[
    {
        "id": 208089,
        "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": 128,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)\": SUB-NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY IN NORTH POINT, HONG KONG\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN⭑\n\n\"Ethnic neighborhoods\" are found not only in city guidebooks but squat smugly astride the intersection of Urban Anthropology with Ethnicity Studies. Mention of such a neighborhood conjures up visions in both folk and anthropological minds of a distinctive and discrete portion of a city marked off by spatial as well as social boundaries from the rest of the urban area. Cultural peculiarities and perhaps even physical oddities predominate on the streets, in the homes, in the shops.\n\nSo much for popular and anthropological expectations. Field research in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong has disclosed to me how misleading such a priori notions of ethnic neighborhood can be. In Hong Kong, certain neighborhoods are known as districts inhabited by certain groups of ethnically distinct Han Chinese,1 yet in every district in urban Hong Kong the majority Guangdongese (Cantonese) is indeed the majority group and not the purportedly dominant minority group.\n\nSince all these districts are peopled by a majority of Guangdongese, I submit it is rather imprecise to speak of a neighborhood such as North Point as \"Little Fujian\" when only 1/5 of the population there is Fujianese (Fukienese). To avoid the clumsiness of a terminology of \"universal,\" \"substantial,\" or \"bare\" majority predominance in a neighborhood, we should instead simply sharpen our tools and terms of urban analysis. We should realize that in the case of North Point and Hong Kong (and, I suspect, in many other cases) the concepts of \"neighborhood\" and \"community\" do not overlap, that the geographical/spatial boundaries of a neighborhood may not be coterminous with the sociocultural ones of a community. A city-wide ethnic community may encompass a number of neighborhoods or sections of neighborhoods. Conversely, a neighborhood may be composed of a number of spatially distinct sub-neighborhoods and/or a number of socio-culturally distinct communities.\n\n* Professor Guldin is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208090,
        "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": 129,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)”\n\n113\n\nlocal communities. \"Ethnic neighborhood\" can potentially refer to either or both concepts. If this were not so, if we could not separate neighborhood from sub-neighborhood or neighborhood from community, how else could we explain the appellation of North Point, a neighborhood over 2/3 Guangdongese,2 not only as \"Little Fujian\" but as \"Little Shanghai\" as well?\n\nFrom \"Little Shanghai\"\n\nAlthough it is hard to imagine now, North Point 50 years ago was a semi-rural area. Extensive landfill projects, however, soon led to North Point's emergence by the end of the 1930s as a center of light industry and commerce as well as of entertainment. The population remained small, however, and prior to the Second World War North Point was the least crowded spot on the northern side of Hong Kong Island (Wai 1957: 2-5).\n\nMuch of the area was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Post-war reconstruction coincided with the late 1940s arrival of the first wave of Central Chinese to North Point: those who had the means to flee the Civil War raging in the north of China and had chosen to come to Hong Kong for a \"temporary\" stay while they waited for the fighting to cease. As a newly developing, uncrowded and semi-exclusive area, North Point appealed to these relatively affluent immigrants.\n\nWhen Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of Zhejiang (Chekiang) and Jiangsu (Kiangsu) were overrun by Chinese Communist forces in 1949, a new wave of \"Shanghaiese\" descended upon Hong Kong although even at this early date North Point was not the destination of all Shanghaiese; the wealthiest went to the most exclusive areas of the colony while the bulk of the predominantly middle-class Shanghaiese proceeded to North Point and lent a decidedly bourgeois flavor to the area.\n\nBy 1950 \"Little Shanghai\" was well established. Restaurants, tailor shops, beauty parlors and other businesses were all set up by Shanghaiese to serve the area's essentially Shanghaiese population. Even today on a walk around North Point one can spot many old and fading signboards of a \"Shanghai Tailor,\" a \"Shanghai Beautiful Woman\" Beauty Parlor, a \"Shanghai Peacock Laundry Service\" as well as a couple of well-known and well-frequented Shanghai restaurants. The Shanghai population clustered within a block or so of King's Road, North Point's main thoroughfare, both Fort Street",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208091,
        "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": 130,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "114\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nand Tsat Tsz Mui Road became the foci of middle-class Shanghaiese life in Hong Kong (see Fig. 1). If there was ever a time that North Point had a majority non-Guangdongese population, this was it.*\n\nBy the early 1960s, however, changes had occurred in North Point which were having a profound effect on the area's demographics. A high-rise apartment building boom, replacing many of the post-war three or six-storey structures with 20-storey buildings, had led to an oversupply of apartments and a consequent drop in rents. Middle-income Guangdongese, who had been moving into North Point slowly but surely throughout the 1950s, could now afford to live in the once exclusive neighborhood and they poured into the area. Soon they found themselves the overwhelming majority not only in the high-rise buildings but in all of North Point as well.\n\nThe Shanghaiese, certainly, could not fill all the empty spaces, for their immigrative tide had already begun to ebb. Since the late 1950s, there had been a net outflow of Shanghaiese from North Point as those who had found ways to replenish their wealth moved to richer areas and the many who had not adjusted so well, pauperized and forced into lower-status occupations, were no longer able to afford the high rents of Fort Street and North Point and also moved away. With a dearth of available Shanghaiese residents, the old system by which North Point's Shanghaiese had maintained their neighborhood's Shanghaiese identity by permitting only Shanghaiese (or approved others) entry into their three-storey buildings — rapidly collapsed under the sudden challenge of the seemingly cavernous 20-storey high-rises. As the Shanghaiese began to leave, another minority population, the Fujianese, began to arrive in North Point in greater and greater numbers until their total eventually surpassed their predecessors' and \"Little Shanghai\" was eclipsed by \"Little Fujian.\"\n\n+\n\nTo \"Little Fujian\"\n\nMost Fujianese who arrived in North Point in the late 1950s to form the basis of a future \"Little Fujian\" community had ironically already been living in a Fujianese community. Since the early 1950s, the few thousand Fujianese resident in Hong Kong had been living in Hong Kong Island's Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Poon districts, areas close to the city's commercial and trading centers. As the Fujianese (along with the Guangdongese) are one of Southern China's peoples who have adopted the strategy of seeking overseas",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208095,
        "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": 134,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "% of Total\n\nHK Population\n\n118\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nFig. 3-Hong Kong and North Point Population by Place of Origin—19758\n\n  \n    Place of Origin\n    % of North Point Population\n    % of Total HK Population\n  \n  \n    Guang Zhou area\n    54%\n    46%\n  \n  \n    Sae Yup\n    17%\n    ...\n  \n  \n    \n    82%\n    16%\n  \n  \n    \n    \n    69%\n  \n  \n    Hong Kong, Macao area\n    5%\n    ...\n  \n  \n    Guangdongese9\n    1%\n    ...\n  \n  \n    Guangdongese9\n    \n    ...\n  \n  \n    Elsewhere in Guangdong\n    6%\n    6%\n  \n  \n    Chao Zhou\n    10%\n    5%\n  \n  \n    Shanghaiese (including Jiangsu and Zhejiang prov.)\n    3%\n    6%\n  \n  \n    Fujianese\n    3%\n    18%\n  \n  \n    Northern and Central Chinese (excluding Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai)\n    1%\n    1%\n  \n  \n    Others\n    2%\n    1%\n  \n  \n    TOTAL\n    100%\n    100%\n  \n\nChinese led to the further expansion of the Fujianese sub-neighborhood across Tong Shui Road for the first time. Since then Little Fujian's explosive growth has slackened a bit although the last decade or so has seen the Fujianese move a block or two further east across Quarry Bay.\n\nThis intra-North Point history makes today's ethnic settlement pattern understandable. Figure 1 maps out the spatial distribution of both Fujianese and Shanghaiese in North Point and indicates the location of today's Little Fujian sub-neighborhood as well as the boundaries of the 1950s Little Shanghai area. As suggested by the over-lapping boundaries, Little Fujian has supplanted Little Shanghai as North Point's major sub-neighborhood. Indeed, we can even go so far as to maintain that Little Shanghai no longer exists in North Point as a distinct sub-neighborhood, although a diminished and outwardly directed sense of Shanghaiese community does persist. There are more to these ethnic enclaves though than a few street blocks; equally important are the social ties that bind a community together. Since the Shanghaiese community no longer centers in North Point let us turn to the Fujianese community of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208097,
        "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": 136,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "120\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nethnicity in North Point. Primarily concerned with community and social welfare projects, the Association sponsors performances of Fujianese provincial operas, folk dances and songs; organizes film showings and outings to the countryside, operates health clinics, a Guangdongese language program and a Fujianese discount grocery; and arranges for inexpensive trips back home to Fujian (Zheng Yi 1974:2-4).\n\nWith all these services and activities the Fujian Province Association is a genuinely popular and community-wide organization among North Point's Fujianese. All Fujianese are familiar with at least some of its services and activities whether or not they have ever personally visited its offices or benefited from its services. They know that the Association is there to help Fujianese, and especially Southern Fujianese, with the problems of housing, jobs, travel to Fujian and access to Fujianese products. With its 3000 active members (2.3% of the 1975 Fujianese Hong Kong population) the Association serves as the main organizational terminal through which many of little Fujian's ethnic and social currents are strengthened and channeled.\n\nAlthough not physically located in North Point, but in the old Sheung Wan district of Fujianese and other trading corporations, the Fujian Commercial Association has exerted a guiding force in the Fujianese community's development. In addition to facilitating PRC trade with the Overseas Fujianese of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, the Association has acted as the unofficial coordinator of the other pro-PRC Fujianese organizations in Hong Kong.11 Composed of the wealthy, influential and active members of an already unusually depleted older male population, the Commercial Association is usually the prime mover in the few community activities that do occur.\n\nOne such activity, and one in which the Commercial Association's role is most conspicuous, is in the organization and direction of the annual \"All-Fujianese National Day Banquet.\" Although the Fujian Province Association, the Fujian Middle School and the Fujianese Physical Education Association all co-sponsor this \"patriotic\" affair, it is the Commercial Association that foots the bill for the evening and which handles all questions of etiquette and policy. If anything in Hong Kong comes close to being a \"center of Fujianese power,\" the Commercial Association does, diffuse and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208098,
        "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": 137,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "\"LITTLE FUJIAN (Fukien)\"\n\n121\n\nindirect though that power may be. In general, though, and especially when compared to other Chinese \"overseas\" communities, neither the Commercial nor the Province Association dominates the Fujianese community.\n\nLittle Fujian as Community: The Social Networks\n\nEthnicity and community are also expressed in less formally structured ways than associations and organizations. Informal patterns of economic, religious and social behavior have arisen and guide life in Little Fujian to a significant degree. Of these three areas perhaps it is the economic and business aspects of Little Fujian that are most visible to outsiders, more visible because they are public.\n\nIn the retail \"Fujianese markets\" of Chun Yeung and Mercury Streets, Little Fujian as a sub-neighborhood intersects with Little Fujian as social community. Each market street is located along an artery of the Fujianese sub-neighborhood and caters to Fujianese tastes in everything from food to jewellery to clothes. Non-Fujianese (Guangdongese, Chau Zhou and/or Shanghaiese) markets adjoin these Fujianese business areas but are socially as well as physically distinct; most Fujianese women prefer to shop on Chun Yeung or Mercury Street where they can be sure of finding people who sell Fujianese specialties prepared in the right manner and who will bargain with them in a familiar tongue. To younger Fujianese, though, language is not so great a barrier and they will often just as comfortably shop on the adjoining but “Fujianese-less” markets of Marble Road or elsewhere in search of a bargain. Yet even for these frugal shoppers the buying habits of childhood and the chance to meet Fujianese friends pulls them repeatedly back to Chun Yeung and Mercury Streets to buy things Fujianese style.\n\nAs with business, so too has religion developed along ethnic lines in North Point.12 Twenty years ago there were no specifically Fujianese Buddhist temples in North Point and early arrivals frequented the one convenient temple in the area: the predominantly Guangdongese Yuet Fei temple on Electric Road.* During the first decade of Fujianese settlement in North Point the percentage\n\n* The origins of this temple are given in a Hong Kong Government file (Secretariat for Chinese Affairs 1/631/1948) which contains a minute dated 3rd April 1948 by the then Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Mr. R. R. Todd:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208099,
        "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": 138,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "122\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nof Fujianese attending the Yueh Fei temple gradually rose until today perhaps 70-80% of the worshippers there are Fujianese. Even so, the temple is not a Fujianese temple; both the people who run the temple and the deity itself are Guangdongese.\n\nThis arrangement was less than satisfactory to the Fujianese. Since Fujianese and Guangdongese ritual practices and religious concepts are not always isomorphic, arguments over what food was properly offered to Guan Yin (Kuan Yin) or what was expected of a medium, etc., frequently erupted. Such disputes, complicated by the language barrier, made many Fujianese feel uncomfortable about worshipping in a \"barbarian\"-run temple.\n\nTen years ago this situation began to change as the Cultural Revolution in China increased attacks on the old religious organizations back in Fujian. Temple personnel such as Buddhist monks and nuns began to arrive legally and illegally in Hong Kong and served to staff a new type of temple, a form particularly suited to Hong Kong's crowded situation. Apartments were rented to serve as temples in many of the apartment buildings which contained a heavy Fujianese population. North Point branches of Sai Ying Poon temples were likewise also begun in this manner.\n\nEach apartment-temple is dedicated to a particular god; sometimes it is a pan-Chinese spirit such as Guan Yin but it can also be a specifically local one such as Sheng Gung of Fujian Province's Nan An county. Sheng Gung's original temple is now in disrepair back in Nan An but the god's statue and objects were brought to Hong Kong a few years back. Hong Kong may thus have the only Sheng Gung temple left functioning in the world.\n\n\"I have visited this little Temple, or joss-house, and have discussed its history with one of the local Kaifong, Mr. Lo Ho Ching, of 129 Electric Road, Ground Floor.\n\n\"The little Temple is dedicated to the God of Warriors, Ngok Fei, and has been in existence about 40 years. According to Mr. Lo it was built by the late Kwok Shut Ting, Compradore of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (A.P.C.), at the time when the A.P.C.'s installation at North Point was built. At present the little Temple is looked after by an old woman appointed by the Kaifong.\n\n\"The little Temple is a picturesque little structure, half embedded in a large boulder and covered by a tree. The Kaifong and I too would be reluctant to see it removed, but if it has to be removed I do not think the Kaifong will object provided that an alternative site for it can be found in the vicinity and if it is re-erected by Government at the time when the new Police Station at Bay View is built.\"\n\nThis information was provided by the Hon. Editor of this Journal.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208103,
        "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": 142,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "126\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nfor community organizations, both formal and informal, to develop to promote and protect the community's interests. Although this may very well occur at times, or even perhaps is the usual occurrence, we should not therefore make the assumption that a shared sense of solidarity, of community, is always dependent on formal organization; indeed, what is striking about North Point's Little Fujian is the generally minor role that formal institutions and organizations play. Associations are not the major aspect of Fujianese community in Hong Kong: kin, quasi-kin (i.e. “tong-xiang” and fictive kin relations), and friendship ties also carry the burdens of ethnicity and community in Little Fujian.\n\nIn great contrast to North Point's majority Guangdongese who regard the area as \"nothing special — it's just a convenient place to live,\" Fujianese are quick to tell you they live in North Point \"because it's Little Fujian.\" Fujianese regard North Point as their \"capital\" in Hong Kong and it is through Little Fujian that most business and friendship networks meander. While most Fujianese admit that North Point is \"most likely\" predominantly Guangdongese, this does not stop Fujianese from all but ignoring that majority proportion; to those Fujianese living in North Point, it's in Little Fujian that much of their lives are spent and not “North Point” in general.\n\nLittle Fujian as a sub-neighborhood could be said to physically exist in the narrow band of streets, shops and buildings in North Point that are peopled and frequented by high percentages of Fujianese. Equally significant though, it exists as a community in those specifically Fujianese social relationships or patterns of activities that appear like currents in the ebb and flow of North Point life. Sub-neighborhood and community may overlap, but they don't have to. Little Fujian can thus be found in the offices of the Fujian Province Association, in the homes of Fujianese, in the Chun Yeung Market, between two Fujianese friends on King's Road, or in the many other public and semi-public Fujianese and non-Fujianese places of North Point,\n\nWhen sub-neighborhood and community do overlap, however, it is a powerful combination. To North Point's Fujianese it is often seemingly small things like walking down a “Fujianese” street with friends from the home county and hearing a Southern Fujianese folk song broadcast from a Fujianese shop that makes life in Hong",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208104,
        "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-1977",
        "page_number": 143,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "# “LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)”\n\n127\n\nKong's North Point feel more familiar and therefore more comfortable. Overhearing a conversation between friends in the accents of the homeland while listening to a soft Fujianese melody wafting gently from a shop, one could close one's eyes and imagine being back in Fujian. With eyes open again, though, Little Fujian would have to suffice.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 E.g. Fujianese (Fukienese) and Shanghaiese in North Point; Shanghaiese in Tsim Tsa Tsui; Chau Zhou (Chiu Chau, Teochiu) in Chai Wan, Western District and Kwun Tong; Boat People in Aberdeen and Tai Po. See Guldin (1977) for a discussion of Han Chinese ethnicity and identity levels.\n\n2 See below, fig. 3.\n\n3 In the parlance of the times, and to a lesser extent even today, \"Shanghaiese\" often referred broadly to all Central (and sometimes even Northern) Chinese.\n\n4 Accurate figures are lacking; no detailed colony-wide or North Point censuses were conducted between 1930 and 1960.\n\n5 Based on analyses of Census Block Tally Sheets from 1971 Census made available to me through the kindness of the Commissioner.\n\n6 By \"Fujianese\" I refer specifically to \"Southern Fujianese,\" the Min-Nan speaking Fujianese of Xiamen (Amoy), Quan Zhou (Chuan Chow), Zhang Zhou (Chang Chow) and the surrounding counties. Other Fujianese are present in Hong Kong but Southern Fujianese are the overwhelming majority.\n\n7 Based on 1971 Census: table 4; Wai 1957:5; Lam 1967:35; 1975 Census Update.\n\n8 Based on 1971 Census, immigration statistics, and 1975 Census Update.\n\n9 A problem with these categories is the Hakka, a distinct ethnic group, whose places of origin often overlap with those of ethnic Guangdongese. One source though (Kuo 1964:65) has estimated the Hakka population of Hong Kong as 12% of the total. For urban North Point the percentage of the predominantly rural Hakka would be substantially lower than for Hong Kong as a whole.\n\n10 Although membership in these \"Fujian\" associations is theoretically open to all Hong Kong Fujianese and some non-Southern Fujianese do indeed belong, the Northern Fujianese of the Fuzhou (Foochow) area have set up their own associations.\n\n11 Fujianese organizations not aligned with the PRC do exist in Hong Kong but are mostly \"paper\" associations.\n\n12 Few Fujianese in Hong Kong are Christians (perhaps 4 or 5%), but those that are mostly arrived in Hong Kong earlier than the bulk of late 1950s and later immigrants and have been largely isolated (both physically and socially) from most aspects of life in Little Fujian.\n\n13 Aidan Southall (1973) makes a related point in using the concept of interaction intensity as key to a definition of \"urban.\"",
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