the course of which he lost everything he had bought and was left with the clothes he stood up in. He immediately asked for a new advance from his employer.\n\nThe same Leung Shui Hei was an interesting case in many ways. Aged about 28 in 1953 he was strong, good looking,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210522, "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-1985", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "110\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nfamilies to find employment elsewhere, put their own wives and children on sampans and hire themselves out as employees to their erstwhile peers. It is a pity that my records do not allow me to distinguish clearly between these two major categories of foki: those whose natal families had merely, as it were, loaned them out, and those who had had to turn to paid employment or starve. Among the former must be included youths like Chung Fuk Woh's son who deliberately ran away from home but nevertheless remained (albeit somewhat grudgingly) a recognised member of his natal family; among the latter, men like Leung Shui Hei alone in the world (whether accidentally or deliberately), and no longer linked into any kind of ongoing group of kinsmen. The elderly bachelor Ma Fung Shan, described below, was in a kind of intermediate position: originally a younger son put out to work on someone else's boat, he was by 1953 the sole surviving member of his father's family of procreation, split off by formal division more than twenty years before from the extended family group which his father's father's sons had at one time formed together. Ma Fung Shan had many local kinsmen, but no family to belong to. Unique in Kau Sai, there were many like him elsewhere.\n\nAs long as their natal families remained undivided and they themselves remained recognised members, fokis were expected not only to support themselves but also to send or take back remittances. A number of the younger fokis in Kau Sai did just that, returning home from time to time (particularly at Chinese New Year or the Dragon Boat Festival, but also on other holidays and sometimes during slack periods in the fishing seasons) with contributions to their natal families' funds, on which, of course, they still also had a claim. Such a young man was relatively well-off, in that even if he did not usually look forward to re-entering his natal family crew as a working member (and even this was not impossible when, as occasionally happened, business expanded or re-expanded and a larger crew was needed after all) he was still a member and could hope to be provided both with a bride and a share in the family's property when it was divided.\n\nIt is true that only 6 of the 26 male fokis in Kau Sai in 1953", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211015, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "T \n\n52 \n\ntent with the motive of maximizing the market, ranging, as it does from the local Chinese literati to domestic servants of European residents, and even to \"country youths\", presumably from the recently acquired \"New Territories\". \n\nThe principal contents of English Made Easy comprise Mok Man Cheung's “unique system” for enabling non-English speakers to pronounce the English alphabet, numbers, words, phrases, and sentences, plus an anthology of \"model letters\". Fascinating insights into the quality of the social life of upwardly mobile Chinese at the turn of the century are provided by the selection of materials for these sections of the book. \n\nSeveral of the categories of objects and phenomena, invented by Mok Man Cheung to organize his work, offer evidence about the ambivalence of this sort of person at this time in the face of influences from both East and West. In his list of words referring to \"Objects of Nature\", for example, the earliest words on the list (“Sky”, “Earth”, “Sun”, “Moon”, “Wind”, “Clouds”, “Rain”, etc.) may have been chosen for their compatibility with such traditional Chinese concepts as \"Feng Shui”1 and with other widespread beliefs. \"Spirits”, “Gods”, “Ghost”, and “Devil” are all included. The later entries seem to concentrate more on practical and modern realities, such as “reclamation ground”, “rough sea”, “typhoon”, “drizzle” [sic], “low-tide”, “flood”, and, to conclude happily, \"calm-sea\". In his suggested vocabulary for \"Time and Seasons\", he includes \"Intercalary moon”, “Full moon Festival”, \"Dragon Boat Festival\" and \"Winter Solstice\" as well as “Christmas day\", the days of the week and months of the year by Western reckoning, and a battery of non-culture-specific temporal terms. Mok Man Cheung's list of \"Persons and their Occupations\" begins, perhaps because it was politic to do so in 1905, with \"Emperor\", \"Empress\", \"Crown Prince\", and proceeds to deal with “Mandarin” and “General”, leading on to such occupations as “Maidservant” and “Captain”, before referring to \"Governor\", \"Policemen\" (juxtaposed with “Thief”) and \"Student\". It would not be uncharacteristic of Chinese style if the precise order in which these “Persons and Occupations” are presented is meant to be significant. Even if this is not the case,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211076, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "112\n\nA HOKLO WEDDING\n\nVALERY M. GARRETT\n\nDuring one of our many visits to Sha Tau Kok with Roger, my Hoklo-speaking assistant, to seek out traditional Chinese clothing for the Hong Kong Museum of History, we learned that a wedding would take place on Tuesday, 24th May 1988, for one of the families living in the squatter area of Yim Liu Ha. This is a district within Sha Tau Kok populated by approximately 3,000 Hoklo people who were due to be transferred to new blocks of rural housing during the latter part of 1988 onwards.\n\nWe were advised to arrive early, and so at 9:30 am on the appointed day we made our way through the village. It was easy to spot the home of the bridegroom, a hundred yards down one of the narrow streets, for around the doorway was draped a narrow length of red cotton, while in the centre, hanging from the lintel, was a freshly cut leg of pork. This was the home of Mr. Lee Sau Choy (李壽財), aged 29, who lived with his parents, three younger brothers, and two younger sisters. His parents were former boat people who had come ashore and settled in Yim Liu Ha some thirty years ago, although his father had continued to go to sea until fairly recently. Mr. Lee worked in Fanling as a fireman, and it was near there, at Kwan Tei, that his bride lived, Miss Lai Miu Han (黎妙嫻), aged 27 and a locally born Cantonese.\n\nThe marriage had already been registered in Tai Po, and the question of dowry settled. This had been in two parts: the first was a sum of money paid directly to the bride's family of several thousand dollars; the second part consisted of some gifts of gold jewellery given to the bride which, combined with the bride's family's gift of jewellery, would be brought back to the bridegroom's home that morning.\n\nInside the house, on both the left and facing right wall, was hung a blanket known as hei-pei (喜被). Upon each blanket was stitched a cut-out double-happiness character in silver paper, with dragon and phoenix painted on it. Above the character on the blanket on the left-hand wall were stitched two rows of four $500 notes, while", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211077, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "113\n\non the right side were stitched six $1000 notes. On either side of the characters were strips of red paper with gold inscriptions wishing the young couple health and good fortune, from the various family members who had contributed the money.\n\nOutside in the street female relatives and friends of the groom were busily cleaning cooking utensils and preparing for a feast. Other women were practising banging the gong and dancing in step, in readiness for the 'Dragon Boat' dance they would perform. Although the Hoklo people in Yim Liu Ha have been settled on land for more than four decades they still retain many of their customs originally performed on water. Instead of the bridegroom being transported by boat to worship and to fetch his bride, on land he is carried along in a procession called pa lung sung (扛龍船) by pairs of women pretending to row a dragon boat.\n\nThese women are gaily dressed in matching pairs with straw hats decorated with plastic flowers and paper tassels. Round their necks they wear collars embroidered and sequinned with nine Chinese characters symbolizing good fortune: up, down, in, out, double happiness, then the same ones repeated around the other side. At their waists they wear aprons in the same colour as the collar, and each woman carries a yellow painted stick to resemble an oar. Often the family will possess its own set of wedding attire, made by a clever seamstress within the family, but in this case the whole set had been borrowed from another family.\n\nAt 10 am the procession was ready to leave the groom's home. The women formed themselves into four pairs, with one at the front to bang the gong, and another older woman at the back carrying a fan, with her left trouser leg rolled up above the knee, who was said to represent the tail of the dragon. Then, at a given signal, the women set off at a steady pace, moving in a rhythmic rocking motion to suggest the rowing of a boat.\n\nThey were followed by two men who formed the head and back part of the Chilin, while behind them walked the band banging a large gong and clashing cymbals. Then came the bridegroom and his best man, both wearing Western suits of the latest fashion, with the groom in white shirt, maroon cummerbund and matching bow", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211079, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "115\n\nbow once more, then the procession wended its way round the village square to where the groom's car and those of his attendants were parked. The groom's car was decorated in the usual fashion with rosettes along the bonnet and a Western doll in a white dress at the centre. Cymbals clashed, the Chilin postured around each wheel and to the front and back to prevent bad spirits from following the groom and best man into the car. Firecrackers were set off and the car left for Kwan Tei accompanied by friends and relatives.\n\nAt 1.30 pm we returned to find everyone waiting in the village square. The women had really entered into the fun by embellishing their outfits, and were now dressed in funny hats with small leafy branches stuck in some of them. The old woman with the rolled up trouser leg who was playing the part of the dragon's tail, was now wearing a yellow plastic colander, decorated with beads and ornaments, upturned on her head. At her back she had a small cushion stuffed under her sam which had been tied tightly to form a large lump! She was carrying a pink plastic beaker, and holding a wooden stick with a red piece of cloth tied to the top. Two women were holding a bamboo pole, supposed to be the rudder, which had crushed beer cans tied to the bottom and at the top a small branch of kumquat leaves. More women now prepared to join the Dragon Boat procession. Those without the proper accessories improvised by either wearing ordinary kitchen aprons, or else ones to which they had added some handsome decoration of beads and embroidery at the neck. There was an air of great frivolity as all entered into the spirit of the festivities.\n\nSoon the car returned carrying the bride and groom. More firecrackers were set off, cymbals clashed and the Chilin cavorted around the car, covering it, touching it, and bowing to each wheel. The women with bamboo poles and tin cans danced as the assembled crowd fought enthusiastically to get a first look at the bride. She was dressed in the traditional hung kua and red leather shoes, with cypress leaves and gold ornaments in her hair, and was carrying the bouquet given to her by the groom.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211080, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "116\n\nThe dragon boat procession reformed and set off in the direction of the groom's home where the newly weds would live. Two women in front were wearing funny hats: one banging the gong while the other thumped a plastic oil drum. They were followed by eight pairs of women rowing in formation, while at the back were the two women with the rudder of tin cans and the woman representing the dragon's tail. Above the bride's head was held the sieve of pomelo leaves and ginger root, carried by the 'fortunate' woman. One attendant, wearing a Western style short evening dress, was carrying a pink umbrella held over the bride, to which was tied a sprig of cypress and pomelo leaves with red cord. A second attendant carried the red and gold patterned tin suitcase known as gar chong (#), containing the jewellery the bride had been given, while a further attendant brought a large suitcase with the bride's belongings. Another woman carried a white enamel basin decorated with red characters for double happiness and flower motifs. In the basin food and other items were wrapped in red cellophane paper, and decorated with cypress leaves.\n\nThe procession stopped briefly in front of the earth god and again firecrackers were set off. At the Ma Jo temple the young couple paused and bowed three times before continuing to their new home. Cymbals rose to a crescendo; the couple, followed by other relatives and the Chilin, went into the house, and a long string of firecrackers was set off.\n\nThe rest of the procession now dispersed as those inside the house settled down for a cool soft drink. It was now 2.15 pm and in the street women were feasting on food prepared that morning, especially on a salty vegetable soup known as ham choy cha (**), chicken, and for dessert, sweet dumplings which are only served at Lunar New Year and special occasions such as wedding ceremonies. These are considered a lucky symbol of getting together. Later that afternoon the newly weds would offer tea to the groom's parents, and then at 6.00 pm all who had taken part in the ceremony were invited to a restaurant in the village of Sha Tau Kok for a large feast to round off the day's festivities.\n\nPlates 19-23 illustrate this article. They were taken by the author.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211278, "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": 339, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "Plate 19. The 'Dragon Boat' procession with Chilin (B) and bridegroom in the background).\n\nPlate 20. The 'fortunate' woman carrying the sieve with pomelo leaves, cypress leaves and ginger root.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211999, "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-1989", "page_number": 414, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "nine Fung Shui sites in the Dragon's Mouth (ref. EMPZ-). The story goes that the Ho family used to worship there twice every year, at the Spring and Autumn rituals. They required all the boat-people to use their vessels to make a floating bridge, so that the descendants could go to and fro to worship at the grave. It was solely because the boat-people feared the power of the Ho family that they obeyed their commands. Because of this, the boat-people all considered for a long time whether it was possible to destroy the Fung Shui. The result was that they employed a Taoist of great magical powers. He dug a hole on one side to allow him to inspect the bone-urn. He saw that the bone-urn was completely wrapped around with the roots of a banyan tree. The Taoist realised that the name of the site corresponded with the reality. He therefore cut away all the banyan roots. However, the next day, when he went back to inspect, he found that they were all back as before. In the same way, he cut the roots away on a number of occasions, only to find that they immediately returned to their original form. Eventually, the Taoist took a black dog and a black cock and sprinkled their blood all around the cut back banyan roots. In this way the Golden Bell Hanging on a Silken Thread was totally destroyed, for the roots could never grow back into their original form. After this, Ho, the Minister of the Left, found it very difficult to retain either his position or his life, and the boat-people never again had to suffer the hardship of building a floating bridge\". \n\n389 \n\nP.H. HASE \n\nNOTE \n\nJournal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 28, pp. 198-203. \n\nTHE WHITE TIGER \n\nWhenever an opera performance is to be staged in a venue where no operas have ever been staged before, it is customary for the actors to stage a short piece called \"The White Tiger\" (白虎), first, before any of the advertised operas. This piece involves a fight between a man dressed in black and an actor dressed as a “white” (usually yellow) tiger.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213269, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "71\n\nMost Chinese will, however, tell you that a dragon has sinews and veins which can be severed. Blood can be spilled. Thus, when the earth's flesh was pierced, blood, in the form of bright red, ochre-coloured earth, appeared during excavations for the construction of Hong Kong's underground railway in the 1970s. This could mean the time had come for workers to down tools. The evil that might follow had to be averted ritually. Taoist priests would then beat ceremonial gongs and offer prayers to pacify spirits of the earth where the dragon's peace was being destroyed. Exorcism in modern day Hong Kong is by no means uncommon (Raceday rites, 1987). Neither is exorcism uncommon in Christian churches. It is mentioned in the Bible.\n\nOne can compare certain Buddhist, Taoist or folk-religion ceremonies, which purify and bestow blessings, with walking through fields in Europe in springtime while conducting a Christian Rogation Service to ensure a good harvest.\n\nInterestingly, some Chinese came to the conclusion during the last century, that foreigners know far more about fung shui than they are prepared to admit. Otherwise, why would they have picked such a fine site (as it was then) for the Governor's residence? Why would they plant vegetation over the slopes of Victoria Peak in which dwells the resident dragon?\n\nReturning to the cutting edges of the Bank of China: a fung shui master is supposed to adhere to strict ethical standards and not do anything which could be construed as the 'black art'. He should not 'attack' a neighbour. However, in the New Territories, for example, a case where a successful family's fortune has suddenly waned has sometimes been traced to the desecration of an ancestor's grave. As a result, revenge against perpetrators was, in the past, not uncommon.\n\nA buried 'person' needs to 'breathe', and, whether he or she can do this properly or not, affects his or her descendants. Some believed Chiang Kai-Shek's rise to power depended on his mother's fine grave. This, the Communists are said to have dug up.\n\nThe People's Republic's 'Red Guards' went to considerable lengths during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) to destroy the 'Four Olds' (old customs, old habits, old culture, old thoughts). These included fung shui.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213280, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "82\n\nThe site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns.\n\nBut whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east.\n\nIn the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable.\n\nNevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213471, "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-1995", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "34\n\n19 Balfour, op cit p 449\n\nReport, DCNT., 1959-60, para 45\n\nReport, DCNT, 1954-55, para 9\n\n\"stranger people\", the word used by the Hakkas to describe themselves (Reports, DCNT, 1959-60 para 46 and Balfour, op cit p 332)\n\n5 Balfour, op cit p 333\n\n54 ibid, and Barbara E. Ward's article \"A Hakka Kengsi in Borneo\" Journal of Oriental Studies, Hong Kong Univ Press, Vol 1, No 2, (July 1954) p. 359\n\nReport, DCNT. 1954-55, para 8\n\nReports, DCNT, 1959-60, para 46\n\nBalfour, op cit. p 464\n\n54 Balfour, op cit pp 460-463\n\nBalfour, op cit p 464\n\nibid\n\n62\n\nReports, DCNT, 1959-60, para 46\n\n6.1\n\nReports, DCNT, 1954-55, para 9\n\nReport, DCNT. 1954-55, para 8\n\nibid\n\n50\n\nReport, DCNT, 1955-56, para 8\n\nBalfour, op cit, p 446 (The notable exception is that the Hakka do not celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival)\n\nReport, DCNT 1954-55, para 8\n\nBalfour, op cit, p. 464", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214200, "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-1998", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "21\n\nBut, while comparing Chinese and western humour, with the latter propagated by television, radio and other forms of the mass media, it has to be borne in mind that the peoples of many countries are changing their way of life. The world is fast becoming a global village.\n\nAmusement in language\n\nIn the mid-1950s, the author recalls, a fashionable colour in Hong Kong was described in Cantonese (a vibrant, vivid language) as ‘duck's excreta green'. This tickled foreigners but was (and still is) good descriptive, serious stuff to our Chinese friends. They never seem to realise, however, that any of their own surnames, such as Mr Wu, Mrs Ma (meaning horse), Mrs Lung (meaning dragon) or Miss Ng (which is difficult for some Europeans to pronounce), may strike the average Westerner as funny. Yet the author has never really understood why his family name, 'Waters' (which hardly ever strikes Europeans as comical) (probably meaning his forebears lived near a river or a lake), is often considered amusing by Chinese. A Chinese physician once wisecracked: 'Dan Waters, please pass some water;' while a Chinese architect quipped, 'Dr Waters has been inspecting waterworks structures all morning.' In other examples just the mention of the name Green, Whalebelly or Goodbody strike many Chinese, understandably perhaps, as comical. We British have become accustomed to such names. However, the countless Chinese firms with names like Lee Kee Motor Boat Service, No-Squeak Wong the cobbler and Au-Choo the medicine shop, do strike the average Westerner as good for a chuckle.\n\nThere is a Chinese saying which, when translated, goes something like this:\n\nWalking we will not change our family name. Sitting we will not change our given name.\n\nIt really implies we are digging our heels in and sticking to our principles. Nevertheless, Sir (now Lord) David Wilson did change his name when he came back to Hong Kong to become Governor in 1987. He had served in Hong Kong before and his Chinese name had previously been romanised as Ngai Tak-ngai (Spurr, 1995;246). The Chinese, however, who read far more into a name than the average European,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214672, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "51\n\nLife was not, however, all hard work, sickness, and brawls. The farming year was full of slack periods when there was time for entertainment and pleasure. The ritual year gave the villagers a framework for their leisure activities: each major festival was marked with a feast - even the poorest of families would have fat pork and rich eels on feast days. Nga Tsin Wai was, according to the Sha Tin village elders, famous for making \"Cha Kwo\", the traditional sticky village cakes, and these would usually be in evidence at festivals. The New Year, Tin Hau's Birthday, and the Winter Solstice Festival were the main festivals celebrated in Nga Tsin Wai, together with the Spring (Ching Ming) and Autumn (Chun Yeung) Grave Festivals, where fat pork would be distributed by the Ancestral Trusts to those who attended the worship at the graves.\n\nDuring the summer, and particularly at the Dragon Boat Festival, the village had the habit of inviting strolling singers to come and stay in the village for a few days or a week, to sing through their repertoire of \"Dragon Boat Songs\". These were long sung novels, and the villagers would sit outside the village gate in the evening listening to the singer for hours.\n\nThe villagers of Nga Tsin Wai were famous for singing themselves (the Tai Wai villagers in Sha Tin were jealous of the Nga Tsin Wai skills). The villagers sang Shan Ko, “Mountain Songs\". These were sung man to woman, verse by verse, and often included innuendo and suggestive comment: they were often called \"Teasing Songs\" as a result. Nga Tsin Wai villagers would often hold impromptu contests with youngsters from Tai Wai when they met at the pass which separated the lands of the two villages (the villagers say that is why the songs are called \"Mountain Songs\"). The Sha Tin elders also remember that more formal contests were also held - an annual one at Ma Tau Wai drew contestants from all of East Kowloon and Sha Tin: it was held at the Mid Autumn Festival. Contestants would be drawn, man and woman, and they would sing to each other; the one that ran out of things to say being declared the loser. The audience was mostly youngsters, and a few interested elders - they would sit around the contest area on the ground, vocal in their comments. The village elders say these contests could last for a couple of weeks if enough contestants appeared. The last contest was held just after the War. This was a Punti practice. The elders of the Hakka village of Ngau Chi Wan rather...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214856, "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": 271, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "239\n\nTwo important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival.\n\nPeople\n\nEnough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen?\n\nI will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals.\n\nI remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972.\n\nDr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.\n\nIn fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214883, "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": 298, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "269\n\nFURTHER TALES OF THE MAN THE EMPEROR DECAPITATED\n\nP.H. HASE\n\nIn Vols 28, 29, and 34 of the Journal a series of folk-tales relating to Ho Chan, the Warlord of Canton in the late Yuan, and Earl of Tung Kuan under the first Ming Emperor were printed1. Recently a further version of one of the folk-tales has been seen, in the booklet issued by the Kau Sai Hung Shing Temple Restoration Committee to commemorate the re-opening of the Temple (March, 2000), and a translation of this version is given below. It will be seen that this is a version of the same story relayed by Tsim Fo-sang (Journal, Vol. 29), although it differs in a number of details: certain important details are also clearly related to parts of the story collected by Wong Wing-ho (Journal, Vol. 34). It seems likely that this story is essentially a boat-people's story from Kau Sai. Tsim Fo-sang in the years just before the coming of the Japanese used to carry fire-wood from his home village in Sha Tin across the mountains to sell to the boat-people in Sai Kung. It is likely that his version of the story was the one he heard in the late 1930s from his boat-people customers, the version given below is as the story is remembered today in Kau Sai2.\n\n“Talking about Tiu Chung Crag (吊鐘巖), the Sai Kung fisher-people have a strange folk-tale which has been handed down among them.\n\nIn the Tiu Chung Crag there is a cave. It has been handed down that when the first ray of dawn enters the cave, the cave discloses what seems to be a Golden Bell hanging in the air: the island is believed to take its name (Tiu Chung Chau, 吊鐘洲, “Hanging Bell Island\") from this.\n\nIt is said that, at the end of the Sung, there was an official called Ho, who loved walking in the mountains and admiring the sea views. He came to Tiu Chung Chau. He considered the scenery there to be very fine. There was an old banyan tree growing in the centre of the island then, with roots wriggling in every direction like a young dragon. In particular, there were two roots, as thick as a thumb, which pierced through the top of the Tiu Chung Crag.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214884, "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": 299, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "270\n\nJust like two silk strings, they hung down into the cave, and it appeared as if the Golden Bell was hanging from them. Now this official was a Fung Shui master, and he realised that this was a marvellous Fung Shui site - \"The Golden Bell Hanging from Silk Strings\",\n\nIf he could bury a relative there, his family would become immensely important. So when a certain family member died, he was taken there for burial. Within less than three years, the official was promoted to a position of great wealth, as if he had soared up on the back of a golden dragon!\n\nNow this man always acted despotically and arbitrarily to make life more comfortable for himself. He ordered the fisher-people that every year they were to draw up their boats at the Spring and Autumn Sacrifices, so that they formed a bridge over the sea, boat next to boat, so it would be easier for him to worship his ancestors, and to show off his high position. Each time, the fisher-people had to waste seven or eight days, thus affecting their livelihood. By thus making fools of the people, they started to seethe with anger. A certain Fung Shui master came to learn of all this, and everything this worthless dog-official was doing. He came by night to tell the fisher-people how to destroy his Fung Shui: all they had to do was to cut off the two roots which pierced the summit of the crag.\n\nShortly afterwards, the Autumn Sacrifices came round. After the rituals were completed, the fisher-people decided to act on the Fung Shui master's advice, and to cut off the roots, and thus secure their aim of a peaceful life. But the next year, at the Spring Sacrifices, it was found that the roots had grown back just as they had been before. The fisher-people were deeply dejected. They could see no hope of a peaceful future. They decided to return to the Fung Shui master to see if he could come up with some clever plan. At first the master was nonplussed, but eventually, after he had given the matter considerable thought, he suddenly realised that this \"Golden Bell Hanging from Silk Strings\" Fung Shui site drew to itself the spiritual forces of Heaven and Earth, so that the essence of the Sun and the Moon impregnated the site, and thus made it very strong. The vegetation and the trees there were thus exceptionally full of vigour and vitality. Not to speak of cutting the roots off once - even if they were cut millions of times they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215002, "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-2000", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "54\n\nwas also awarded to some members, whether serving with or attached to the CLC.\n\nSome Items of Interest\n\nWhilst carrying out research in the Imperial War Museum in London, I came across an undated letter, written in literary Chinese by Zhong Yangchang on YMCA headed paper, giving the address as ‘On Active Service with the British Expeditionary Force' and addressed to his wife c/o Bureau of Recruitment of Chinese Labour, the British Administration, Weihai Wei. It appears that the letter was also addressed to the Hong Kong University. The writer, a well-educated man, was not necessarily the husband of Zhilan and could quite possibly have been one of the Chinese administration staff. The translation is as follows:\n\nTo my\n\nwife, Zhilan\n\nI had intended to write to you earlier; however, it is only now that I have found a gap in my daily routine to do so. We are still at the same base camp. On the 13th it was Duanyang Festival [the Dragon Boat Festival] and we had the day off. The [Chinese] workers were made-up and put on the Yangke dance (a northern Chinese country peasants' dance) along the street. It was a very good show, but the foreigners seemed somewhat bemused by the event.\n\nSome British Army [officers] came along and they brought with them some other [Chinese labourers], from the Hong clan from the west of Tai [the area around Tai Shan].\n\nI will stop writing now, my spirit will follow the letter to you\n\nMy greetings and best wishes\n\nYour clumsy husband Zhong Yangchong.\n\nThere is a letter, also written in a similar vein on YMCA paper, but this time in English, [with the Wade-Giles left as in the original]. The envelope on display is addressed to Mrs Sung, Normal School,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215075, "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-2000", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215307, "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-2001", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "32\n\nDragon Boat Festival when in various ways the dead helped to secure the successful transplantation of rice.28\n\nIn that essay on the cult of the ancestors in spring time I also addressed briefly the fact that in late Imperial days we find these grave visits dispersed in time, occurring on several dates in the progression of the spring, even if the day and the period of Qing Ming seem to have dominated. Taking account of the fact that Qing Ming and worship at the graves were phenomena not mentioned in our earliest source from the sixth century, I proposed that perhaps grave worship was introduced into this area as part of an ongoing sinicization process in the course of a somewhat later phase in history. If this was so, there may have been some local options as to when the graves should be visited.\n\nThe She Day was a day of agricultural renewal with offerings on the altar of the She. Like the dead, the She was a chthonic phenomenon. Both god and ancestors were active forces beneficial to the sowing of rice. How the dead actually related to the She—directly or indirectly—is not known for this area. The spread over time of vernal worship at the graves may best be seen as a set of local variations on a theme, the standard Qing Ming practice. These alternatives in terms of points in time do not seem to have posed a problem for the robust iconic architecture of the annual ritual cycle as a whole.\n\nThe She Day seems to have been one of merriment, parties al fresco, and social games and competitions. In Baling, the capital of Yuezhou Prefecture, there were competitions and people congregated to feast and drink.29 In Zhongxiang it was the custom to drink ‘earth god wine’ and eat ‘earth god meat.’30 This custom seems to indicate some commensality in which the sacrificial gifts—wine and meat—were shared between the donors and the divinity. No doubt such feasting was combined with the processions and the shamanistic performances mentioned earlier.\n\nReviewing our findings, we observe that the She Day was a day for celebrating the earth and praying for good results in agriculture. It\n\n28 古今圖書集成. 1888.VI, 1223:風俗考2a.\n\n29 古今圖書集成.1888.VI,1142:風俗考2a.\n\n30 古今圖書集成.1888.VI,1120:風俗考6ab.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215316, "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-2001", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "41\n\nboth. The She Day sought abundance in terms of rice from chthonic generative forces, while Flower Dawn solicited wealth in terms of human proliferation from the celestial yang forces of the season. Early spring was a ritual season of releasing life by way of offerings, engagements for marriage and games of contest which, taken together, brought new life to both local communities and domestic groups. Together the two festivals sought a general enjoyment of double blessings.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAUMER, GORAN. 1964. The Dragon Boat Festival in the Hunan and Hupeh Plains: A Study in the Ceremonialism of the Transplantation of Rice. Stockholm: Statens etnografiska museum.\n\nAUMER, Goran. 1968. A Structural Approach to Chinese Ancestor Worship. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land-, en volkenkunde 124: 91-98.\n\nAUMER, GORAN. 1979. Ancestors in the Spring: The Qingming Festival in Central China. Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 19: 59-82\n\nAumer, Goran. 1991. Chongyang and the Ceremonial Calendar in Central China. In H.R. Baker and S. Feuchtwang (eds.), An Old State in New Settings: Studies in the Social Anthropology of China in Memory of Maurice Freedman. Oxford: JASO.\n\nAumer, Goran. 2002 (In print). New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.\n\nAUMER, GORAN and VIRGIL K.Y. Ho. 1999. Cantonese Society in a Time of Change. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.\n\nBODDE, DERK. 1975. Festivals in Classical China: New Year and other Annual Observations during the Han Dynasty 206 B.C.-A.D. 220. Princeton: Princeton University Press and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nBREDON, JULIET & IGOR MITROPHANOW, 1972 (1927). The Moon Year: A Record of Chinese Customs and Festivals. Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company.\n\nCHAVANNES, EDOUARD, 1969 (1910). Le dieu du sol dans la Chine antique. Appendice à Le T'ai Chan: Essai de monographie d'un culte chinois. Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers.\n\nCh'u T'ung-tsu, 1972, Han Social Structure. Edited by Jack L. Dull. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216060, "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-2002", "page_number": 359, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "293\n\nwas a young man of twenty just starting his lifelong career in China. In his Miscellanies he described how on his arrival at Hankou commanding the sailing lorcha, Hailong Wang [the Dragon King], he was paid off by the owners, the Mc Twins, who offered him a job as superintendent builder of a large hong [company office/warehouse] they intended erecting on the Bund. He accepted - as the Hailong Wang was laid up. However, as he actually wished to return to Shanghai to marry a local maiden, Zhu Wenjing, he took leave and in one statement he claimed that he sailed aboard the Huguang, a new beam-engine paddlewheel river steamer on her maiden voyage.\" In another he explained that he had left Hankou at the end of 1862 in charge of a cargo boat which was captured by the Taipings. This occurred when, having called at Zhenjiang on 1st or 3rd of November 1862 [his accounts vary], he was on his way to Shanghai in charge of a cargo boat, and was captured, with his crew, by the Taiping rebels, midstream, at Fu Shan Zhen. Mesny's colourful description of his time with the Taipings began with him being brought in chains before a senior Taiping who ordered him to ketou [kowtow]. Mesny wrote that he refused and that he only bowed to God. ‘So do we', cried the Taiping, and promptly ordered Mesny's release. Mesny continued his tale describing how the Senior Taiping had dined Mesny and offered him his daughter in marriage and the command of a Taiping vessel with the rank of vice-admiral. In another version elsewhere in his Miscellanies Mesny claimed to have been wounded twice during the capture and was at first badly treated by his captors. But once the Taiping discovered that he could play Chinese tunes on his four-octave flutina, their behaviour entirely altered. On a more credible note he was required to write to his employers in Shanghai demanding 100,000 Spanish Carolus dollars ransom.\n\nMesny was puzzled at the time why various senior Taiping officials should have vied to hold him their captive. It later transpired that at first these officials had not appreciated the power and capabilities of the foreign-led Chinese force [meaning the Ever-Victorious Army] sent against them; and when they did the Taiping officials' first act was to obtain and hold foreigners to prevent the violent wrath of the foreign-led force being brought down on them. One of the foreigners Mesny saw momentarily, also in Taiping hands, was Frank Phillip de la Cour, another Jerseyman, who had been taken whilst shipping arms.\n\nHaving managed to send a secret message to Shanghai that he was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216099, "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-2002", "page_number": 398, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "332\n\nSir Robert had a wonderful funeral procession with 16 bands. In those days popular tunes at Chinese funerals were; Abide with me, Polly Wolly Doodle all the Day, and Yes, we have no Bananas! They were good, rousing tunes and most Chinese did not understand the words anyway. Bamboo ramps were a common sight in the 1950s to bring coffins and corpses down to street level. Ramps disappeared with traffic congestion and with the introduction of high-rise buildings, about 1960. Major Chinese festivals occur in the calendar when there are marked changes of seasons. People are then likely to feel \"under the weather.\" When the body is at a low ebb a sick person is more likely to die. In 1956, it was said that Sir Robert had “passed over\" Ching Ming and should be able to carry on at least to Dragon Boat Festival. However, it was not to be.\n\nIn March 1955 I had managed to obtain a government quarter at 56 Conduit Road. At the time it resembled a quiet country lane, gay with flowers, where you could occasionally hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. A few people were still carried up to Mid-Levels by sedan chairs which, until the end of the fifties, were parked at the bottom of Wyndham Street.\n\nI engaged a Chinese amah to whom I paid $130 a month. She spoke Pidgin English and talked of \"going topside” when she meant going upstairs. Indeed some of us old Hong Kong hands still use pidgin expressions. I, for example, still talk of a makee-learn, for someone learning a job, and I say small chow when I mean canapés which are provided at receptions. A Chinese colleague complained that, at $130, I was overpaying my amah. He gave his $70 a month. He also said that his amah had no time off. If she had anything important to do she would request a few hours off work. Several people had gold teeth in those days and the saying was that one should have enough gold in one's mouth to pay for one's funeral. The present-day, gold-coloured building, at Admiralty, is nicknamed the \"Amah's Tooth.\"\n\nWhen I first lived in Conduit Road there were a number of quite palatial mansions standing in their own grounds, often with tennis courts, in the Mid-levels. One example was the house on the site, at No.41, on which I live today. The old building was demolished in the mid-1960s. From 1951 to '61 it was occupied by the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC). The film, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, based on Han", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216162, "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-2002", "page_number": 461, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "395\n\nso on. I owe this information to our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, who has also referred me to an article on the subject by Professor James L. Watson, \"Eating from the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society\", published in Anthropos, Vol. 82, 1987, pp. 389-401.\n\nIn the course of enquiries (1970s) into foods made at festival time, I came across some interesting facts about the preparation process. This was often laborious. The \"cakes\" made at the lunar New Year are a case in point. The materials comprised pounded glutinous rice and cane sugar. According to men from two of the former Tsuen Wan villages, sixteen hours were needed to cook the mixture in a very large, deep wok (the Chinese frying pan) in effect for a whole day, from dawn till dusk or later. Cooking in an old-fashioned village stove, fuelled by dried grass or firewood, was essential; since the taste would be different were charcoal or gas to be used. Some of the Sham Tseng elders (also Tsuen Wan District) said that each \"cake\" might require between 30 to 50 catties of glutinous rice, resulting in very large \"cakes\". In one household of my acquaintance (originally from Shek Pik on Lantau Island, resited to Tsuen Wan in 1960), it had been usual for them to make four large \"cakes\" every lunar New Year. These were distributed as goodwill gifts to shops in the market towns of Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the boat people's families in the Shek Pik anchorage - indicative of this household's economic and social ties. People also gave and received portions of such cakes during the customary visiting to mark the arrival of the New Year.\n\nThe Sham Tseng men had also mentioned a rather curious requirement involved in the preparation of the dumplings made for the fifth day of the fifth lunar month festival, commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. The dumplings had to be made with a preparation of wood ash, placed between bamboo leaves, and filtered with water. This watery ash, known as kan shui [the character I was given for 'kan' is that for 'root', but though this sits oddly with the context, I have not been able to find anything more suitable in a dictionary search] had to come from \"new\" wood, though not necessarily of any particular kind. It was no use trying to filter ash from anything that came to hand, like old boards or drift-wood.\n\nTurning to other topics, I had earmarked but subsequently overlooked two interesting items in the course of shaping the chapters.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216205, "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-2002", "page_number": 504, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "438\n\nto the spot where he died, by some French missionaries in the 19th Century. Father Kane referred me to Father Antonio Tam in the Macau Jesuit Residence who, despite being elderly, still travelled regularly to St Johns, and was leading a Taiwanese group there the following month. He recommended the services of the Religious Affairs Bureau rather than China Travel to organize our trip, so that we would gain a better insight into the history of Christianity in the area. This proved more difficult than it sounded, but China Travel came to the rescue with a reasonable-sounding itinerary.\n\nOur trip eventually took place in the first weekend of November 2002. China Travel suggested a suitable package tour for five adventurers - Patricia Bierregard, Anna and Michal Niewiadomski, Jenny Wu and myself, Chris Bailey - members of the HK Branch of the RAS. We had planned a varied itinerary including St Francis' Church on the island, Flying Sand beach, Big Buddha and Nine Dragon's cave - with the firm CTS instruction: No missioning! We caught the 8:30 am ferry to Gong Yi from the China Hong Kong Terminal. The sea journey was quite rough until we reached Macau, where a right turn along a Pearl River tributary took us back through time for a pleasant 3 hours viewing village life along the river banks (having upgraded ourselves to the upstairs first-class cabin). The rice-fields at harvest time were particularly splendid and the hamlets looked inviting, with interesting watch towers.\n\nWe disembarked at around 1 pm at the small port of Gong Yi and were met by Roger, our excellent CTS guide who escorted us to the town of Tai Shan for an elaborate lunch. We caught the 4 pm boat for another rough trip across the muddy waters, but in less than an hour were rewarded with the splendid sight of our goal - a white church on the hillside - as we arrived at the island, dominated by a large PLA base. Roger could not tell us how many military personnel were stationed at the base and we glimpsed only a few blue and white uniformed sailors walking along the streets.\n\nThe day's end was approaching and Roger speedily herded us into another vehicle for the short drive to the church, and the resident caretaker opened the gates - we finally climbed the stairs to the recently redecorated church and entered its large wooden doors. The interior was well-kept and featured a large central \"tomb\" with paintings along", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]