[
    {
        "id": 205291,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 53,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "46 \n\nL. G. AUMER \n\nAnimal husbandry is another traditional feature in the economic life of the villages. In an earlier period, every household used to raise two or three pigs. This was not only for immediate profit but also as a kind of saving economy. The animals were sold off when circumstances required activation of capital. Pork has always been a luxury in the villages and is eaten only on special occasions. Roast pigs for ceremonial display play an important part, and a status-bestowing one, on festive occasions. Stimulated by the increasing market demand for meat in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, villagers increased their stocks to three or four pigs per household. Around 1960, however, the market price was heavily affected by the steadily increasing import of relatively cheap pigs from China. Pig breeders now acutely experienced the chronic disadvantage of poor transport facilities to the markets. The saleable price does not exceed HK$100, and it is calculated that the breeding costs for about six months, together with labour and transport costs, do not make the venture worthwhile.\n\nCows are kept in the villages for a double purpose. Rice farming requires draught animals, and buffaloes are not suitable for mountain areas. A certain profit can also be made on selling. It is calculated that a cow-owner will get a new calf every two years. The feeding is not very expensive since the animals are grazed on the hill sides and on abandoned fields. They are used in agricultural work for about five years, after which period they are sold off. In this case, marketing offers no difficulties as brokers in the butcher trade turn up in the villages whenever they hear of a possible deal. They pay in cash and take the cows with them. Weak animals are sold as soon as possible. Together with pigs, cows fulfil another most important function. The manure is used for fertilizing the fields, and villagers depend greatly on this supply.\n\nSmall-scale chicken breeding has always been carried out in the villages. People from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village now sell their fowls in the new Sha Tin Market, where the presence of wholesale dealers from Kowloon improves the market situation; though there is heavy competition from specialized chicken farms run by immigrant peasants from China. In Grass Field Village, breeders wait for the main festivals to obtain a better price in their traditional market town, Sai Kung.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205293,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "48\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nJapanese Occupation, but this was only temporarily. It is reasonable to relate the decline in these two trades to two main factors. Extensive exploitation of the woodlands gradually brought about a destruction of the supply, so that today only some patches remain in their original state. What the wood-cutters had left was laid waste during the Japanese Occupation. The other factor was the introduction of paraffin which seems to have reduced the general demand for fire-wood and charcoal in a drastic way.\n\nI have been informed that women, apart from their assistance in farming tasks, used to devote spare time to weaving as a subsidiary occupation. This was particularly so in the slack season during winter, from the Chinese New Year up to the third month. The appearance of factory-made textiles on the market made handicraft industry come to an end.\n\nBy way of summing up we could say that, in the past, the insufficient production of rice in this particular valley was complemented mainly by planting tea and indigo, cutting fire-wood and burning charcoal, and weaving cloth. The tea production had apparently already disappeared before the British arrival, and the production of dye and charcoal as well as the fire-wood cutting and the handicraft industry came gradually to an end at the appearance of foreign industrial products in the market. Animal breeding has always been of some importance, but has on the whole suffered from bad transportation.\n\nIt could be added that, at an earlier stage, some shooting of deer and wild boar took place, but restrictions on fire-arms imposed by the British, together with deforestation, put an end to this. At the present time outsiders make use of some minor resources in the valley. In the summer frog collectors go hunting in the paddies, and in the winter season bird catchers come up to the mountains. Wild growing taro and other plants attract herb collectors who are often a nuisance to the villagers as they set fire to the shrub in order to facilitate their work. These trades require an intimate knowledge of very special markets a knowledge that only these 'outsider' specialists are in possession of.\n\nThus we have seen that, as a result of its confrontation with the impact of Western industrialism, the traditional economic system of these villages was deprived of the whole sector of activities complementary to the basic rice production. This situa-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205295,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 57,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205299,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 61,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "54\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nfrom piracy there. The mountains offered more security and this group established themselves in the remote Grass Field Village. In fact, this spot in the valley was then already occupied by people bearing the surname Ng. What form the contact between these original settlers and the intruders took is not clear, but evidently, as time passed by, the Ng were pushed off, and resettled themselves on an island in the Rocky Harbour area.11\n\nThe first Lau group in Grass Field Village seems to have constituted an extended family — one particular man is referred to as the founder of the village. He was of the 15th generation.12 The founder had two sons, one of whom moved out of the place and settled at Clear Water Bay. The progeny of the remaining son ramified in several offshoots. The village now consists of four hamlets inhabited by distinct lines of descent. Two branches have moved away to other areas; to Three Fathoms Cove in a northerly direction, and to the Yuen Long area in another part of the New Territories.\n\nThe Grass Field people, then, constitute a localized major lineage. As such they form part of a kin unit of a higher order, for which I would propose the designation 'clan'. In fact, a Grass Field villager is not usually able to establish his proper kinship relations with other villagers, at least not with those who are members of other main segments. In order to do this, he has to consult a kinsman with special knowledge or a genealogy book, which used to be kept in most villages. By these means he has a theoretical possibility to trace his actual relations through the genealogical links in the patrilineal line of descent. This will motivate the use of the term 'lineage'. The greater kin unit will, besides the Grass Field people, comprise the segments that resettled in other areas as well as the people living in the village of origin in Sai Kung, and the relatives, in all respects distant, in Mui Yuen in Kwangtung. Theoretically, other Lau descent lines, unknown to Grass Field people, would be included.\n\nBefore the Japanese Occupation fairly regular demonstration of kinship bonds took place when people from the Three Fathoms Cove and Clear Water Bay branches returned to Grass Field for common ancestor worship. There were, too, frequent contacts with the village of origin in China before the establishment of the People's Republic; delegates took part in ancestor worship",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205301,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "56\n\nHe continues:\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nIt was apparently open to any man of means to tie a portion of the property he left either to the maintenance of an ancestral hall already in existence or to the establishment of a new one in respect of himself or some recently dead forebear. New segments coming into being were physically reflected in the ramification of halls.17\n\nFreedman, arguing in terms of domination processes, isolates the accumulation of wealth, implying power, within certain sections as the seed of lineage proliferation; the transformation from section to segment being manifested by the establishment of a new ancestral hall.\n\nSome features of traditional Hakka society need to be examined in this context. Major lineages tended to have small numbers; for instance, in 1911 Big Stream Village had 173 inhabitants. Plum Grove Village 59, and Grass Field Village 124.18 Surveying the 23 purely Hakka villages in the surrounding mountainous area, we find that at that time Big Stream Village was the most populous place; the number of residents in the 23 villages ranging between 173 and 6, giving an average of 64.19\n\nHere in the mountains there was very small differentiation as to occupation, all people being agriculturalists cultivating small pieces of land, owned and controlled by themselves. Poverty was a characteristic of these settlements. With the exception of a few paddy fields, said to be the lands of the village founder and connected with ancestral ceremonialism and occasionally with schools, no common property was shared by villagers. Some economic differentiation will have arisen from different forms of external income, and perhaps in relation to ownership of ferry boats, charcoal ovens, and hill plantations. The ecological setting, limiting any expansion of local production, provided the framework of an unstable situation, sensitive to any increase in population or decline in economic capacity. The small numbers of inhabitants in the Hakka mountain villages seem to reveal, therefore, that growth within the social and ecological framework was not possible.\n\nThis picture of Hakka society displays localized communities on a major lineage basis, connected only through occasional common ancestor worship expressing the idea of clanship as a con-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205305,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 67,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "60\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nExtension in Hakka society took different forms. Banditry seems to have been one,29 occasional work in the countryside,30 tenant farming in the plains,31 employment in towns or overseas others. These forms imply different depth in the extension, and it seems reasonable to assume that such differences were due mainly to ecological factors, such as the proximity to urban milieu, and facilities of communication. My attempt at interpretation of the difference in depth of extension between Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village, based on the differences in the socio-economic situations prevailing in their respective market towns, will serve as an illustration.\n\nThose who take part in the extension process live a life oscillating between their focus of social interest and their focus of economic interest. They spend much time away from home, often the main part of their lives, but they are always planning to return to the place of origin and they seldom feel attached to their place of work. They are sojourners.32\n\nOscillation is well illustrated in the career of an elderly man from Plum Grove Village. His early contact with an urban milieu was when, as a teenager, he carried fire-wood to the market in Yau Ma Tei, on which occasions he spent some four hours in town. His experiences there stimulated him to settle in Kowloon, where for a period he worked as a cook. Next we find him working in Singapore for some time. Returning home he took up a position as a salesman in a grocer's shop in Kowloon. A labour recruitment office in Kowloon offered opportunities of coolie work in the West Indies, and a four-year contract with these people brought him to Jamaica and Trinidad. The contract period over, he went to work in the phosphate mines of Nauru in the Central Pacific. Back in Hong Kong once more he took employment in a grocer's shop, but left soon again, now as a member of a ship-crew. He spent 18 months in jail in Holland, returning to Hong Kong just before the Japanese Occupation in 1940. This difficult period he spent entirely in Plum Grove Village. Immediately after the war he succeeded in going back to Holland, where he entered illegally. Finally we find him in his own village engaged in chicken raising, ginger cultivation, and pineapple planting, all on a small scale and rather unsuccessfully. He is now living entirely on remittances from his son who is working in England. During his wandering life",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205309,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 71,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "64\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nemigrants who had left the Colony. The masons in Grass Field Village, who had their village within a day's journey, naturally had a word in all village affairs; but the Big Stream men working in Vancouver or on Aruba in the West Indies had a very limited influence on decisions made in the home community.\n\nVI\n\nTraditional leadership in these Hakka villages was gerontocratic in nature. There were no formal isu (M) or fang (M) leaders. An informal council of old men met occasionally in the ancestral hall to discuss current problems. These persons' influence was directly correlated to the distribution of economic control within the community. As long as this differentiation was small, all elders would have had fairly equal status. Age differentiation within the group does not seem to have been of vital importance.\n\nThe process of emigration created new economic groups. In Big Stream Village, where emigration abroad early dominated the scene, the informal council of village elders is made up of four former overseas Chinese. Two of them have worked in the United States, one in Canada, and one on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. The last-mentioned man has quite a good house and has apparently had some resources, but he is in poor health, struck by rheumatism, a fact he ascribes to excessive use of alcohol in his younger days. His sight is bad and is hardly improved by the smashed pair of spectacles on his nose. This 76-year-old man said that he was 'willing to accept anything, whatever it is and whenever it comes.' He has no children. His influence on village affairs is apparently very limited. It seems as if he is taking part in the village council meetings merely to represent the first minor lineage, even if I was never able to confirm a strict rule that all fang (M) should be represented there.\n\nOf the other three leaders, two are men who have spent much time in New York in the United States, and one who has been working in Vancouver, Canada. One of the New York men is Village Representative and the official spokesman with the British administrative authorities. He is 73 years old and a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205311,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 73,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "66\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nand Hoklo fishermen operating from Ho Tung Lau across the water. He is mainly dependent on the remittances from his son working in England. It seems likely that his exclusion from the informal council is due to his low economic status. The third, 86 years old, is completely deaf and cannot communicate with people.\n\nOn the basis of the above we may generalize and say that during the transitional period the earlier, fairly non-differentiated, gerontocracy in Big Stream Village was transformed into a system, still gerontocratic in nature, but one marked by unequal distribution of power within the set of old men. Power was directly correlated with the accumulation of wealth which, in communities involved in processes of extension, was dependent on the economic opportunities pertaining to the destinations of the sojourners, and their fortune there.\n\nVII\n\nThe new phase in the extension initiated after the Pacific War took, as we have seen, a more systematic form as emigration was almost entirely concentrated on Great Britain. The difference in the new situation lies in the circumstance that the emigrants from the same village, although scattered over the whole of Britain, are still not too far away from each other to be able to keep in touch. Some of the 33 men from Big Stream Village working overseas, on an occasional visit at home, told me that villagers working in Britain in Chinese-style restaurants stay in London, Liverpool, and other places. They have frequent contacts and meet each other fairly often. Sometimes they even hold meetings.\n\nThe different solidarity groups within the major lineage at home mark off relations also in the overseas settlement. The village at home is now almost entirely dependent on the remittances flowing in from Britain. In this situation those working in Britain, who now constitute a kind of localized sub-group in the community, feel that political influence should go along with the flow of money. They are young and middle-aged men with a latent dissatisfaction with the passive conservatism of the old men still in power at home. The Village Representative is constantly blamed for his lack of interest in village affairs, supposedly reflected in his daily visits to his former place of work, the Ma On Shan Mine, where he spends his days at the mahjong table.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205313,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 75,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "68\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ncost, compared with the first scheme, being due to some difficulties in the terrain, and to higher labour costs.\n\nThus the two main groups were not able to co-operate in this affair. The overseas members of the major lineage acted along lines in accordance with their minor lineage solidarity. The example illustrates the position of the overseas sub-community in the home village situation. The first suggestion on this matter came from an overseas employee on a temporary visit to the village. The consent came from the others in Britain, that is the people who had to pay for this investment. The decision was then made by the overseas group supplying the economic resources for the village, on the suggestion of one of its members. The council of old men does not seem to have played a part in this affair — at least not until the second tank project was considered.\n\nOther examples of how vital affairs are handled by the community members residing abroad could readily be found. In Plum Grove Village the construction of a small bridge over a brook was in progress. The District Office had supplied the village with some building material but the remaining cost of about HK$4,000 was paid by members of the community working in Britain. I was told that the decision to build the bridge was made by the overseas villagers at an assembly, when they raised a contribution fund for this purpose. At first the District Office was reluctant to approve the project, and instead suggested a less ambitious scheme to erect some concrete blocks. 40 bags of concrete were supplied. It is typical that in this situation, an overseas villager who had just returned home took charge of the affair, contacted the Plum Grove men in Britain for money, and at last work on the bridge could start. The formal Village Representative, an old farmer who has spent the whole of his life in the valley and holds the position as the oldest man in the major lineage, was apparently circumvented in this matter.\n\nAs in Big Stream Village, there is an informal council of old men in this village also. It is made up of the Village Representative, and two old, but poor, former emigrants. However, it was openly admitted that most decisions came from Britain.\n\nAt the time of my work in the valley, two villagers, about 50 years old, were on a visit to their families in Plum Grove\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205315,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 77,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "70\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ngration inevitably created a shortage of farm labour, and large areas of arable land were abandoned as time passed. In the first place it was the less accessible terraces that were given up. Of course, rice cultivation is still a major factor in village economy, and it still supplies the people with a basic amount of staple food.\n\nOn the other hand, the rapid economic change in the Colony after the Pacific War has continued to accelerate. There has been an increasing demand for labour in the New Territories and in the absence of men, women have had to fill many of these requirements. For instance when the construction of a small dam was in progress in the valley many women from Big Stream Village were engaged in carrying pipes from the landing place at Tide Cove to the construction site. They were paid HK$8-9 a day for their work. With an economy now fundamentally based on remittances from abroad, cash has come increasingly into demand. Most unmarried girls, from about the age of sixteen and upwards, now leave the home village and take up jobs, preferably in the industrial areas in Kowloon. Textile factories seem to attract them most. Once in town, they are captivated by the urban milieu and its possibilities, and they return to their village only on rare occasions.\n\nIn the process of extension the economic capacity of women has grown in importance; first by taking over agriculture, and gradually by taking part in the extension itself. Male absenteeism has also created a situation where many activities formerly carried out more or less exclusively by men, are now handled by women. For instance, what remains of traditional ceremonialism in the villages is now to a great extent kept up by the women.\n\nIX\n\nThe extension process has also modified the selection of women that enter these communities as wives.\n\nAt an earlier period, on the initiative of the parents, brides were selected through go-betweens. These go-betweens were nearly always non-professionals, and most often agnatic or affinal relatives, who had knowledge of a friend or relative with a daughter of suitable age. With both boys and girls this was about 16 years old. Surname, hsing (M), exogamy was and still is a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205317,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 79,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "72\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nmarriage are now cast over wide areas. However, some of the traditional wedding ceremonialism is still kept up. A kind of procession, but without a sedan chair, is arranged. The main rite is still ancestor worship. What might earlier have been secondary marriages in foreign countries have now become the main and only marriage. In Big Stream Village, for instance, there is a man who married a British woman. They are now both residing in Britain, but their small child has been left with the grandparents in the village. On the whole, the marriages seem to be outside the scope of parental control: and the new wife is not always willing to submit herself to the traditional household control exercised by the husband's parents. As a matter of fact, many wives prefer to stay away from the near relatives of her husband, during the periods he is working abroad. Mostly she stays on with her own parents, but her husband may also provide for her so that she and their children reside in a market town, or at least away from the village. In Big Stream Village alone there are six examples of this innovation. During the periods the latter spends at home, the woman joins him whether he chooses to live inside or outside his village. There is no well-established pattern of residence, and apparently there is much improvisation.\n\nThese innovations are very much in contradiction with the rules of traditional Chinese society. The older generation often express bitterness with the present-day situation. They still think in terms of local economy, even if they have been emigrants themselves, and they regret the diminishing supply of female labour that used to be a substitute for absent men.\n\nNOTES\n\nI The material for this essay was collected during a stay in Hong Kong from December 1964 to October 1965. The field work was financed by the following Swedish funds: Magnus Bergvalls stiftelse, Konung Gustaf VI Adolf:s 80-arsfond, Hierta-Retzius' fond, Humanistiska fonden, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse, and Vegafonden. I wish to express my deep gratitude for their generous support. I am also indebted to Mr. Leung Chee-tung, whose profound knowledge of the New Territories, so well-known among anthropologists working in Hong Kong, was of indispensable help to me. I thank Mr. Robert G. Groves most warmly for his kind assistance in Hong Kong. All romanisation is given in a Cantonese Form, except where an M in brackets indicates Mandarin in the Wade-Giles form. The place-names are as listed in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960. See especially pp. 180-181.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205321,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1967",
        "page_number": 83,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "76\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nthe carrying and other heavy work, \"The men do not even know how to carry water\" and probably do not demand that the women give them lessons at it.' \n\nFrank 1925, p. 210f. Even among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population in Kwangtung, traditional women's participation in the work in the fields occurred; cf. Yang 1959, p. 21f. The notes above, however, are to be read as contrasts to Punti custom.\n\n35 Investments in house building on a large scale seem to be typical for all Chinese peasant communities with a marked inflow of external income. Generalizing from his experiences with three emigrant communities in Fukien and Kwangtung, Chen Ta writes:\n\n\"The most practical way to gratify their vanity is to build a house. Even when he does not contemplate a return in the immediate future, a Chinese emigrant who has made a fortune in the Nan Yang is quite likely to send a sum of money home for the express purpose of buying a new house\"; Chen 1939, p. 109.\n\nFrom another part of China, Francis Hsu notes that\n\n\"in this Yunnan community people became rich not through South-Seas emigration, but through tin mines and trading. As soon as a family becomes wealthy, it begins to build huge but largely unused houses ...\"; Hsu 1945, p. 48.\n\nBoth authors interpret house building as the symbolic aspect of the move from one social position to another by the sojourner in his home community, the big house being closely associated with gentry status. A comment on increasing house building in the New Territories in the beginning of this century is made in the N. T. Report 1899-1912, p. 56.\n\n36 Although these people have spent many years in English-speaking countries, none of them can converse in the English language. Also, this is largely true for the younger generation now residing in Britain. The Chinese emigrant is often sojourning in a Chinese enclave, the structure of which, in many important respects, is very different from that of his home community; it is still basically Chinese and offers social security in a foreign country. I have the impression that the sojourners have a fairly limited direct contact with the people of the country where they stay, especially if this is in Europe or America. Such contacts are also often highly formalized, of the type client-waiter relations in a restaurant. The surrounding social milieu is, I feel, experienced filtered through the culture of the enclave.\n\n37 In 1963 overseas remittances, in the form of postal and money orders cashed at the New Territories post offices, amounted to the value of HK$20,973,152. The corresponding figure for 1964 was HK$24,076,719; Hong Kong 1963, p. 60; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Considerable sums will also have been remitted through banks: these figures are not known. One item of information from the New Territories tells that one farmer annually receives about HK$1,500 from his two sons working in England; Topley 1964, p. 176. Ronald Ng (1965, p. 35) estimates the monthly remittances at £30, or HK$5,760 annually.\n\n38 This means that the daily income for a restaurant worker in Britain would amount to nearly HK$23. This may be compared to the daily wage of a worker in the New Territories which is about HK$10. Ng gives a similar figure for restaurant workers in the U.K.; Ng (1965, p. 35).\n\n39 The situation of the members of the overseas community in Britain could be compared to that of a villager of Big Stream Village working in a grocer's shop on the island of Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. His salary there is 'over' US$100, i.e., at least HK$130, a month. The daily",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213344,
        "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": 166,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "149\n\nSong dynasty were said to have set up a travelling palace in the vicinity as they passed through the Hong Kong region fleeing the Mongols.\n\nAnother characteristic of this group is that they relied on documentary sources such as dynastic histories, genealogies, local gazetteers and stone inscriptions, but had little use of non-text materials. They did, however, discover an enormous amount of valuable local historical material. In particular, Lo and Lin made important contributions through their systematic collection of genealogies and by expounding on their value in the study of local history. Equally significantly, as renowned mainstream historians, they played an important role in giving Hong Kong history a legitimate place in the wider field of Chinese historiography.\n\nSocial Scientists from the West and Japan\n\nAnother group of scholars working on Hong Kong, anthropologists and sociologists from the West and Japan, not only came from different parts of the world but very different intellectual traditions. Interested in Chinese society and yet no longer able to carry out in Mainland China the kind of prolonged, detailed and intimate field study they required, these scholars opted for Hong Kong's New Territories where much of traditional China still survived. The pioneer was Barbara Ward, an English social anthropologist trained at the London School of Economics, who arrived in 1950, much earlier than anyone else. Then in 1961 came Jack Potter from Berkeley to study economic developments in the village of Ping Shan. Two years later came Hugh Baker from London University to write his Ph.D. thesis, thus becoming the first of a long line of scholars to conduct extensive field work in Hong Kong addressing the issue of lineage which was seen as a key to understanding Chinese society. To carry out his research, Baker lived in the village of Sheung Shui, learnt the Cantonese dialect and generally immersed himself in the local community. The major outcome of his research is A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui. (London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1968).\n\nOthers to follow were E.N. Anderson, R.L. Moench, John Brim, and Graham and Elizabeth Johnson from the United States, L.G. Aymer from Sweden, Hiroaki Kani from Japan, Marjorie Topley, H. Nelson and R.G. Groves from the UK. In the 1970s they were joined by James Watson and later, Rubie Watson. Each focused on a particular village or group of people—staking out his or her turf, so to speak. Through their in-depth",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216396,
        "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": 155,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "105\n\nH.M.S. HERMES1: CHINA STATION, 1930/33\n\nJONATHAN PARKINSON\n\nIn volume 41 of the Society's Journal, pages 326/328, to illustrate his article Keith Stevens kindly reproduced photographs of the aircraft carrier HERMES at Hankow during the great floods of 1931.\n\nThis was not her only rather unusual experience of this commission.\n\nOn passage from Sheerness, where on 3rd October 1930 she had re-commissioned under the command of Captain E.J.G. Mackinnon, DSO, HERMES spent Christmas at Singapore. Approaching Hong Kong on Friday, 2nd January 1931 she passed Gap Rock2 at 0357 hours and four hours later flew off her aircraft of Flights 403 and 440 to Kai Tak. At 1039 she secured to No. 1 buoy in Victoria Harbour.\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong at the time was Sir William Peel. He spent most of Tuesday, 20 January at sea in the ship witnessing flying exercises. The destroyer THRACIAN, Commander N.L. Veresmith, conveyed His Excellency from and back to the colony.\n\nAfter lunch on 5th June HERMES slipped for Wei-Hai-Wei. There the climate in summer enabled exercises to be carried out with greater zest than in the steamy waters off South China. Once clear of Lyemun Pass her aircraft flew on. She had an easy passage up the coast and through the Formosa Strait. During the morning of 9th June when crossing the Yellow Sea full power trials were carried out during which she achieved 25 knots. Just before noon, HERMES once more proceeding at her economical speed of 12 knots, the easternmost promontory of the Shantung peninsula was sighted.\n\nTwo hours later the atmosphere onboard changed abruptly.\n\nA signal was received from MARAZION,3 Commander E.A. Aylmer, reporting that the submarine POSEIDON had been sunk in a collision.\n\nCaptain Mackinnon altered course and increased speed to 19 knots. Another boiler was flashed up and shortly thereafter our ship was...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]