[
    {
        "id": 204456,
        "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": 88,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n77\n\nby the seasons was reinforced and coloured by the Confucian system of ethical behaviour which included filial piety and ancestor worship, two fundamentals which were re-expressed every New Year and at the two grave festivals. Both operated through the closely knit organisation of the clan, a group of families of the same name linked by descent from a common ancestor. This internal bond was further tightened by the restrictions of thought and movement imposed by poverty and poor communications.\n\nI have always felt that this essential unity of life and thought is reflected in the traditional village scene, whose component parts are laid out in accordance with a general pattern whose essential beauty and simplicity leave an impression on the mind. Most of the present villages in the New Territory existed in 1898 and it is only mainly in the last ten or fifteen years that their original outline has been cluttered up with additional buildings in a semi-European style and their surrounding fields covered with wooden shacks put up by immigrant vegetable farmers. Clear all this away and in a good many cases you can still see what Stewart Lockhart and the gentlemen of his party saw as they travelled through the Territory in the month of August some sixty years ago. You will see a village whose houses are laid out in close rows on the higher ground. Behind them will be a thick grove of fung shui trees and to their front will extend terrace after terrace of rice fields, the one sliding almost imperceptibly into the other, the whole layout shaped for the purpose of seeing that a water supply can be led to each field for the planting periods of the year. On the slopes of the hills there may be pine trees and, occasionally, crops like pine-apples and peanuts. You will also notice a few prominent horseshoe-shaped graves, some green or brown burial urns glistening in the sun, and areas on the higher slopes which look as though they have been shaved recently; as they virtually have by the women of the village who cut grass to sell for boat breaming and brushwood to burn in their own stoves. Entering one of these larger villages you will still see what Lockhart had to report.\n\nThe houses in these villages are, as a rule, well and solidly built. The foundations and lower courses of their walls are, in many cases, of granite masonry, the upper courses",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205288,
        "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": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n43\n\nHalf-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested.\n\nRice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid.\n\nIn earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system;",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205290,
        "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": 52,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n45\n\nOrchards with pineapples and tangerine oranges are located in Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village. These orchards seem to be much exposed to typhoon damage, and are more or less of an experimental nature. Orchards form a new feature in the valley and have been introduced only in the last decade. They are not very profitable.\n\nThe terraces mentioned above were once used for tea plantations also. It is possible to trace the remains of such terraces on the steep slopes all along the valley. They are the remains of plantations of tea and a shrub giving a dye, most probably the indigo plant Indigofera tinctoria, common in South China. The tea plantations are mentioned in an early report:\n\nTea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill. The bushes are grown in lines on narrow steps or terraces out in the rich soil of recently felled woods or along the dividing banks of sheltered vegetable fields, in either case only in fairly elevated situations. There is a tradition that tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces similar to the above are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation has diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone count for it.5\n\nTea plantation in South-eastern China experienced a general crisis towards the end of the last century as Indian and Ceylon tea invaded the Western market. There is no reason to assume that these circumstances had a direct effect on the New Territories plantations, but generally unsettled conditions on the tea market might have contributed to the actual decline. Wild-growing tea shrubs are still plucked of their leaves for local use. As to the dye plant cultivation, it seems reasonable to suggest that the introduction of foreign artificial indigo and aniline dyes in the beginning of this century was the main reason for the abandonment of these plantations. During an earlier period, however, the production of tea and dye-stuff will have been prominent features in the economic activity, complementary to rice production.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205291,
        "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": 53,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "46 \n\nL. G. AUMER \n\nAnimal husbandry is another traditional feature in the economic life of the villages. In an earlier period, every household used to raise two or three pigs. This was not only for immediate profit but also as a kind of saving economy. The animals were sold off when circumstances required activation of capital. Pork has always been a luxury in the villages and is eaten only on special occasions. Roast pigs for ceremonial display play an important part, and a status-bestowing one, on festive occasions. Stimulated by the increasing market demand for meat in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, villagers increased their stocks to three or four pigs per household. Around 1960, however, the market price was heavily affected by the steadily increasing import of relatively cheap pigs from China. Pig breeders now acutely experienced the chronic disadvantage of poor transport facilities to the markets. The saleable price does not exceed HK$100, and it is calculated that the breeding costs for about six months, together with labour and transport costs, do not make the venture worthwhile.\n\nCows are kept in the villages for a double purpose. Rice farming requires draught animals, and buffaloes are not suitable for mountain areas. A certain profit can also be made on selling. It is calculated that a cow-owner will get a new calf every two years. The feeding is not very expensive since the animals are grazed on the hill sides and on abandoned fields. They are used in agricultural work for about five years, after which period they are sold off. In this case, marketing offers no difficulties as brokers in the butcher trade turn up in the villages whenever they hear of a possible deal. They pay in cash and take the cows with them. Weak animals are sold as soon as possible. Together with pigs, cows fulfil another most important function. The manure is used for fertilizing the fields, and villagers depend greatly on this supply.\n\nSmall-scale chicken breeding has always been carried out in the villages. People from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village now sell their fowls in the new Sha Tin Market, where the presence of wholesale dealers from Kowloon improves the market situation; though there is heavy competition from specialized chicken farms run by immigrant peasants from China. In Grass Field Village, breeders wait for the main festivals to obtain a better price in their traditional market town, Sai Kung.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205295,
        "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": 57,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205296,
        "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": 58,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n51\n\nKowloon. They engaged in the construction of small bridges, pig-sties, village houses, and urban structures. On the look-out for chances of work, leaving their families behind them in the village, they began to settle, more or less temporarily, in the market towns of the New Territories, and on the Kowloon Peninsula. They lived a life oscillating between the rural and urban areas.\n\nThis uniform specialization in a skilled labour trade is difficult to explain. However, I venture to suggest a possible explanation. It seems reasonable to assume that specialization in the masonry trade was a gradually developing process. Some men were making use of the slack season in farming to obtain an extra income. This was a period when rapid urbanization in Kowloon, and increased building by New Territories emigrants in their native villages, would have raised the demand for such labour. Some success could have encouraged them to work on a larger scale, and to recruit extra hands by way of their agnatic bonds of kinship. The enterprise ramified, and more relatives became engaged. Through the stimulus supplied by the possibility of earning money in a short time when the traditional village economy was suffering from the strain of foreign industrialism, more Grass Field people sought a new income along lines already established by agnatic kinsmen. For a time, most households in the village had male members in the masonry trade. The fact that very few people chose existing alternatives can be explained in terms of a strongly kinship-orientated society.\n\nA more drastic solution to maintain livelihood was emigration abroad. All three settlements have experienced this type of migration. But here also there are differences. Before the Pacific War, Grass Village had only a few migrants working in South-east Asia, while in Big Stream Village nearly every household had overseas members. In fact, emigration abroad seems to have started one generation earlier in the latter place than in the other two valley settlements; that is around 1890. In this generation, several men left for the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. I was told that mostly they entered the new countries illegally. They made a start as recruited crew members of ocean-going ships, and later deserted in convenient ports, thus avoiding poll-taxes and other obstacles to unwelcome Chinese immigration. The next generation, setting out in about the second decade of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205297,
        "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": 59,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "52 \n\nL. G. Aijmer \n\nthis century, followed in very much the same way as their fathers though many men stayed on as sailors. The old men in this village are well-travelled. They stayed away from the village for twenty to forty years, remitting money home for their families. External income became increasingly important as a complement to agricultural production, then as now largely in the hands of the village women. \n\nIn Plum Grove Village there was no specialised skilled labour trade like masonry in Grass Field Village, nor was there specialisation in going abroad to seek employment. Emigration was an important factor in the economic life of this settlement also, but it started later than in Big Stream Village. \n\nIt seems to the present author unreasonable to dismiss the problem by merely referring to accidental choice. Some points call for brief discussion. There is reason to consider the market situation. Grass Field Village had its traditional economic ties with Sai Kung, about one hour's walk away over hill paths. Today it is a market town of some importance with about 1,500 inhabitants. An item of information from 1899 tells us that there were 800 people living there at that time, although the 1911 Census, reckoned as very reliable, gives the figure 512. A very knowledgeable man in Grass Field Village recalls from his childhood in the beginning of this century that Sai Kung was then a small place with only about 300 people, a few shops, and a tea-house. He was also of the opinion that little business was done there, and that villagers went fairly seldom to the market town. Life in the village was self-contained. Nevertheless, Sai Kung would have been important in the economic life of the village as the principal market for its products, at least before the establishment of the urban community at Yau Ma Tei on the Kowloon Peninsula. Tea, dye, charcoal, fire-wood, and pigs will have been sold in Sai Kung in traditional times. \n\nAs mentioned earlier, Big Stream villagers had their traditional connections with the important market at Tai Po. However, the situation in this town was entirely different from that in Sai Kung: \n\nIn the 1880's the Tai Po market was controlled by a localized lineage of the Tang people who, as masters of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205298,
        "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": 60,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "the market, permitted themselves to claim excessive privileges and to harass marketers from other lineages. Tang control of the market was repeatedly challenged by the Man people of another village, and on suffering a decisive setback in their campaign to force a relaxation, the latter organized a league of already existing intervillage units in order jointly to establish, in 1893, a new market in the close vicinity of the old.10\n\n53\n\nAlso, Tai Po was relatively distant, and by rowing-boat the trip there would take a couple of hours in good weather. The conditions prevailing at the Tai Po Old Market will have created economic difficulties that did not exist in the Sai Kung Market, and which placed the Big Stream people in a relatively bad situation.\n\nThe Plum Grove villagers used the market at Sai Kung, and often do so still but its possibly declining importance may have been less decisive in determining the extent of their work outside the old-style village economy. The land under cultivation around this settlement is regarded as the best land in the valley, though a large proportion of the fields here is owned by people from Grass Field Village, and also by people from Yellow Bamboo Mountain Village in another valley. In a small village the agricultural output might still have been sufficient enough to make emigration less attractive. The Plum Grove people also had some bad experience as some 10 men left the village for Southeast Asia around 1910 and were never heard of since.\n\nIII\n\nI wish now to turn aside to provide a background for migration in the context of the social structure of these villages.\n\nThe youngest children in Grass Field Village are of the 25th generation of a patrilineal kin group, all members of which share a common surname, Lau. The early ancestors lived in Mui Yuen (Mei Hsien, M), a Hakka district in the north-eastern corner of Kwangtung Province. A branch of the Mui Yuen people migrated down to what is now the New Territories, where they first settled in the Sai Kung area. A group soon branched off, and left the immediate coastal area, supposedly because of the constant threat\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205299,
        "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": 61,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "54\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nfrom piracy there. The mountains offered more security and this group established themselves in the remote Grass Field Village. In fact, this spot in the valley was then already occupied by people bearing the surname Ng. What form the contact between these original settlers and the intruders took is not clear, but evidently, as time passed by, the Ng were pushed off, and resettled themselves on an island in the Rocky Harbour area.11\n\nThe first Lau group in Grass Field Village seems to have constituted an extended family — one particular man is referred to as the founder of the village. He was of the 15th generation.12 The founder had two sons, one of whom moved out of the place and settled at Clear Water Bay. The progeny of the remaining son ramified in several offshoots. The village now consists of four hamlets inhabited by distinct lines of descent. Two branches have moved away to other areas; to Three Fathoms Cove in a northerly direction, and to the Yuen Long area in another part of the New Territories.\n\nThe Grass Field people, then, constitute a localized major lineage. As such they form part of a kin unit of a higher order, for which I would propose the designation 'clan'. In fact, a Grass Field villager is not usually able to establish his proper kinship relations with other villagers, at least not with those who are members of other main segments. In order to do this, he has to consult a kinsman with special knowledge or a genealogy book, which used to be kept in most villages. By these means he has a theoretical possibility to trace his actual relations through the genealogical links in the patrilineal line of descent. This will motivate the use of the term 'lineage'. The greater kin unit will, besides the Grass Field people, comprise the segments that resettled in other areas as well as the people living in the village of origin in Sai Kung, and the relatives, in all respects distant, in Mui Yuen in Kwangtung. Theoretically, other Lau descent lines, unknown to Grass Field people, would be included.\n\nBefore the Japanese Occupation fairly regular demonstration of kinship bonds took place when people from the Three Fathoms Cove and Clear Water Bay branches returned to Grass Field for common ancestor worship. There were, too, frequent contacts with the village of origin in China before the establishment of the People's Republic; delegates took part in ancestor worship",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205301,
        "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": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "56\n\nHe continues:\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nIt was apparently open to any man of means to tie a portion of the property he left either to the maintenance of an ancestral hall already in existence or to the establishment of a new one in respect of himself or some recently dead forebear. New segments coming into being were physically reflected in the ramification of halls.17\n\nFreedman, arguing in terms of domination processes, isolates the accumulation of wealth, implying power, within certain sections as the seed of lineage proliferation; the transformation from section to segment being manifested by the establishment of a new ancestral hall.\n\nSome features of traditional Hakka society need to be examined in this context. Major lineages tended to have small numbers; for instance, in 1911 Big Stream Village had 173 inhabitants. Plum Grove Village 59, and Grass Field Village 124.18 Surveying the 23 purely Hakka villages in the surrounding mountainous area, we find that at that time Big Stream Village was the most populous place; the number of residents in the 23 villages ranging between 173 and 6, giving an average of 64.19\n\nHere in the mountains there was very small differentiation as to occupation, all people being agriculturalists cultivating small pieces of land, owned and controlled by themselves. Poverty was a characteristic of these settlements. With the exception of a few paddy fields, said to be the lands of the village founder and connected with ancestral ceremonialism and occasionally with schools, no common property was shared by villagers. Some economic differentiation will have arisen from different forms of external income, and perhaps in relation to ownership of ferry boats, charcoal ovens, and hill plantations. The ecological setting, limiting any expansion of local production, provided the framework of an unstable situation, sensitive to any increase in population or decline in economic capacity. The small numbers of inhabitants in the Hakka mountain villages seem to reveal, therefore, that growth within the social and ecological framework was not possible.\n\nThis picture of Hakka society displays localized communities on a major lineage basis, connected only through occasional common ancestor worship expressing the idea of clanship as a con-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205303,
        "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": 65,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "58\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\nFukien, has found that there was no regular framework for the expansion of a segmentary system beyond the limits of a local group'22. We have seen that the Lau people of Grass Field Village in traditional times maintained only ceremonial connections with their villages of origin in Mei Hsien and Sai Kung. Their own ramified branches at Clear Water Bay, Three Fathoms Cove and Yuen Long also maintained similar connections with Grass Field Village. We could say that ramified groups did not continue to be part of the system at home, but together with their village of origin they remained within the ceremonial system provided by the clan. A new major lineage was not subordinated by the major lineage of origin. A permanently resettled fraction marked off their identity as a new lineage by the establishment of a new ancestral hall, providing a fixed focus on the continuum of generations pertaining to the clan. A vague principle of seniority might have been expressed in the return of the resettlers for common ancestor worship, but this was not reflected in a system of control.23\n\nWe have seen that the hill-dwelling Hakka in the New Territories display only a small amount of segmentation within the local framework, but a rather widespread expansion beyond the limits of established settlement. Accepting that segmentation and expansion form part of the domination processes, we may argue that fractions building up an increasing prestige mostly operated within a given fixed structure. Although small, the accumulation of wealth that was implied in this course of action was directly dependent on the given localization, the amount of external income through non-local resources probably being rather small in traditional times. At that time local status could be described in terms of local economy. People coming into a favourable social position were not those who were apt to move out. Rather, it will have been the sections who, within a fixed non-developing economic framework, had to pay for the rise of other groups in the community who broke away. Sole owners of small amounts of property were prepared to give this up, and resettle under uncertain conditions in other areas.\n\nIn situations characterized by shortage of resources in relation to the population, ramification appears to have been quite frequent. Droughts, typhoons and heavy rains are factors that played a part in this process. Segmentation of lower order in",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205305,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 67,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "60\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nExtension in Hakka society took different forms. Banditry seems to have been one,29 occasional work in the countryside,30 tenant farming in the plains,31 employment in towns or overseas others. These forms imply different depth in the extension, and it seems reasonable to assume that such differences were due mainly to ecological factors, such as the proximity to urban milieu, and facilities of communication. My attempt at interpretation of the difference in depth of extension between Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village, based on the differences in the socio-economic situations prevailing in their respective market towns, will serve as an illustration.\n\nThose who take part in the extension process live a life oscillating between their focus of social interest and their focus of economic interest. They spend much time away from home, often the main part of their lives, but they are always planning to return to the place of origin and they seldom feel attached to their place of work. They are sojourners.32\n\nOscillation is well illustrated in the career of an elderly man from Plum Grove Village. His early contact with an urban milieu was when, as a teenager, he carried fire-wood to the market in Yau Ma Tei, on which occasions he spent some four hours in town. His experiences there stimulated him to settle in Kowloon, where for a period he worked as a cook. Next we find him working in Singapore for some time. Returning home he took up a position as a salesman in a grocer's shop in Kowloon. A labour recruitment office in Kowloon offered opportunities of coolie work in the West Indies, and a four-year contract with these people brought him to Jamaica and Trinidad. The contract period over, he went to work in the phosphate mines of Nauru in the Central Pacific. Back in Hong Kong once more he took employment in a grocer's shop, but left soon again, now as a member of a ship-crew. He spent 18 months in jail in Holland, returning to Hong Kong just before the Japanese Occupation in 1940. This difficult period he spent entirely in Plum Grove Village. Immediately after the war he succeeded in going back to Holland, where he entered illegally. Finally we find him in his own village engaged in chicken raising, ginger cultivation, and pineapple planting, all on a small scale and rather unsuccessfully. He is now living entirely on remittances from his son who is working in England. During his wandering life",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205306,
        "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": 68,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205307,
        "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": 69,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "62\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\nIllegal immigration in the countries of Southeast Asia and elsewhere seems to have been rather difficult in the post-war period. With regard to legal immigration, people from the New Territories have one advantage in their competition with the crowds of recent immigrants from China. A Hong Kong Chinese who can prove that he was born in the Colony is able to claim British nationality. In the 1950s, an increasing number of New Territories residents left Hong Kong to seek employment in Great Britain. This movement reached a peak during 1961-62 when at least 2,270 people are known to have left for work in Britain. Most of these emigrants take up jobs in the restaurant trade. The Chinese-style restaurants in Britain have boomed since 1957, at which period some 50 establishments are said to have existed in the whole country, whereas the corresponding figure today is differently estimated between 1,000 and 2,000. It is said that pre-war London had only about eight or nine Chinese restaurants, but at the present time the number in the capital city may be some 300. The Hong Kong Chinese in Great Britain are now supposed to exceed 30,000 and the whole Chinese community there is estimated at about 45,000. The main part of the Hong Kong Chinese are from villages in the New Territories.33\n\nNearly all young and middle-aged men in the area of study have left their home communities and are now working in Britain. This absence of grown men is one of the most striking features of all Hakka villages in this particular mountain area. The village scene is completely dominated by women of all ages and small children not yet in their teens. Old men are found there, but generally they seem to prefer an indoor life. Sometimes one may meet a young man on an occasional visit to his home village. Agricultural work is entirely carried out by the women. At harvest, the children assist. A few of the old men, however, also work in their fields; one is a non-emigrant in Plum Grove Village who has devoted all his life to farming, the two others are masons in Grass Field Village, who work their fields when the masonry trade is not so good. It is difficult to estimate the efficiency of the women in their work in the fields, as compared with that of men. Some elderly men do not think too much of woman-labour, but on the other hand, Hakka women have traditionally taken part in all kinds of agricultural activities, and their toil in the fields is no innovation.34 What is certain is that during this last",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205309,
        "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": 71,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "64\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nemigrants who had left the Colony. The masons in Grass Field Village, who had their village within a day's journey, naturally had a word in all village affairs; but the Big Stream men working in Vancouver or on Aruba in the West Indies had a very limited influence on decisions made in the home community.\n\nVI\n\nTraditional leadership in these Hakka villages was gerontocratic in nature. There were no formal isu (M) or fang (M) leaders. An informal council of old men met occasionally in the ancestral hall to discuss current problems. These persons' influence was directly correlated to the distribution of economic control within the community. As long as this differentiation was small, all elders would have had fairly equal status. Age differentiation within the group does not seem to have been of vital importance.\n\nThe process of emigration created new economic groups. In Big Stream Village, where emigration abroad early dominated the scene, the informal council of village elders is made up of four former overseas Chinese. Two of them have worked in the United States, one in Canada, and one on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. The last-mentioned man has quite a good house and has apparently had some resources, but he is in poor health, struck by rheumatism, a fact he ascribes to excessive use of alcohol in his younger days. His sight is bad and is hardly improved by the smashed pair of spectacles on his nose. This 76-year-old man said that he was 'willing to accept anything, whatever it is and whenever it comes.' He has no children. His influence on village affairs is apparently very limited. It seems as if he is taking part in the village council meetings merely to represent the first minor lineage, even if I was never able to confirm a strict rule that all fang (M) should be represented there.\n\nOf the other three leaders, two are men who have spent much time in New York in the United States, and one who has been working in Vancouver, Canada. One of the New York men is Village Representative and the official spokesman with the British administrative authorities. He is 73 years old and a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205316,
        "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": 78,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n71\n\ngeneral rule. Unlike the Punti population, among whom it was customarily expected that groom and bride were total strangers to each other,40 the Hakka go-between arranged a meeting on a selected day at a tea house in a market town. The boy and the girl each brought along their 'friends', which presumably meant mainly the age-mates of their respective major lineages. The parents were not present on this occasion. If the couple consented, the boy's parents selected an auspicious day and informed the girl's family at least a month in advance of the date of the wedding.\n\nThe bride's family now started to arrange the dowry, which mainly consisted of clothes, at an amount that was supposed to be sufficient for her entire lifetime, and which was maintained under her control after the marriage. If it could be afforded, the dowry also contained some jewellery.\n\nAt the wedding the bride was transferred from her native village to her future one by means of a sedan chair. This ceremony is supposed to have limited the area in which a marriageable girl was to be found, as in this mountain district it would be difficult for a bridal procession to move too long a distance. Most wives of the valley seem to have been recruited from the surrounding mountain villages and from the Three Fathoms Cove area. Big Stream Village also has had many wives coming from one particular village in the Lam Chuen Valley in the hinterland of the Tai Po Market. It was also pointed out that in 'old times' marriage connections stretched as far as the border town of Sha Tau Kok and Sham Chun Market in Chinese territory.4 Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village have frequently had marriage connections with the Sai Kung area. Some of the community members working overseas took secondary wives in the country they were working in.42\n\nAdoption of infant or child brides into the household was also very frequent, as this was a more economic solution for poor people who had not then to feed an extra mouth until the girl was of marriageable age and provide a dowry for her. In both cases the woman maintained the surname of the clan of which she was born a member.\n\nAt the present-day go-betweens are not used. The youths make their own contacts during work and recreation. Bonds of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205318,
        "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": 80,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n73\n\n2 There are indications that this mountain area at one time was inhabited by non-Chinese Yao people; Barnett 1957, p. 261. The present inhabitants, however, are all Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese, settled here for only about 300 years.\n\n3 The estimated average price for local unmilled rice is (1965) HK$28 per picul for first crop rice. The corresponding figure for second crop rice is HK$36 a picul.\n\n4 Chiu 1964, p. 77.\n\n5 Bot. Report 1906, p. 221.\n\nIt could be added that a fish hawker is touring the area daily. He is from Sai Kung and his route includes Grass Field Village and Plum Grove Village. There are also other occasional peddlers, trading in food and sweets. Some shops can be found at the mining workers' settlement at Ma On Shan. Fishermen call at the pier there every morning. People from Big Stream Village often take advantage of these facilities.\n\n7 S., D. W. 1900, p. 202f. See also Tregear & Berry 1959, p. 12ff, and Hayes 1966, p. 128f.\n\n8 In a village just outside Canton, \"almost all those who went to work on ships were Wongs. This was chiefly due to the functioning of kinship relations in economic life. One who knew of an opportunity in one's own occupation usually recommended it to a kinsman. A Lee already engaged in business in Hong Kong would hire his own relatives as help or recommend them to fellow businessmen who might need help. A Wong in the 'hard labour' business, an activity tightly controlled by secret societies, or in marine work, did the same for his own kinsmen.\" Yang 1959, p. 73.\n\n9 Lockhart Report, p. 557. Census 1911, p. 103.\n\n10 Skinner 1964/65, p. 202. For further details, see Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n11 The Ng people in Plum Grove Village have no connections with the former Grass Field people of the same surname.\n\n12 The coastal area of Kwangtung was the scene of a dramatic mass deportation, executed by the Ch'ing occupants as a counter-measure in the struggle against raiding Ming loyalists. This course of action was carried out from 1661. Eight years later the coastal strip was declared open for settlement and an active policy by the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, A Ke-min, lured immigrants to the waste lands. The main influx of Hakka to the New Territories was in the following decades. If this is correct it may be that the Lau people appeared in this area during the course of this re-occupation. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff.\n\nSee Hui 1963, p. 89ff. However, Professor Freedman (1967) has quite correctly pointed out that the data are by no means conclusive on the effective evacuation of the area.\n\n13 Skinner 1964/65, p. 37.\n\n14 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n15 In the Hakka village in the Tolo Harbour area, studied by Jean Pratt, at the Chinese New Year 'all the men go to the lineage hall in a village across the valley, where they claim their ancestors lived. Pratt 1960, p. 149. But note supplementary information in Freedman 1966, p. 41; this issue, however, has no bearing on my argument. Similar social ceremonialism seems to have occurred among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population. See Hayes 1962, p. 28.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205319,
        "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": 81,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "74\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\n16 The still wider surname groups, hsing (M), in Chinese society, based on entirely fictitious agnatic relationships, expressed in at least preferred exogamy, have often indiscriminately been designated 'clans'. See e.g. Lee 1960, p. 134f. and Willmott 1964, p. 33. This purely conventional consanguinal kin group comes close to the sociological concept of 'phratry', and kin group constellations of this kind may be described better as units of this higher order. The Hakka nomenclature may vary but the units discussed are always conceived of,\n\n17 Freedman 1958, pp. 47, 129.\n\n18 Census 1911, p. 103f.\n\n19 Nine villages with Cantonese-speaking Punti population in the same district at the same time display numbers ranging between 346 and 9, with an average of 108.\n\n20 However, Jean Pratt, in her account of a Hakka village to the north of Tolo Harbour in the New Territories, gives an example of a non-symmetrical segmentation, reflected in the establishment of a new ancestral hall; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n21 This also applies to the Hakka village studied by Miss Pratt: 'The three lineage halls are merely buildings in a row like an ordinary dwelling house'; Pratt 1960, p. 148.\n\n22 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n23 Skinner, in discussing the importance of marketing communities, points out that in Szechuan there existed organizations of Hakka 'composite lineages', with headquarters in teahouses in the market towns (Skinner 1964/65, p. 37). I have no knowledge of similar organizations in the New Territories. One would have expected something of this kind in a portion of China where the Hakka groups suffered political strain from the Punti population. Local groupings on a non-kin basis may sometimes have fulfilled a protective function. Such local organizations, with headquarters in small temples, are for instance to be found in the Sha Tin Valley, and in the Three Fathom Cove area. All three villages studied belonged in pre-British times to an administrative organization called Luk Yeuk, focussed on the old government centre of Kowloon City. Freedman (1966, p. 86) sees yeuk organizations as means for weak communities to seek 'protection against being molested by local powers'. For a discussion of yeuk see op. cit., pp. 82-89 and for the Luk Yeuk especially pp. 85f.\n\n24 A map of Hakka migrations is, for instance, provided by Kuo 1964, facing p. 6. But there are also other views as to the origin of the Hakka, see e.g. Barnett 1958, p. 2.\n\n25 Izikowitz 1963, p. 171.\n\n26 One man from Grass Field Village has settled for good in Borneo. He has taken his wife and children there. This is the only instance of permanent overseas settlement I have come across.\n\n27 This particular migration is said to have been encouraged and even given financial assistance by the Chinese Government as an aftermath of the war mentioned below; Dyer Ball 1925, p. 282. Another author thinks less of the generosity of the government:\n\n'Comme ces tribus Hak-ka se montraient particulièrement turbulentes, les mandarins chinois ne pensaient qu'à les éloigner de leur territoire; c'est ainsi qu'en 1864 et 1866, à la suite de nombreuses revoltes, ils furent expulsés dans le sud du Kouang-Si, vers ces marches frontières qui, comme la province de Moncay, étaient peu habitées et dans un état habituel d'anarchie politique.'",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205320,
        "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": 82,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n75\n\nVaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement.\n\n28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282.\n\nA Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui.\" Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27.\n\n29 \"Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long.\" New Territories Report 1917, p. J2.\n\n30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home.\" New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55.\n\n31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction:\n\nIn the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162.\n\n32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest.\n\n33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon,\n\n34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci.\n\n'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205538,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 80,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n75\n\nphenomena. Fêngshui is a ritual language: a set of symbols and ways of combining these symbols into ritual statements. The fêngshui language is largely shared and understood by all Chinese and it provides an important instrument in Chinese society for a diffusion of local ideas into the larger society. The system of symbols can also be manipulated; individuals in the process of maximizing their resources employ special techniques — ‘geomancy’ — to discover and map localized symbolic sub-systems. Natural surroundings are explored in terms of fêngshui. The natural influences the interaction between the symbols can be played upon to the benefit of the player. This facet of fêngshui has recently been discussed in anthropological literature. The argument of this paper is concerned with its communicative aspect.\n\nThe fêngshui influences of a given ecological setting are of extreme importance to the people who are dependent on this setting. They are not static, but are changing in 60-year cycles. The fêngshui has a bearing not only on the particular individuals, but is equally important for the whole localized group. The effect of the influences can be measured in terms of good or bad fortune; the latter experienced in few sons, bad crops, and so on. In the same way as individuals are maximizing their resources, a whole community may try to manipulate the fêngshui. An example of this was to be found in Grass Field Village, further up the valley mentioned above. A most striking feature in the scenery there is one of the two peaks of the imposing mountain Maanshan (Ma On Shan) peeping up from behind the lower mountain ridges surrounding the village. Villagers explained that they always have a feeling that this mountain top is watching them from above. Apparently this watching implied a negative influence; people tried to check it by planting trees on the ridge in order to screen off the sinister mountain top. However, during the Japanese Occupation these trees were cut down, fuel being reckoned then as more essential than negative influences.\n\nOn the other hand, one seldom finds a general agreement as to the positive or negative character of the fêngshui influences in a certain setting. Poor people tend to regard the fêngshui of their locality as a 'killing breath', while better-off persons in the same settlement may say that it is after all ‘not too bad'. Fêngshui language, then, is used to express social and economic differentiation.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205543,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 85,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "80\n\nGORAN ALMER\n\nposition of their ancestral hall into which the dragon of the hill behind is 'crashing' all the time.\n\nBy way of summing up, we may say that social and economic differentiation is projected on the natural surroundings. The phenomena of nature in their symbolic aspect project back the image of differentiation in the form of rational models concepts of systems of natural influences affecting man and social life. These models can be manipulated by their constructors. They also carry messages that can be communicated between individuals and between groups.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 For a somewhat fuller description of the two villages, see Aijmer 1967. Big Stream Village (Dashuikeng) and Plum Grove Village (Meizilin) are in Hong Kong known under the Cantonese designations 'Tai Shui Hang' and 'Mui Tsz Lam'. Grass Field Village (Maoping) is 'Mau Ping'. They can be located with the help of Gazetteer 1960. Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Field work was financed by six Swedish funds; I gratefully acknowledge their support. Thanks are due to Mr. James Hayes, Hong Kong, and my wife for comments.\n\n2 Freedman 1966, 118f; 1967; Baker 1965.\n\n3 An alternative to, or perhaps rather a facet of, manipulating was fleeing. Examples of how people broke away from localities considered having bad fengshui have been given by Hayes (1963; 1967).\n\n4 It may be of interest to point out that nets are instrumental in exorcistic ceremonies, when malevolent spirits may be caught or scared away with fishnets. I have this from a Buddhist monk whom I interviewed in Macau in 1965.\n\n5 Census 1911, 103:27.\n\n6 The sources classify Plum Grove land as third class land whereas Big Stream land is rated as second class. In the former place farming is done on terraced fields only.\n\n7 In Plum Grove Village 35 houses were registered in 1906. If we compare this with the population figure of the Census of 1911, we will find that, if in use, each house unit was inhabited by 1.7 persons. This is an amazingly low figure, as we would have expected something around five or more as an average. Even if we allow for the ten men mentioned below, the figure would increase to just about two. The implication of these facts must be a reduction in population, perhaps by way of a lineage segment breaking away to settle elsewhere. In Big Stream Village 77 houses gave shelter to average families of 2.2 persons. Not even male absenteeism, discussed later, can explain this low figure to satisfaction.\n\n* Information obtained from the District Demarcation Maps and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 188' of 1906 and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 196' of the same year, to be seen at the Tai Po District Office, New Territories, Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208195,
        "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": 234,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "218\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nOnce this trade was taken up, not a single family member could sit idly by. If the family consisted of only five members, all five had to be mobilized: first of all, to grind the beans and then boil the paste. After the paste was hot enough, one member had still to keep heating it to produce the layers of bean skim. Another member carried the products prepared the day before to Kowloon where he sold them to the shops and bought more beans. The remaining members, after finishing their breakfast, had to climb the hills to look for dry grass which they fetched home for fuel. This was the hard way by which our ancestors managed to make a hand-to-mouth living and rear us.\n\nNowadays, we have electricity, motor and transport facilities and the manufacturing process has mostly been mechanized. The kind of hard life that our ancestors once led will never be repeated.\n\nADDENDUM\n\nThe brief account that follows is taken from Peng-chun Chang's China at the Crossroads (London, Evans Brothers, 1936) p.145.\n\nAn example of a type of manufacturing common in the villages is the preparation of tofu, or bean curd. A tofu shop may be seen in nearly every village. In this shop is the mill used for crushing the beans. This mill is run by human or animal power. The beans are ground in the mill and then mixed with water. The liquid, called bean milk, is squeezed from the mass and boiled in a boiler which is part of the shop's equipment. This boiled milk is frequently eaten. If, however, certain chemicals are added to the boiled liquid, it solidifies and is known as bean curd, or tofu. The tofu manufacture represents a rough, everyday type of manufacture common in the villages. It exhibits the skill of accumulated experience, for this food has been common in the diet of the Chinese people for centuries.\n\nTofu is high in protein and takes the place of dairy products and meat in the diet of the people. Recent scientific experimentation in China is endeavouring to find a commercially profitable way of reducing the bean milk to a powder to take the place of imported powdered milk.\n\nChang was a native of Tientsin and presumably is referring mainly to North China. For a recent detailed account from Hong Kong based on field work in 1961 and 1963 see Vol. One, Part III, 27, \"The Bean Curd Maker\" of Cornelius Osgood's The Chinese. A Study of a Hong Kong Community (Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Press, 3 vols, 1975), pp. 393-404. These volumes contain a wealth of information on many traditional economic undertakings.\n\nFOUR CHINESE ‘BANKS' FAIL, PARTNERS BLAME HEAD\n\nThe following is extracted, in part, from a report in The Washington Post Metro for Sunday 26 February, 1978.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209858,
        "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": 117,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "95\n\nuncommon, always indicates a kiln. Lime-burning boomed after 1918 but slumped badly in 1925 in the great strike in Hong Kong, and never revived seriously. Distilleries for making spirits, generally from molasses, sometimes from rice, are found in the towns, also soy and preserved vegetable factories. Mining of wolframite is done only in North Lantau. There are two or three small granite quarries on Cheung Chau and Lamma.\n\nA good deal of these various products are sold outside the islands and bring in cash and foreign goods of all kinds. Some remote valleys are still, however, living what is essentially a \"subsistence economy\" life, in which the village grows nearly all it needs, and has very little left over to sell. Much rice is exported, and rice imported from Annam to replace it; rice from Annam is cheaper and a profit is made on the difference.\n\nCheung Chau is the biggest business centre of the islands, thanks to its excellent harbour, the ferry service, its big fishing business, and its flat land suitable for building. It does all the business of South and East Lantau and the smaller islands nearby; it supplies a small European settlement; has several factories, numerous shops, and does a very big fish and shrimp paste business; it has distilleries, and boat and junk builders' yards. Its chief drawback is water shortage; water boats bring supplies from Lantau, but the problem is a very serious one for the growing population.\n\nTai O is a port which has grown up to supply the needs of the fishermen in the shallow waters of the Delta, the best fishing ground on this part of the coast. Its harbour is poor and rather silted up, and the deeper part is very exposed. It has not much industry beyond its saltpans.\n\nPingchau is a business centre for North Lantau, many of whose inhabitants cut grass to feed its limekilns; the lime is got entirely from coral and shell, and as the sea near it is almost worked out, coral fishermen have to go far afield.\n\nMa Wan is a village which seems to have grown up round the old Customs yamen, now the school. It has little business and few shops.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210162,
        "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-1984",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "112 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nen are all of the sort that go barefooted and work in the field. I have not seen one small-footed woman here. At least 8/10 of men here smoke opium.' \n\nAs we have seen, Aberdeen, about the same time, was, as Collinson reports, also a fishing port. According to another military observer, Captain Cunynghame, it contained about 200 buildings, and had “a very respectable appearance”. It is thus very likely that it engaged in the same mixed business as Stanley, and contained a similar size of population and a similar mixture of people.24 \n\nThe villagers were essentially farmers and fishermen relying on their padi fields for a subsistence rice crop twice a year, supplemented by coastal fishing. The old style of village life, that must have characterized Hong Kong's settlements before British rule, lingered on in its essentials well into this century until squatters and development ended the old life style. Even as late as 1967, at Little Hong Kong, Old Village, an old lady then aged 80 told me that her's had been the first family in the village to apply for a mains water supply ten years before, and some villagers were still in 1967 cutting grass to use as fuel to heat water, cook pig food, etc. and going to the foreshore to find edible items. \n\nIn earlier days, the hillsides were apportioned for grass cutting between clans and their member families as in the New Territories, and she had changed areas where she married a man in another clan from the New Village. Besides being cut for fuel at home, grass was taken to Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay to sell to the boat people anchored there. They used it to burn the marine growth from the underside of their craft at regular intervals (usually twice a month), as was done in many coastal villages in the area. \n\nThe villagers used the adjacent sea shore to supplement their diet, waiting for the tide to go out and spending up to four or five hours daily in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lunar months (March till May or June) gathering sea eggs, digging in the sand for clams, looking for other shell fish among the stones and gathering sea weed to feed the pigs. Both men and women engaged in the work, and she recalls both her mother and father carrying large baskets of sea",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
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    }
]