[ { "id": 204420, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n43\n\nmeditation. I know of a monk who tried the latter for about a year and a half and then gave up. He changed to T'ien-t'ai meditation, which is somewhat easier. He did this for nine years, but still did not feel that he was getting anywhere, and so for the last eighteen years he has been reciting Buddha's name, which is the practice of the Pure Land sect.\n\nNotice that there was no set career. A monk could meditate; he could recite Buddha's name; he could study. He was not committed to the practice of any one sect. It is as if in the West a Christian could be a Quaker this year, a Roman Catholic next year, and a Baptist the year after, regarding them all as complementary. Much of the Buddhist monk's time, of course, was spent in ritual which was common to all sects: chanting the scriptures morning and evening, rites to celebrate the anniversaries of buddhas and bodhisattvas through the calendar year, masses to release the souls of the dead from hell, prayers for the sick, prayers to avert disaster, and other ceremonies designed to assist the faithful with practical problems of life and death.\n\nThe newly ordained monk was, as I say, supposed to meditate and study for five years after ordination. Study was usually carried on in a seminary. The seminaries (there were about thirty-five of them) were established in the nineteen-twenties as a part of the general revival of Buddhism in China. I shall not go into the seminary curriculum, but it lasted from three to twelve years, depending on how much education the monk had already had. It began with secular subjects (history, mathematics, etc.), and ended with studying how to expound the sutras. Some seminaries had a tough programme: one monk I know got T.B. from overwork.\n\n**\n\nAfter the seminary the next stage of the monk's career was peregrination. I use this word because it properly means making pilgrimages. A monk would start off from the place he had been trained and wander up and down China. He might spend a week in one monastery, a few months in another, many years in a third. But in theory there could be no final settling down.\n\nPeregrination was a hard life, and this was one of the reasons it was considered essential. It rubbed off superficialities—from interest in personal comfort to feelings of self-importance. More than that, it enabled a monk to learn each text and doctrine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204472, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n93\n\nThe graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring 清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow1. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau.\n\nAt New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able-bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties.\n\n550\n\nThe whole ethos and action of the clan was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads, who were educated to the Confucian tenets, were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture, and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness, and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204481, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204591, "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-1963", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING\n\n61\n\nacquire at Peking a site for Building, or may hire Houses, for the accommodation of Her Majesty's mission, and that the Chinese Government will assist it in so doing\". Then, when the Imperial Government appeared to procrastinate over the ratification of these treaties, another English and French force fought its way to the capital and compelled the Manchu authorities to ratify them by the Convention of Peking. This was signed by the British envoy, Lord Elgin,1 and by Prince Kung,2 the chief Chinese representative, on October 24th, 1860 in the Hall of Ceremonies situated in what was later to be called Legation Street. The second clause of the Convention stated that \"Her Britannic Majesty's Representative will henceforward reside permanently, or occasionally, at Peking, as Her Britannic Majesty shall be pleased to decide”. \n\nLord Elgin proposed that Prince Kung's own residence should be rented to the British, but Prince Kung memorialized the throne as follows: \n\nAs regards the matter of the English residing at the capital in the near future, we have been discussing it with them during the past few days. The chief barbarian official [Lord Elgin] considers that the quarters in Prince I's [Prince Kung] palace are spacious and he insists that it is to be their future residence at the capital. Moreover, he stated that there were still open spaces in the palace and that he wants to build houses there himself. It seems to your ministers that to \n\n1 James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin. He served as Governor-General of Canada 1846-1854. In 1857 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to China and signed the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, returning to England early in 1859. In 1860 he was again sent to China as special envoy, and signed the Convention of Peking. He returned to England in 1861 and was appointed Governor-General of India in the same year. He died in India in 1863. \n\nHis younger brother Frederick William Bruce held the post of Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong from 9 February 1844 until 27 June 1846. In 1857 he accompanied his elder brother to China as principal secretary. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Emperor of China in December 1858, but had to wait until March 1861 before actually taking up residence in Peking. He left China on his appointment as British Minister to Washington in 1865. \n\n2 I-hsin (1833-1898), the first Prince Kung, was the sixth son of Emperor Tao-kuang. When the joint French and British forces approached Peking in September 1860 the Emperor Hsien-feng fled to Jehol leaving his half-brother, Prince Kung, to make peace with the allies. When a prototype Chinese foreign office, the Tsungli Yamen, was set up in 1861, Prince Kung was in charge of it, and he played an important part in Chinese affairs for the next fifteen years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205083, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "34\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nare usually situated at some distance from the villages; in some cases up to several miles away. It becomes an opportunity for the clans to display their wealth and numbers in public. The first and most important of the graves of the Tang Clan is on a hill behind the new, large, industrial town of Tsuen Wan,82 and the Tangs always turn out in their thousands at Chung Yeung, going to the grave in fleets of lorries, cars, and buses. The Lius' First Ancestor is buried behind the Hau village of Kam Tsin, and the Lius march round the Hau village in great numbers on their way to the grave. On the second day of Chung Yeung, the Lius go to the grave of their Second Ancestor, which takes them past the Pang village of Fan Ling and the Tang village of Lung Kwat Tau. The procession is always large, and banners and ceremonial foods are conspicuously displayed. The major clans are remarkable for the large number of ancestors which they worship on this and other occasions, some branches having a ceremony and feast nearly every day for several weeks at Chung Yeung as their various ancestors are worshipped. The cost of these ceremonies is very high, and is quite beyond the reach of smaller lineages and clans. The money comes in as rent from the fields with which the ancestral halls and other segments of the lineage are endowed. The proportion of lineage-controlled land which is owned by the lineage itself and by its segments (as opposed to that owned by individual members of the lineage) may be very high indeed, often well over 50 per cent.83 Thus, not only do the lineages control vast areas of land, but they also actually corporately own much of it, and have high incomes from which to finance ceremonies, public works, etc. Again, land is important.\n\nBeing wealthy, the clans needed to resort to some form of protection from thieves. Each of the villages of the clans organised and ran its own village watch system.84 I am not sure whether the system was identical in each of the villages, but one practice was to allow lineage members to tender to the ancestral hall for the position of watchman. Those who tendered most were allowed to take the positions, the number of watchmen being pre-determined. These men recouped themselves by charging individual villagers for the property they were protecting according to a fixed rate (so much for a field of paddy, so much for a field of sweet potatoes, so much for a buffalo, etc.). If a buffalo were stolen or some other property made away with, it was the responsibility...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205084, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "THE FIVE GREAT CLANS\n\n35\n\nsibility of the watch to compensate the owner, so that they acted as a rudimentary form of insurance, as well as guards. They also acted as fire-watchers and firemen. One further advantage was that in this way there was always a small body of men under arms in case of attack from bandits or other clans.\n\nMen who were apprehended by the watch were taken before the village leaders for trial and judgement. Punishment frequently took the form of a beating, the criminal having a sack tied over his head to prevent his seeing who administered it. At the same time restitution of goods stolen, or a cash equivalent, had to be made. The system still survives, performing the same functions, though the watch no longer have to deal with bandits. Nowadays offenders caught would probably be handed over to the police, though a lineage member might well be subjected to the informal justice of his own lineage leaders in preference to this. Certainly it is not unknown for the lineages still to execute their own forms of punishment on wrong-doers. The chief advantages of the watch-system from the villagers' point of view are that both thieves and the police are kept away.86\n\nOne of the marks of a wealthy family, in this part of China at least, was the ability to buy and maintain outsiders in a position of servitude. Sai Man87 or Ha Fu, as these servile families were called, were to be found in each of the villages of the five clans, while other smaller lineages of the area do not appear to have possessed them — a further mark of the superior wealth and status of the five. Under this system of servitude, a male would be bought from his family and raised as a servant in the house of the purchaser. In due course he would be married at the owner's expense and provided with a house to live in and fields to till. He paid no rent, nor did he give up any proportion of his harvests; in theory, all he was required to do was to work for his owner on special occasions such as weddings and feasts, and to help at lineage ceremonies. In practice he was at the beck and call of all the lineage to do any task they set him. He was a servant for life, as were his wife and his descendants. In return for a guaranteed income and house he forfeited his freedom and submitted to a position of degradation throughout his life. Financially better off than the poorer members of the master lineage, he was socially way below them. Sai Man were not taken from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205176, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n127\n\nbelow; another was the owner of a herbal medicine shop in Yau Ma Ti, and the other two came from Ho Man Tin. One of these was the village elder, and the other was a woman who was a keen Taoist and the wife of the richest man in the village.\n\nThe temple was the focal point of village life at this time and contributed much to relieve the boredom of hard work and ordinary routine for the cultivators, stone-cutters, shop-hands and their wives who were among its devotees. The highlight of the year was the celebrations at the time of the birthday of Kwun Yam, the patron goddess of the temple. This falls on the 19th day of the third lunar month. At this time the managers arranged for a variety of ceremonies and entertainments to take place. First, there was the annual chanting of religious books, called locally ta chiu (T). This was performed by Taoist priests known as nam mo lo (亮樣羅)12 and during this time it was customary for the villagers to follow a vegetarian diet. Having done their religious duty the elders made arrangements for entertaining both gods and men. They employed a troupe of actors to perform Cantonese opera for the traditional period of four days and five nights. My informants tell me that these shows took place every year when they were small, and indeed right up to 1926.\n\nRev. E. J. Hardy, who served as a military chaplain in Hong Kong for three and a half years at the turn of the century writes, with special reference to the villages of the Hong Kong region:33\n\n\"The great event of village life is the occasional visit of strolling players. In a very short time a temporary mat-shed theatre is put up on some barren spot on the outskirts of the village: around it cook-shops, tea-shops, gambling booths and the like, all made of bamboo, palm-leaves, and matting are erected. The place is like a fair. At mat-shed theatres the audience in the pit stand; above there are seats for subscribers and local magnates\".\n\nAnother feature of the celebrations on Kwun Yam's birthday was the firing of lucky rockets. It was usual to fire three rockets, and the assembled men and youths scrambled for the fragments of the rockets, which were believed to bring luck to the successful keepers. The first rocket was the most prized. This local entertainment could take place at various festivals. It is described for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205178, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n129\n\nYau Ma Ti is not mentioned by name in the Commissioners' Report of 1862, and its earlier origin is therefore in question. However, at the latest estimate, its principal temple, dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven, was located there soon after the Kowloon peninsula changed hands: two stone lions standing outside the present building are dated 1864. Some years later the Registrar General included a brief mention of Yau Ma Ti in his Census Returns for 1876 in which he wrote: 39\n\nYau Ma Ti in Kowloon has become a new Town within the last few months, and it will continue to increase if facilities are afforded to the boat builders and to the junk people who repair thither to careen and repair their vessels, for on these the trade of the place chiefly depends\".\n\nIn 1882 Osbert Chadwick wrote of the formation of \"irregular groups of houses\" and the \"lack of proper streets\" in growing villages like Yau Ma Ti. He went on to describe the environs of the town as follows: 40\n\nTo the north of Yau Ma Ti the shore is lined with establishments for boat people or other trades connected with shipping... Just to the south of Yau Ma Ti is a sort of mud-dock which dries at half ebb or little later. This is occupied by many boats some of which are too old and leaky to go out, and lie here permanently, being used as dwellings. This causes a serious nuisance\".\n\nIn Yau Ma Ti there was a community organisation known as a kaifong (†). This type of association is commonly found in small towns whose main activities are trades and crafts rather than agriculture. Its leaders are usually local shop-keepers and businessmen. In Old Kowloon the several regional kaifongs' activities took on the nature of charitable deeds such as the provision of primary education, herbal treatment for illness, a funeral expenses scheme (#), free coffins for paupers, etc. These services were meant to benefit the poorer residents of the town. A kaifong's work also verged on what would now be considered the proper sphere of the central government, in such matters as building and repairing footpaths, lanes, bridges, public wells, and so on. 41 As in the villages its leaders were also responsible for the organisation of local religious ceremonies and their accompanying entertainment. 42 Like the village organisations of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 205789, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n89\n\nBallestier did not meet the King and so never presented the President's letter. He was treated with little respect and left Bangkok in less than a month without a treaty or hope of one. Ballestier reported angrily to Washington that the only way to improve trade with Siam was by the threat or use of force. After he left, fear spread through the city that force might be used. Some teachers who had been instructing American missionaries in the Thai language thought it judicious to leave their employment, but all fear was soon to be removed. The old King died in 1851, and Prince Mongkut ascended the throne.\n\nIt was the beginning of a new era. From a long period of isolation, from suspicion and fear of Western merchants and sailors, Siam, in the fourth reign of the Chakri dynasty, turned to co-operation, free trade, and acceptance of the new civilisation. The change came quickly, almost as soon as the cremation ceremonies of Rama III were completed a year after his death. Emerging from a Buddhist monastery at the age of forty-seven, His Majesty Somdet Pra Paramenda Maha Mongkut, King Rama IV, proceeded to reform his kingdom and open new relations with the West.\n\nIn 1824, when he was twenty, Prince Mongkut had entered the order of monkhood. It was a custom, still sustained today, for all young men to enter the order for three or four months. That might have been the length of Mongkut's service as a monk, but just then, within two weeks of his entering the monastery, his father, King Rama II, died, and his half-brother was chosen for the throne. Mongkut decided to remain a Buddhist monk indefinitely. Out of disappointment? This may have been so, for his claim to the crown was stronger than that of his half-brother, Pra Nangklao. Mongkut was the eldest son of the King by a royal mother, and his half-brother, though seventeen years his senior, was the son of a lesser wife. However, in Siam, the succession is not necessarily according to strict rules of primogeniture, and in this instance, the choice by the Council of Nobles of Pra Nangklao seemed a wise one. He had had many years' experience in matters of state, often assuming duties for his father, who was more interested in poetry than politics. But if Mongkut was disappointed, monastic life suited him, and he remained a monk for the next twenty-seven years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n97\n\nceremonies, audiences and banquets. A white elephant had been captured the previous year, the most auspicious of auguries for the new reign and now its presence seemed to be bringing the expected good fortune. Mongkut seemed to enjoy the company of the Englishmen, particularly Bowring whom he called “my friend”. As a parting gift he offered Sir John two elephants, but they were gracefully declined owing to transport difficulties. But Bowring did accept two tufts of hair from the white elephant's tail, which he later presented to Queen Victoria.\n\nThe gates were open. Within a year the Americans and the French had signed their own versions of the treaty with King Mongkut. In the next three years half a dozen European nations had similar agreements with the Siamese. By April, 1856, Harry Parkes returned with the Queen's instrument of ratification and a personal letter from Her Majesty. King Mongkut was delighted with this royal favour from mighty Britain and ordered a procession for formal delivery of the letter. In fact these ceremonies infuriated Townshend Harris, the newly-arrived American envoy, as he had to wait many days before he could begin discussions on his own treaty.\n\nThe effect of Mongkut's treaties with the West were far-reaching. Trade increased rapidly and had more than doubled by the time of the King's death in 1868. The character of the trade changed. There was virtually no export of rice before 1855, and by the end of the century rice accounted for nearly seventy per cent of Siam's exports. Bangkok grew rapidly, foreign merchants set up offices in the capital and there was an increase in the number of Chinese entering the country. The King's fiscal system had to change. Instead of royal monopolies of imports, taxes were charged at an agreed level.\n\nThe political effects were even more important. Foreign consuls lived in the capital and Siam sent embassies to Europe for the first time. The King took the initiative in employing foreign experts in his civil service. This practice was greatly extended in the next reign, that of his son, King Chulalongkorn. British officers were employed in the police force. A Belgian advised on legal reform. Germans were invited to plan the building of railways. Americans and Danes were appointed to civil and military duties. Most notorious of these appointments was that of Anna", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206413, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "204\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nin Macao, when he was a Cadet of the Hong Kong Civil Service, some thirty years earlier, and of how he had heard of Sir John's friendship for Macao and of his association with the Church of San Paulo and that it had had some influence on the hymn.\n\nProf. Hugo Brunt, whose account of San Paulo is so well liked,* tells me that he is rewriting the article and adds that he was told by Mr. T. Bowring, then Director of Public Works in Hong Kong, about the influence of the ruins on his grandfather.\n\nIt is not surprising that so many people, not making an effort to trace the date of the first publication of the hymn, were led to believe that it was written after Sir John Bowring had actually seen the ruin, but we are indebted to Prof. Goodrich for pointing out the facts.\n\nHowever, I have come across a reference which may serve to shed some light on the subject. There is a reference to the hymn in Rev. W. T. Keeler's Romantic Origins of some Favourite Hymns, London, Letchworth Printers, 1947, where mention is made that although the hymn was first published in 1825 the fourth verse was added after 1859. It is not impossible, therefore, that Bowring could have been impressed with the close appropriateness of his hymn to the Cross surmounting the old ruin at Macao and this could have explained how his name came to be associated with the ruin.\n\nCanberra, 1971.\n\nJ. M. BRAGA\n\n* Journal of Oriental Studies 1-2 (1954-55) p. 344 seq.\n\nCEREMONIES OF PROPITIATION CARRIED OUT IN CONNECTION WITH ROAD WORKS IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1960\n\nEditor's Note. Early in 1960, road widening took place at Hiram's Highway which links the Clear Water Bay Road with Sai Kung Market. Objections to the work were received from villagers of Pak Wai, where the existing road passed behind the village fung shui grove and from Sai Kung Market where the road passed behind a family's ancestral hall. In accordance with usual Government practice, due notice was taken of these legitimate objections, and payments were arranged for ceremonies to offset the adverse influences which those concerned feared would result from disturbing the two locations.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206416, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n207\n\nboos was taken to the other end of the village and similarly placed.\n\nLastly, the geomancer declared that work could start in three days' time and said the ceremonies were over.\n\n18 January, 1960.\n\nPostscript. The Village Representative came into our office two days later and I asked him about the cockerel. He said it was quite healthy and could see. I said I didn't believe him and asked to see the victim that afternoon. He had a good laugh and explained that the nail was stuck in the eye socket in such a way as to avoid the eye. I still insisted and arranged to see it that afternoon. When I saw the cockerel I was indeed surprised. It looked quite healthy and appeared to be the same one. On closer examination I found that one eye was blinded. Apparently the geomancer fumbled a bit.\n\n21 January 1960.\n\nDETAILS OF A TUN FU CEREMONY HELD ON 23 MARCH 1960 IN FRONT OF THE TSUI (#) FAMILY ANCESTRAL HALL AT SAI KUNG MARKET TO PROTECT THE CLAN FROM THE EVIL INFLUENCES OF WIDENING HIRAM'S HIGHWAY\n\nThese notes and pictures* are supplementary to the Pak Wai Tun Fu. This ceremony differed in many details from the one held previously, especially in that the cockerel used was not sacrificed. The attached photographs* show the ceremony in proper sequence and the differences between the two ceremonies are pointed out.\n\nCompared with the other Fung Shui Sin Sang† who conducted the ceremony at Pak Wai, this one was rather untidy and did not seem to care where the offerings and gadgets were placed on the altar; but his manner and style were far more impressive and he gave the impression that great and mysterious things were happening.\n\nPhotograph No. 1.\n\nWriting on the bamboo stakes that will protect the village.\n\n* Unfortunately not now available.\n\n† Geomancer,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207134, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n199 \n\norder to re-grant the area to the individual section holders. The Governor in Council cancelled the re-entry respecting the Temple site in 1928, and a new lease as Inland Lot 2705 was obtained by the parties who had purchased it in 1923. This time they were designated as trustees for the Kwong Yut Tong (...). Of these trustees, Ng Tsz Mei about 1930 is listed as head of a construction company; and Ng Wah, head of the Sang Tai firm, died in 1950.” \n\nThe Lo Pan Temple \n\nThis is, to my knowledge, the only temple erected to Lo Pan, the God of Carpenters, in Hong Kong. It is, suitably, a fine temple, and still in the ownership of the Kwong Yut Tong or 'Hall (Association) of Extended Gratification'. This clearly takes a close interest in its upkeep and is responsible for the annual ceremonies on the birthday of the saint which falls on the 13th day of the 6th moon each year. \n\nThe Kwong Yut Tong of Hong Kong was incorporated under the Companies Ordinance on 14th September 1962. Among the objects listed in its Memorandum of Association are the following— \n\n(a) To take over the management, assets and liabilities of the unincorporated association known as the Kwong Yut Tong of Hong Kong. \n\n(b) To commemorate our great teacher Lo Pan and to bring \n\nto light his teachings and to improve building business. \n\n[In one breath!] \n\n(c) A clause to the effect that the company will deal with all the property of the association, including sale, except Nos. 15-16 Ching Lin Terrace, named the \"Lo Pan Sin Shih Memorial Hall and Public Office\" which shall not be sold or mortgaged. \n\n(d) To explain and expand the Building Ordinance and Regulations of the Colony for the information of the members of the Association. \n\nAll the office bearers at the time of the incorporation and since have been building contractors or persons connected with the trade. \n\nFortunately for historians and other interested parties, the temple is full of tablets commemorating its origins and later repairs. Among these, the earliest dated the year of Kuang Hsu (1884-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207266, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "26\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nmanaged by members of one Chinese speech group, the Chiu-chow. The \"honorary\" committee members, the working committee members, the tan sang, and the kei tung are Chiu-chow. Observation of numerous possession ceremonies reveals that it is rare to discover a non-Chiu-chow among the worshippers. This de facto exclusivity is rendered more formal in a brochure advertising places for tablets of the deceased in the “Hall of 100 Surnames\" by the statement that the places are reserved for heung lei or fellow countrymen, i.e. fellow Chiu-chow.\n\nWhile from a ritual point of view Tai Wong Ye is correctly described as a spirit-medium temple, from a social point of view it is akin to a type which Feuchtwang2 designates a \"Compatriot” temple. It is a place where members of the Chiu-chow minority speech group can gather to converse freely in their native tongue, exchange useful information, and enjoy that sense of solidarity which Durkheim posits as the chief product of shared ritual. The low-keyedness of the ritual offerings is understandable when one realizes that the target population is one already predisposed by regional socialization to accept the reality and effectiveness of the kei tung's mediumship. Our conclusion therefore is that the success of the Kwun Tong spirit-medium temple is due more to the social selectivity of its appeal than to a heightened interest in spirits and their mediums on the part of the general population.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Firth 1959, p. 141.\n\n2 Feuchtwang, no reference details available.\n\n3 Elliott, 1955.\n\n4 Jordan, 1972.\n\n5 Ahern, 1973.\n\n6 Potter, 1974.\n\n7 This observation is based on casual questioning of Hong Kong residents over a three-year time period.\n\n8 Potter, op. cit.\n\n9 The Chiu-Chow and Hoi-Luk-Fung people's native regions are the eastern coastal counties of Kwangtung Province. The Hokkien are natives of Fukien Province which is immediately east of Kwangtung Province.\n\n10 Tak Kaau is a syncretic cult which claims tens of thousands of supporters from the Chiu-Chow communities in Southeast Asia. Although more ritual attention is awarded to Chinese deities the Tak Kaau pantheon includes Christ, Allah, and deities from the Hindu religion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207312, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "72\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nand then a company is contracted to erect the temporary bamboo structures to house performances and ceremonies. The ideal is for the structures to be arranged in a square, the temple facing East and the stage opposite (i.e. West), so that the god is conveniently positioned to get the best view of the stage. The organizers are housed on one or both sides of the temple and on the sides of the square are exhibited the giant-sized dragon-robes, crowns and boots, all elaborately made of paper, which will be burnt and, in this way, sent as a birthday present to the god.\n\nAND RICE TO DONATE TO THE POOR EXHIBITION OF COLLECTED GOODS\n\nFESTIVAL\n\nTEIFLE\n\nCOMMITTEE\n\nHALL FOR CEREMONIES TO\n\nAPPEASE SOULS\n\n辉花\n\nROOF TO SHELTER AUDIENCE\n\n(FORMERLY OF NATTING, NOW TIN SHUI WAI)\n\nSTAGE\n\nKITCHEN\n\nEXHIBITION OF PAPER DRAGON ROBES\n\nChiuchow festival square (the layout is almost the same whether it is used for the celebration of god's birthdays pao-tan or for the appeasement of the hungry souls in the 7th month called Yu-lan-p'en).\n\nThe interior of the temporary temple is almost completely occupied by a large square table (about 4m x 4m) on which items donated by individuals of the community are displayed before they are auctioned off. Holding a microphone and a gong several auctioneers stand on a table in front of the temple and, competing with the loudspeakers amplifying the opera music, they promise prosperity and good fortune (in the traditional 4-character phrases) to the highest bidder. Bottles of brandy and whiskey, porcelain figures of immortals and deities, and colourful lamps and lanterns go for several hundred or thousands of dollars at a time. Although the successful bidder can take his acquisition home he does not pay the bid until the following festival. And especially if he is poor at the time, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207710, "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-1976", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "\"PATTERNED BANDS\" IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG\n\n83\n\nto the edge and the tassels allowed to fall free at each side, swinging at either side of the wearer's face. In Yuen Long, the band is not worn this way but instead a longer band (145 CM) is used to tie the hat under the wearer's chin.\n\nA patterned band approximately 85 CM long, with relatively small tassels, is often used to hold the rectangular headcloth worn by Hakka women both indoors and outdoors when a hat is not worn. The band is doubled over the top of the headcloth and fastened at the back of the neck below the woman's bun, thus serving as an ornament and to hold the headcloth in place.\n\nIn addition, a band approximately 75 CM long may be used to fasten the small apron (1) across the back. To attach the band, buttons are sewed to the ends of the bands near the tassels, and these are buttoned through loops in the apron. The bib of the apron is commonly fastened around the neck with a silver chain on which old Hong Kong silver five-cent pieces serve as buttons. These aprons are worn by Hakka women both on special occasions and for everyday use.\n\nIn Tsuen Wan, at least, the bands traditionally served other purposes as well. Women said that they had to weave great numbers of them before their marriages, because of the role they played in the ceremonies, and for a week or so beforehand they stopped all other work and stayed indoors to weave. The bride was expected to give them as gifts to all the older women relatives who came to attend the festivities. Patterned bands were also used to tie back the mosquito nets on the marriage bed, and were tied around the foot-washing basin which is an important dowry item and fertility symbol. One was used as the bride's trouser string, and one was even given as a gift to the little boy whose job it was to kick open the sedan chair door upon the bride's arrival. When a son had been born, a very long red patterned band was hung over the lantern which was raised in the ancestral hall at the hoi tang (H) ceremony, symbolizing the birth of a son into the lineage.4\n\nTechnique of Manufacture\n\nThe weaving of patterned bands was the only textile art form produced, in recent years at least, by Tsuen Wan women. Their only other artistic outlet was the singing of \"mountain songs\" (山歌*) while working together in groups, and the spontaneous singing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208082, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES\n\n105\n\nGoddess came, firecrackers would be lit. That was when the fa-paau event occurred.\n\nThe Spring Rites ceremony and the hoi-tang ceremony took place at the same time. After the Goddess of Heaven was installed in the Lung-tsai Hall, the Kwaan, the Wong and the Tang performed the kowtow and the three prostrations in no special order whatsoever. Whoever had a son born that year would hang the lantern there on the same day. After the ceremony, there was a feast. As there was no temple property, each villager brought his own meat for the feast. Occasionally, the village opera would crown the event. The Goddess of Heaven then remained in the Hall until the end of the year when it would be sent back to the same heung temple just for a few days before the next New Year.\n\nBesides the fa-paau, the hoi-tang ceremonies, the Spring Rites, and the village opera, there was also the worship of the Earth God on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month. This again was participated jointly by the Kwaan, the Wong and the Tang together in the Lung-tsai Hall.\n\nNot only were the three lineages in Lung-tsai She co-operating in celebrating their festivals of the year, they were also very integrated in their economic life. Those who wanted to rent or sell land would offer it to the villagers first, be they members of the Kwaan, the Wong or the Tang, before they would offer it to people outside the village. This was in direct contrast to the practice in Na-loh. There, both private and corporate property were open to bidding every three years. Only the Kwaan could bid for Kwaan land and the Oo for Oo land. If no tenants were found among the Kwaan in Na-loh, Kwaan land would be offered to tenants in the rest of T'oh-fuk; if no tenants were found among the Oo in Na-loh, Oo land would be offered to the Oo outside the village.\n\nBurton Pasternak, in his work Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford 1972), has given a detailed description of two multi-surname villages in Taiwan-Tatich and Chungshe--which may throw some interesting lights on the differences between the two multi-surname villages in Hoi-p'ing described in this paper.\n\nTatich was similar to Lung-tsai She in social organization. Firstly, none of the lineages there had an ancestral hall of its own or owned corporate property. All the members worshipped in a community temple. Secondly, like Lung-tsai She, members had the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208187, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "210\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nritual obligations for Kam Tin, officiating at the Kam Tin ta chiu ceremonies.\n\n21. d. The changing of the name of Sham Tin to Kam Tin dates from 1587. We collected a variant of the tale related by Sung. In this account, the magistrate never leaves San On at all, but is moved to praise the delicious quality of their rice. Hence, the name Kam Tin. In general, this tale illustrates the extent of the wealth and power of the Tangs, and their intimate relationship with the local magistracy.\n\n22. Expansion out of the Pat Heung basin into neighboring heung of Yuen Long Valley, Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island continued throughout the early years of the 16th century. Sung (p. 205) notes that the appropriation of Hong Kong island was completed by the Wan Li reign of Ming Dynasty (app: 1573-1620), as references exist in the Tung Kwun Leung Chak (ĦM) of that date. Our own evidence (see San On Land Dispute below)* suggests an even later date. In any case, the oft-made assertion that Tang land holdings steadily decreased from large Sung grants is clearly in error.\n\n23. The period coinciding with the fall of Ming and the establishment of Ch'ing [especially the K'ang Hsi reign] although devastating in its consequences for most of the lineages of the present day New Territories (southern San On), left untouched—indeed enhanced—the basis of Tang power in the area.\n\n23. a. Sung spends quite a bit of time (as does O'Dwyer) on the tales surrounding Tang Man-wai (*)† This man was a large landowner and eminent scholar who is remembered for 1) his relationship with the rebel Lei Man-wing (‡✯✯), 2) the building of Tai Hong Wai (✯✯✯) dating from 1647-1656, and 3) the establishment, in his pen-name (*) of the Tong which financed and operated the Yuen Long Old Market. It is clear that, throughout the imperial era, whenever the central government was threatened or weakened by rebellion, the Kam Tin Tangs accommodated and shared power with rebel forces. [The extent to which this fact justifies its characterization by surrounding lineages as a \"bandit clan\" remains in doubt.]\n\n23. b. As Hugh Baker notes in Sheung Shui A Chinese Lineage\n\n* See paras 24-29 below.\n\n† JHKBRAS 14 (1974): 172 - 174.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 4, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "183\n\nthere would have been some people who could make use of them. These, often village teachers, acted as scribes for other villagers.59\n\nLivelihood\n\nThe village economy in 1920 was not self-sufficient. The increase in trade since the mid-nineteenth century had brought about a type of economy that gave priority to subsistence, but that nonetheless depended directly or indirectly on trade with the city. It was a common pattern, even in better-off families, to find that the men worked outside the village, either independently or in employment, while the women farmed at home. The land yielded two crops of rice per annum, and an additional catch crop of sweet potatoes. But it was frequently asserted in interviews that it was not possible for a family to grow enough for a year's supply, and extra rice (as much as half a year's supply) had to be purchased from Sai Kung Market. Outside village income no doubt paid for some of these purchases, but those who farmed also sold firewood and pigs, and helped to transport fish into Kowloon, and for all these activities they were paid in cash. These different sources of cash income, in conjunction with the credit arrangements provided by the shops in Sai Kung, enabled villagers to make regular purchases.60 There were also other sources of income. Until cement replaced lime just before World War II, the lime kilns were profitable. There were also the occasional villages with specialized economic activities: Wong Chuk Shan being noted, for instance, for the making of rice polishers, and Tai Lam Wu for providing the wedding sedan chair, the carriers, and the musicians, for wedding ceremonies. The fishermen, of course, sold their fish, and bought rice, meat, and firewood, with their cash income.61\n\nAs far as can be ascertained, nobody starved in Sai Kung, but for the majority, life was not luxurious. Only the better-off had rice for every meal, and for many, for at least part of the year, rice was cooked mixed with sweet potatoes.62 Fortunately, most villagers owned the land that they farmed, but those who rented land had to pay half the crop as rent.63 Women, in particular, led a fairly harsh life. The history of Mrs. Shing,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208420, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "128 \n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR \n\nthe father of the sex family will not always have the final word in matters regarding his own children, especially his sons. For sons are looked upon as wards of the sib, and therefore matters concerning sons may be decided by the heads of the larger groups — the economic or religious families.' \n\nIt is not always true that the esprit de corps of the clan is stronger than the factions between smaller groups. Indeed, factionalism may well be used as an index of the decay of the clan system. But in a clan which is still unified—the situation which is here being supposed—the discipline and systematic integration will be complete. The crux of this system is the ancestral temple. \n\nII \n\nPrimarily, the ancestral temple is a religious center. Here, at certain seasonal times elaborate ceremonials and rituals are carried out.2 These celebrations are usually accompanied by feasts, and often by theatricals which the whole clan or kin group attends. Two very important psychological results are produced by this collective worship. \n\nIn the first place, the gathering of the whole group in honor of a common ancestor reinforces clan solidarity. The clan nexus is more ephemeral than the tie which binds other groups in the village together, and were it not for these periodic ceremonies the clan tie would tend to disintegrate.3 Especially when individuals outside the clan group also inhabit the village is the \"we-group\" feeling strengthened. Secondly, the rituals strongly emphasize the particular status of the individuals participating or looking on. The exact relationship of every person in the clan to every other and to the ancestral line is minutely worked out, based upon the recorded clan genealogy kept in the temple. In the processions and rituals of worship these relationships are graphically shown. Now, one of the fundamentals of Chinese familist government is its dependence upon a well worked out system of status amongst the individuals \n\n1 Ibid., p. 126. \n\n2 For a description of these services in Anking and Amoy see respectively: Shryock, John; The Temples of Anking and their Cults, p. 39-43; DeGroot, J. J. M.; Les Fêtes Annuellement Célébrées a Emoui (Amoy), vol. 2, p. 549-553, 563-566. \n\n3 For example, Shryock, op. cit., p. 40, reports a clan which requires all its members within half a day's journey to attend the major ceremony once a year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208422, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "130\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nto the common ancestor. Or it may be that several individuals will tacitly be recognized as the responsible leaders.\n\nAssociated with the ancestral temple is a clan council which serves in an executive capacity. The number of members in this council may be fixed, as reported by Leong, or it may include all the Chia-chang. If the size of the council is fixed, the positions may be filled by popular agreement amounting to election, or in rotation by the various Chia-chang.\n\nIII\n\nThe administrative and judicial affairs of the clan are managed by the officers of the ancestral temple. Most clans, through this temple, possess an estate, either in the form of productive farm lands set aside by former clan members, or as a revolving fund raised at some time by popular subscription. This estate the clan council has the duty of administering for the profit of the clan. As an added incentive they will often be granted a larger share of the yearly income from the estate. Regular and necessary expenses to be met from this fund are for the upkeep of the ancestral temple, the care of the graves, and the periodic ceremonies of worship, with their attendant feasts and theatricals.\n\nCharities also come under the jurisdiction of the clan leaders, for poor relief has been in the main a traditional familist concern in China. Poverty is commonplace, and in many areas it is very intense. The care of the poorer members of the clan, and of widows, children and aged who have no other means of support, must be attended to by the council of leaders. Rewards in the form of annual grants are often given to the scholars of the clan. To families\n\n1 Leong, Y. K. and Tao, L. K.; Village and Town Life in China, p. 28. 2 Tsu, Yu-Yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy, p. 79, ff. gives an extended account of the history and administration of one such clan estate founded in 1064 A.D., reporting particulars of the rules and procedure of administration. These are quite complicated. Clan estates are sometimes quite large: Tang, Chi Yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture, p. 236, gives an example of six villages in Swatow, Kuangtung, a province where clans are strong. In these six villages totaling 5000 people, 5325 mao of land were owned by the different clans in perpetuity.\n\n* Taylor, J. B.; The Study of Chinese Rural Economy, p. 43, figures that in the Kiangsu villages surveyed half the population, and in the Chihli (Hopei) villages over eighty percent are below the poverty line. It is Mallory's belief, however, that the abject poverty of the masses is a recent thing, living conditions having seldom if ever been so hard as now. Mallory, Walter H.; China: Land of Famine, p. 107.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208657, "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-1979", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n87\n\nthey may not visit or talk to us. We understand they have been allowed to retain their servants, and have a good supply of food. They have a very small compound in which to recreate.\n\n12-A Mrs. Greensburg, Catholic, died at the Hospital today. No bread today.\n\n13~~One slice for supper. First meal, rice and raisins only. More British internees arrive from Hong Kong; namely, the telegraph and radio men; also the Colonial Secretary. Rumor of a Red Cross ship bringing food to us. It has, in fact, already left San Francisco!\n\n14- Father Quinn leads the songfest. More British arrive in Camp.\n\n15- Sunday. Father Allie preaches in the morning and the Bishop in the afternoon. If you want the impossible done, go to the Maryknoll Sisters. No one may leave or enter this Camp under any consideration, yet today, Sister Paul and two other Sisters wangle permission to do so, from the Japanese officer in the Prison, in order to go to Carmel for vestments and other things for our coming Holy Week ceremonies. They almost get permission to go to the Cathedral in Hong Kong, but were stopped by the gendarmes, who were quite incensed that they had gotten out of the Camp.\n\n16-Father Vincent Walsh quite ill, with some former intestinal trouble. He does not go to the Hospital, but the doctors attend to him in his room. At present we have two British doctors, Dr. Hackett and Dr. Talbot, assigned to take care of us Americans. More English arrive. Father Haughey gets his face slapped for some infraction of some kind of a rule. Curfew and roll call now the order of the day.\n\n17-St. Patrick's Day brings us some sunshine. In the evening at St. Stephen's Hall, Father Charles Murphy directs an Irish entertainment, featuring Father Madison in an Irish history skit. After the show, dancing was permitted by the Japanese authorities, in other words, the gendarmes, for they are our keepers. Brother Anthony returns from the Hospital. Mr. Tcheng, the Chinese comprador in charge of our rations, is reported to be seriously ill, and leaves. A Japanese, Mr. Yamashita, now takes charge. This, we hope, augurs an improvement in our food rations.\n\n18 No soya beans since February 24; no salt for three days, and the ration of milk for babies has been reduced. Evidently the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208876, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "10\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nInside the library large cases of books cover the walls and some books, used more frequently, are individually wrapped in cloth and lie on tables and altars. The larger monasteries have rooms for the aged, and most have halls where ashes of devotees may be deposited.\n\nIn general, a visit to a Buddhist monastery would take you first past the shrine of the folk religion tutelary deity of the neighbourhood, the Earth God (1✯✯). (Illustration 3) Once through the gates and the entrance hall with its six \"guardians” (Mi Luo Fu, Wei Tuo and the Four Heavenly Kings) the layout follows a fairly standard pattern. The main altar will be straight ahead in the Great Hall which houses the main Buddhas. The main altar may be occupied by a single image, a group of three, or an array of a dozen or so. On and along the secondary altars, altars down the side walls and side halls there are images of other lesser deities. These, in twelve monasteries and temples in Hong Kong and Macau, include the well-known groups of eighteen or five hundred Luohan. Frequently, immediately behind the main altar and back to back with the main deity, stands the most popular and honoured of the Bodhisattvas, Guan Yin, with her two assistants.\n\nMahayana Buddhist temples contain a large number of images of Buddhas and major Bodhisattvas, some of which are considered to be more important than the image of Sakyamuni Buddha himself, unlike the Theravada Buddhist temples of Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Srilanka in which Sakyamuni is the most important.\n\nThere appears to be only one temple in Hong Kong in which Lamaist images are worshipped, although there is one other, above Tsuen Wan, where in a private room, some forty or so Lamaist bronze images are on display.* The temple in which the Lamaist images appear on its altars is a shoddy, fairly modern concrete and corrugated iron construction above a new estate in North Point, where an elderly and now deceased Cantonese gentleman settled after spending some years in Tibet. Most devotees appear to have little idea of the style or origins of imagery, and the rituals and ceremonies performed in the temple by the widow of the founder are identical with those in other temples in Hong Kong.\n\n* Guan Yin temple in Fu Yung Shan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208877, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n11\n\nThere are a dozen or so temples in Hong Kong the titles of which should leave one in no doubt that they are Buddhist. To highlight the problem of classifying temples by their religious affiliation, let us examine one in Lo Wai above Tsuen Wan which has a typically Buddhist name followed by the characters for \"Buddhist temple\". The staff consists of three laymen who run the vegetarian restaurant below the temple and the deities on the altar from senior to junior are Guan Di, Guan Yin, Lu Dong Bin, Dou Mu and Yao Shi Fo. Guan Yin and Yao Shi Fo are Buddhist, whilst the other three are Daoist folk religion deities. Opposite the main altar, on a secondary altar, are a Kitchen God and a Protector of the Law, both represented by framed prints; the first is a folk religion deity and the second Buddhist. And finally, on the table before the main altar is a red wooden rice bucket containing a peck of uncooked rice in which stand numerous items which have without doubt Daoist and not Buddhist origins. Despite the mixture, the three laymen were surprised that there was any doubt that their temple was Buddhist.\n\nConfucian and Daoist temples\n\nIn Hong Kong and Macau there are no Confucian temples as there were in China and still are in Taiwan. There are, however, Confucian Halls such as the one in a school sponsored by the Confucian Society at Caroline Hill, Hong Kong Island. Several Chinese societies in Hong Kong are understood to have private altars dedicated solely to Confucius.\n\nThe official state religion had its own rites and deities and involved the official bureaucracy and the gentry only. The nearest thing to a State temple in our two territories is the rural school at Fanling where an image of the Yellow Emperor (*) stands on an altar in the main hall, and the side hall of a Macau temple in which a school is held where on an altar there are full-size images of the inventors of ink and writing.\n\n\"Pure\" Daoist temples are rare, there appearing to be none in Macau and some two dozen in Hong Kong of which two are branches of two of the others. These two dozen contain distinct Daoist deities, are run by Daoist bodies represented by a committee, whilst Daoist lay priests and priestesses perform Daoist ceremonies.\n\n* Peng Lai Ge (**M**)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208884, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "18\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nmain altar, with a further three altars down the side walls. In the centre, a long altar divides the upper part of the hall from the lower. A side hall to the west, dedicated to one goddess, is also used as a workshop for the construction of paper items to be burnt in ceremonies for the dead. Behind this side hall is a courtyard beyond which is a separate hall containing three more altars. To the east of the main hall is a secondary hall, dedicated, not altogether surprisingly even in a traditional temple, to the Buddhist Trinity. This hall contains just the one large altar and behind it are the living quarters for the staff.\n\nSome traditional temples have had a secondary temple built alongside, as an annex or as a separate temple dedicated to a particular deity, and many traditional temples nowadays have had windows knocked into the outside walls, particularly into the rooms in which the keeper and his family reside.\n\nIn villages and hamlets there are two types of temple. The first is the small, often single-room popular folk religion temple or shrine, of the kind we have described above, in which one or two major deities are depicted on the main altar. The second, the clan ancestral hall or temple, may be a comparatively large complex of halls and rooms, the main hall of which contains, by seniority, serried rows of ancestral tablets of the most senior members of the family, the public ancestors of each generation back twenty or more generations.\n\nVillage temples, be they traditional folk religion or clan temples, are more than just religious establishments where prayers and offerings may be made. Side halls and rooms are used as the village storehouse for items like the old rice winnower, large tables and clan crockery*, as the village school, the games room and as the civic and medical centre. They also frequently are homes for one or two of the village needy.\n\nMost walled villages in the New Territories have a very small single-hall folk religion temple called a Shen Ting (神廳), dedicated to one of the national or local heroes (such as Guan Di or Hou Wang) situated in the north wall, facing south, and located at the opposite end of the main lane which bisects the village from the main gate. In most walled villages too, the Tu Di Gong (the Earth...\n\n*\n\nLineage or village properties that can be borrowed by families on festive occasions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209018, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "148 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nFung Yuen is a coastal valley cutting deeply back from the coast of Tolo Harbor, about a mile and a half deep and perhaps a half mile wide, flanked by hills falling sharply down to the sea on both sides. The eastern hill, the abode, geomantically speaking, of the Green Dragon, has been shaved off in Government engineering works as a \"borrow area\" for bay fill several years, and tun fu ceremonies have been held in Fung Yuen in the past. In 1981, \"borrowing\" was to begin on the western hill, the home of the White Tiger, so new ceremonies were necessary. \n\nThe details of the 1958 and 1960 rituals described by Hayes (JHKBRAS 5:122-124 and JHKBRAS 11:204-209) are roughly similar to those I observed in Fung Yuen in 1981. However, the specialist hired, according to the village head, was not a fung seui sin saang, but a tun fu sin saang (could this perhaps indicate the growth of a new occupational specialization?). He was aided by one elderly assistant. Offerings included both meat and vegetarian dishes; the specialist commented that since many spirits are invited to such a ceremony and one does not know their preferences, a variety of things should be made available to please them all. The basic ceremony consisted of the presentation of offerings and prayers, the burning of candles, paper money, and incense, and the renewing of ritual objects that had been positioned in a similar ceremony a few years earlier, and were now reconsecrated and left in place once more. Large incense pots were filled with fresh sand, into which new bamboo sticks affixed with charms were stuck. Fresh, tall stalks of bamboo, very leafy at the top, with a paper charm attached to each, were erected beside the pots at various locations in the valley. As the village head explained it to me, the ceremony serves to invite a benevolent deity, a po sat, who is a sin sih, or a kind of an official in the heavenly bureaucracy, to protect the village from malevolent spirits who may be disturbed by the earth removal. He is, I believe, represented by the paper charm attached to each tall leafy bamboo stalk. \n\nIt is not only the fine details of ritual acts, nor the numbers and types of ritual objects used, that had significance on this occasion. The spatial patterning of the sites chosen for the series of one major and seven minor ceremonies conducted over the course of \n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209019, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n149\n\nthe afternoon was equally meaningful. According to Hayes, the priest in charge of the 1958 ceremonies on Lantau decided how many pots should be prepared with charms, and where they should be placed at various spots throughout the area. In the 1960 case in Sai Kung, two pots were prepared, and one was placed at either end of the village. In the Fung Yuen case, however, as many as seven pots were needed (plus an extra ceremony with no pot), and though the ritual specialist may have dictated the precise orientation of each, they are located at sites which could only be derived with a full knowledge of the local social rather than geomantic terrain.\n\nAlmost 450 people make their homes in Fung Yuen, according to my surveys, of whom only about 120 are \"indigenous villagers,\" or descendants of the several small lineages that settled the valley in the middle of the Qing dynasty. Some sixty people name other New Territories villages as their native places, though they have been settled in Fung Yuen for forty to sixty years; the remainder are more recent arrivals, immigrants from China who now grow vegetables as tenants on lineage-owned land. But of these several categories of Fung Yuen residents, only the first, the villagers, face potential harm from the changes to be wrought by government engineering works. This understanding is shared by everyone, despite the fact that the terrain to be altered embraces the homes of everyone, not just the villagers. In fact, those actually farming the land, including some villagers as well as many immigrants, might be considered to be at highest risk, for the water that sustains their vegetables and their livelihoods runs down from the hills where the Green Dragon and White Tiger live. That ritual units are constituted socially rather than geographically or economically, however, is a lesson brought home very clearly in the tun fu ceremonies.\n\nThe first ceremony, and the only one complete with all food and drink offerings as well as other ritual paraphernalia, was conducted at the site of the local Daaih Wohng Yeh shrine, and was addressed to the nearby Touh Deih Gung as well. These gods define a community, in that all who are full members in that community fall within their sphere of responsibility; the gods are concerned with their welfare, and the reverse is equally true. In tradi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209020, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "150\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ntional times, the social community tended to be isomorphic with the territorial unit, but times have changed, and territorial definition no longer counts. Outsiders in Fung Yuen, whether other New Territories villagers now resident in the valley or immigrants from across the border, never worship at these shrines or participate in any of the annual ceremonies performed to honor these gods.\n\nThe remaining, somewhat abbreviated ceremonies of the tun fu took place at important sites scattered throughout the valley. The sequence in which they were conducted seemed to follow the shortest path covering all sites, rather than any rank order of significance. The point of interest in these ceremonies is that certain pots (and their associated bamboo stalks and charms) protect residential units, while others protect units constituted socially, represented symbolically in a shrine or hall of some religious significance. Some pots embody both dimensions simultaneously, and every household requires protection of both sorts; inclusion in a social unit that is symbolically protected apparently must be supplemented by having a charm in close proximity to one's own home.\n\nWhen the 1905 Block Crown Leases were prepared, most villagers lived together in a nucleated cluster of six rows of terraced houses at the back of the valley. One of the lineages had already begun to splinter off into a single-surname hamlet in front of the old village, however, and in the early decades of this century that move was completed. A second lineage hived off at about the same time to form a separate hamlet along one edge of the valley. Since it was essential that protection be afforded equally to all Fung Yuen people, incense pots and bamboo fronds had been placed at strategic points in each of the three hamlets in previous tun fu ceremonies, and these now had to be reconsecrated. Though all hamlets received equal protection, however, the number and placement of the pots varied in each.\n\nIn the old village there is a community hall, the center for lunar new year rituals in which all of the four lineages share equally. One tun fu pot was placed in front of this house, signifying protection for all members of the multilineage alliance that is formalized in this building and in land held in trust to support its rituals. This single pot is, it seems, able to offer protection at two other levels as well, however. Next to the community hall stands the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209022, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn addition to the renewal of these seven pots, a small ceremony was held at one other location. There were prayers and burnt offerings, and a tall bamboo frond with a charm attached was set up, but there was no incense pot at the site. This spot was thus symbolically included in protective rites, but at the same time it was not granted full inclusion, and it is indeed a spot about which Fung Yuen villagers feel some ambivalence. One of the lineages was approached a few years ago by an urban clan association of the same surname, thus claiming descent from a common ancestor long ago, which was seeking a place with good fung seui to erect a clan association hall; Fung Yuen was just such a place. The local lineage is small and poor, and evidently realized some financial gain by making some land available to their urban tuhng sing. The widow of the former village representative, the man who was apparently instrumental in the deal, is the caretaker of the new clan hall, and burns incense there regularly. But I have heard other members of the local group speak disdainfully of the hall. Moreover, it was built directly in front of the ancestral hall of one of the other lineages, and there has been a dispute about the geomantic effects of its orientation on the older hall. Nonetheless, it is a place of religious significance which, theoretically at least, embraces one of the local lineages. For that reason, it seems, it cannot be left out completely when rites of propitiation and protection for the valley and its inhabitants are conducted. So, the clan hall was given half a ceremony - better than none at all, but stopping decidedly short of granting it full inclusion in the valley community.\n\nA final observation I would like to mention in passing relates to the continuing strength of the multilineage alliance in the face of social change and emigration. Though four lineages are resident in the valley, and were brought under the protection of the tun fu ceremonies I observed, men of only two surnames participated (and of course, no women at all; this was \"men's business\"). The other two groups have few adult men currently living in the village, and of those few, some are elderly and too ill to spend the afternoon walking all over the valley, while their sons were working that day as usual in other parts of the colony; many others are living and working in Europe. Nonetheless, the same attention was given to the third hamlet and the third ancestral hall, and to the new house of a family currently in Europe, that the residential and ritual places of the actual participants received. This expression of con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209788, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "25\n\nFirst we want to investigate the composition of the sangha. A convenient date to take as our start is 1949, when the present communist regime took control of the whole of continental China. Previous to that date, most of the monks in Hong Kong were Cantonese speaking. They lived in a few monasteries scattered throughout some isolated spots in the New Territories and in the rather inaccessible peaks of Lantao Island. There they practiced their religion quietly. Occasionally, they were asked to perform ceremonies for the dead. They were rather typical of the monks in traditional China. Like the majority of the monasteries in China, the ones in Hong Kong were not public monasteries (***) and were rather easy-going. However, it must not be thought that these temples were completely cut off from China. There was always a steady stream of contact with other monasteries.\n\nAfter 1949 a large influx of northern monks came with immigrants who tried to escape the communist regime. For a time they saturated local monasteries, but the majority have since migrated to Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere. Nowadays, northerners make up about half the total number of monks. Connections with South-East Asia and Northern America enable the monks to travel about rather frequently and this fact makes the Hong Kong sangha a rather fluid entity. Some of these northern monks came from renowned monasteries in central China and favoured a stricter life style. However, none of the temples in Hong Kong could maintain in full the system of public monasteries,\n\nThe coming of northern monks coincided with the beginning of certain developments in Buddhism unseen in previous ages. The unprecedented affluence created during the two decades 1960-80 was the material cause of these developments. Popular Buddhism flourished with the increase in population and wealth. Monks were increasingly sought to perform ceremonies over the dead () by well-to-do devotees and large sums of money were paid. Burial grounds in Hong Kong have become extremely scarce and expensive. The alternative to finding a burial plot or keeping cremated ashes within the equally crowded home was to deposit the ashes within a monastery. That way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209789, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "26\n\nthe problem of space was solved and the ancestors acquired additional merit by sharing that gained by the monks' prayers. Thus, the ancestors' hall (1) has become a rich source of revenue in many Hong Kong monasteries. The affluence of the sangha is most easily seen in the many very spacious and ornate temples built or rebuilt in recent years. These magnificent buildings in turn become centres of attraction for devotees and tourists. As we shall see below, these temples do not really serve the direct needs of the sangha, which has diminished in number. (Very often, only a handful of monks live in a monastery which could accommodate hundreds.)\n\nThe affluence of the monks is again seen in the proliferation of small temples and houses of cultivation (#4). There are altogether about 400 big and small temples and the significance of this large number is self-evident if we bear in mind that there are altogether only about 200 to 250 monks and about 1,000 nuns in Hong Kong. It is estimated that there are about a dozen big monasteries each of which holds in excess of ten monks, and a significantly larger number of nunneries containing about that number of nuns. It appears then that a small temple has on the average only one monk or two or three nuns. If a monk is wealthy enough, there is a great attraction for him to own a temple himself, for then he can avoid the difficulties of living in common with other monks or of subjecting himself to an abbot. The impact of this development on the monk's religious cultivation is yet to be investigated.\n\n4.\n\nAnother development during this period was the establishment of Buddhist centres within the urban areas. Many of the small temples mentioned above are situated within high-rise blocks of flats in the crowded areas of the city. Thus, the monks make themselves readily accessible to the populace whether for the purpose of spreading the Buddha's teaching, doing social work, administering to the schools or performing Buddhist ceremonies. The old centres in the New Territories were not given up. With the expansion of the population and the development of new towns, these old centres have in turn become readily accessible. Constant streams of devotees and tourists are a normal happening nowadays. The net effect has been that contact between monks and ordinary people has become very considerably increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209947, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDOG DIVINATION FROM A DUNHUANG MANUSCRIPT\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nArchaeology has revealed a large number of canine bones in the foundations of numerous Shang (16th to 11th centuries B.C.) and early Zhou (11th to 9th centuries B.C.) buildings. According to Cheng Te-K'un, dog sacrifices were part of the consecration ceremonies of tombs, palaces and private dwellings. In another early ceremony, the ning, a dog was dismembered and its remains buried in each of the four quarters either to placate the directional deities or to stop the four winds'. It is also well known that dog meat has been consumed throughout Chinese history for ritual, nutritional and even medicinal2 purposes.\n\nGiven this background, it is surprising that dogs play a relatively minor role in Chinese divination. Section 8 of the largest Chinese encyclopaedia, the Gujin Tushu Jicheng 古今圖***, which deals with omen lore and supernatural phenomena, devotes far less space to dogs than to birds, reptiles and other domestic animals. Nor does dog divination appear to have survived into the present day. To my knowledge it is never mentioned in the almanac nor have I found modern divination manuals dealing with the subject.\n\nThus, a manuscript from the Dunhuang3 collection* (P.3106) entirely devoted to omens drawn from various aspects of canine behaviour, becomes a valuable source of additional information. Unfortunately, only 27 lines from what must once have been a long treatise have survived. Moreover, the lower half of the middle section of our fragment has been lost. Nonetheless, despite its damaged state the remaining text is sufficiently interesting to warrant further study. P.3106 also appears to be the only manuscript on this subject among the Dunhuang material.\n\n* See plates 9-10.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211977, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 392, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "367\n\nThe villagers had already gathered at the festival site when I arrived at half past nine in the morning. The red slips of paper etc., were carried by the people responsible on a tray, and, in some cases, a \"pavilion\", back to where they had been fetched from. In all cases, I believe, the person who carried the divinities was preceded by one of his companions who beat a gong. In some cases the procession included the \"Keep quiet!\" and \"Keep clear!\" banners.\n\nI witnessed the case of the Hung-Fan Taam gods. On their arrival the villagers set up the temporary spirit tablets of the divinities at the site, and made offerings of tea, sweets, yun-bou and paper clothing to them. Then they burnt the spirit tablets as well as the paper offerings.\n\nAhern, Emily Martin\n\nBrim, John A.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n1981 Chinese Rituals and Politics, Cambridge University Press,\n\n1974 \"Village alliance temples in Hong Kong\", in Wolf (1974: 93-104).\n\nCheng, Sui Kwan Faure, David\n\nn.d. \"Yuanlang Xinx\", unpublished manuscript.\n\n1984 \"The Tangs of Kam Tin - A hypothesis on the rise of a gentry family\", in Faure et. al (1984).\n\nFaure, David et. al (eds.) 1984 From Village to City: Studies in the Traditional Roots\n\nHayes, James W.\n\nKamm, John\n\nof Hong Kong Society, Centre of Asian Studies. University of Hong Kong.\n\n1983 The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.\n\n1977 \"Field notes on the social history and fungshui of Kam Tin”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JHKBRAS) xvii, pp. 202-216.\n\nLaw, Suk-Ching and Lam Siu-Fung\n\n1985 **Jintian Dengshi shixi bogian shi'', in Renleixie Zhou Tekan, pp. 2-14. The Anthropology Society, Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\n1984 \"Village education in the New Territories region under the Ch'ing\", in Faure et. al. (1984).\n\n1983 New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,\n\nNg Lun, Alice Ngai Ha\n\nNg, Peter Y.L..\n\nOfuchi, Ninji\n\n1983 Chugokujin no Shukyo Girei, Tokyo,\n\nSaso, Michael R. Schipper, K.W.\n\n1972 Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, Washington.\n\n1974 \"The written memorial in Taoist Ceremonies\", in Wolf (1974:309-324).\n\nSiu, Augustus K.K. and Anthony K.K.\n\nSiu, Anthony K.K.\n\n1982 Studies on Chinese Genealogies and the History of the Hong Kong Region, Hong Kong: Hin Chiu Institute.\n\n1982 \"Zupu zhong suojian zhí shishi shili”, in Siu and Siu (1982), pp. 21-29.\n\n1984 **The Hong Kong Region before and after the Coastal Evacuation in the Early Ch'ing Dynasty', in Faure", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212587, "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-1991", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "121\n\nbirthday and would have brought bad luck. Nor did he celebrate his birthday that year. Presents were returned with an explanation.\n\nThe third tsat (three times seven ceremony) fell on the 27th of the month. If a tsat falls on the 7th, 17th or 27th of the Chinese calendar this is propitious. Close relatives also attended the fourth tsat and there was a great deal of banter, such as, 'Hello Mummy, how are you!' in front of the altar in second daughter's home.\n\nThe most important of these weekly rites was the fifth tsat held at the Buddhist Hall where the dead person's ling paai (spirit tablet), complete with small photograph, was placed. The function was advanced by one day and 2.00 to 7.30 pm was selected by the fortune teller as a propitious time. (Buddhist and Taoist priests sometimes supplement incomes by telling fortunes). Conforming with Buddhist doctrine close relatives were not allowed to eat living things before the ceremony. They also bathed in water purified with pomolo leaves. With the old Chinese day divided into 12, two-hour periods, it starts at 11.00 pm. One could thus bathe any time after that. Sexual intercourse was still forbidden (齋戒沐浴).\n\nClose relatives wore the same white clothes and shoes as before, but the hemp surcoats had been burned after the funeral service. The same picture was placed on the altar and many mourners maintained the deceased looked stern when they arrived. Her appearance became cheerful as the service progressed. A cigarette was kept lit on the altar. There was food, such as cookies and oranges. It was an impressive spread so the dead woman could invite ancestors. The altar was surrounded by wreaths and paper offerings sent by friends. Many came to pay respects.\n\nOne ceremony was conducted by six nuns. A monk led the invocations. Some knew the long mantras by heart. At appropriate times the leader threw coins and flowers. Any mourner who caught one was considered lucky. The chanting Buddhist nuns were quite young with shaven heads. They wore green and the leader a red robe. For most of the 5½ hours, various ceremonies, some long, were conducted. Also, continuously, friends and relations painstakingly folded paper ‘gold bars'.\n\nA 'charade' was later acted out by close family members. The deceased person's new spirit shrine (one had previously been cremated)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213261, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "63\n\nIn another case a post-graduate Chinese student told the author:\n\n'Before, I thought it was all superstition. But now I realise it makes sense to proceed in harmony with nature. In life, one of the most important things is to maintain harmony. Although Mother is a Catholic she also believes in fung sha.\n\nThe author, years ago, personally knew young Hong Kong Chinese teenagers who did not believe in, or were not convinced about the efficaciousness of fung shui. But now, after becoming middle-aged or elderly, they have become firm followers. 'A woman who did not believe nearly died,' the author was informed. 'After recovering, she became convinced.'\n\nAs Hong Kong has become more developed and affluent, people have had more money to spend on 'luxuries', such as fung shui. Certainly, modern education alone seems not to deal the final blow (Freedman, 1976:235). Yet it is more likely that a New Territories' villager, who lives close to nature and is a member of a tightly knit group, is more likely to believe in fung shui than his urban cousin. Urban society is divorced from close, everyday contact with mother earth and her cycles. For the urban dweller the modes of thought which underly the practise of fung shui have to be consciously cultivated in order to comprehend them. There are, of course, some New Territories' villagers who do not believe in fung shui in spite of the close web of relationships in rural life.\n\nEugene Ho (who one assumes is Chinese although he could be Eurasian) wrote in the South China Morning Post letters to the editor columns, on 25 May 1987- 'I find the whole theory of fung shui wholly devoid of cognitive content.' He went on to say that many of the casual 'laws' of fung shui, (if they are really \"laws\" at all) are no more than half a probability.\n\nNonetheless, when the British took over the New Territories on a 99-year lease in 1898, they promised to respect the then existing (Qing Dynasty) religious rites, ceremonies and social customs. The Hong Kong Government Gazette of October 7, 1899, published (one year after the New Territories were taken over) as a supplement to the Convention of Peking, said that graves in the leased Territory were never to be removed. Some law lecturers at Hong Kong University feel, however, that, because", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213459, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "22\n\nhowever, cases of marriage by proxy have come to notice and although the validity of such a marriage has never been decided by the Courts, at least there is a case wherein, it can be argued, there was implied recognition of such a marriage.\" Dyer Ball, writing nearly sixty years ago, describes the custom:-\n\n\"When a man is absent from home and unavoidable circumstances prevent his return to be married, a strange marriage by proxy takes place sometimes in some districts of the Canton province; we are not aware whether it prevails in other parts of the empire or not. But the curious thing about it is that, instead of a man acting as the proxy, a cock does duty for the latter to the marriage ceremonies, though it is not even necessary that he should be sent by the bridegroom. This fowl is sent by the bridegroom, the presence of the fowl at the wedding being sufficient.\"10\n\nOn 1st July 1940 an action was brought before Sir Atholl MacGregor C.J. for the purpose of obtaining letters of administration. The plaintiff claimed that she was the lawful widow of a man whom she married by proxy in China in 1922 and who was presumed to have died in City Island, New York, in 1930 without having consummated the marriage. She gave evidence that at the ceremony carried out in the deceased's village while the deceased was in New York, he was represented by a cock decorated with golden flowers and draped in red. At the time of that marriage ceremony the plaintiff was a widow of a previous marriage to another and had three children.\n\nAs is usual in cases involving Chinese customary law, there was a battle of the experts: one gave evidence that after the cock draped in red had been taken together with the bride to the ancestral hall and had entered the bridal chamber, the marriage was regarded as valid and complete as if the bridegroom and the bride were present and even though there was no subsequent consummation; the other expert gave evidence that according to the Ching Code, the most essential point for a valid marriage was a betrothal, for the validity of which there must be a marriage contract or marriage presents exchanged between the two families. Where there was a valid betrothal there must be some kind of public ceremony in order to complete the marriage. A marriage without a valid betrothal in the first instance and without a formal ceremony to complete it, could not, the second expert stated, have any legal effect. He conceded, however, that there was some local custom allowing representation of the bridegroom by a cock.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213792, "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-1996", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "115\n\nbetween three-compartment ancestral halls restricted to officials and ancestral worship within the domestic unit or bed chamber appropriate for commoners. Faure points out that the three-compartment ancestral hall is related to claims of official title. Faure sees some small ancestral halls found in the New Territories of Hong Kong as the “bed chamber” variety. Examples of villages in which ancestral halls of this style are found include Ping Long, Kau To, Man Uk Pin and Wo Hang, the last three of these four are Hakka villages. Faure thus writes of the New Territories in the 19th Century: \"with rising prosperity and acquisition of official degrees, some of their ancestral halls became more ornate even though none quite reproduce the official style.\" Although the bed-chamber type ancestral hall is found in both Hakka and Cantonese villages, a Hakka ancestral hall holds a single spirit tablet, dedicated to unnamed shi, gao, zheng ancestors. This is probably related to the practice of moving incense ashes from the domestic unit to the incense burner of the ancestral hall mentioned above. This contrasts with the “major surname” clan ancestral halls in the Hakka county town of Xingning described in ZHJLS, in which those who had made donations had a spirit tablet of their ancestor installed.\n\nThat ancestors are represented in individual ancestral tablets is a prerequisite of some ancestral hall ceremonies found in Cantonese lineages in Hong Kong, such as one found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, in which the group of ancestors to whom the ancestral hall is dedicated is escorted in the form of ancestral tablets for special treatment.\n\nDespite the possible difference in the form of ancestral halls, the Hakka probably followed the trend of development of lineages since the 16th century. Ancestral hall rites, Faure has pointed out, was an example of the incorporation of a literate tradition into a proto-literate culture, the literate tradition spread with the literati ideal, coming... in the Ming and the Qing dynasties as local government strengthened, as neo-Confucianism was taken for granted as an acceptable social code, and as examination awards were granted in large numbers for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213829, "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-1996", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "154\n\nlimited surplus funds.\n\nThe Local Principal Deity Cult and the Making of Communal Culture\n\nLarge-scale local festival activities can best demonstrate a community's communal culture. Unlike single-clan communities, where ancestral halls serve as the venues for collective functions, Tung Chung's ceremonies of ancestor worship generally occur within individual families. Most villages are multi-surnamed and do not have ancestral halls. Only a few single-lineage villages, such as Mok Ka 家 Wong Ka Wai 黄家圍 Lam Che 藍峰 Nim Yuen 稔園, and Ba Mei te, and some larger lineages such as the Hsiehs, the Hos, and the Chous at the multi-surname village San Tau, have, or used to have, ancestral halls for worship ceremonies in spring and autumn. For villages with ancestral halls, ancestor worship may be conducted on both a family basis and a lineage basis. At the houses of most villagers, spirit tablets of their ancestors are enshrined on the family altars in the main halls. Joss sticks are burnt daily in front of the tablets. During festival days, animal sacrifices, food, wine, and other offerings are prepared. Kowtow and the burning of incense and ritual paper form part of the simple ceremony.\n\nFor a minority of single-surname villages with ancestral halls, collective ancestral worship on a lineage basis is held at the halls during the Ch'ing-ming Festival and the Double Ninth Festival. Among ancestral halls built before World War II at villages such as Mok Ka, Wong Ka Wai, Ba Mei, and San Tau, the Mo-yu-sheng tang at Mok Ka, and the Yung-ho t'ang at Wong Ka Wei are best maintained. Some of these halls also served as village schools to which boys were sent for three to four years, before a modern school was established near the Tung Chung Fort in the 1940s. At these halls, pupils were taught with the traditional primers, i.e., the San-tzu-ching (Trimetrical Classic), Ch'ien-tzu-wen (Thousand Character Classic), the Confucian classics, and the collection of Chinese idioms. After some halls had deteriorated, village offices would sometimes be used to accommodate the schools. As a case in point, the public office of the upper Ling Pei village was turned into a classroom after Ho's Study, the ancestral hall of the Hos and a village school at upper Ling Pei, had fallen into ruin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213830, "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-1996", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "155\n\nDuring the pre-War period, traditional rituals of worship in the spring and autumn seasons were observed at ancestral halls. All lineage members assembled there for the rituals of offering of animal sacrifice and setting off of firecrackers. Lineage members then followed the elders to their ancestral graves, usually located on foothills bordering the village. Upon returning to the ancestral hall, the elders monitored the formal collective worship ceremony in which lineage members, in the order of seniority, kowtowed and presented incense to their ancestors. Some lineages at multi-surname villages, such as the related Los at Shek Lau Po and Shek Mun Kap, held reunions twice a year for ancestral grave visiting before the War. Fruit and three to four roasted pigs were offered as oblations and pork meat was divided immediately after the performance of the ceremonies of worship.\n\nRituals performed at ancestral halls and visits to ancestral graves were both collective activities of worships at the lineage level. However, without strong lineage organizations supported by economic power, these ancestor worship ceremonies were rather simple and small in scale. There were no communal properties to support big feasts or entertainments. Only pork meat was divided among males. Sheer numbers might explain Tung Chung's weak lineage organization and small-scale ancestor worship. As indicated by the 1911 census, the community had a population of only about one thousand. Single-surname villages there were sparsely populated with 77 people at Mok Ka, 47 at Wong Ka Wai, and 46 at Pa Mei.\n\nBanditry and Japanese occupation during the Second World War struck a serious blow at the already weak lineage organization in Tung Chung. Japanese soldiers wrecked or burnt some ancestral halls and genealogies, and in effect, disrupted the tradition of ancestor worship for some lineages. Pa Mei, for example, caught fire during a Japanese campaign against bandits, and a new village had to be built later. Although a part of the Teng's ancestral hall remains at the old site, according to one of the lineage members, no collective worship has been carried out there since the War. The Japanese also seized the genealogy of the Tengs. The Huangs of Tai Po saw their family register burnt by the Japanese. For fear of Japanese looting, some villages destroyed their genealogies themselves. Throughout our field investigation in Tung Chung, no genealogy was ever found.\n\n157\n\n \n17", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213831, "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-1996", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "156\n\nIn recent years, mass emigration to the cities has further weakened the lineage tradition at some villages. Only the Mos at Mok Ka and the Los at lower Shek Lau Po seem to have maintained the status of their lineages. As the strongest lineage in Tung Chung, the Mos managed to rebuild their ancestral hall, the Mo-yu-t'ang, and continue to visit the graves of their focal ancestors collectively. As for the Lo lineage at lower Shek Lau Po, the reconstruction of their ancestral hall, the Lo-yu-chang t'ang, in the 1970s, as a centre for ancestor worship, contributed to the reinforcement of lineage identity. Nevertheless, the majority of Tung Chung's villagers worship their ancestors inside their family halls.\n\nThe worship of the earth god in Tung Chung also occurs on a small scale. Symbolically, the earth god stands for the spirit of the village at which he is located, and is represented usually by a rock at an open-air shrine or by an old banyan tree. Variously known as Ta-wang (great king) or Po-kung (lord or paternal great-uncle), the earth god guards a village at its entrance or rear. As a guardian deity at the basic level of rural organization, the god helps to mark the territorial line between villages. In Ngau Au, for example, four Po-kungs are located there at both the entrance and the rear of the village. Three of them, as a village elder confirmed, are more than three hundred years old. At Mok Ka, earth gods are enshrined, two by the stream and one at the village entrance, and one at the rear of the village. As the oldest village, Shek Mun Kap has the largest earth god, represented by a giant boulder.\n\nOn the 1st and 15th of every lunar month, during the major festivals, and on the earth gods' collective birthday, Ta-wang or Po-kung are offered sacrifices. On auspicious days of their choice, villagers also come to pray for the god's blessings and repay his protection. The ceremonies concerned include the display of wine and animal sacrifices in front of the shrine, the spraying of the wine on the ground, the burning of paper offerings, and kowtow to the god. Compared to ancestor worship, the earth god worship functions more directly to enhance the village identity, especially among individual members of a mix-lineage community. In Tung Chung, however, the ceremony has never taken the elaborate form of the tso-she (doing the she), i.e., special collective rituals and celebratory activities consisting of a feast in honour of the neighbourhood god at various times of the year. Being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214713, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "92\n\nDo villagers really believe in tun fu?\n\nHow many of the New Territories' villagers really believe in tun fu? Earlier, it was mentioned that the Pat Heung villagers were paid $600,000 to stage their collective tun fu ceremonies. Brian Jenny, Government Director of Audit, in November 1994 wrote in his report that, during the 1980s, amounts paid annually by the Government (on account of feng shui disturbances) varied between $500,000 and $950,000. In 1990, the Government paid $1.1 million, in feng shui compensation, to the villagers at Ha Tsuen so that ceremonies could be held (Hong Kong Standard; 1990). The fall in the purchasing power of the dollar over the years must be taken into account when interpreting these figures.\n\nWhen the British took over Hong Kong they promised the Chinese that Qing laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott; 1958, 38, 40, 41). Certainly a large number of festivals, customs and much culture have been retained. To some degree, because of lack of restrictions during the colonial period, there was limited hostility towards the British (Cheung; 1999, 573). Other ex-colonial powers could perhaps argue that this easygoing affinity, which developed between the Hong Kong Chinese and their rulers, was not always in the interests of the Colony. For example, the compensation paid to villagers to hold tun fu ceremonies, could have been put to better use.\n\nBut returning to how many villagers really believe? A small group of elderly women that the Author spoke to, sitting in the sun near a tun fu pot at Shui Tau Village, in the Kam Tin District, said that when work first started on improvements to the Kam Tin River the villagers did not intend doing anything. But people started falling sick and several died. It was decided then to hold a tun fu ceremony.12 'Did the elderly ladies believe in tun fu?'\n\n'Well, people stopped falling ill and dying,' they replied, 'so of course we had to believe.'\n\nThat is as good an argument for believing in tun fu as any.\n\nNevertheless several retired civil servants, both British and Chinese who have worked in the New Territories, some as District Officers,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214718, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "97\n\nin tun fu and other religious ceremonies. 'It is not really worth making a fuss about and upsetting the system', seemed to sum it all up.\n\nBut by comparison, even if western women would probably not accept a 'second-class citizen' situation in a similar way, nevertheless it should be remembered that only men are allowed, still, to become Catholic priests. Women have however been accepted, in a number of cases not so long ago, as clerics into the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church. Again showing leanings towards men, even in the West, the Author recalls his 90-year old English mother saying, in the 1980s, \"It's a pity Mrs Thatcher (the then Prime Minister of Britain) isn't a man. People would respect her more.”\n\nWill tun fu die out?\n\nWith the population of Hong Kong expected to reach somewhere in the region of eight-and-a-half million by the year 2010, this can only mean additional new towns and greater urbanisation in the New Territories. Such growth must bring drastic changes in lifestyles as has happened in the past. Western style bars, karaoke and other hostess services are now not uncommon in the Yuen Long and Kam Tin area, signifying the move towards globalisation (Chu; 1999)(Yu; 1999). In addition, what sociological changes will Route Three Highway, the West Rail Link and a possible new town close by bring to the district (Shum; 1996, 41)?\n\nBut in spite of inevitable changes, Sheung Tsuen, where the main Pat Heung tun fu ceremony that the Author attended was held, is still a pleasant, peaceful village. In spite of paddy fields having long disappeared and derelict cars being dumped together with other eyesores, there is still a country atmosphere. The Koel and other birds call from atop camphor and banyan trees. To an observant person, the number of tun fu ceremonies held in the New Territories still does not appear to be exceedingly small. But with the continuing rapid increase in population and concomitant developments, they are likely to become endangered, although the custom is likely to be around, in smaller numbers, for some time to come.\n\nConclusions\n\nTun fu ceremonies are held because a previously quiet area of the countryside and its feng shui are threatened. Perhaps a hill in which the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "98\n\n'dragon' resides is to be the site of civil engineering work. As a perceived result a number of people in a village die.\n\nThe main tun fu ceremony, which this paper examines, was performed in a basically Hakka district. It was claimed to have been (including a number of related, smaller ceremonies), the largest tun fu ceremony ever held in Hong Kong. Comparisons in this paper are made with another Hakka ceremony and also with Cantonese ceremonies. The latter tend to be more rigorous. For instance, in some cases villagers are not allowed to leave their village or to eat meat for a fixed number of days. Although not for the squeamish, blood is sometimes obtained from a cockerel to anoint tun fu pots and talismans. It can be seen that, while there are similarities in basic principles, there can be not inconsiderable differences in the way they are performed, some of which depend on the personal practices of the person or persons conducting the ceremony.\n\nLike most rituals, such as living generations of a clan kowtowing to the soul tablets of their ancestors in an ancestral hall, tun fu is performed by men. For example by Taoist priests accompanied by village elders. Again, those who line up to pay their respects at tun fu ceremonies are males (see Plate 4 and 5). Women who were interviewed in this study seemed to accept this. Priests and feng shui masters were deemed to perform the ceremony on the collective behalf of villagers of all ages, including men as well as women.\n\nMost villagers, male or female, nevertheless, seem to take tun fu seriously. The British pledged, when Hong Kong became a crown colony, that local customs, including popular religion, would be allowed to continue, unlike on the Chinese Mainland where several attempts, at different times, have been made to stamp them out.\n\nIn Hong Kong, sizeable sums of money have been paid by the Government to finance the holding of tun fu ceremonies. These can be both expensive and time consuming. Such compensation has often 'bought' co-operation from villagers. In spite of what some past District Officers say, about it being 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui, the latter's disturbance can be viewed with considerable alarm. Affected villagers often go to great lengths to make amends and to ‘adjust' their lives accordingly. While a great deal appears to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215639, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 416, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "368\n\nand he should always live in good correspondence and amity. It is a whitish, agate-looking stone about a foot and a half long, curiously carved and highly prized by the Chinese, but to me it does not appear to be of any great value....\n\nThe Emperor then presented me with a ju-eu-jou of greenish-coloured stone of the same emblematic character; at the same time he very graciously received from me a pair of beautiful enamelled watches set with diamonds, which I had prepared in consequence of the information given me, and which, having looked at, he passed to the Minister.\n\nAfter delivering the King's letter there followed a sumptuous banquet at which the Emperor sent Macartney and Sir George Staunton several dishes from his table and after an interval, he, the Emperor, sent for Macartney and Sir George and gave them each a cup of warm wine to drink in his presence. Members of the party then spent the whole of the week sightseeing in Jehol, visiting the Potala, attending an opera and going to the Emperor's birthday party:\n\nThe Emperor did not show himself, but remained concealed behind a screen, from whence, I presume, he could see and enjoy the ceremonies without inconvenience or interruption. All eyes were turned towards the place where His Majesty was imagined to be enthroned, and seemed to express an impatience to begin the devotions of the day. Slow, solemn music, muffled drums, and deep-toned bells were heard at a distance. On a sudden the sound ceased and all was still; again it was renewed and then intermitted with short pauses, during which several persons passed backwards and forwards, in the proscenium or foreground of the tent, as if engaged in preparing some grand coup de théâtre.\n\nAt length the great band both vocal and instrumental struck up with all their powers of harmony, and instantly the whole Court fell flat upon their faces before this invisible Nebuchadnezzar,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215907, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "140\n\nSeated in the front row are the other guest speakers for the day: Dr. Patrick Hase, a member of the conference organising committee and RAS Council member, who will talk about Shatin and its development from a village to a city; Reverend Carl Smith, the honorary vice-president, who will talk about his 40 years of research in Hong Kong, and Mr. Tim Ko, an organising committee member and Council member, who has prepared a slide presentation about living in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1980. Also listening attentively is Dr. Elizabeth Sinn, vice-president of the RAS, convenor of the conference and mistress of ceremonies for the day.\n\nI sit near the front to get better video of the proceedings, but it's dark in the hall and other than Dr. Waters, I realise I won't be able to capture any of the audience's faces. I direct my camera in their direction anyway, just in case, or maybe just to let them know they'd be wise not to doze off.\n\nThis was in December 2000, when the one-day conference was presented jointly with the Hong Kong Museum of History. Waters has since stepped down from the presidency he held for four and a half years, during which Hong Kong was handed back to the motherland.\n\nAn old hand's reflection...\n\nI met Waters for the first time a month before the conference at his home on Conduit Road. He greeted me at the door and he was just as I had imagined from our telephone conversations. He is a tall man with a strong presence. He has perfect posture and his movements are quick. Waters holds the 800m and 1500m local running records in the over 70 category. He has a full head of hair although the colour has changed from when he was a young man; the only other hint of his advanced years is that he's a bit hard of hearing.\n\nHe takes me to the study and has had his maid prepare a glass of orange drink for me. I haven't had orange drink from powder something like Tang since early childhood,\n\n-\n\nWhat do I want to know? he asks. What do I want to know? I ask myself. I really want to find out if the Royal Asiatic Society is as snobby as it sounds, maybe. But no, I don't ask that...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215960, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "193\n\nruling authorities, including the emperor in the temples of the imperial college. Then very solemn ceremonies of reverence and adoration were performed, marking the Sage as the ultimate exemplar for all who aspired to any level of leadership within Chinese society.1\n\n18\n\nThe Poklo temple to Master Kong was, indeed, more impressive than those in nearby villages, such as the one at Lung Ch'un (literally, the \"River of the Dragon,\" M. Lóngchuān) also visited by Legge and others in 1861. There the temple had no images at all, but only the spirit tablet (shénpái) of the Sage along with a large plaque citing the sixteen maxims of the Sacred Edict (Shèngyù) of the Kangxi emperor (ruling from 1662-1722).19 Both temples at Poklo and Lung Ch'un were dwarfed by the massive grounds set aside to honour the sage in the capital city of Canton. There the image of the Sage was in a hall elevated from the grounds six to eight feet above the preceding courtyards, the roof made of \"those splendid burnished tiles\" constituting imperially-sponsored buildings, garnished with mystical beasts balancing on the upper beams. Seated on a large rock dais, the thick paper-maché-like image of Master Kong was taller and larger than life. Postured as if leaning over a tablet in his hands, the Sage appeared immersed in the study of the text before him.20\n\nHow Ch'ea came to take his place in this Confucian institutional and ritual system is never explained. Whether he had been a student at one time or not is also not made explicit, but he was able to read, and so had probably spent at least part of his youth as a student, one of large majority who had obviously not been elevated by successful results in the examination system. When the two colporteurs from Hong Kong met him, Ch'ea was already in his fifties, had been married, and had at least one son.21 Because no direct mention is made of Ch'ea's wife in any of the documentation after his conversion, there is the possibility that Ch'ea had become a widower even before the pair of colporteurs met him in Poklo.\n\nIf conversion is a multiform and processural event,22 then all of the above cultural, social, personal and religious factors have a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215992, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 291, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "225\n\nA recently prepared description of the area from local sources can be seen, along with fuller descriptions of this famous mountain and its history, in Bóluóxiàn zhì (The Gazette of Bóluó District) (Bóluó: Guangdong Provincial Cultural History Research Library, 1988), pp. 69-79, 325-329.\n\n16. These are drawn from Legge's notes in \"Journal of a Missionary Tour\" and materials from 19th century gazettes (fangzhi) from the Nanbai district of western Guangdong province.\n\nA description of the refurbishing and building up of the temple complex dedicated to Master Kong in Poklo, initiated in the seventh year of the Kangxi emperor (1668) is rehearsed in Bóluóxiàn zhì, pp. 315-316. In the third year of the Qiánlóng reign (1738) yellow tiles were added to the roof reflecting imperial honour and a decorative sign was added to the main temple, honouring Master Kong as one yǔ Tiān Dì gēn (“a Partner with Heaven and Earth\"), a phrase from the Zhongyong which Legge translated \"[Confucius] may with Heaven and Earth form a ternion\" (Ch. 22, CC1, p. 416). Three other similarly adulatory signs were added in the fourth year of the Jiaqing emperor (1800), during the Dàoguāng reign (1821-1850), and the second year of the Tongzhi reign (1863).\n\n17. See Chinese Classics, Volume 1 (CC1), prolegomena, pp. 112-127. The following footnote (p. 113) provides the necessary details for understanding the layout and furnishing of the \"temples (diàn) of Confucius\". [Transliterations replace characters in the original text, which can be looked up in the attached glossary. Here I use standard Pinyin for the sake of easier identification.]\n\nThe principal hall, called Dàchéng diàn, or 'Hall of the Great and Complete One,' is that in which is his own statue or the tablet of his spirit, having on each side of it, within a screen, the statues, or tablets, of his 'four Assessors.' On the east and west, along the walls of the same apartment, are the two xù, the places of the shí'èr zhé, or 'twelve Wise Ones,' those of his disciples, who, next to the 'Assessors,' are counted worthy of honour. Outside this apartment, and running in a line with the two xù, but along the external wall of the sacred inclosure, are the two wǔ, or side-galleries, which I have sometimes called the ranges of the outer court. In each there are sixty-four tablets of the disciples and other worthies, ... Behind this principal hall is the Chong shèng cídiàn, sacred to Confucius's ancestors, whose tables are in the centre, fronting the south, like that of Confucius....\n\nFrom a rubbing of a stele portraying the arrangement of the sacred tablets in the Beijing temple dedicated to Master Kong, it is seen that the \"four Assessors” are (from left to right when facing the Sage) Mèngzǐ (“Mencius,” c. 372 B.C. - c. 289 B.C.), Zēngzǐ (noted for his filial piety, 505 B.C. - 436 B.C.), Yánhuí (noted for his humane virtue, the Master's favourite student, 521 B.C. - 490 B.C.), and Zǐsī (a grandson of the Sage who edited and/or wrote the Zhongyóng, one of the four books Legge first called it the Doctrine of the Mean, but later gave it the more preferable title, the State of Equilibrium and Harmony (see CC1, p. 383).\n\n18. See Legge's descriptions of these ceremonies and some of their prayers to the Sage in CC1, prolegomena, pp. 91-93.\n\n19. According to the journal record, Legge and Ch'ea had preached in the grounds of the Confucian temple at Lung Ch'un on May 15, 1861.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216315, "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-2003", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "23\n\nThe second courtyard is flanked on the left side by a two-story wooden Drum Tower (Gu Lou) and on the right by the matching two-story wooden Bell Tower (Zhong Lou). On the first floor of the Zhong Lou is a glass case holding a golden effigy of Kshitigarbha (Di Zang). Dizang is the bodhisattva who has the special power to rescue departed souls from Hell, and thus plays an important role in Buddhist funeral ceremonies. Upstairs on the second floor is the bronze bell which can be rung for a fee of 50 Rmb. On New Year's Eve this bell is rung 108 times at midnight. It is considered good luck to be there to hear it ring, and even better luck to be the one who rings it. The Zhong Lou was rebuilt by Qing Emperor Guang Xu in 1895, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. The bell itself was made in 1894, during the 18th year of the Guang Xu reign of the Qing Dynasty. Beside the Zhong Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a partially legible inscription which has been damaged.\n\nOn the first floor of the Gu Lou is a glass case containing a golden effigy of Guan Yu, the God of War. In the Ming and Qing dynasties Guan Yu had temples dedicated exclusively to him in every city in China. The former Guan Di Miao can still be visited in Shanghai's Nanshi District. The second floor of the Gu Lou cannot be ascended, and it no longer seems to contain a drum. Beside the Gu Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a lengthy inscription in very good condition. The present Gu Lou dates from an 1895 reconstruction, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862.\n\nAcross the second courtyard from the Mi Le Dian is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang Dian). This hall dates from an 1881 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. The hall contains enormous gilded wooden statues of all four kings, two on each side of the hall. All four wear crowns on their heads and are dressed in heavy armor. One holds a four-string guitar and has a light green face, another holds a sword in his right hand and has a black face, a third holds an umbrella in his right hand and a small stupa in his left hand, and has a white face, while a fourth holds a snake and has a black face. This depiction is somewhat different than in the past. In the centre of the Tian Wang Dian are two glass cases containing golden effigies of two rather obscure Buddhist deities. Tian Guan Mi Le, a variant incarnation of Mi Le Fo, is depicted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216319, "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-2003", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "27\n\nalso in this hall that one is most likely to see the resident monks performing ceremonies which include chanting and the use of musical instruments such as cymbals and drums.\n\nA second long barracks-like hall hidden behind the first one is known as the Jade Buddha Hall (Yu Fo Dian), and contains other side chapels which are usually kept closed and only opened on special occasions. One of these is a chapel which contains an unusual Reclining Jade Buddha (Yu Wo Fo) like the one at the Jade Buddha Temple (Yu Fo Si). Above this chapel is a second floor with another image inside a glass case, and windows looking down on the gardens of Longhua Park next door.\n\nThe monks' residence is in a separate set of buildings in a back corner of the complex and is off limits to visitors. Through the windows of the second floor can be seen their private library stacked with books.\n\nApproximately 90 resident monks live here now, with another 30 student monks in apprenticeship. The temple's current abbot is Master Ming Yang. The monks of Longhua supposedly belong to the Chan Zong sect (Zen) of Chinese Buddhism. However, the vast array of gilded effigies here, representing the whole Buddhist pantheon of deities, makes one wonder about the accuracy of this claim or the status of Chan Buddhism in China today. Chan was originally an iconoclastic sect which prohibited use of images of any kind. At least one resident foreign monk was noticed living here in January 2004, made obvious by his large crooked nose, white skin, and wide girth, as well as his lateness for morning prayers.\n\nColor photos of Longhua Temple can be seen in the author's Vol. I of his New Yangzi River series, entitled Shanghai and the Yangzi Delta, published by Times Publishing Ltd. of Singapore in 2004.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]