[
    {
        "id": 205023,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 131,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "122\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n2. With the high rates of interest on loans and/or the continuing need over several years to have money ready to pay the instalments in a money-loan association, it is not surprising that people got into difficulties and there are good instances of this in the papers. One man borrowed thirty-four silver dollars from the Tong at the end of 1886, and three years and two months later owed eighty-eight dollars, representing principal plus interest. Of this sum ten dollars had already been paid off by selling land to offset the debt. The remainder was extinguished by the debtor waiving his turn for payment in a money-loan association in favour of his creditor. Yet this experience was not a case of 'once bitten, twice shy' for either side, for in the month following the settlement of his affairs with the Tong he asked it for, and secured, another loan of sixteen dollars \"due to dire need of money.\" This loan was made on the mortgage of more of his inherited farmland. We do not know the sequel. Another villager who had failed to pay his share or instalment in a money-loan association mortgaged a house in pledge and was to lose if he had not paid the money by the end of that lunar year.\n\n3. The Tong was not the only source of money loans available to the Shek Pik villagers. Shops in the neighbouring market centres of Tai O and Cheung Chau would advance credit, or give loans as would two other local Tongs. They were not organizations belonging to Shek Pik, one being composed of merchants from Tai O and the other a family organization belonging to a clan in another village.\n\n4. These papers came from only one of the clans living at Shek Pik and there is reason to think that similar activities were taking place in other clans and amongst other groups of persons in the village.\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nA CEREMONY TO PROPITIATE THE GODS AT TONG FUK, LANTAU, 1958\n\nIn the course of opening new roads and other works the developers usually run up against feng shui (geomantic influences). This",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205177,
        "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": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "128\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nanother occasion in the lunar year by Robert Morrison, the celebrated missionary, in his View of China (1817):34\n\n\"The 2nd moon, 2nd day is the general birth-day of these [tutelary spirits] when at all the public offices, and in various of the streets, plays are performed, and Crackers are let off in great numbers; also decorated rockets. The spectators struggle to obtain the fragments of the last, under the idea that he who obtains it will be fortunate\n\nThis was a rough sport and sometimes led to minor fights between men of different dialect groups. As Hardy observes, the proceedings on these occasions were invariably accompanied on the side by such delights as gambling stalls, opium divans and the like, and as such they were not welcomed by the police for whom they made extra work and trouble.35\n\nThese entertainments were paid for by opening subscription books which the managers took round the villages. The occasional deficit was usually met on application to a well-off village elder. Village people did not have to pay to see the show, but those who subscribed received a big lantern called tang lung36 and could take part in the feast customarily held at this time. I am told that it was not uncommon to set out a hundred tables on these occasions.\n\nThe temple organisation for this small group of villages could be found at other places in Old and New Kowloon.37 It is interesting to note that villagers were quite clear about which villages belonged to a particular group and which did not. For instance, when I asked one old person as to whether Kowloon Tong village people attended the entertainment at the Tai Shek Kwu Temple, she said immediately: 'It had nothing to do with them; they lived on the other side of the stream'. This indicates the existence of clearly recognised geographical boundaries for each temple group area; and the division of the peninsula into several groups each with its exclusive interests and responsibilities.\n\nI have mentioned Yau Ma Ti and its shop-keepers several times already.38 Partly because of its proximity and close economic connection with the Tai Shek Kwu group and partly for its own sake a word about the place is opportune, especially as there was a more developed type of local organisation in Kowloon's growing townships.",
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    {
        "id": 205282,
        "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": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "THE TRAVELLING PALACE OF SOUTHERN SUNG\n\n37\n\n\"the back seat\". But before accepting this interpretation, one must verify the identity of the Yunnan Lao with the aboriginal tribe dwelling in Kow-Joon speaking the same language.\n\n6 See my article \"The Southern Sung Stone-engraving at North Fu-t'ang\" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 5, 1965. At line 17 of the article \"before this date\" should read \"after this date\". The Chinese text on the engraven rock was given in my article, but was not accompanied by a literal translation, which now follows:\n\n[I] Yen I-chang of Ku-pien (K'ai-feng, Honan Province), being the administrator of this Field (namely, Kuan-fu Ch'ang), accompanied by Ho T'ien-chuch of San-shan (Foochow, Fukien Province), come to visit these two mountains (North and South Fu-t'ang). In the course of investigation, [I found, first, that] the stone pagoda (shih-ta, or colloquially called Ku-shih-ta and abbreviated to Ki-ta) at South T'ang was constructed in the 5th year of the reign of Ta Chung Hsiang Fu (i.e., of Emperor Tsen Tsung of Northern Sung, A.D. 1012). Next, Cheng Kuang-ch'ing of San-shan, piling up stones and chopping down trees, renovated the two T'angs. Again, T'eng Liao-chuch of Yung-chia (Wen-chou of Chekiang Province) continued the work. The ancient stone-tablet at North T'ang was established by Hsin P'o-ting of Ch'uan-chou (Fukien province) in the year wu shen but the reign [of what Emperor] cannot be ascertained. Now, Nien Fa-ming of San-shan and Lin Tao-i of this native place (i.e., Kowloon) continue the work. Furthermore, Tao-i can expand the former plan requesting [me] to establish another stone-engraving for commemoration [of the renovation]. Inscribed on the 15th day of the 6th lunar month in the year chia shu [i.e., 10th year] during the Hsien Shun reign (Emperor Tu Tsung of Southern Sung, A.D. 1274).\n\n7 Yuan Yuan, Kwangtung T'ung-chih, Haifang lüeh, chuan 2, kx. Ak Ma. 40%. Shu Mou-kuan, Hsin-an Hsien-chi, chuan 7, Chien-shu lüeh 建署累\n\n8 Ta-ch'ing Hui-tien, Kuan-chih kao. 76.\n\n9 Research notes by the late Sung Hsueh-p'eng (4) who had done much research work on the local history and geography of Hong Kong and Kowloon. A portion of the notes was generously recopied and given to me.\n\n10 Ibid.\n\n11 T'u-shu Chi-cheng, Chih-fang-tien (811A.AZ) records that \"This was the old engraving of Yuan times”.\n\n12 Chuan 18, Sheng-chi-lüeh BAY.\n\n13 Before 1941 there were three streets at this place, called \"Sung Street\", \"Ti (Emperor) Street\" and \"Ping Street\". (Apparently Emperor Ping was mistaken for Tuan Tsung (Shib). As the history of Southern Sung in Kowloon had been rather obscure, the mixing up of the two names was not very unlikely; even the Hsin-an Gazetteer made the same mistake. This whole area including the three streets was levelled during the Japanese occupation to facilitate the extension of Kai-tak airfield.\n\n14 See Jao Tsung-i, Kowloon yũ Sung-chi shih-liao ✯‡, ^*‡‡‡£ #, Hong Kong, Universal Book Co., 1959, p. 105.\n\n15 Wu Pa-ling, Sung-t'ai kan-chiulu 4*. *4434 in Sung Wong Toi, a Commemorative Volume, p. 108.\n\n16 By the side of the cliff a low-cost housing estate has been recently constructed south of the new Fu-ning Street (3##), east of the now Fuk-",
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    {
        "id": 205420,
        "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": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n175 \n\nbeliefs and practices still occupied an important role in the lives of the people (we have so little information on the contemporary position of the popular cults), it is doubtful whether we could ever cover the immense range of variation in the material. \n\nGods worshipped by the ordinary folk, the celebration of their festivals, stories about them, and what they were believed able to do for the people in a community, differed not only from region to region, as we know from the literature on the subject, but even between different localities within a region. \n\nBut immigrants from various parts of the homeland have taken many of their local beliefs and practices with them (although they have sometimes come to occupy a different role in their societies). And it is still possible, therefore, to enlarge our knowledge of such things from study of the Chinese overseas. \n\nThis short handbook by Father Saso, a Jesuit living in Taiwan, provides us with some welcome new material on some of the beliefs and practices of the region as followed by the Taiwanese, a people originating from round the Amoy area in Fukien province. \n\nThe author takes us through the lunar year discussing gods of local popularity and their festivals, and the social customs associated with them. He also discusses some local customs associated with festivals which enjoyed a wider popularity in China, and some of their possible origins. Discussion is based on written sources, including some in Taiwanese and Japanese, on information from a temple to the city god in Hsinchu, which helped him track down stories and identify the many temple \"patrons\", and on his own observations particularly of the celebrations and customs of one family. \n\nThe reader not approaching Chinese religious phenomena from a Christian angle might be disconcerted to read that divinities in the temples can hardly be called gods because they are spirits of human beings who lived long ago, and the student of religion will recognise some of the pitfalls of trying to disentangle the various elements which go to make up this typically syncretic Chinese folk-type religious material. Nevertheless, points such as these are not unduly distracting. There is much of interest in the book. \n\nThose working on problems of comparative religion might have welcomed more information on who, more precisely, in the",
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    {
        "id": 205424,
        "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": 186,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n179 \n\nThe reprint, in so attractive an edition, of Derk Bodde's translation of the Annual Customs and Festivals of Peking by Tun Li-ch'en is most welcome. In setting himself the task of compiling information on the day to day life of the capital the Manchu author must have had a premonition of change, and that much that he recorded would be forgotten. The disastrous war with Japan in 1894 had laid bare China's shortcomings, and the efforts of K'ang Yu-wei to reform the structure of the Empire by modernisation had been thwarted by the old Empress Dowager. The country was seething with discontent at foreign encroachment, and the Boxer movement threatened to provoke the \"carving of the melon\" by the European powers and the loss of independence. The decay of the dynasty was accompanied by the disintegration of temples and architectural monuments for want of funds for maintenance, a process much accelerated by the advent of the Republic in 1912. Within a few years only the renting of the famous monasteries in the Western Hills as week-end residences by foreigners saved them from ruin, whilst many centres of pilgrimage mentioned by the author have since completely disappeared. \n\nThough the archaeologist may throw light on a vanished civilisation by the study of inscriptions and works of art, he cannot reveal its day to day life in the way that Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims depict mediaeval English society. Tun's record has a similar value since, though it is just over sixty years, or a 'Cycle of Cathay', since he recorded the highlights of each lunar month, there would be little he would recognise were he to revisit the scene of his life's activities. \n\nIn the original preface to Tun's book, written by his friend and fellow student Jun-fang Shu-t'ien, his wide interest in, and knowledge of, ancient customs is cited in commendation of the work, and the reader will be struck by the thoroughness with which the subject is treated. \n\nBeginning with New Year's eve the author describes the ceremonies for celebrating the coming season, and all the festivities appropriate to the Holiday Moon. The great temples, within and in the vicinity of the capital, are described as the annual festival of their patron saint comes round, and the appropriate dishes for the feast are invariably given. Even the belief that the consumption of candied crab apples is a prophylactic for coal-gas poisoning is recorded.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    {
        "id": 206652,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 200,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "194\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nin Thailand and at Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The few observed examples of his statue have all been in temples run by Fukienese emigrants, and probably the most famous statue is to be seen in Malacca in a temple run by Fukienese emigrants from An Chi county. (Plate 28)\n\nThere does not appear to be a standard identification characteristic for images of Cheng Ho. The Malacca statue is of sandal wood, carved some 8\" high, in Amoy style, depicting a Mandarin seated on a throne with his right hand clutching his girdle, his left palm cradling a flat elongated plaque of office or sceptre, which rests in the crook of his left arm. He is beardless and has the raised eyebrows so often seen on Chinese opera generals; he is wearing a military hat with one pompom on top, and a tassel hanging from each side of it over his shoulders. He is accompanied by two standing attendants; the one on his left a military attendant is carrying his sheathed sword, and the one on the right a civil attendant is carrying his seal of office wrapped in a red cloth. Alongside, on the same altar, is Kuan Kung, the Chinese god of loyalty and patron of soldiers, who is also the patron of Chinese businessmen. In the temples listed above, Cheng Ho has several birthdays and feast days, the most common of which is the 30th day of the sixth lunar month.\n\nOne of the many images on sale in a Singapore godshop, was another Amoy style carving of Cheng Ho, some 10″ high in wood, now in the possession of an English news correspondent. This image of the Admiral depicts him as an elderly benign man without a beard, dressed in gilt dragon robes, and standing with a fly whisk in his right hand and a scroll in his left. (Plate 29)\n\nCheng Ho in Java and the Philippines\n\nThe Admiral is held in the highest esteem in Semarang in Java as the Chinese patron deity of the town. It is said that he left behind in Java some ten men under his sick navigator, Ong King-hong, who founded the town of Semarang. Before 1724 a statue of Cheng Ho together with four carved wooden attendants was brought from China, and these stand in a cave near the town. During the British occupation of Java in 1945 the commander of the British forces recommended the Chinese of Semarang to evacuate the town for their own safety. After consultation with Cheng Ho, they decided\n\n11 Willmott, D. E., The Chinese of Semarang, (Cornell U. P., 1960).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
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    {
        "id": 207036,
        "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": 107,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "The Monuments of Vientiane and Luang Prabang\n\nMichael Smithies*\n\nThe second international tour organized by the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, went over the Chinese (Lunar) New Year 1974 to Laos. 41 members and their guests visited Vientiane and Luang Prabang from 23 to 27 January, flying directly between Hong Kong and the Laotian capital. Some persons on the tour went ahead to visit Chiengmai in Thailand or Vat Phu in southern Laos and joined up with the main group later.\n\nThe attractions of the monuments of Vientiane, the administrative capital of the Kingdom of Laos, are slight in comparison to those in the royal capital of Luang Prabang. This is less a reflection of the religious fervour or artistic sensibility of the inhabitants of Vientiane, but a proof of the efficiency of the Siamese sack of the city in 1828 as a reprisal for Chao Anou's attempted attack on Bangkok two years previously and his subsequent alliance with Hué.\n\nVientiane's position in relation to Luang Prabang is ambivalent. Luang Prabang was the original capital of the Kingdom of Lane Xang (a million elephants) which was founded in 1353 by Fa Ngum, the son of a Lao chief who had been in exile in Angkor. King Potisarat moved the capital to Vientiane in 1520 and it was from the more central position of the kingdom, which then included much of the territory now in northeast Thailand, that the most famous Lao monarch, Souligna Vongsa, ruled from 1637-1694. On his death, however, the kingdom split into three, not counting the semi-independent existence of Xieng Khouang in the northeast: Vientiane, in alliance with Burma and a vassal of Annam; Luang Prabang, which at first drew support from China and later Siam; and in the south Champassak, which drew ever closer to Siam. The devastation of Vientiane by the Siamese in 1828 and the elimination of the line of Vientiane left in the centre a power vacuum, which the...\n\nMr. Smithies, at the time of this visit and report, Lecturer in French at the University of Hong Kong, was Secretary of the Hong Kong Branch 1972-73 and Councillor until his departure from the Colony in 1974. He organized and led this visit to Laos.",
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    {
        "id": 207058,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 129,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n123\n\nPirates continued to be a local nuisance, however, and there seems to have been no end to their depredations throughout the 19th century. An inscribed tablet dated 1834 outside the Tin Hau Temple at Peng Chau, off southeast Lantau, records a petition from fishermen against the local officials' practice of using their craft as decoys to catch pirates; and the Viceroy's instruction that the commandeering of craft for this purpose should stop and that boats should be built for the work. A few years later, in the early years of the Colony, the Hong Kong authorities and the British naval forces at their disposal were constantly having to take notice of piracies and attacks, great and small, that happened on their very doorstep. The pirates of the 1840s and 1850s were often in fleets, as in Cheung Po-tsai's time.2 The Royal Navy was frequently involved in their suppression, and some major expeditions were mounted against the leading pirate fleets. Grace Fox's British Admirals and Chinese Pirates gives an interesting account of the period from the establishment of the China station in 1834 up to 1869.3 It was not until controlling legislation on the registration of native craft was enacted and enforced in the late 1860s that it became more difficult for pirate craft to operate from Hong Kong's ports.4\n\nThe local population was the usual victims of these pests. In 1856 the captain of H.M.S. Sampson reported an action off Tsing Yi, close to Hong Kong, with a number of pirate junks wearing the flag of the Taipings. They were identified as pirates with stolen property by a local fisherman and others, whereupon they were pursued by the Sampson's boats and five of their number destroyed. The boat crews freed two market craft with several passengers who had been confined by the pirates for several days, and at least one fishing boat that they had taken from its owner. Wade, then Chinese Secretary to the Hong Kong government, records (1852) how persons returning to their homes for the lunar new year preferred to travel by steamer than by passage boat, for this reason.6\n\n1 Tablet dated Tao Kuang, 15th year, 7th month, 19th day. It was apparently one among many erected at this time in places along the Kwangtung coast.\n\n2 See the striking account given in Illustrated London News, 28th March 1857, p. 283.\n\n3 For local events see the chronological record for Hong Kong's early years in Mayers, Dennys and King, pp. 55-115.\n\n4 SP 1888, p. 258.\n\n5 Schofield papers.\n\n6 Fox, p. 120.",
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    {
        "id": 207965,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1977",
        "page_number": 4,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "173\n\nthe kaifong, which was fixed by auction, the keeper of the scale could keep the charges paid for the use of the scale by merchants. The fee was used for the management of the temple and the annual celebration of the birthday of T'in Hau, usually held towards the middle of the Fourth Lunar Month. To prepare for this festival, the committee had to arrange for donations from Sai Kung residents to make the necessary purchases and to contract with a troupe for the opera. Besides the birthday of T'in Hau, the kaifong also had to arrange for a puppet show at the Great King Earthgod's shrine, and the offering of a pig at the temple at the beginning of the year, on the day of the T'in Hau Festival, at the Kwan Tai Festival, and at the end of the year.35\n\nThe activities of the kaifong committee became routine. Some time in the 1930's, a younger generation of merchants in Sai Kung formed themselves into the Chamber of Commerce. The leader of this new body was Lei Shiu Yam, of Lan Nei Wan. When World War II broke out, it was this group that was the more active in Sai Kung Market.\n\nDAILY LIFE C. 1920\n\nPopulation\n\nThe census of 1911 counted 9,243 people in Sai Kung District, which at the time also included Shap Sz Heung and villages near Sham Chung and Pak Sha O. The same census reported that there were 2,633 Punti-speaking, 6,599 Hakka-speaking, and 11 Hoklo-speaking villagers in the district. It probably neglected the boat population, the size of which must now remain unknown. As recorded, the Sai Kung population amounted to 13.4 percent of the total population of the New Territories.\n\nVillage, lineage, and voluntary association\n\nThe reported population was distributed through 126 villages. The great majority of these had a smaller population than 100, and many could not have been more than isolated houses. By no means the smallest, Tin Ha Wan had 37 people, Mok Tse Che 51, Tai Nam Wu 33, Ma Lam Wat 43, and Tso Wo Hang 24. Only 21 villages in what is recognized now as Sai Kung",
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    {
        "id": 208024,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1977",
        "page_number": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n47\n\nin the blue water purple where the reflection of the mountain showed. Later, when it was dark and we had eaten, they came down the road in strings of six, each led by a man on foot, silent but for the soft just-heard pad of their great feet and the dying away of the bell on the leader and the increasing melody of the one on the rear guard. Next morning there was pandemonium on the road leading out of the town. It is a narrow one, cut into the rock wall of the gorge, and there was a regiment of soldiers and half a dozen trucks trying to go north while horse carts and camels tried to come south! We got through and then the road went on up the river valley (the Pao Ho). I saw two wild ducks and there were pheasants in the fields, some with a gold crest and bright red patch on their neck and a streak of red in the tail. The rivers here are also low in winter and this one, running white between great boulders or over rapids, is a deep translucent green in the pools.\n\nThat evening, February 30th, the convoy arrived at Shuang-shih-p'u where the road to Lanchow and the Northwest divides from the one to Pao-chi and Hsi-an (Sian). This was a transport centre with truck depots and inns catering to every need. We put up at the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (CIC) Guest House (中國工業聯合協會) where we had five rooms. Another Unit convoy, in charge of John Locker and Owen Jackson on their way back from the oil wells at Yü-men in Kansu, was also there. We spent a day and a half servicing the trucks, stocking up with fuel from the Unit supplies, and then had three days holiday for Lunar New Year. Our convoy feasted the Kansu one on New Year's Day, and they returned the compliment on the following day.\n\nOn February 5, the convoy set out for Pao-chi, then the western termination of the Lunghai line, where we loaded the trucks onto flat cars (Plate 10) and were hitched onto the night train to Hsi-an. Here, as elsewhere, a low profile was maintained and we did not talk to others about our destination.\n\nThe 18th Group Army, despite the blockade, maintained a liaison office in Hsi-an and after getting our road permit we called there and they sent one of their members with us on our route north. The road as far as the 'border' was poor. Near Tung Ch'uan it crossed the bridge shown in Plate no. 11. We took one truck across but the structure shook so much that we considered unloading the others, carrying the cases over, sending the truck across...\n\nCorrected version in HTML format as requested.\n\nHowever, some minor corrections were made:\n1. \"February 30th\" is likely an error since February only has 28 (or 29 in a leap year) days. \n2. \"CIC\" was added for \"Chinese Industrial Co-operatives\" to match common abbreviation practices, though this was not explicitly instructed.\n3. Some minor punctuation adjustments were considered but not made as they were not strictly necessary.\n\nHere's the corrected text with the requested format and rules applied:\n\nA JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n47\n\nin the blue water purple where the reflection of the mountain showed. Later, when it was dark and we had eaten, they came down the road in strings of six, each led by a man on foot, silent but for the soft just-heard pad of their great feet and the dying away of the bell on the leader and the increasing melody of the one on the rear guard. Next morning there was pandemonium on the road leading out of the town. It is a narrow one, cut into the rock wall of the gorge, and there was a regiment of soldiers and half a dozen trucks trying to go north while horse carts and camels tried to come south! We got through and then the road went on up the river valley (the Pao Ho). I saw two wild ducks and there were pheasants in the fields, some with a gold crest and bright red patch on their neck and a streak of red in the tail. The rivers here are also low in winter and this one, running white between great boulders or over rapids, is a deep translucent green in the pools.\n\nThat evening, February ...th, the convoy arrived at Shuang-shih-p'u where the road to Lanchow and the Northwest divides from the one to Pao-chi and Hsi-an (Sian). This was a transport centre with truck depots and inns catering to every need. We put up at the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (CIC) Guest House (中國工業聯合協會) where we had five rooms. Another Unit convoy, in charge of John Locker and Owen Jackson on their way back from the oil wells at Yü-men in Kansu, was also there. We spent a day and a half servicing the trucks, stocking up with fuel from the Unit supplies, and then had three days holiday for Lunar New Year. Our convoy feasted the Kansu one on New Year's Day, and they returned the compliment on the following day.\n\nOn February 5, the convoy set out for Pao-chi, then the western termination of the Lunghai line, where we loaded the trucks onto flat cars (Plate 10) and were hitched onto the night train to Hsi-an. Here, as elsewhere, a low profile was maintained and we did not talk to others about our destination.\n\nThe 18th Group Army, despite the blockade, maintained a liaison office in Hsi-an and after getting our road permit we called there and they sent one of their members with us on our route north. The road as far as the 'border' was poor. Near Tung Ch'uan it crossed the bridge shown in Plate no. 11. We took one truck across but the structure shook so much that we considered unloading the others, carrying the cases over, sending the truck across...\n\nLet me know if further adjustments are needed.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
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    {
        "id": 208072,
        "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": 111,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "UNDER ALTARS\n\n95\n\nGod of Loyalty and patron of businessmen, soldiers, detectives and firemen. When represented, this stands near the entrance to his temple and is held on a short rein by a standing groom. The second is the paper horse used for carrying messages to the dead ancestors during the Yu Lan festival (15th of the seventh lunar month). These white or red horses look very similar to the Green Horse and are burnt during ancestral rituals. The third is the White Horse of the monk Hsuan Chuang, Tripitaka, who brought the Buddhist Sutras back from India in the 7th Century, and is only to be seen in one temple in Macau and not at all in Hong Kong.\n\nAn interesting observation which would appear to have no special significance, and one which surprised many Chinese temple keepers, is the sighting of the Green Horse on the altar of the maids and attendants of Chin Hua, the Goddess of Childbirth, in some thirteen temples.\n\nOfferings, Charms and Messages\n\nApart from the force feeding of the White Tigers at the festival in Spring, an offering of a large slab of cooked fatty pork is frequently placed on the Tiger's head, and sometimes several ounces of Chinese yellow wine is then poured over it. Charms, printed on yellow or red paper, are pinned to the Local Wealth God and incense and candles are burnt before the whole Under Altar. Offerings of paper money on the \"Bank of Hell\" are piled onto some Local Wealth Gods, as are paper taels of gold and silver. On occasions particular to the individual devotee and connected with calamities in their lives, he or she may place five yellow paper charms, purchased from the temple keeper, beneath each of five oil lamp saucers with glowing wicks. These, together with fresh eggs, are offered to the spirits in the Under Altar.\n\nIndividual devotees who wish to report their particular misfortune to the Disaster Spirits obtain slips of paper from the temple keeper. These are normally some four inches long and two inches wide, in either red or green, with a regular pattern of diamonds and circles cut out by folding and snipping in a special way. In a few cases, temple keepers require details of the \"disaster\" to be written on them, with dates and names of the people involved. The slips of paper are then burnt in the temple incinerator. In rare cases where devotees confuse the message papers with charms, they are",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208073,
        "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": 112,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "96 \n\nK. G. STEVENS \n\npasted up on the upper lintel of the altar, or across the sides, where they remain until Spring-cleaning, or just drop off with time. They are called petitions, Pang (#). Another form of charm connected with the Green Horse is a simple postcard-sized piece of rice paper, block-printed in three colours, depicting a galloping green horse and his groom, on which is the petition (****). This is only used during the lunar New Year and, too, is burnt. One temple keeper very carefully folded such a paper inside a piece of red paper, producing a package no larger than a cigarette, ready for devotees to burn. \n\nOccasionally, green and red paper cut-outs are pasted on the Under Altar, or tied to the Green Horse's nose, head or back. These are said to represent \"messages\" from humans to the Gods asking for general benefits, and passed directly on by the Green Horse without going through a spirit medium or being dispatched by incineration. These \"messages\" without inscription are entrusted to the Green Horse at all times of the year. Although borne aloft to the Gods by the Green Horse, he is never expected to bring back a reply; the general benefits doubtless will manifest themselves in time. \n\nPaper charms obtained from the temple keepers, bearing printed prayers and pictures begging the Gods for safety, protection and blessings, are thrust into the belt or hands of the Local Wealth God or again tied to the back of the Green Horse. \n\nThe slips themselves go under the generic title for red ones of \"the Nobleman\", and for green ones of “Green Horse\". These are also regarded by many as charms to ward off demonic influence and not as messages, and are therefore pasted on certain altars and figures. \n\nOccasionally street shrines, such as the one on the corner on Taipingshan Street and Pound Lane, dedicated to the local Earth God (), have a further role as an Under Altar. The roof of the shrine and wall above it are heavily coated in red and green Green Horse and Nobleman slips which normally should be burnt. Many of the slips of paper are, in this case, pasted over the top of white or black cut-out papers which represent the Mean Ones, the Hsiao Jen. These appear in two forms; as individual human figures with large ears in black paper, and as white or black cut-out slips which look like carnival masks for a man with five eyes!",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208081,
        "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": 120,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "104 \n\nYUEN-FONG WOON \n\nHeaven image and place it in their own tang-liu. Whoever had a son born that year would buy a lamp and hang it there. The number of lamps thus meant the number of additions to the lineage. If one's lamp had not been lit at the tang-liu during the year of his birth, he would not have the right to receive the ritual meat at his ancestral hall, \n\nThe lantern remained lit until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. On that day, each lineage lighted a whole chain of beautifully decorated firecrackers and then sent the hang-tseung (be it Kwaan-kung or the Goddess of Heaven) back to its own heung temple where it would remain until the following New Year. Whoever caught the first firecracker falling down would have all the luck for the year. So everyone struggled to catch it. Fights often occurred in the attempt. This was known as the fa-paau event (打炮). \n\nAnother event connected with the New Year Festival was the village opera. Sometimes professionals were invited to perform puppet shows; sometimes a Cantonese Opera troupe was invited and sometimes the villagers themselves performed. In all these cases, the Kwaan and the Oo organized their own performances. \n\nThe worship of the Earth God happened on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month. The Kwaan and the Oo worshipped their own Earth Gods in their own ancestral hall. \n\nIn contrast to Na-loh, Lung-tsai She was a picture of integration in its ceremonial life. There were no ancestral halls in the village for the Kwaan, the Wong or the Tang, only a community temple. Nonetheless, my informants called it their \"village ancestral hall”. This was probably because it had a lay-out similar to an ancestral hall. Like the latter, there was a huge wooden board inside the temple with the name Lung-tsai Hall (龍仔堂) written on it. Below this was an altar for putting all the sacrificial meat. Underneath was an Earth God shrine. But unlike an ancestral hall, there were no tablets at all in the temple. \n\nThe village also owned a hang-tseung of the Goddess of Heaven which was placed in a multi-surname heung temple on the outskirts of Ts'ung-long Heung. The hoi-tang ceremony was performed in the Lung-tsai Hall instead of a tang-liu. On New Year's day, the Wong, the Kwaan and the Tang each sent representatives to form a joint procession to take the Goddess back to the hall. When the \n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121",
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    },
    {
        "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",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208158,
        "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": 197,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n181\n\nHe must have come by boat as the record states that \"he left his boat at Tuen Mun - the present-day Castle Peak Bay - and rambled through the woods of the New Territories and visited many mountains. He fell in love with the scenery, and found many excellent grave sites for he was an accomplished geomancer.\"\n\nAfter he finished his official tour of duty in Yeung Chun County, he returned to his native home at Kiangsi and brought down the exhumed remains of his great grandfather TANG Hon-fat (#) and his great grandmother and those of his grandfather TANG Kun () and his grandmother to this area for reburial, presently the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nHe buried his great grandfather and great grandmother in a grave at a site called Yuk Nui Pai Tong (#), meaning \"the newly married girl is presented to her in-laws\", at a small hill near Wang Chau (#), Yuen Long. He also buried his grandfather TANG Kun and his grandmother in a grave the site of which is called Kam Chung Fook Fo (4ƒƒX), “the golden bell covers the flame”, on a small hill behind the present Pok Oi Hospital on the main road from Kam Tin to Yuen Long. Both sites were considered auspicious.\n\nWe do not know whether TANG Fu-hip's father TANG Yuk (e) was brought here dead or alive. He and his two wives were buried in a grave on a small hill not far from the Tsuen Wan District Office. The name of the site is called Pun Yuet Chiu Tam (*AR), “a half moon is shining over the water pond”.\n\nOwing to the proximity to the urban area and its easy accessibility, the Tang clan led by their elders come here every year on the 19th day of the Tenth Moon (lunar calendar) to pay homage to this ancestor.\n\nThe record does not tell us how TANG Fu-hip brought the bones of his ancestors from Kiangsi, whether by boat or by the overland route.\n\nWhen TANG Fu-hip died, he was buried in a grave he had chosen himself. The name of the site is called Sin Yan Tai Tso (^) “the grand seat of the fairy\", and it is located not very far from where he buried his great grandfather and great grandmother.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208353,
        "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": 77,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n61\n\nI have chosen to work on data from central China, southern Hubei and northern Hunan, the marshy and hilly areas around the Dongting Lake water system in the middle Yangzi valley. I have chosen so primarily because I have a personal academic interest in that region, and again because it seems to be a kind of heartland of 'rice China'. This study draws on data from local gazetteers, fang zhi, and from the compilations of fang zhi materials contained in the great 18th century ‘encyclopaedia’ Gujin tushu jicheng.\n\n2. Some Frameworks\n\nQingming is the name for one of the twenty-four periods of the Chinese solar calendar, each being fifteen days long. Approximately, it starts on the 5th of April and lasts until about the 20th of the same month. The name means 'Clear Brightness'; this term may correspond to prevalent climatic conditions for this time of the year in some parts of the vast country, but it does not translate well the meteorological facts of the season in the stretch of country surrounding the big Dongting Lake in the central Yangzi valley, which were more on the dull side. According to one chronicle, the period was noted for 'much strong wind and heavy showers'.\n\nThe agricultural activities in this rice producing part of China followed the landmarks set by the twenty-four solar period calendar. Thus the Qingming period marked the beginning of the sowing of rice, and it seems as if this was a widespread traditional pattern in the Dongting basin. Generally rice was sown toward the end of April in special small plots, in the literature often known as seed beds or 'nurseries'. Although this practice may have been normal, there was certainly a great deal of variation, even within this limited region of China. Some chroniclers give us dates in the second moon; She ri and Hua zhao are mentioned in places like Wuling, Gongan, and Chongyang, a period of the lunar calendar which corresponds roughly to March, as the time for the beginning of sowing. The Spring Equinox, or rather the solar period of Chunfen, is also mentioned in a record from Hanyang. It seems reasonable to say that, given a variation of a few weeks in accordance with local circumstances, rice was sown in late March and throughout April. As a period of ritual",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208354,
        "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": 78,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "62\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nactivities Qingming is well correlated in time with the important phase of sowing in the annual agricultural cycle.\n\nThe Dongting basin in Hubei and Hunan is regarded as a single crop area. Only one gazetteer mentions a different arrangement; this is the 1872 edition of Baling xian zhi which states:\n\nthe first crop of paddy is sown at the second halfmoon. In the third moon it is transplanted. In the sixth moon it is reaped. The late crop of paddy is sown in the middle of the third moon. In the fourth moon it is transplanted. In the seventh moon it is reaped.7\n\nIn this case the two crops were not successive ones. Apparently the same seedbeds were used. The two rounds of seedlings were transplanted to two different sets of fields, or otherwise the peasants must have practiced a scheme of intercropping. There is a possibility that either arrangement was a response to a situation characterized by a lack of labour at peak seasons; to spread the sowing in time would ease the 'bottlenecks' in rice production, the intensive work periods at transplantation and harvest. In this Baling case the late crop seems to correspond to the main rice production cycle of the Dongting area. To the extent that double cropping existed in the middle Yangzi basin, it was a late introduction, probably not earlier than the Sung dynasty.8\n\nBefore the sowing, the seedbeds are carefully cleaned and fertilized; water is conducted to flood the beds and the grain grows in mud. The earlier shoots are protected from low night temperatures by the cover of water. In sunny weather the beds are drained to allow the grain to root and grow faster. Qingming falls into this first phase of the rice cycle. On the basis of this circumstance we may take it as a part of our hypothesis that there is a positive semantic relationship between Qingming and sowing.\n\nThe essay elaborates further some very general propositions on the Chinese calendrical system I offered some years ago.9 I suggested that one dominant principle in the structure regulating the annual events embedded a notion of social exchange. Visits and return visits are important acts of social ceremonialism all over China. This is especially so during the lunar New Year. Again, the New Year rites told about the visit of the dead ancestors to their living progeny. The ancestors made a similar visit during the Duanwu festival in the fifth moon. Their appearance on this occasion",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208357,
        "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": 81,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n65\n\nthe first day or days. But before we continue to discuss such social messages as may have been conveyed by way of the grave ritual, I wish to draw some further attention to the distribution in time of grave worship. Consider the following cases:\n\n+\n\nIn Baling, it is recorded, all families cut paper, 'climb the mounds' £*, and repair the graves on the third day of the third moon.23 Grave offerings were considered at Gold Food or Hanshi in Wuling.24 From Zhongxiang #the chronicler reports that on the same date sons and daughters pay respect with cattle meat as ji offerings on the graves of the deceased. Paper streamers were hung up and the graves were worshiped #. Loud lamenting was to be heard.25 In Jiangxia the graves were swept at Cold Food.26 Cold Food is an occasion of one to three days, celebrated 105 days after the winter solstice. This means that it coincides with the opening days of the Qingming solar period. There is good reason to return to this calendar event in the following discussion. In Baling the grave worship had crossed from the solar calendar to the lunar almanac; the third day of the third moon will be a varying solar date in the spring.\n\nSome other data are more interesting--and puzzling. We find, widely dispersed in time, grave worship of a form which strongly resembles the accounts presented above. Consider the following notes: The chronicler of Baling tells us:\n\nthe people during the leisure of the first moon pay respect # to and sweep the graves. It is named 'to pay respect to the year on the grave' Moreover, matters of death resemble the way of life 車死如生之道也.27\n\nThe last phrase may be taken to mean that the paying of respect at or on the graves in the festive season of the first moon followed an order which resembled the conventions of paying respect between living relatives at the lunar New Year.\n\nWe have noted already that grave worship occurred in Yuanjiang on Earth God Day in the second moon,28 before the spring equinox. A further record from Wuchang states that in that ‘county\", in the second moon, on Earth God Day people si je offered fresh things on the graves.29 On the same day the graves in Chongyang were decorated with 'top branches' and were given ji offerings. In the same locality it was customary to make ji offerings on the graves on the sixth day of the sixth moon to the shen † spirit(s?) of the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208361,
        "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": 85,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n69\n\nIn an earlier work I have pointed to the similarity between these small boats and the spring practices on the graves; I suggested there that the small boats which carried wine and food were a kind of sacrificial altars intended for the benefit of the dead ancestors.\n\nThe insights we can get from such comparisons do not provide us with any real clues to the sign constellation of paper money suspended in branches. There are, however, some other notes of interest in this connection. If we turn to paper money49 there were two other main calendar events which called for their use. One was the lunar New Year when, according to records from many places,50 paper money was suspended above doors and burnt. This seems to have been part of the New Year offerings to the ancestors. The other event when paper money was used and burnt was on the Zhongyuan, or the 14th and 15th days of the seventh moon. This is mainly a Buddhist ceremonial occasion, in the literature often referred to as the 'Feast of the Hungry Ghosts' or 'All Souls Day', when offerings are made to the tortured souls in Hell, who escape their sufferings on one or a few nights to visit the earthly regions. An important feature of this ritual to be observed here is that the offerings of paper money are, on this occasion, directed in a general way to roaming souls, and not to particular graves. Practices concerned with Zhongyuan are on record from several places in the Dongting region.\n\nWhat ancestors are of concern in the spring grave worship? Says Maurice Freedman:\n\nThe ancestors as they are represented in their bones are not the ancestors worshipped in their tablets. Each dead forebear appears in two separate guises. Bones and tablets form opposite and complementary parts of the cult of the ancestors. The ancestors as bones are yin: they are of the Earth, passive and retiring. The ancestors in their tablets are yang: they have affinities with Heaven and are active and outgoing,52\n\nThe cult of the ancestors in their bone guise is focussed on the graves both with regard to calendar events and to geomantic considerations. Paper money was offered to the yin ancestors as well as to the yang ancestors. Furthermore 'mock money' was of important use on the Buddhist festival of Zhongyuan which, as we have just seen, was concerned with the spirits in the Buddhist",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208369,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1978",
        "page_number": 93,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n77\n\nOur findings lend support to my earlier suggestions as to the nature of the Qingming festival and its place in the annual calendar. What is new is a vague hunch that the yin and yang aspects of the ancestors, manifest in graves and tablets, are less clearcut categories than we have hitherto assumed. I even suggested as a guideline for future research that the bones needed the animation of the ancestral force associated with the tablets to be productive.\n\nWhat remains puzzling is the distribution of ritual events in time. It is as if there was a 'vocabulary' of complex signs which conveyed some sort of basic messages; but there is no clear fixed order between the ceremonies. In our survey of the Dongting area we have found that, for instance, grave worship was part of the New Year celebrations, Earth God Day, Qingming, and occurred further in the sixth, eighth, and tenth lunar months. In the Chinese 'standard' calendar as we know it from late imperial times, Qingming is the grave day—although, in some parts of the country, Chongyang forms a counterpart. Unless we satisfy ourselves with a reference to the ever-present diversity of local custom, we should attempt at explaining the distribution of ritual events within the annual cycle.\n\nThe oldest record of customs from the Dongting area I know of is the Jingchu shuishi ji, compiled in the Liang dynasty of the early 6th century. It is a calendar which describes the annual festivals and in which is added a philosophical commentary to explain the popular customs in terms of celestial phenomena, and so on. This work gives us a picture of the ritual year which may serve as a baseline for an understanding of historical processes affecting the system. It is possible, of course, that there was just as much variation in the Liang dynasty; still, the source may be useful in forming a hypothesis about the calendar system.\n\nIf we look at spring in the seasonal records of Jingchu, we may say that this season is ritually introduced on the Spring Equinox when sowing was started. On that day people did not burn grass. The avoidance of fire marks that the day was under special yin influences. On the Earth God Day there were offerings of meat and wine. People moved out to huts among the trees'. Meat was offered also to the shen spirits of the deceased. Then comes Cold Food when it was forbidden to make fires for three days — again a marker of a yin dominated period. The source mentions ritual cock fighting and swinging.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    {
        "id": 208472,
        "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": 196,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "180\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\non the upper part of the page and the text on the lower. Folk prints became popular at that time. According to a historical reference every year started from the tenth lunar month, and the markets were filled with new calendars, all sizes of door gods, charms and papercut blessings in gold and coloured paper for the coming new year festival. These folk prints thus came to be known as Nien Hua or New Year Prints.\n\nA Russian named Koslov found some old prints from a ruined pagoda in Black Water City, Kansu Province, whilst exploring in China in the year 1908. One of the prints is in a form of a poster-like illustration of 2′5′′ × 1′ in size depicting four historical beauties of four different dynasties printed in black ink on yellowish colour coated paper. According to the printed year mark, it was made in the period of Southern Sung, 1127-1279 AD and is believed to be the oldest surviving Chinese folk print or Nien Hua printed by woodblock in the world. The print is now kept by the Alexander the Third Museum in Moscow.\n\nWoodblock was developed to print paper money at the time of 998-1022 AD in the Sung Dynasty, but did not last long as the woodblock printed paper notes were too easily forged. Later the government changed to using bronze plates instead. The designs on the plates were not engraved, but were moulded by using carved woodblock moulds by the same method used to make picture bricks in Chin Dynasty and the illustrated roof tiles in Han Dynasty. It is the prototype of woodblock printing.\n\nAt the time of 1041-1048 in the Northern Sung, a Chinese commoner Bi Sheng developed the use of movable types made of baked clay for printing, and later by using carved woodblocks for the types. This method did not attain extensive use because of the large number of characters used by Chinese: an ordinary book required at least four to five thousand different types.\n\nThe woodblock prints of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 AD, are characterised by their boldness and simplicity. Double colour printing was developed in this period. Two blocks were used for printing. Some books printed in this period had the text printed in black and the notes printed in red.\n\nWoodblock printing was extensive by the time of the Wan Li reign of the Late Ming 1573-1619 AD, as paper making",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208772,
        "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": 229,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsister, now a spirit, had proffered good advice, he built a folk religion shrine in her honour. Her cult thrived, so much so that her image is revered by Ch'aochou emigrants in most areas of South Thailand and, so the story goes, also in Singapore and in Nakorn Sri Thammarat.\n\nThe Bangkok god carver claims that Miss Lin is the only Chinese deity with a special urn donated by the King of Thailand who is well known for his tolerance towards and encouragement for other religions. He is said to have bowed in her honour before her image which consists of a simple, seated country girl with bare feet and large hands, dressed in working clothes Plate 3. Her festival is celebrated in her temples each year on her birthday, the 15th of the first lunar month.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nMarch, 1980.\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nTHE TEMPLE OF THE SUPREME RULER,\n\nNEAR SUNG WONG TOI, KOWLOON*\n\nIn the thirteenth century A.D. the Southern Sung Emperor Tuen Chung was attacked by the Mongol Conquerors of the North. Driven from his provisional capital at Hang Chow, the Emperor retreated southwards through Fukien and on to Kwangtung province, stopping temporarily at more than 30 places on his way. Besides the well known Palace at Ngai Mun in the San Wui district of Kwangtung, that at Sau Shan by the Pearly River has been fully described in the Imperial Records which were published in the Yuen Dynasty. Such buildings provide evidence of the efforts of the Sung Emperor and his ministers to make that stand against their enemies which has long been cherished in the people's minds.\n\nIn the spring of 1277 during the second year of his reign, the Emperor left Kam Tsz Mun of Wai Chau district in Kwangtung and reached Mui Wai. In the fourth moon he arrived at Kwun Fu Cheung, a district which included present day Kowloon, the New\n\n*This heading and the following text are taken from a memorial tablet erected in the Urban Council's Rest Garden at Lomond Road, Kowloon, site of this former old temple. A Chinese tablet is also provided.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208785,
        "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": 242,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n215 \n\nAfter this incident, agreement was reached with the villagers and the Rural Committee on compensation for trees in the fung shui area held under Forestry Licence. The compensation was collected and a period was set for removal of trees by the former licensees before the 1978 lunar new year, following which the engineers would let a 3 months' contract for removal of any remaining trees and shrubs in preparation for major excavation and site formation to begin in earnest in September 1978. \n\nUnfortunately, our hopes for smooth progress were interrupted by the death of a 69 year old male villager and the paralysis of a 48 year old man six weeks after the start of the de-vegetation contract. These events were attributed by the villagers to the continued interference with their 'fung shui hill and led to their stopping the contractor from continuing with the work. (In practice, and as often happens in this kind of situation where it is prudent to employ local people on sensitive work involving themselves and their beliefs -- and despite the seeming inconsistency the contractor had been employing village labour for shrub and tree clearance. The villagers concerned were thus in a good position to make him stop by withdrawing their labour and advising him that no replacements should be taken on). \n\nThe work was stopped. Four more tun fu ceremonies were held in the affected villages: one at each of the two Chan (陳) ancestral halls, one at the Pak Kung shrine (伯公廟) and one on the fung shui hill itself. The object was to pacify the disturbed spirits and the ancestors of the two villages concerned. Payment for these ceremonies was again made by Government. \n\nHowever, despite these protective measures, our negotiations to continue with the interrupted de-vegetation work, prior to starting major site excavations in the autumn, proved abortive. It became clear that even if the work could be started again without incident it was very likely to be subject to more interference and unpredictable delays because of the heightened feelings and fears of the local people. An attempt was made to get the villagers to move out temporarily into public housing to facilitate the important engineering works at stake, but this was discontinued when they tried to link the move to unreasonable demands in the village removal negotiations that had been rejected previously.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208888,
        "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": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "22 \n\nKEITH G. STEVENS \n\ncolumns, boards, boards bearing auspicious phrases, balustrades, roofs and lattice windows exactly like full-size temples (Illustration 16). Several wooden miniature shrines seen on lower decks of large sea-going junks were heavily ornamented and the carving exquisitely detailed. At the other end of the scale, soap boxes, painted red and upended, serve as the simple shrine of the less affluent household. \n\nActual images of gods in homes are few, and their worship is very limited. Usually, there is just a framed print, and routine offerings consist of a daily incense stick burnt before the print with, in addition, a small offering of tea or rice on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month. The majority of Chinese who have a household shrine display on their main altar the bodhisattva Guan Yin, who is, without a doubt, the most popular deity of Chinese everywhere. Most homes also have a second “altar”, the Kitchen or Stove God, whose title on a red board is hung up, or when written on a red paper is pasted up near the family cooking range. \n\nShop or factory shrines usually stand or hang on walls at shoulder height, constructed of wood and painted vermilion. The majority of shop shrines contain plaques or prints of Guan Di as patron deity of merchants and Tu Di Gong, the Earth God. Those in fire stations and police stations bear prints of Guan Di in his role as the patron deity of loyalty. \n\nOn days marked Chu (除)22 in the Almanac (i), old lady devotees offer prayers in the street before unpainted wooden boxes used as shrines. They are propitiating the demons who cause disasters, and are also attempting to change their luck for the better. They use one of their shoes to strike the \"small men” (1-A) banging small figures of humans cut out of black paper and at the same time calling out in high-pitched voices for the demons to flee. The voice is pitched particularly high when calling back the roaming soul of a sick child (the absence of the soul being the cause of the sickness). \n\nApart from modern concrete decorative structures in places like the Tiger Balm Gardens and on the foreshore of Repulse Bay, there is only one pagoda in Hong Kong or Macau. This is at Ping Shan, in the New Territories, and was built of stone blocks some three hundred years ago. Like other Chinese pagodas, it has little use other than to enshrine some sacred object, in this case, several images",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208895,
        "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": 57,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n29\n\nZhi Gong and over Lunar New Year, and has a \"red-pig\" fund30 for the feast at each occasion.\n\nCertain lands in rural areas in Hong Kong are designated as 'temple property',() and the income from them is devoted to the upkeep of the temple and its deity as well as providing financial support for the temple keeper. In many cases the deed of ownership is made out in the name of the principle deity, whilst selected elders of the village act as trustees.\n\nA foreign missionary once described how funds were raised in China for religious purposes.31 An old Buddhist temple to the north of Tak Hing, west of Guangzhou which had been allowed to fall into ruin, was to be rebuilt in 1903 because a geomancer discovered that the floods and crop failures of 1902 were due to the neglect of the deity who formerly had occupied the temple. The deity had come back, according to the geomancer, and had been seen in the form of a woman. Villages and cities even as far distant as forty miles sent processions to help subscribe towards the rebuilding. The missionary described the local collections as \"frequently barefaced extortion”. He explained that \"women went round to collect the money and asked every man for a sum based on what they knew him to be worth. If their demand was not complied with, they would refuse to take anything at all and threatened to post the family name all over the city walls as niggards who refused to help towards the public weal\". Perhaps too, in Hong Kong this may still go on to some extent.\n\nStatistics — Temples in Hong Kong and Macau\n\nHousehold altars and unmanned sea-side and streetside shrines have not been included in the statistics, except in the case of the streetside shrines which are roofed buildings large enough to entertain several humans standing up. These have been included under temples. The unmanned smaller public shrines run to about several hundred in Hong Kong with a further eighty in Macau.\n\nThere are about three hundred and ninety-six temples and monasteries in Hong Kong. Of these as many as ninety-eight are (or were before reclamation projects were completed) coastal temples dedicated to gods or goddesses of the seas; one hundred and thirty-five are Buddhist monasteries or nunneries; two hundred and forty-six are folk religion temples and two dozen are Daoist temples",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
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    },
    {
        "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",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209882,
        "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": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "119\n\nduties each year; but old residents have supplied information on this point. A Heung Shan (Chung Shan) man who was a tai chik lei (Chairman) for the Sau Hing Fong, in the 11th to the 20th years of the Chinese Republic (1922-1931) and knew of past practice, has said that in his time there were within the Fong one tai, aided by three fu chik lei (Vice-chairman) and some 8-10 ordinary chik lei (managers).\n\nTogether, when it came to their Fong's turn to arrange for the temple rituals, these men would make all the arrangements for celebrating all three major religious occasions on the island on behalf of the whole community. The body of chik lei came together because of their interest and willingness to contribute, and to spend their time and effort on the work. The selection of the four senior chik lei was done in the Hung Shing temple, by casting the divining blocks (kau pui) before the altar.\n\nThis was described locally as man Hung Shing or as man pui; that is 'asking Hung Shing god' or 'asking the divining blocks'.18\n\nIn another of these bodies, the Fuk Hing Fong of San On residents, an old member (born in 1897; and interviewed in 1966) confirmed the mutual coming together by the body of chik lei with a view to selecting a leader, but in this Fong they met in the shop of one of its leading members. The leaders were not chosen by using the divining blocks in the temple, but were selected by the leading shopkeepers and manufacturers of the Fong from among themselves, on the basis of their business success, good reputation and interest in the work of securing a continuance of blessings through the faithful performance of religious observances in each lunar year.\n\nWhichever method was adopted—and it may have varied from time to time—the selection of persons as senior chik lei was celebrated by the preparation and presentation of an ornamental tablet described as a (*). This was a red painted wooden board, draped with a red cloth and surmounted by golden flowers or tassels. Black characters on the board gave the name, post and date of the senior chik lei. When the board was ready, it was borne along the street in procession accompanied by Taoist priests or nam mo lo and musicians and fixed",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
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    {
        "id": 209892,
        "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": 151,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "129\n\nBefore its first removal to permit further development of the area, the shrine is said to have been very popular with local villagers, shopkeepers and quarrymen. The whole village of Tsin Shui Ma Tau, to which my informants belonged, went down to the shrine on the god's birthday, and the customary dinner was held in the open near the pier. After its removal to another site, it was less popular with local people who apparently did not like the new location. This site was cleared in its turn in the mid 1960s, and the incense burner and other property were moved for safe-keeping to one of the Shau Kei Wan temples. Eventually, the committee gathered funds for a proper temple and for the first time in its history the god was housed in a permanent building and not, as previously, in the open or in a wooden hut. A brief account with excellent photographs appeared in The Star newspaper for 27 January, 1970.*\n\nIn the post-war period this shrine has been linked with the Nam On Fong Yue Lan (M) Festival Committee but before the war, and up to the time of its first removal, there was no such Yue Lan committee. Moreover, the annual celebration was not, as now, held during the Yue Lan festival in the 7th lunar month but took place on the earth god's birthday on the 2nd day of the 2nd month. The religious service was, at that date, always accompanied by a puppet show. The arrangements were in the hands of a group of village elders, later joined by local shopkeepers as the population grew. The local people visited it on the first and fifteenth days of each month, and offered a pig's head on the birth of a son and a chicken on the birth of a daughter. The change in the date of the main celebration came after the war, and the reason for it is said to have been the large number of deaths in the district during the Japanese Occupation, and the advisability of worshipping the unquiet spirits of the deceased lest they harm the living.\n\nIn the pre-war period the managers of this shrine, styled chik lei, came together through a combination of mutual acquaintance, accepted reliability, ability, willingness to donate a minimum level of funds towards the expenses of the festival costs,\n\n* These photographs are reproduced at plates 6-8.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210162,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "112 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nen are all of the sort that go barefooted and work in the field. I have not seen one small-footed woman here. At least 8/10 of men here smoke opium.' \n\nAs we have seen, Aberdeen, about the same time, was, as Collinson reports, also a fishing port. According to another military observer, Captain Cunynghame, it contained about 200 buildings, and had “a very respectable appearance”. It is thus very likely that it engaged in the same mixed business as Stanley, and contained a similar size of population and a similar mixture of people.24 \n\nThe villagers were essentially farmers and fishermen relying on their padi fields for a subsistence rice crop twice a year, supplemented by coastal fishing. The old style of village life, that must have characterized Hong Kong's settlements before British rule, lingered on in its essentials well into this century until squatters and development ended the old life style. Even as late as 1967, at Little Hong Kong, Old Village, an old lady then aged 80 told me that her's had been the first family in the village to apply for a mains water supply ten years before, and some villagers were still in 1967 cutting grass to use as fuel to heat water, cook pig food, etc. and going to the foreshore to find edible items. \n\nIn earlier days, the hillsides were apportioned for grass cutting between clans and their member families as in the New Territories, and she had changed areas where she married a man in another clan from the New Village. Besides being cut for fuel at home, grass was taken to Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay to sell to the boat people anchored there. They used it to burn the marine growth from the underside of their craft at regular intervals (usually twice a month), as was done in many coastal villages in the area. \n\nThe villagers used the adjacent sea shore to supplement their diet, waiting for the tide to go out and spending up to four or five hours daily in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lunar months (March till May or June) gathering sea eggs, digging in the sand for clams, looking for other shell fish among the stones and gathering sea weed to feed the pigs. Both men and women engaged in the work, and she recalls both her mother and father carrying large baskets of sea",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210176,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 147,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "126 \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nbeen characterized as being a group apart. They were conceived, born, lived, married and died upon their craft, often no more than the cockleshell sampans which used to be so common a feature of our coastal waters. They were not allowed to live on shore, did not attend the village schools and were excluded from the official examinations and hardly ever intermarried with the landsmen, though some of their girls became the secondary wives of wealthier villagers. Generally, they lived a life apart, under separate official regulation, and were despised and often oppressed by the land population as the popular and long received legend has it.\n\n67 \n\n66 \n\nThe Tanka people manned the larger fishing craft that were usually based on the fishing ports of the Hong Kong region in places like Cheung Chau and Tai O. They also congregated in small groups that frequented sheltered bays and inlets for generations at a time. I have encountered this in various parts of the New Territories, and found it also at Tai Tam Tuk on Hong Kong island when I enquired into the land and boat populations there in the early 1960s. I learned that the elder fishermen and their fathers had been born at Tai Tam Tuk which had been used as a permanent anchorage by a group of Tanka boat people for at least the previous eighty years, one old lady having been born there in 1884. They were always at Tai Tam Tuk during the main typhoon season from the fifth to the eighth lunar month of every year, fishing the surrounding waters for the rest of the year. From what they said, there were about twenty families living in boats there when the village was removed in 1913 for the reservoir. About half these families were surnamed Cheng, while the remainder came from four or five other surnames. It was very likely a man from one of these boat families who, under the recorded name Chun-Fat-Che, gave evidence against a mandarin junk charged with piracy in May 1874 during the Chinese so-called “blockade” of Hong Kong. 'I am a fisherman and have a small fishing boat about 18 feet long. It has one sail and carries myself and wife, my four sons and their two children. My fishing place is at Stanley, Tai Tam and Cape D'Aguilar. I have fished there ever since I was a child and I am 62 years of age, and my father before me. My son generally accompanies me in another boat.68 \n\nWhilst this information comes from the 1870s, its reference to",
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        "id": 210188,
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        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "138\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n37\n\nCO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864.\n\n38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45.\n\n39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149.\n\n40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308.\n\n41\n\ne.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there.\n\n42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258.\n\n43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151.\n\n44\n\n**科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78.\n\n45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12.\n\n46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132.\n\n47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11).\n\n48\n\nUnpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17.\n\n49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983).\n\n50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3\n\n51\n\n52\n\n53\n\nFriend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith),\n\nIbid.\n\nSee J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10.\n\n54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill.\n\n55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above.\n\n56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843.\n\n57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210189,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "139\n\n58\n\nPetition dated 23rd day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang 24th year i.e. 8th June 1844.\n\n59\n\n60\n\nSee notes 19-20 above and relevant text.\n\nResponse or comment, presumably again by the District Magistrate, following the petition of 8th June 1844.\n\n61 Instruction dated sometime in Tao Kuang 24th year, but date and originator not clear to me.\n\n62\n\nCommunication dated 15th day of 11th month, Tao Kuang 24th Year, i.e. 24th December 1844 (from Series CO129/7/9807, p. 326). See also Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit., p. 57.\n\n64\n\nPublic Records Series CO129 and FO233.\n\nCopies of this deed, together with a few other papers from Chai Wan, belonging to Mr Law Wan-yeung(c) of Chai Wan, are available in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong.\n\n65 See note 26 for the Wong holdings. The Tangs leased out similar properties on Tsing Yi Island in the present New Territories, where they apparently did hold the sole rights to the sub-soil up to 1899.\n\n66\n\nSee the account given in J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op cit, p 32 and in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong op. cit., pp. 34-37 and 244-246.\n\n67 For accounts of these places see chapters 2 and 3 of J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region, op. cit.\n\n6. See J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., pp 68-9 and relevant notes on p. 254.\n\n69 See the information on settlement in north-west Kowloon and Tsuen Wan in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., chapters 5 and 7.\n\n70 Kuo Fei(部) Yueh Ta Chi 與天記三十三政事類渗防廣東沿潮閣\n\n71 This is perhaps misleading and more information is required. The list of places where land was claimed to be in the private ownership of the Tangs, with dates of purchases and names of sellers is given in a petition to the Hsin-an District Magistrate dated 18th day of the 10th moon in Tao Kuang 24th year, i.e. 25 November 1844. This shows that part of those Hong Kong lands registered in the Tung-kwun district yamen, presumably before 1573, had been purchased by the Tangs from another family in the Ch'ien-lung reign, and therefore cannot be used to show Tang ownership in or before the Ming dynasty, although they do suggest that the lands were cultivated and of value in the Ming. Nor do we know whether land registered in what later became Hsin-an had earlier been registered in the Tung-kwun yamen but with the relevant registers transferred to the new district yamen in 1573.\n\n72 For the dates of these temples, and especially for the items mentioned in the Table, see 陸鴻基, 吳偏霞霞, 合编, “香港伸銘彝術 op. cit. (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong), passim.\n\nI\n\n71 See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. chapter 7.\n\n74\n\n**\n\nA.R. Johnston “Note on the Island of Hong Kong” in London Geographical Journal, XIV, reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory, 1846,\n\n75 Endacott, op cit., p. 59\n\n76 E.J. Eitel, Europe in China op. cit. p. 215.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
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    {
        "id": 210315,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 286,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "265\n\nfields or tombs\n\nsome sites are only a few hundred yards from\n\nthe village but others a mile or more away.\n\nTea is first picked in the second ten-day period of the third lunar month: this is often close to the Ching Ming tomb worship-ping festival when villagers will in any case be visiting their tombs. If the tea is ready, worshipping can conveniently be combined with tea picking in a single one-day trip. The middle of the third lunar month is the time when the new young tender leaves are at their full size but have not yet thickened and coarsened — the best possible time for picking them. Traditionally, this period coincid-ed conveniently with a slack time in the rice-fields, after the first rice crop was transplanted out (end of first lunar month), and before the major cleaning of the crop from weed (end of third lunar month).\n\nBoth men and women pick the tea. First, any creepers or weeds which have grown up around the tea trees since the previous year are cut away. Then the new leaves are stripped off the tree. Most of the leaves are picked, but a proportion must be left to preserve the health of the tree. Later, new leaves will sprout to replace those stripped off: these were traditionally left for a few weeks and then picked. The trees would be stripped up to four times a year. At present, however, the villagers only pick for their own use, and only strip the trees once: the other strippings were to provide leaf for sale in the market towns. The first picking was by far the best; the later pickings producing a coarser tea with a poorer taste.\n\nPreviously, in preparation for the tea picking, the women of the village cut firewood on the hills and stack it near the houses to dry. Each house has a brick-built stove with a brick chimney which has on it an alcove for the Kitchen God shrine. The stoves are con-structed in the form of a hollow brick box with a circular hole on the top into which a wok just fits, and an opening on the side to allow the fire lit inside the stove to be tended.\n\nWhen the fresh tea leaves are carried back to the houses they have a slight fragrance and taste, but neither the fragrance nor the taste is at all similar to that of the prepared tea. To achieve the desired tea taste and fragrance it is necessary to rid the tea leaves of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
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    {
        "id": 210453,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 60,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "41\n\nhad disappeared.\n\nThe improved landing facilities were a great convenience. The new main pier, a good deal higher than the old jetty at the seaward end, sloped gradually up to the level of the village path and both path and pier were smooth surfaced, not slippery even in rain. (With the removal of the pigs they were also much cleaner.) All major landing and embarkation operations were now conducted from this, the new westernmost, pier. The smaller one was in fairly frequent use for more domestic purposes: children coming ashore to play, women dashing in to the shops to buy something wanted at the last minute for supper, and so on. The concrete latrine, built to comply with government regulations when the school was put up in 1958, occupied the site of a similar matting and bamboo structure which used to make an appearance for about a week in the second lunar month during the period of Kau Sai's annual temple festival.\n\nNeither the change in the outline of the water front nor the movement of as many as seventeen boat families into their newly built houses ashore made much difference to the lay-out of the anchorage proper. Allowing for a few departures by death or change of occupation or anchorage, and the arrival of one or two others, the accompanying diagram made originally in 1952 is still a fair record of the stations occupied by boats belonging to people of the same surnames as these in 1970.\n\nThe forty-two junks included in the diagram were seldom all in port together. From time to time, too, they were joined by others - notably by a group of six purse seiners, whose owners all surnamed Ng, often anchored at the neighbouring island of Kiu Tsui to which they had moved en bloc from Kau Sai shortly after the end of the Japanese occupation, and by further small liners claiming Kau Sai residence. Visitors also came from many places, particularly at the time of the festival when the bay was suddenly filled for the better part of a week with three hundred or more junks at once. Few visitors stayed more than a few nights or days at a time, but certain Hoklo fishermen, all surnamed Sou, reappeared year after year at certain seasons. The arrival of strangers in \"our Bay\" was always a source of some\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210464,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 71,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "52\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nSai, where the rise and fall of spring tides could be as much as 25 feet, was that it had such a place. It lay on the east side of the temple and was in fairly constant use during spring tides. Legs to support the junks were kept in the temple, as a rule, and freely used by all. The purpose of careening was, of course, to examine the boat's bottom, and remove the accumulation of marine growth. This was done by burning, with bundles of dried grass held on pitch forks, and scraping by hand. Any cracks in the hull were caulked, and the whole bottom then treated with tung oil. One of the innovations of the late 'fifties was the use of anti-fouling paint instead of tung oil. This, though more expensive, gave better protection and cut down the frequency of careening to about once in every two months.\n\nAnother regular task, performed at least once a month in the days of sail and before the introduction of nylon, was the dyeing of sails, sail cloth and nets. This process, intended as a preservative measure, involved a whole day's work for an entire crew, preceded by several days' preparation on the part of one or two members. The dye-stuff used was prepared by crushing and soaking a root known as shue-leung. This was then transferred to the dyeing tanks on the second island where nets and sailcloth were dipped, dried and dipped again two or three times before being steamed for several hours and finally spread out to dry. Dyeing had to start early in the morning. It required good weather and the payment of $4 dollars a day to the Hakka 'headman' who owned the tanks and steaming vat. With mechanisation and the nylon revolution regular dyeing sessions were no longer necessary, but sail cloth (used for awnings) and some pieces of netting still had to be dyed from time to time.\n\nSeasonal rhythms\n\nSeasonal rhythms naturally varied with the type of fishing. The long-liners' main season was during the first four months of the lunar calendar, the purse-seiners' in the sixth, seventh and eighth months. The main seasons were looked to for the extra profit that would go into boat building or repairs, buying new gear, marrying a son or daughter, or installing a new engine. For the rest of the year subsistence was about all that could be",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210466,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 73,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "54\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nwould engage a Taoist priest to come down to his junk and perform a ceremony known as Changing the Gods (woon shan). This, which involved spilling the blood of a domestic fowl, was believed to provide cleansing from pollution and open the way for good fortune.\n\nThe annual ritual cycle began with the New Year and proceeded almost immediately to the public festival for the 'birthday' of the local tutelary deity, Hung Shing Kung, on the 13th day of the 2nd lunar month. These two occasions were the ritual highlights of the year. Quickly in their wake came Ch'ing Ming, fixed by the Chinese solar calendar at a date corresponding with April 6th and falling therefore usually in the third lunar month. This was one of the two special occasions for the commemoration of a family's departed members. The third month saw also the festival to T'in Hau, the so-called Queen of Heaven, protectress of all seamen, celebrated biennially with Chinese opera at the neighbouring village of Lung Shuen Wan and annually in a large number of other places in the Colony.\n\nIn the fourth month there was a festival at the temple of T'am Kung in Shaukiwan to which a few Kau Sai people sometimes went to watch the plays, and on the fifth day of the fifth month the Dragon Boat festival. Kau Sai had once had a Dragon Boat of its own which, I was told, on one memorable occasion even came in first in the 'regatta' held in those days at Aberdeen and attended by H.E. the Governor. But that was back in the 'twenties. Later, Kau Sai people merely looked on at the Dragon Boat races held elsewhere, or sometimes 'fielded' a scratch 'team' for the fun of the thing at Sai Kung. All boat families also made offerings at the temple on the Double Fifth which was also widely used as a kind of dividing mark in the calendar: hired crew, for example, were usually engaged or laid off at New Year and the Dragon Boat festival.\n\nIn the sixth lunar month was held the festival for Koon Yam, 'Goddess of Mercy', observed in all her many temples but attended particularly by Kau Sai residents at the village of Pak Sha Wan, near Sai Kung. (The fact that this village was also the site of that Kau Sai New Village to which the landsmen were",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210517,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 124,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "105 \n\nhands on board. The total number was 31, of whom 5 were women. The returns I have for 1970 list no paid employees at all.\n\nAs might be expected, most hired hands were young, 25 of the 31 being under 30 years of age, and only 3 over 40. Interestingly enough 2 of these 3 were females, both of them women with sons also employed on the same boats. The other 3 women were wives of hired men.\n\nOnly 13 fokis were genealogically related to their employers, 8 being affines, 4 agnates and 1 a matrilateral kinsman. About half-a-dozen were described to me as sons of well-known neighbours. For the rest I have no information. Recruitment, which took place at Chinese New Year and around the Dragon Boat Festival (the 5th day of the 5th lunar month) was normally through the local \"grapevine\", or, much less commonly, by written advertisement posted at one or other of the shops in Shaukiwan or Sai Kung which specialised in this kind of thing. Applicants answered the advertisements by approaching the shopkeepers who, already known to the prospective employers, then acted as “introducers\" (gaay siew yan, introduce man recommended). At New Year 1952 Chung Fuk Hei recruited two new fokis in this way, one of his previous employees having left to join a more congenial boat family in Kau Sai, the other (a poor relation) having been sacked for laziness (and gluttony: Fuk Hei was continually grumbling about the number of bowls of rice his employees managed to put away in a day).\n\nHired men received full board and lodging on the boats on which they worked, and a money wage which in most cases worked out at about 4% of the value of the catch. Women received board and lodging, too, and a sum of about $H.K.15 a month. On some boats the 4% share was paid at irregular intervals as money came in and convenience dictated; on others, more regularly. Usually payments were handed over about once a week or twice a month. The share was always calculated on the gross total takings before the deduction of any other expenses. It was several times explained to me that it would not be fair (mm gung doe, lit: not right reach, or mm gung ping, lit: not right level) for fokis to have to share in the expenses. Thus while",
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    {
        "id": 210619,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1985",
        "page_number": 226,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "207\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE DECLINE OF TIU CHUNG\n\nAS A CHINESE NEW YEAR FLOWER*\n\nTiu Chung (Enkianthus quinqueflorus) is a native plant of southern China and is one of the best known flowering plants in Hong Kong. It is a rigid wild shrub with a blotched stem, attaining a height of about 2 metres. Its shiny deciduous leaves are narrowly elliptical in outline and are crowded at the branch tips. At the end of January and early February, clusters of small waxy pink bell-like flowers appear from the ends of the branches and for this reason it is called “Tiu Chung\", or \"Hanging Bell Flower\". Since its flowering period coincides with the Lunar New Year Festival, it has long been widely used for decorative purposes in living rooms and, to a lesser extent, in business premises.\n\nThe custom of displaying Tiu Chung during the Lunar New Year became well established among the residents of Guangzhou (Canton) early in the Ch'ing Dynasty. The popularity of the plant was due, in addition to its decorative value, to the fact that people could derive favourable symbolic meanings from its flowering and seeding characteristics. The bells at the tips of the branches were interpreted as \"Chong Yuen Ko Chun” (重院高樽), meaning \"Came First in the Imperial Examination”. The great number of bells and seeds was taken to symbolize \"Dor Tze Dor Suen\" (多子多孫), meaning \"having numerous descendants\". These were highly regarded values.\n\nThis custom was adopted in the late 19th Century by the Chinese residents of urban Hong Kong, who were predominantly Cantonese. Since the plant was abundant in several places locally, such as Tai Tam, Castle Peak and Lantau, its branches were cut for sale in the local markets. The Government, alarmed at the widespread destruction of the plant, introduced legislation in 1913 (Section 3 of the Licensing Ordinance) to prohibit its possession and sale. The prohibition was later incorporated in...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210936,
        "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-1986",
        "page_number": 286,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "269\n\ntions, was the senior military official at Kowloon City. The scroll has been kept by a member of the Wong Wai Chak Tong (**) of Cheung Chau, who has looked after the shrine for the past twenty years or more. He had it from the previous keeper in return for keeping the scroll and other objects — there is a table inscribed lo tang pang and for erecting the matshed. He gets all the oil and incense money given by worshippers during the three days of the first month in the lunar year that the matshed is in position. It is not put up at any other time. A fuller account, with an illustration of the scroll, is at pp 311-318 of the RAS Journal, Vol 15 (1975).\n\nThe street associations are interesting. The Pak She Association has office premises, from which it provides services and amenities for residents of the street. It takes part in the procession (chut wui i) for the Bun Festival, the major religious activity of the year in which all the leading associations take part. It also has a recognised annual part in the organisation of the festival. As stated above, the Chung Hing group has no premises, but uses the Tin Hau Temple (AGB) in that street for its meetings. It takes an annual part in the chut wui for the Bun Festival, and forms part of the organizing group like the Pak She Association. The Tai San Street people have no premises and take no part in the procession but have this curious connection with the lo tang pang. The Hing Lung Street people have association premises put up about 1960 when I was D.O. on a piece of vacant ground. They are connected with the procession for the Bun Festival but not the organisation of the festival itself.\n\nSome of the associations celebrate the lantern festival on other days during this period, probably because of the difficulties in securing accommodation in the few restaurants large enough to take the numbers of people involved. I was told that the dates do not vary and have been followed for many years.\n\nHong Kong, 1987\n\nNOTES\n\nJames Hayes\n\nThe day of my visit was also the 15th day of the lunar new year (hsin-hai year), the proper date for celebrating the Feast of Lanterns. For information on this festival see Juliet Bredon and Igor Mitrophanow's The Moon Year, A Record of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211080,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1987",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "116\n\nThe dragon boat procession reformed and set off in the direction of the groom's home where the newly weds would live. Two women in front were wearing funny hats: one banging the gong while the other thumped a plastic oil drum. They were followed by eight pairs of women rowing in formation, while at the back were the two women with the rudder of tin cans and the woman representing the dragon's tail. Above the bride's head was held the sieve of pomelo leaves and ginger root, carried by the 'fortunate' woman. One attendant, wearing a Western style short evening dress, was carrying a pink umbrella held over the bride, to which was tied a sprig of cypress and pomelo leaves with red cord. A second attendant carried the red and gold patterned tin suitcase known as gar chong (#), containing the jewellery the bride had been given, while a further attendant brought a large suitcase with the bride's belongings. Another woman carried a white enamel basin decorated with red characters for double happiness and flower motifs. In the basin food and other items were wrapped in red cellophane paper, and decorated with cypress leaves.\n\nThe procession stopped briefly in front of the earth god and again firecrackers were set off. At the Ma Jo temple the young couple paused and bowed three times before continuing to their new home. Cymbals rose to a crescendo; the couple, followed by other relatives and the Chilin, went into the house, and a long string of firecrackers was set off.\n\nThe rest of the procession now dispersed as those inside the house settled down for a cool soft drink. It was now 2.15 pm and in the street women were feasting on food prepared that morning, especially on a salty vegetable soup known as ham choy cha (**), chicken, and for dessert, sweet dumplings which are only served at Lunar New Year and special occasions such as wedding ceremonies. These are considered a lucky symbol of getting together. Later that afternoon the newly weds would offer tea to the groom's parents, and then at 6.00 pm all who had taken part in the ceremony were invited to a restaurant in the village of Sha Tau Kok for a large feast to round off the day's festivities.\n\nPlates 19-23 illustrate this article. They were taken by the author.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211410,
        "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-1988",
        "page_number": 126,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "102\n\nand others. Grandfather was the book-keeper and his 'sworn brother', Lum Gam Chin, was the manager. In those days Chinese immigrants were very clannish and used these stores for various purposes. Consequently Wing On Tai was patronized by those from the See Dai Doo District. They spoke a subdialect of Fukienese known as Nam Long. Many of them were rice farmers from Waiahole, Waikane and Punaluu on Oahu and from the Panalei Valley on Kauai. They would charge their purchases during the year and would clear their accounts just before the arrival of the lunar New Year; they would send their grain to be milled and sold; they would remit money to their families in China through the store facilities; they would stop by to socialize; and some would use the living quarters located behind the store as a temporary stop-over place. In those days meals were served to the employees, an amenity extended to visitors. Therefore, Wing On Tai was not only a place of business but also a community centre, as were other stores to their own clansmen.\n\nIt was around 1899 that Wing On Tai started the Iwilei Rice Mill on a large piece of land on Iwilei Road, in the heart of the then Red Light district. Ping Lim wrote to Father in Hilo that Yim Quon, one of the principal shareholders, had selected Chew Lum Chan (probably a distant cousin) to oversee the weighing of the grain. There were also living quarters on the grounds for the employees and I remember being there with Mother to visit Mrs. Lum Gwo, a daughter of a Chan clansman married to the book-keeper who succeeded Grandfather. Even for that short distance we went there in a hack, a horse-drawn buggy. In the early 1920s when Lum Siu Bun was manager, the two businesses were dissolved and the mill property was sold to the Hawaiian Pineapple Company and on this land stands the huge pineapple tank. Because Grandfather had deeded his holdings to Father when he left for China, Mother and we children received several thousand dollars of the liquidation distributions. Mother sent her share to First Paternal Uncle and Second Paternal Uncle, and used the balance to build a duplex on our Fort and Kuakini Streets property where a store was already standing.\n\nGrandfather cared very much for his second wife. When she became ill, reportedly from tuberculosis, he nursed her tenderly. When she died on 4 October 1899, he felt the loss so keenly that he sought solace in opium. His grief was compounded by the death of Ping Lim a few years",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
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    {
        "id": 211466,
        "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-1988",
        "page_number": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "158\n\nRuth's death in 1932, after several years of illness, was a physical and emotional drain on Mother, but surprisingly, she took this loss with much fortitude. In times of adversity and loneliness, she must have found support, solace and strength in her religious faith, in her loving family and in her close friends.\n\nMother died on 20 November, 1974, following a stroke, at the age of 87. We three daughters had tried to make life easier and happier for her. She had the companionship of Dora and her two sons since 1950 when they returned to Honolulu to live with her. Mother had made several extended visits with Helen in Chicago and with me in Brookline and had travelled with me by car as far north as Bar Harbour and as far south as Philadelphia, and across the United States through the Southwest via Yosemite Park to San Francisco. I earnestly hope that we had given her some real happiness. We are grateful for the sacrifices she had made without expecting anything in return. A simple, unobtrusive and intelligent lady, devoted to husband and children, loyal to family and friends, and strong in her religious beliefs this was my Mother. She had been my support, my counsellor one who gave me life and nourished me with love. I shall miss her always.\n\nMy Sisters and I\n\nWe were a family of five girls\n\n―\n\n▬\n\nRuth, Me Yuk, Helen, Dora and I. The three older ones were about 20 months apart in age and were born in our first home on Prison Road. In those days Chinese women did not have the benefit of either prenatal care or professional attendance at time of delivery; they relied on the help of midwives or experienced relatives. Although Mother had arranged for me to be delivered by a midwife, the latter could not keep her commitment because my arrival was too close to the lunar New Year. It was fortunate that a Hawaiian neighbour was available. She cleaned my eyes, massaged them so that they would become large and round, and sucked my breasts so that they would grow large and full.\n\nI have no recollection of Me Yuk as she was sent to California while still a baby. Ruth and I were each other's playmate most of the time in those early years. I recall having only one doll between us named To Gai and Tong Chen (words without meaning that we had concocted),",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211632,
        "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": 47,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "22\n\nremoval to T'ai Miao.\n\nIn Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne.\n\nAlthough the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him.\n\nAn English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote \"Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'\"*.\n\nIt is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211640,
        "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": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "30\n\non an altar in a folk religion temple in Pongol in northern Singapore.\n\nIn the Feng Shen Yen I, mythical tales known to most Chinese, Yang Chien is described as the nephew of the Jade Emperor. Yang, also known as Erh Lang in some stories and in some temples, was a mythical general fighting for the legendary Shang (Yin) dynasty during the wars of the 12th century BC.\n\nAnother popular romance of the Ming, the Journey to the West, better known as the story of Monkey, tells of the incident when a heavenly being was exiled to Earth for re-incarnation as a punishment for assaulting one of the Jade Emperor's daughters. By mistake he entered the womb of a sow and was born half-man and half-pig and is now best known as Piggy, one of Monkey's assistants.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's festivals are celebrated on his birthday, the 8th and 9th of the first lunar month, and on the 6th of the eleventh lunar month, the anniversary of his ascension. In parts of Taiwan he is also feasted on the 24th of the sixth lunar month, and in South-East Asia on the 6th of the fourth, and fifth of the eighth lunar months. Though it is not a date on which humans especially revere the Jade Emperor, all the gods of Heaven assemble on the 19th of the first lunar month to pay their respects to him.\n\nHe is offered a feast on his birthday which includes duck and chicken, but must include pork. These offerings are placed on a table in the open, before the front entrance to the courtyard, together with candles and the large-size sticks of incense. Two whole sugar canes with leaves intact are especially popular offerings in Fukien communities to celebrate the escape of Fukienese who hid amongst the fields of cane to avoid being killed by an enemy. The survivors offered such canes to the Jade Emperor in thanks and the custom has persisted.\n\nIn general, routine offerings before the altar of the Jade Emperor consist of the standard three sticks of smouldering incense. However, offerings of a vegetarian feast are made to him in Hong Kong on the first day of the lunar new year, accompanied by the burning of spirit money. Not all families perform this ritual, many Hoklo and Hakka families prefer only to offer the basic vegetarian meal.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is usually accompanied on the altar by images of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211648,
        "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": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "38\n\none of the temple staff thought that Chih (b) bore the personal name Meng-piao (E).\n\nA very few deities, on the face of it Pestilence deities, in practice turn out to be protective Wang Yeh. One such example highlights the probability that local devotees in southern China some considerable time ago, perceiving that their local protective deity bore the title Wang Yeh, assumed that he must be a Pestilence Wang Yeh and treated him as such. This was in a temple in Tungkang, south of Kaohsiung, said in a guide book to have an impressive display of 80 to 90 images of Wang Yeh. It turned out to have but one major Wang Yeh, a protective hero, Wen Hung. Wen Hung, also known as Wen Wang Yeh, a title said to have been awarded him by a T'ang dynasty emperor for his services, lived during the seventh century AD. A dozen or so portable images of him also stood on the altar table before the main altar. A handbook presented by the temple committee not only provided Wen Hung's biography but also contained charts shewing the routes his images had been carried around the parish for five successive years during the annual 'pestilence festivals'. This suggests that two cults have been combined, the cult of the T'ang hero Wen Hung, known as Prince Wen (Wen Wang Yeh) and, almost certainly due to a misunderstanding, the cult of the Pestilence Wang Yeh. Wen Hung's image is taken out during the Pestilence festival during the fifth month but unlike Pestilence Wang Yeh, he also has his own and more important festival celebrated on his birthday during the eleventh lunar month. His original legend, over the years, has had added to it elements of the Pestilence Wang Yeh legend, and to add to the confusion he now has his own Pestilence Wang Yeh boat. Such cases of apparent Pestilence Wang Yeh having a specific and individual personality are not at all common though they have been noted in several other cults in Taiwan.\n\nAlthough there are four temples in Yunlin and one in Taipei county dedicated to ten specific Pestilence Wang Yeh, known always as the Five-Year Excellencies (†) or (EFE), the maximum number of images of Wang Yeh with different surnames seen by the author on any one altar is seven, the Ch'i Fu Ch'ien Sui (LT) in Tainan. In each of the temples dedicated to the Five-Year Excellencies images had been borrowed by devotees for private worship at home. The collective group of the Five-Year Excellencies each has an individual birthday though it was decided in 1662 that they would be feted on one day in a collective feast on the 29th of the tenth lunar month, with one",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211656,
        "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": 71,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "46\n\noffered entertainments similar to those offered to deified humans such as opera, banquets and regular meals with tea and wine. Offerings to Pestilence Wang Yeh usually consist of incense, oil, tea, wine, cakes, cooked rice, vegetables and fruit and never meat, poultry or fish. In a number of temples images of the Pestilence Wang Yeh have 'hell money' placed under them, though this is possibly due to the devotees' desire to please and appease every god in the temple irrespective of their role.\n\nSeances are held in some Pestilence Wang Yeh temples with a medium communing with the Wang Yeh himself to discover the cause of a specific disease; that is, what the actual demonic attack consists of, so that the devotee may take all the necessary precautions.\n\nSome spirit mediums in Pestilence Wang Yeh temples perform their rituals and exorcisms under the watchful eye of the image or images of Wang Yeh brought to the temples by devotees from their own home altars.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh have also been seen in temples in Kiangsi province bordering northern Fukien, though no reference to them in other areas adjacent to Fukien province has been noted in native or foreign travel or religious books.\n\nThe dates of Pestilence Wang Yeh festivals vary from temple to temple though a popular date is the 26th of the fourth lunar month; another is the 15th of the eighth lunar month. Each year during the fifth lunar month festival a 'plague boat' (Wang Ch'uan) made of paper or, in large communities, of wood, is laden with captured demonic spirits (the cause of disease) and pushed out to sea or set afire on the shore. This is a three-day event during which the Wang Yeh are entertained and feasted before the boats are despatched in flames together with their passengers, the demons. In practice images of the Wang Yeh and their wooden tablets remain in the temple and nowadays only paper tablets bearing the name of the Wang Yehs are despatched with the demons.\n\nIt has been the practice for a new small shrine to be set up in honour of the Wang Yeh wherever the boat drifts ashore. The Wang Yeh boat festival is rarely seen nowadays in Taiwan; it was popular elsewhere until fairly recently, for example it was seen in Malacca until the mid-thirties. In Malacca it was referred to as the Wang Kang and was held for the five days from the 21st of the tenth lunar month every",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211704,
        "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": 119,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "94\n\nJOSS STICK MANUFACTURING: \n\nA STUDY OF A TRADITIONAL INDUSTRY IN HONG KONG\n\nCHAN KA YAN\n\nIntroduction\n\nAncestral worship is one of the most significant customs in the lives of the Chinese. Respect for the dead links one intimately with the past which, in turn, is believed to be an integral part of the present. Among the Chinese, filial piety for the dead usually requires the burning of joss sticks. Burning joss sticks is not only an essential part of the rituals of devotion to the ancestors, it is also indispensable to the worship of the Gods and at occasional feasts such as Chinese New Year, Ch'ing-ming, Chung-yang, and on every first and fifteenth day of the Lunar Calendar. Indeed, to \"worship with incense\" is a traditional activity that most Chinese regard as being both proper and, indeed, essential.\n\nWithin Hsin-an County, the significance of the joss stick was more than merely religious. The joss stick industry in fact stimulated the early economic prosperity of the Hong Kong region. The origin of the joss stick industry in the Hong Kong region can be dated as early as the late Ming Dynasty when incense trees were cultivated and trade in incense wood prospered. Even today, the joss stick industry still preserves its traditional character intact. Despite one or two machines having been adopted to facilitate the production of incense coils, the manufacture of joss sticks has remained a traditional handicraft. The employment of primitive tools, the choice of raw materials, and the end products themselves all seem to transcend the time barrier. This article aims at studying the evolution of the industry in Hong Kong, its development and its integrity under the pressure of technological development.\n\nTechnical terms used in the industry, and place names in China are given in Wade-Giles. Place names in Hong Kong follow the form given in the Gazetteer. The measures used convert to metric measurements as in the following table:",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211949,
        "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": 364,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "339\n\nbut moved the Dei-Jong Wong inside the Buddhist hall instead.\"7 After the building of the Buddhist hall two of the nuns were added to the managers of the trust, and since then the Dangs did not have much to do with the nunnery except that the related ritual associations go annually to worship at the charitable grave.\n\nB. Household and village worship\n\nEveryday worship is local and is mainly performed by women. Such is the case of a family of Tsi Tong Tsuen who gave me information on this point. This family seldom worshipped in any temple. For weddings they worshipped at the Mau-Ging Tong ancestral hall, where the head of the family also went when he was small for the annual worship, and to get his shares of the ritual pork. This he no longer does, having stopped a few years ago. In some years he also joins the ancestral grave worship in Tsuen Wan. On Ching Ming and Chung Yeung his family went to worship their own near ancestors. On festivals his family worshipped at Tsi Tong Tsuen's shrines to the Earth God and the God of Earth and Grain and the place for the Well God.\n\nI was able to talk with some of the older women. One Tai Hong Wai woman born in the 1910s told me that ordinarily her family worshipped at home. They went to neither the Jau and Wong Temple nor the Hung-Sing Temple. They had no share in the Hung-Sing Temple. They did go to the Daai-Wong Temple at Yuen Long, early in the first month of the lunar calendar, but it is the business of their men only: the temple belonged to their distant ancestor. Similarly, an elderly Kat Hing Wai lady told me that Pak Wai Tsuen (i.e., Shui Tau and Shui Mei) people worshipped at the Hung Sing Temple. I have witnessed part of a waan-san (“thanksgiving”) ritual in Kat Hing Wai, which took place at the san-teng. I was told that for impromptu religious activities such as divination, some of the Kat Hing Wai women went to a temple at Tai Shue Ha [which is, as far as I know, not otherwise of interest to the Dangs of Kam-Tin] and some went to Ling-Wan Ji. They went to the Jau and Wong temple mainly during the jiu, and the temples at Shui Tau and Shui Mei were for their respective villagers alone.\n\nA san teng was probably considered to be of central importance to its village. When I walked with an elder to his house we passed the san-teng of Tai Hong Wai. He explained to me that it was the wai-jyu, and he compared its status in the village to that of the most senior and",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212095,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 37,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "14\n\nvillage scholar once described to me by Tsuen Wan elders as \"having no degree, but scholarly (man hok ka), liking books and study\"; persons who might themselves be schoolmasters or could otherwise maintain a reputation for being educated men. The influence of such persons in the village was correspondingly great.25\n\n5. Augmented by Other Means of Ethical Education\n\n(a) Story-telling\n\nOne other means of educating children in the standard and expected norms was through story-telling and related pastimes. In response to questions put to elders in the Tsuen Wan villages about books and story-telling in their youth, various titles were mentioned, some of them surviving in hand-copied editions. It had mostly been the elderly villagers of their day who had owned such books and, in their leisure hours, had transmitted their contents to the younger members of their families. Judging from the titles listed, the moral content of many of these stories was high, emphasizing such qualities as loyalty, charity and filial piety, denouncing oppression and injustice, and showing the old principle of retributive justice in operation.26 Though intended mainly for amusement, their contents had the effect of reinforcing the ethical indoctrination received from other sources. These customary extensions to formal education were the more influential because there had been no newspapers or periodicals on sale in the Tsuen Wan shops in their youth, i.e. in the period 1910-1925. Thus the field of information had then been restricted to traditional reading material and its various means of transmission.27\n\n(b) The Man and Puppet Opera Stories\n\nWe can now pass from books and stories to the opera. Even in the 1970s, it was possible to glimpse the hold which the old entertainment still exerted upon the people. In Tsuen Wan, they still flocked to see the traditional opera performances held in the temporary matsheds erected on waste or temporarily vacant ground at festival times, on the temple deities' birthdays, and at important events in the calendar such as the Hungry Ghosts' Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lunar New Year.\n\nIn describing the staging of plays to celebrate the birthdays of the",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212158,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 100,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "77\n\nexalt the magical power of the tree god.'\n\nOn the 23rd day of the first lunar month in 1925 just west of Suifu in Szechuan province some Chinese saw a beggar lying on the ground. They returned very shortly after to find the beggar had disappeared completely, the ground where he had lain was bone dry and his imprint on the wet grass stood out. They realized that he must have been an Immortal and built a small shrine dedicated to him. Once a year thereafter, on the 23rd of the first month anniversary local people held a special festival to celebrate his disappearance.\n\nInnumerable stories are told of the creation of such new deities. These tend to have the following common factors:\n\na. a human dies under unusual circumstances and his spirit is 'found' to have special and supernatural characteristics.\n\nb. An image is carved and placed on an altar as a direct result of the god's behaviour or action. Usually the deity has appeared in a dream, or in a more tangible form as a piece of wood sometimes rough, at other times shaped (a gate or door) — floating in the sea, on a lake or a river, and manifesting supernatural characteristics.\n\nAlthough in theory the deification of a dead soul requires the joint authority of the supreme Taoist deity, the Jade Emperor and the terrestrial emperor of China, there have been a large number of minor deities in particular who owe their deification to the common people, voting with their feet, going to shrines to offer up incense and oil. And just as gods fade and disappear because of lack of support from devotees who have found other and apparently more potent deities, so the creation of new gods springs from a natural but unusual happening such as was the case of the small boy in Singapore, who, as we shall see later, was killed in 1963 by lightning.\n\nCults spring up whenever the spirit of a dead person responds to public devotions and offerings and grants devotees their requests. The deceased need not be from the distant past. An image of Chiang Kai-shek, who only died in 1976, has been seen on at least one major altar in Taiwan, against the wishes of the Kuomintang government, though they would appear to have turned a blind eye. Sun Yat-sen, one of the Republic's greatest worthies, has also been seen in both image and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212159,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 101,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "78\n\nicon form on minor altars in Taiwan. These icons are understandable as portraits of Sun the 'Father of the Nation' appear with those of Chiang Kai-shek in offices, schools, barracks etc. where they were bowed to each morning as a sign of respect. Among the less literate and more superstitious it is not difficult to see how this has led to such icons appearing on altars with incense burnt before them.\n\nIn the mid-1960s, the Kuomintang organised a political demonstration in Cambodia on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the middle of the month during which Hungry Spirits return to the human world for thirty days. During the demonstration public sacrifices to the spirits of the victims of the communists in China were performed. There was also talk of deification of one or two but this came to nothing.\n\nIt has not been unknown for outstanding living persons to have a sanctuary built in their honour. The magistrate of Ch'ing-ho district in Hopei was such a man. He brought about a substantial reduction in taxes and other government levies and thus lightened the financial burden on a hard pressed people. In 1886, two years after he had been transferred to administer another district, the grateful populace of Ch'ing-ho built a shrine in his honour.\n\nIn Singapore in 1970 a new cult was founded near Woodlands on the northern tip of the island when the deity, Wu T'ien Chu, appeared to a Singapore Fukienese man in a dream. The deity explained to the Fukienese that he, Wu T'ien-chu [The Military Master of Heaven], was a mighty deity who had chosen the Fukienese man to become the 'Master Warrior' of his cult. He required a new bungalow to be converted into accommodation for the founder with the lounge becoming the altar hall. He told the Fukienese man that he would protect his devotees, cure their illnesses and bring them good fortune. A statue of the deity was carved in the likeness of the spirit as he appeared in the founder's dream and placed on the altar. The founder, the Fukienese man, explained that with his wide knowledge of all religions he encourages devotees from every nation and creed to worship in his temple. He explained that the world's most powerful deity is the Jade Emperor, with Sakyamuni, The Buddha, as his deputy. Next in seniority is Kuan Yin followed by Wu T'ien-chu who has a great many assistants and warriors under his charge, none of whom is ever portrayed in image form. He continued that the four pillars of the cult are \"the four gods (shen) of other religions, Buddha, Christ, the Pope and Mohammed”.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212163,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 105,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "a cure. He was born in Anhui province during the latter part of the seventeenth century and was a kind and upright junior official. He was regarded as a local sage and much respected. Particularly skilled at medicine, he saved countless lives, and one year he successfully mediated between two fighting factions. He died in his bed and proved so popular that within a few years an image of him was carved and placed on a local altar. In 1714 a devotee from Hsing-an prefecture in Fukien province emigrated to Taiwan and brought the cult with him, building a shrine in his honour in Taiwan. Much later, a scholar from Taipei, visiting Tainan, the local capital, to sit his first examination, passed the shrine and knelt before the deity promising that if he were successful in his examination he would set up a similar altar in Taipei. He was successful and did as he had promised. Much later, when the cult had grown much larger, a temple was built in Taipei where the image of Hsin Ting now stands.\n\nThe third case of deification of a charismatic worthy is Ch'en Chang, born in Yunlin in central Taiwan during the reign of the Ch'ien Lung emperor. He was a noted philanthropist in the town of Tsao-t'un in Nantou county where he moved later in life. He did numerous good deeds and was greatly respected. His good works, however, annoyed a local petty tyrant who had Ch'en convicted on a trumped-up charge and imprisoned. Ch'en died in gaol. The locals mourned his death and built a shrine in his honour in which they first placed his tablet (later to be replaced by a standard image with no special identifying characteristics). His title then became General Ch'en despite the fact that he had never served in the army nor had he ever fought in any battle. He became the local protective deity with an annual festival on the 15th of the first lunar month.\n\nCults of the Deified Spirits of Insignificant People\n\nThe following are examples of legends and cults connected with ordinary people. Cults of twelve deceased very ordinary people have been chosen at random from the hundreds of such stories available. They highlight how their cults, some preserved by oral tradition and others with their histories now long forgotten, evolved.\n\nA young man in his early twenties was killed in a now forgotten accident near Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. He was buried on the spot and, because he had been a brave settler, his family, the Ts'ais,\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212164,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 106,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "83\n\ntook some of the soil from his tomb and raised a shrine to him in his native village nearby. Almost immediately other villagers discovered that one could obtain good advice through divination at the shrine and his fame spread. Shortly after the Japanese occupied Formosa some of their cavalry passed through the village destroying crops. The angry Chinese villagers were unable to protest but that night as the cavalry troop tethered their horses around the shrine one of the horses neighed once and dropped dead. This was seen as hidden retribution by the spirit of Ts'ai on behalf of the villagers, punishing the Japanese without providing an opportunity to blame the villagers for the mishap.\n\nA very local cult in a village near Tainan is based on the worship of a 'Young Girl' (Hsiao-niang). A two-year-old baby died in about 1908 and was deified after she reappeared as a spirit in 1935. The cult would appear to have been forced upon the family by the appearance of, and pressure from, the deity herself.\n\nMiss Ch'en Jui lived during the Ch'ing dynasty, 'about a hundred years ago', in Yen-shui in southern Taiwan where she died a spinster at the age of 28. All that is known about her according to the temple plaque is that 'her spirit did not disperse and she was deified'. A thatched shrine built over her grave was rebuilt with bricks in 1928 and the only image within is that of Miss Ch'en. Devotees claim that since she was deified she has delivered them from perils and cured their illnesses.\n\nA native of Chia I, a town in central Taiwan, was killed in about 1853. A short record of his life is kept in Chia I itself although the local residents who worship at his shrine know nothing more than his name, Luo An, and that he was a neighbourhood peasant who died \"about a hundred years ago\". None knew why he had been deified. The short record explained that Luo An had been involved in the fighting around Chia I between migrants from Chang-chou and those from Ch'uan-chou, both groups from the mainland. Although he had neither official nor unofficial status he struggled hard to prevent the fighting spreading into the town of Chia I itself. After he had succeeded and peace had been restored he was accused of acting in his own interests and killed. People remembered him as a brave man who had saved their town and a shrine was erected in his honour. His cult grew, with Luo An as a local protective spirit with an annual festival celebrated on the 29th day of the first lunar month. Like many of the very local",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212767,
        "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-1992",
        "page_number": 76,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "61\n\nNovember 1862\n\n1863 March\n\n1863 May 1864 April\n\n1864\n\n1864-1865\n\n1867 Winter\n\n1867\n\nhis junk and three others\n\nCaptured at Fu-shan-chan by Taiping rebels. Mesny held first in Soochow and Chang-shu, then at Pao-ying the Taiping camp, and finally in Nanking\n\nRescued by Adkins, the British Consul at Chin-kiang aboard HMS Slaney and taken back to Chin-kiang\n\nJoined Chinese Imperial Customs Service, Hankow\n\nResigned from Customs Service after fourteen months Involved in cotton broking\n\nEstablished the Hankow Horse Bazaar, a private hotel in Hankow, and set up Hupei Iron and Brassworks, Han-yang Romantic interlude with a Chinese widow in Hankow Mesny called on Tso Tsung-tang during the latter's visit to Hankow and was appointed his French and English Secretary, and was further offered the opportunity to accompany Tso on his campaign to the Northwest. Mesny also claimed that he had made recommendations to Marquis Tso Tsung-tang for a number of undertakings to help modernise China\n\nSold the Huper Iron and Brassworks to officials of the Viceroy of Szechuan province\n\nMesny's trek to war\n\n1868 June\n\nLate July or early August Late August\n\nSeptember\n\nLeft Hankow, after five year's residence, for Szechuan to become a drill instructor with the Szechuan Force\n\nArrived Chungking\n\nDeparted Chungking for Kueichou to join the Szechuan Force suppressing the Miao rebellion: he accepted employment as a military instructor (wu-chiao hsi)\n\nArrived Niu-ch'ang, the headquarters of the Szechuan Force in Kueichou\n\nSeptember 1868-May 1874 Involved in the military campaigns to suppress the Miao\n\nThe Advance: Late Summer 1868-March 1869\n\n1869\n\nPromoted Colonel, awarded the Star of China and the Flowery Plume The Retreat: Summer 1869-Summer 1870 1870/1871\n\n1871\n\n1872\n\nHelped form a joint stock company in Kuei-yang to \"recover mercury\"\n\nThe Withdrawal: mid-August 1870-Lunar New Year 1871\n\nca 1873\n\n1873\n\n1874 Spring\n\nEstablished a small day school for poor boys and girls in the Jade Emperor temple in Kuei-yang, importing suitable books and paying a Chinese teacher, a struggling student painter, Chin Yü-t'ang Siege of Hsin-ch'eng in upper Kueichou (Mesny involved in preparations for the siege during 1871)\n\nWent to Szechuan with General Chou Ta-wu\n\nPromoted Major-General and awarded the Ying-yung Pa-t'u-lu Left Kueichou for Szechuan: Margary expected to meet Mesny in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213071,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 139,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "120\n\ndrought. He is also renowned for his supernatural involvement in the construction of major bridges.\n\nIn some villages when a person dies, an image of Ch'ing-shui is taken from the temple for a fourteen or twenty-one day stay, to help pass on prayers and supplications of the relatives to the Underworld on behalf of the newly deceased soul.\n\nThe dates of his annual festival vary considerably from temple to temple. The most popular dates are the 6th of the first lunar month and the double sixth. In Singapore it is celebrated more often than not on the 7th of the first, with the second and fourth days of the twelfth lunar months being quite popular too in Malaysia and Taiwan. In a few places he is revered on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month, the anniversary of his death. In Singapore his cult followers claim that his festival is not celebrated with processions as other cults do with their deities.\n\nSan P'ing Tsu-shih\n\nThe identity of the third cult deity, San P'ing Tsu-shih, has proved controversial as a number of temple keepers in Singapore and Malaysia have claimed that he is identical with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. The majority, however, believe him to be simply an influential Buddhist priest whose name is now lost. He was generally known by his name in religion, I-chung and, according to T'ang inscriptions, was considered to have been a patriarch of Chinese Buddhism, a local claim which failed. Nowadays he is revered by devotees in the popular religion temples where his image stands on its own altar and where he is prayed to, especially, for his ability to cure sickness.\n\nHis cult centre is some twenty miles south west of Changchou in P'ing-ho district where his temple is popular with pilgrims from Amoy and Changchou who travel to the remote site by bus in large numbers. Very small images of the deity are to be seen hanging from the rear-view mirrors in taxis in Amoy where he is claimed to be the most popular of all protective deities.\n\nLegend claims that he lived in Changpu in Fukien province, a learned man who was able to predict the patterns of lives and the dates of individuals' deaths. According to a temple keeper in Nantou in Taiwan,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213166,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 234,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "216\n\nThe main ceremony consisted of the kar ye (godfather) and kat neung sitting below large Chinese characters, (meaning 'double happiness'), and a 3-inch diameter, draped red-paper 'streamer'. The 'son' then poured and 'offered up' cups of tea to his adopted parents and kowtowed. By accepting and drinking the tea this signified that the couple had taken the 28-year old man as their 'son'. He would, however, continue to live with his real parents. As with most Chinese ceremonies today, photographers were present to capture important moments on film.\n\nThe procedure of offering cups of tea was repeated by the new godson 'doing the honours' to the wife's eldest sister and her husband, as well as to another unmarried sister. At an adoption ceremony such as this, and on occasions like a parent's birthday and at Lunar New Year, such action displays filial piety. It is interesting that tea is always presented and drunk, not wine. Kowtowing is still sometimes performed in traditional Chinese families although it is not nearly so common in Hong Kong as it was, even 40 years ago.\n\nIn Chinese culture presents are commonly exchanged at this ceremony, of course they included the usual red 'lucky packets' containing money. The godparents also gave their godson a neatly packaged box holding two bowls and two spoons. These signified, 'May you never go hungry'. In China, which has been plagued by famine throughout history, such a wish was appropriate. After all, even as late as the early 1960s, 30 million (the exact figure is debatable) died after the crop failure during the 'Great Leap Forward'.\n\nSeveral members of the two families involved in the Wanchai restaurant adoption ceremony are professional musicians. The godfather composes Chinese opera. On the evening in question his four to tat (*apprentices or pupils) also poured and offered up tea to their 'master'.\n\nThe last 'event' of the evening was the meal, which, of course, included roast suckling pig and shark's fin soup, washed down with brandy. As one would expect, as many of the guests worked in the entertainment business, karaoke accompanied the dinner. There was many a star performance.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213288,
        "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": 110,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "90\n\nmany clients as possible and earning as much as he can before he emigrates before 1997.'\n\nWhy does a person engage a geomancer? Normally it is because, for whatever specific reason, life is not 'right'. A person may feel unwell. There may be a looming, or, if one is in business, a corporate, danger. Why did my competitor do better than me? Perhaps his father's grave has better fung shui?\n\nCase Study Two\n\nBelieving that, if a person wants to write about rickshaws he or she needs to pull a rickshaw, at least for a day to get the feel of things, the following is an account of a visit paid by the author, in the company of a fung shui consultant, to business premises. Much fung shui lore for the home also applies to other types of accommodation. Incidentally, rather unlike being a Buddhist or Taoist priest, it is highly respectable to be a fung shui specialist. They are held in high esteem and fit neatly into the overall social and hierarchical pattern. Most practise on a part-time basis. This largely male profession is regarded as an avocation or almost as a hobby by many, and, in the past, they were transported in sedan chairs. Even today they depend to a considerable extent on hospitality and gifts, instead of fees. Nevertheless, practising fung shui can be quite remunerative.\n\nReturning to our second case study: the consultant has been engaged to advise the owner of these business premises on a regular basis, usually visiting shortly after every Lunar New Year. On this particular visit, however, the fung shui master was summoned specially. Business had not been good. The master had to advise what could be done to rectify the situation. On such visits the date and time of birth of the owner of the premises are taken into account in some calculations.\n\nWhen the author and the master arrived the latter was carrying his loh poon (geomantic compass) () of which there are variations (Baker,1980:65). It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe in detail exactly how this instrument is employed. It is, however, divided into a number of (the maximum is about 38) concentric rings and segments. These are inscribed with symbols which are physical representations of the cosmos with its array of interrelated real and imaginary creatures, forces and phenomena.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213377,
        "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": 199,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "186\n\nin matters relating to personal relationships. During Lunar New Year, hundreds of people come from all over the Territory, even from as far away as Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, to offer prayers at the foot of the tree and to throw red and yellow prayer flags, attached to strings weighted with stones, up into the branches.\n\nOnly in four villages was it claimed that the special trees were the home of earth gods. At Lin Au, the large, old Cinnamomum trees were planted by the villagers when the settlement was founded in order to protect the shrine that was built to honour the ancestors. The earth gods have their home in the trees and also roam about in the wood. Lin Au and Sheung Tsuen were the only cases found where this was said to happen, but it may be that such a belief could have been more widespread in the past. At Pak Kong, a grove of six trees protects the Tai Wong shrine to Tin Hau beside which is a smaller Paak Kung that is used to worship the earth gods who live in the trees. Kuk Po is also an example of an ancestral tree which is also the home of the local earth god.\n\nIn most cases, however, the tree adjacent to the shrine is there simply to provide shelter. In the study carried out by the author, a variety of reasons were given as to why specific trees were protected and the commonest reason given was that the trees protected the important shrines of the village, which were both Tai Wong and Paak Kung shrines. The shrines were situated at important fung shui locations, usually protecting the entrance points of the village from loss of chi (good luck or prosperity) and affording protection from undesirable forces. The spirits live in the shrines rather than in the trees themselves. For example, at Tai Om, camphor trees protect each of the three Paak Kung shrines in the village and trees protect four of the principal shrines in Man Uk Pin. Such trees are commonly banyan, or camphor, although other species may be used. The commonest shrine trees found during the study were;\n\n  \n    Ficus microcarpa\n    Banyan\n    19\n  \n  \n    Cinnamomum camphora\n    Camphor\n    13\n  \n  \n    Euphoria longan\n    Longan\n    5\n  \n  \n    Gironniera nitida\n    \n    5\n  \n  \n    Litchi sinensis\n    Lychee\n    4\n  \n\nin addition to 26 individuals of other less common species.\n\n19",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213380,
        "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": 202,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "189\n\ncourt robes and glided along the path only to disappear into the base of a tree once he drew parallel to the watcher. Villagers have also seen fires at the Paak Kung shrines even during rain\n\nThe village with the greatest number of shrines, out of the 20 villages examined in detail in the study, is Sheung Tsuen (Pat Heung). The more important Tai Wong shrine is housed in the 200 year old temple and is the governor of the village. There are also ten other Paak Kung and earth god shrines located around the village. Six of the Paak Kung protect the village at night while four earth gods of a lower rank are located in each of the four directions and are 'on duty' for twenty four hours a day as general security guards and to prevent people from becoming lost. All the shrines are worshiped on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month and on major festivals\n\nWorship at the shrines varies from village to village, although it is common that worship is carried out on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar new year. Seven of the villages performed rites at their shrines at this time. Offerings may also be made with prayers at the main Chinese festivals, particularly during Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Harvest festival, as well as at weddings, births and the birthdays of elders and ancestors and for general thanksgiving.\n\nSome villages have their own special ceremonies. At Ma Mat Wai, the Paak Kung shrine to the earth god 'Hin Tan' is worshipped on 'farmer's day' on July 14th and at the harvest festival on August 15th. The shrine at Pak Kong is worshipped on the birthday of the popular sea-goddess Tin Hay. The Hei Shą Fuk festival is only carried out at Wo Hop Shek, near Fanling, at the end of the last month of the lunar year and at the end of the first month of the lunar calendar. Each family in the village contributes $30 to buy pork which is cooked with vegetables on stoves built into the Tai Wong shrine. February 13th of the lunar calendar is the god Hung Shing's birthday in Ho Sheung Heung, which is even more important for the village than Lunar New Year. For three days before the god's birthday, an opera is held in front of the Tze Tong while a feast and dragon dance takes place on the day itself. In June a feast day is also held to commemorate two officials, Chou and Wong, sent by the Emperor to save the village from pirates. This may represent those officials who came to rescind the Imperial evacuation order in 1669. The festivals in Ho Sheung Heung are organized by the master of the temple but in other",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213838,
        "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": 190,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "163\n\nhave served as the focal point of village coalition organization as early as the 18th century. Pending verification is the identity of Houwang. As commonly held, he was the Chinese folk hero, Yang Liang-chieh, who had loyally protected the last emperor of the Sung, fleeing by sea from the victorious Mongols. The young emperor and his bodyguard, under Yang's leadership, finally landed near what is now Kowloon. Legend also holds that they spent some of their last days in the Tung Chung Valley. It is suggested that not only Yang's honourable behavior, but also the fact that he was a refugee far from home, deeply touched the hearts of early immigrants to this new land, especially the Hakka people.\n\nIn local people's minds, indeed, there is no doubt of the efficacy of this hero-turned-god. For their families and themselves, they come to procure divine assistance in connection with serious illness, financial problems, the picking of propitious days for marriage, long journeys, house construction, and so forth. By casting the divining blocks before the altar, the deity's instructions are revealed to them. Small-scale ritual transactions between the deity and individual worshippers are usually carried out with the assistance of the miao-chu, the temple's keeper and religious specialist. In the case of marriage, for instance, it is the Houwang who decides, through the temple keeper, whether the betrothed are well-matched.\n\nBesides day-to-day ritual transactions invoking the local god's help in meeting personal or family needs, annual religious activities also strengthen villagers' patronage of the temple. Examples are the occasion of tso-fu (make blessing), usually held in the second lunar month, during which the worshipper requests the god's favour in the coming year, and the observance of huan-shen (repay the spirits), held at the end of the year to repay the god for his blessings. While these relatively small-scale rituals are performed on behalf of individual worshippers, the Houwang's Birthday celebration is held on behalf of the community as a collectivity. Thus it best demonstrates the role of the local principal deity in maintaining a communal sense of identity among villages, which have formed a united body in the territory, and the function of the temple as a village-coalition temple.\n\nEven the date for the festival carries distinctive local characteristics. While the Houwang's Birthday is on the 6th of the sixth lunar month",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213955,
        "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-1997",
        "page_number": 25,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "1998\n\n17 January\n\n30 January\n\n7 February\n\n21 March\n\nReference\n\nGems of Chinese Art, Guided Gallery Visit at the Hong Kong Museum of Art.\n\nLunar New Year Visit to places of worship in Tai Po District, Dr Patrick Hase.\n\nWalking Tour of Stanley, Messrs Jason Wordie and Geoffrey Roper,\n\nGallery tours of Tsui Museum of Art and Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery, Mrs Vallery Garrett.\n\n1. RASHKB Journals, vol. 33, 1993, p. xii; and vol. 34, 1994, p. xi.\n\nDr D.D Waters ISO, President\n\nxxiv",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214320,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 178,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "142\n\nand Zheng Lingguan Yuanshuai EA\n\nXu Sun's festival is celebrated on the 1st of the eighth lunar month, though in a few of the temples a further minor festival is held on the 28th of the first lunar month.\n\nApart from his title, Xu Zhenjun and his personal name, Xu Sun, he is also known as:\n\nXu Xianzhen 許仙真\n\nXu Xian Zhenren 許仙真人\n\nXu Zhenren 許真人\n\nShengong Miaoji Zhenjun 神功妙濟真君\n\na Song dynasty title\n\nJingming Zhongxiao Dao 凈明忠孝道\n\na Song or Yuan dynasty title\n\nNote: This deity should not be confused with another, Xu Jia, also known as Xu Zhenren A nor should either cult be confused with yet another local deity, Xu Tianjun. A further complication arises from the identification by some temple keepers in Singapore and Taiwan of Xu as the local Chaozhou community Military Earth God, Gantian Dadi.\n\ni Chinese Medical Deities: 1870\n\nii Sun Simiao, one of the Ten Celebrated Physicians renowned not only as a herbalist but as a diagnostician was also of Jiangxi province.\n\niii Wu Ben, a herbalist of great renown born in a village near Xiamen in Fujian province. He is possibly better known by his title of Baosheng Dadi, the Great Emperor who Protects Life.\n\niv Fitkin, Gretchen Mae: The Great River - The Story of a Voyage on the Yangtze Kiang: Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh: 1922\n\nv Professor Liang is Head of the Department of History at the Jiangxi Normal University in Nanchang.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214821,
        "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": 236,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "202\n\nTo this day, services for the departed, whether as newly-deceased souls or as wandering spirits, command the greater part of the time of practitioners from the two religions. Apart from the varied religious services carried out in the homes of the deceased, or in the temples and monasteries where similar rites were held for the departed, both Buddhists and Taoists are prominent in the rituals carried out in public places at the Hungry Ghost Festival.23 This, the most important ritualistic pacification of wandering souls and spirits during the lunar year, is still performed throughout Hong Kong on behalf of the general public by priests of the two religions, hired by local committees and associations.\n\nWhat People Want: Individual Expectations from Acts of Worship\n\nIn approaching the gods, whether in the temples and monasteries, or at the earth god shrines on the street or in the fields, the worshippers had specific requirements in view. Then as now, worshipping itself was principally devoted to obtaining divine assistance in time of trouble or to attain the object of one's desire or supplication. These usually concerned health and wealth, as well as general preservation from all ills, for oneself and for family members, deceased as well as living. There was also the need to obtain protection (because of their great potential for harm) from the general body of those many departed souls without living male descendants to care for them.\n\nUnlike the ritual services, worshipping was not carried out with the help of intermediaries from the two religions. It is a personal act, usually conducted by the individual before the altars in temples, monasteries or nunneries, or at the tombs of deceased family members and ancestors at certain fixed times of the lunar year.\n\nAs Archdeacon Moule says - and it bears repeating because it is so basic to an understanding of how Chinese people think and act - the prayers of the worshippers one sees in the temples are being \"addressed to images representing deities of living and present power.\n\n24 In Hong Kong, a visit to a large city temple like the Wong Tai Sin Temple in New Kowloon at a major festival leaves one in no doubt that the people believe in the ability of the god to grant their requests. Nor is satisfaction kept to oneself. The word soon gets around, and since the worship",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214856,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1999",
        "page_number": 271,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "239\n\nTwo important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival.\n\nPeople\n\nEnough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen?\n\nI will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals.\n\nI remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972.\n\nDr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.\n\nIn fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215067,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 163,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "120\n\ndisasters.' She is portrayed as a Daoist deity sitting cross-legged on a lotus, with gilded robes and a small crown, and with eight arms and three faces. Flanking her are two demonic, black-skinned deities standing, each with six arms and dressed in armour, holding weapons and charms in each of their hands. They are her attendants known here as Gnasher, Qiechi J, and Biter, Yaoya, titles not encountered anywhere else. The sixty Taisui images stand on lower tiers in two groups in five rows, either side of a space between the groups leading from the main entrance to the main deity on the top tier. But before the main deity on the second tier is a lone Taisui, the Taisui of the current year, changed annually at the Lunar New Year. Finally, the sets of double doors to the hall are decorated with depictions of the deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations +, the Ershi ba Xiuxing each deity having a 'human' form and its own attributes.\n\nThe second temple is some fifteen miles from Nanchang, the provincial capital of Jiangxi province in mainland China. Once more there is a separate hall but here dedicated to the wife of the main deity of the complex, the major medical god Xu Zhenjun. In the centre of the Hall is a large rectangular altar with the sixty Taisui ranged on all four sides along two tiers, with the image of Xu's wife and her two attendants positioned on the top of the third tier where she is identified merely as 'Xu's wife,' furen A. Her Hall, the Furen Gong, has stood within the temple complex since at least 1820 though it, together with the other temple halls, has been destroyed three times. Once apparently by accident in 1820, once by the Taiping iconoclasts in 1856 and finally by the Red Guards in 1966. However, it has only been within the last century that her hall has had images of the Taisui added to the gods within the complex and placed on the lower tiers of the plinth of her altar. The temple custodian did not know who decided on this addition, why or when.\n\nIn both of these temples, as in a number of other temples, the images of the sixty Taisui are portrayed as individuals with unique characteristics. A few look demonic, the majority are normal humans, with or without facial hair, young and old, and all are seated and dressed in a wide range of robes. Some are soldiers, some elderly mandarins - and although from lists provided in temples they all have individual personal names, none apart from the President, Yin Jiao, would appear to be recorded in legend or myth. However, several god carvers in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215074,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 170,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "127\n\nthe sacred and the secular.\n\nSacred time can be separated into liturgical and non-liturgical. Liturgical dates are those linked to the lunar calendar such as Yu Lan Hui, the Chinese All-Soul's Day, celebrated on the 15th of the seventh lunar month [best known as the Hungry Ghosts Festival] and the anniversaries of the gods and immortals; whilst the non-liturgical are fixed dates marking the seasonal changes. Only two such non-liturgical dates are still observed - the grave sweeping at Qing Ming, usually on the 5th of April, 106 days after the Winter Solstice, and the Winter Solstice itself. Secular dates are national state holidays.\n\nHumans accept the depth and space of time as a natural aspect of our daily lives. To people the world over a day, depending upon the culture, consists of the period between noon and noon, midnight and midnight, or from dawn to dawn. The lunar month has been a common time-marker since time immemorial, with the Chinese lunar calendar being based on the full moon on the 15th day of the month and the new moon, on the first. To many Chinese, as indeed to a number of other agricultural civilisations, time did not stretch back into eternity but came round again and again, it was cyclical, and again like other civilisations a zodiac evolved.\n\nBefore the days of the cheap watch or clock, time to the average Chinese man-in-the-street was simply the year, which is the interval between each spring equinox, the month and the forenoon, afternoon and evening of the day. Chinese peasants were able to avoid the bourgeois vice of clock-watching. However, certain times were rigid; for example, the times of the opening and closing of the city gates; these were usually regulated by dawn and dusk, and for watchmen who walked the dark streets who knew from experience reasonably accurately when to call out the hour. For the majority of Chinese another important aspect of time is the lunar date of birth and death, as no marriage could be arranged without the exchange of time and date of birth of the potential bride and bridegroom.\n\nHowever, to the Daoist time never stops and no state can be retained. Change is the only constant. Everything is continually changing but for each action there is a reaction so that the cosmic balance remains the same.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215075,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 171,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215079,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 175,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "132\n\nThe cycle of years consists of sixty possible combinations of pairs of characters, a system used since remote antiquity. A second system used reign periods similar to that used in England until fairly recent times. In the sixty-year cycle, the Chinese have used individual characters, the ten stems [tiangan] and the twelve branches (dizhi), paired to provide sixty combinations; thus, the first of the stems, Jia, and the first of the branches, Zi, together form a combination for the first year of the sixty, Jia Zi, and each successive year has another pair designating it for the whole sexagenary cycle when the combination begins again.24 The 'branches' were originally used to designate successive days; however, since the Han, they have been used in combinations for successive years.\n\nAlso within that sixty-year repetitive cycle, each individual year, with the five sequences of twelve years, was known, not only by the combination of stem and branch but also, for simplicity, by the animal of the year. Thus, the year 2000 is the Gengchen year as well as being the year of the Dragon. 1988 was and 2012 will also be the year of the Dragon, but neither will be Gengchen years, as this only comes round once every sixty years. For example, the year 2000 was Gengchen, as was sixty years earlier in 1940 and will be again in 2060.\n\nThe Chinese years are also referred to cyclically by one of the twelve named animals. Thus, we have the years of the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, etc., the change taking effect from the Lunar New Year, which can fall any time between late January and the middle of February on the Gregorian calendar.\n\nAlthough the months were divided into two fifteen-day periods, markers for rituals, these periods had no particular relevance to the lives of the common man. What did have marked relevance for the majority of the population was the artificial division of the month into three ten-day periods, used mainly to mark rest days. However, as the seven-day week of the Judeo-Christians does not follow the natural laws by which events and phenomena operate, so it was an alien concept to the majority of Chinese until 1911, when the western Gregorian calendar was introduced by the Republic.\n\nChinese used sun dials and water clocks from an early date, the latter dependent upon a constant and steady flow through control",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215083,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 179,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "136\n\nthe images with the temple keeper removing and burning them after fifteen or thirty days. The usual offerings to placate the deity consist of the three different cooked meats, fruit and tea (or wine) though before about 1955 it was not uncommon to see a candle burning in front of an image, placed there by a devotee whose year it represented. This was frowned upon by the Hong Kong authorities as a fire risk and the practice died out. Gray in Guangzhou [Canton] in the 1870s noted that under each image two or more small slabs of clay had been placed. These had been put there by votaries 'desirous to curry favour with the gods.' When there were too many for convenience they were removed by the person in charge of the shrine. Rev. Henry in Guangzhou in 1883 noted that the sixty small images, one to the presiding genius of each year in the cycle of sixty were raised on tiles with some bedecked with gaudy red coats, the gift of those devotees who had received special favours during their special years. Hardy (John Chinaman at Home) noted the sixty images in the same temple in Guangzhou, in a hall of the 'doctor' temple, before which the sick prayed for recovery before the spirit of his particular year, with people over sixty starting to count the years again from the beginning.\n\nA huge stove stood in the south-west corner of the Taisui temple dedicated to the planet Jupiter, within the enclosure of the Temple of Agriculture in Beijing, in which animals used for sacrifice were boiled or roasted. The sacrifice was performed on the penultimate day of the year or on a lucky day specially selected from the first ten days of the new year.\n\nImages of Taisui appear on the altars of some fifty-six temples in Hong Kong and on fourteen in Macau. Fifteen of these temples have the full groups of sixty images, the others have single images or small groups of two, three, four or six.\n\nTaisui Festival Dates\n\nTaisui is variously feted, nominally on the 7th of the first lunar month though more generally his festival is celebrated on what is called his anniversary on the 19th of the seventh lunar month. He was, however, officially sacrificed to in dynastic China in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215091,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 187,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "3\n\n144\n\nDoré, Le P. Henri : Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine : Hème Partie : Tome X: Shanghai: 1915: pp 831-832\n\n* See below under Yang Ren for an alternative to Yin Jiao as Commander of the Twelve Branches.\n\n5 No Cantonese devotee appears to have heard of Yin Jiao whereas Fukienese and Chinese of the Yangzi basin knew him as Marshal Yin rather than as Taisui.\n\n6 \"Werner E. T. C. in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology: Kelly and Walsh: Shanghai: 1932 claimed that the Ministry consisted not of 60 but of 120 spirits as he included the deities controlling the months and days\n\n7 The cycle of sixty years was the basis for the Chinese lunar calendar with its twelve branches and ten stems. The sixtieth year of a man's life signified a turning point, this being the normal life span of a human being, and anyone who is fortunate enough to be older than sixty begins the round again. Other deities are entreated for a prolongation of life beyond the normal span.\n\n* DuBose, Rev. Hampden C: The Dragon, Image and Demon or The Three Religions of China: Partridge and Co.: London : 1886\n\n\"The combination of branch and stem provides the date, with the branches and stems depicting and belonging to one of the five primordial essences [water, wood, fire, metal and earth]. The concentric rings within the compass contain information on planetary movements, the ba gua and yin and yang; the five elements; the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, etc.\n\n10 The reason for this is simple. The basic Farmer's Almanac is produced and printed in Taiwan, a predominantly Fukienese community, but with copies sent to Hong Kong and elsewhere for local binding and distribution.\n\n\"According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books. In early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, with seven in each of the four directions. Other similar groups are the Thirty-six Stars of the Plough (T'ien-kang Hsing XXI) and the Seventy-two Stars of Evil Omen [Ti-sha Hsing]\n\n1. Each of the Thirty-six was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215092,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 188,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "145\n\n15\n\n16\n\nare deities of good omen whereas the Seventy-two are stellar spirits of ill omen, without individual legends.\n\nThe bell is called The Bell which dissolves Demons - Ronggui Zhong\n\nHoudous notes in Fujian province that Taisui images sometimes wear a necklace of skulls to represent his authority over the lives of mankind.\n\nMost lone Taisui are known as the 'Intendant of the Year' [dangnian A], though a few are 'the Intendant of the Month\" [dangyue B] and even fewer the 'Intendant of the Day and Hour\" [dangri dangshi B].\n\nW A Grootaers: Rural Temples around Hsüan Hua: Folklore Studies vol. X\n\nShanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents: Its Chief Objects of Interest. Rev. C.E. Darwent : Shanghai: ca 1906\n\nStudies in Chinese Life: Grainger : pub. Chengtu : 1921\n\nKing Zhou was the last ruler of Shang dynasty, described down the centuries as the most despised ruler in Chinese history due to his abhorrent excesses.\n\n}} Jiao means the 'suburbs' his whole name therefore is Yin [who was deserted in the Suburbs.\n\n20 Tian Fet, an early title of the goddess, is now known as Tian Hou [or Tianshang Shengmu]\n\n21 For details of the use of the stems and branches within the sexagenary cycle refer to the chart at the end of this article.\n\n\"The method of gauging distance used by the general populace before the 1911 downfall of Imperial dynasty, and still used by peasants for several decades thereafter, when they were uncorrupted by advanced technology, was the 'li', approximately one third of a mile, though in practice it was the distance measured in time taken between places, it being markedly shorter when travelling up hill than when travelling down.\n\n23 These extra months were added every two to three years to reconcile the annual difference of some eleven and a quarter days between the lunar and solar systems.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215114,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 210,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "167\n\nhis patriotic rage caused him to grind his teeth so that after his death it was found that all but three or four had been worn down to the very gums.\n\nXu was a civil mandarin, the prefect of Suiyang, a native of Yanguang in Gansu province, who was posthumously awarded the title Weixian Wang by the emperor. His festival is celebrated on his birthday, the 29th of the first, or the 2nd of the sixth lunar months. In Mucha near Taipei an image of Xu's consort stands on a rear altar in his temple.\n\nAlthough their images are to be seen in most of their temples together, both on the same altar, in a few places they are also to be seen individually as the lone main deity on an altar. Further complications include both deities noted individually on altars in temples where the temple keepers deny that their particular individual deity is in any way connected with the other deity who is not present.\n\nWhen they are together as joint main deities their images are very similar and cannot easily be identified apart. They are usually portrayed as customary military figures, dressed in armour, sitting on thrones and holding unsheathed swords but without any unique identifying characteristics. In many temples they have a pair of military and civil aides flanking their altars and, in one instance, in Tainan, Zhang has an 'army' represented by six miniature images of military and civil aides on the altar table before his main altar.\n\nAmong the many legends told about these two deities one related in a Chaozhou temple in Bangkok related how the cult came from \"the north” and arrived in Chaoyang, a small city on the coast of Guangdong just south of Swatow [Shantou]. Zhong Ying, a Song dynasty soldier [ca. AD 1200], whilst escorting taxes gathered in Chaozhou to the capital was resting overnight in a temple somewhere in central China when he heard voices of Xu and Zhang, the two deities on the main altar, instructing him to carry their images on his return to Chaozhou to spread their cult into southern China, which he duly did.\n\nAccording to the Chaoyang county annals a force of foreigners [red-haired bandits] attacked Swatow [Shantou] in 1854. They were repulsed by the Chinese defenders when the latter were aided by giant apparitions of Zhang and Xu who, amidst a host of horsemen, came to\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215116,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 212,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "169\n\nthe hills. In temples in and around Hsintien and Mucha Wang Gong is revered as the protective deity (with the pair being revered in a few places but still known as Wang Gong) with his [their] annual festival celebrated on the 10th day of the fourth lunar month, but largely without the great majority of devotees realizing the original identity of the deities. Wang Gong A is also referred to as Weng Gong and Huang Gong A, both of which are almost certainly erroneous titles due to mistaken homophones.\n\nIn and around Hangzhou they are known together as Er Da Ming Huang [The Two (Generals) of Tang emperor Ming Huang]. A fierce image of Zhang, with his mouth wide open used to stand on a minor altar in a small temple near Donghu, a city some sixty miles upstream from Hangzhou. Devotees there believed that pain could be cured merely by touching the abdomen of the image whilst throwing a few coppers into its mouth. Two large images of Zhang and Xu in an old temple some fifteen miles east of Hangzhou, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been replaced with modern images with the image makers being guided by the elderly from memory. This temple stands out in the countryside with the nearest village some half a mile away and with the catchment area for contributions for the rebuilding extending some ten miles in all directions. The refurbished temple has yet [early 1994] to have the two dozen aides flanking the side of the main hall completed, though the images of their main deities and their consorts have been finished. They are regarded as the local protective deities.\n\nIn 1963 in Hong Kong, in a Chaozhou community squatter-shack temple on Lion Rock hillside above Kowloon [now long demolished], the two deities, represented on a framed paper icon on the main altar as two relaxed, seated mandarins in floral robes, were first identified as \"The Two Loyal Dukes\" or \"the Two Loyal Saintly Lords\". The two deities were later identified by several devotees as Wang Zhang Ek and Wang Xu Elf. The two mandarins, with long black beards, were identical and were prayed to as the patron deities and protectors of Chaozhou people.\n\nIn 1927 Goodrich in Beijing recorded seeing images of “two famous generals of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan” in the Dongyue Temple to the east of the city.13",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215300,
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        "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": 77,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "25\n\nEARTH GOD WINE AND THE MEETING OF THE FLUTTERING BUTTERFLIES LOCAL CUSTOMS OF EARLY SPRING IN LATE IMPERIAL CENTRAL CHINA\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nAs spring was approaching in the lake lands of Southern Hubei and Northern Hunan, people became increasingly involved in the new agricultural season. Once snow and frosts were part of the past, the new season for rice began. In the first place the irrigated seedbeds were prepared to receive the sowing of the grain, and later to see the sprouting of the first thick green carpet of the young shoots. Irrigation systems had to be looked over and repaired in anticipation of the period when the large paddy fields were to be set under water.\n\nAfter the celebration of the Lantern Festival as the finale of the New Year season, on the fifteenth of the first moon of the lunar year, there was a bit of a ritual slack season. The advantage of this for people was that there was then a period of uninterrupted time necessary for the urgent agricultural spring tasks. What followed after New Year was a string of smaller seasonal events, somewhat more modest than the big cardinal festivals. Even so these celebrations were certainly of some importance - at least they provided a few short but joyful breaks in days otherwise filled with heavy loads of work. In this essay I shall examine two relatively minor festive events which were celebrated in the early spring, in the second lunary of the year or around that time.\n\nWe must remember that Chinese reckoning of time in Imperial days was structured by two main and different annual calendars. One was based on the phases of the moon and comprised twelve lunaries. The other took account of the annual behaviour of the sun and contained twenty-four solar phases. The lunar dates varied in terms of the sun calendar, but it was the latter which gave the pragmatic landmarks in terms of seasonal weather and rural tasks for the countryman, whereas various celebrations of agricultural achievements and social events were held in accordance with the moon year. The lunar New Year could fall any time from the twenty-first of January to the nineteenth of February, Gregorian reckoning, and thus varied a great deal from year to year in\n\nI have dealt with these elsewhere: Aijmer 1964; 1968; 1979; 1991; 2002.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215301,
        "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": 78,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "26\n\nits relationship to the relatively stable solar year, which could deviate from the true astronomical cycle only by three days. This discrepancy between the two cycles brought the advantage that what people carried out practically, in accordance with the reckoning of the sun's passage through a zodiac, could be celebrated after the practical event, and then the moon calendar offered the opportunity. Feasting did not interfere with work. But this was not always so. Some important festivals were tied to the position of the sun. The existence of two calendars also offered the possibility of double celebrations - each feast emphasizing one of two different aspects of some phenomenon. By such a separation in time, equal weight and dignity could be given to notions that did not easily tally inside one singular ritual frame.\n\nIn solar terms, the period of 'Establishment of Spring' set in on (approximately) the fifth of February. There was a great festival at that time, which was really part of the long New Year duration, but also connoted with expectations for the coming agricultural year.2 The spring season in central China lasted through the periods of 'Rain Water,' 'Arousal from Hibernation,' 'Vernal Equinox,' 'Clear and Bright,' 'Grain Rains' and up to ‘Establishment of Summer' on the fifth of May. In terms of the varying lunar calendar, spring would correspond roughly with the period from the middle of the first moon up to the beginning of the fourth lunary.\n\nWhat were the festive concerns of people in the Lake Dongting area in the early part of the long Chinese spring? One prominent feature was a continuing divination about coming crops and the weather upon which these were dependent. Already New Year was a great period for forecasting and these predictions were continued in the course of the spring. We can find some glimpses of such activities in our sources. But there were also some more prominent days which saw a lot of ritual activities.\n\nOne day in early spring was of special importance. According to the official almanac it fell on the fifth wu day that followed Li Chun.  is the fifth of a set of twelve 'Earthly Branches' that in combination with twelve 'Celestial Stems' formed a system for calculating time and days. Li Chun is the mentioned solar period\n\n2\n\nAijmer 2002: Ch. XV.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215315,
        "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": 92,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "40\n\nto a state of the earth. The same paradox is also apparent in the celebration of the other seasonal festival, the Flower Dawn with its emphasis on an upward yang direction. The latter festival was observed according to the lunar calendar, and so relating to the main yin manifestation in Heaven, the moon. To intensify this sense of femininity it was celebrated under the full moon of the second lunary. The second moon, being of an even number, also has female associations.\n\nThe Flower Dawn day highlighted the awakening Nature and the end of the cold season's hibernation. It celebrated arousal and the drawing out of life from the underground in an upward direction. It was a day to be spent in the open with picnics in 'the wilderness', away from built-up areas. This was in contrast to the centripetal She celebrations, which were focused on one particular, centrally located altar. Flower Dawn was a day of contesting games, food, and kite flying. Female sexuality was one main theme of the festival, people following old conventions as to the coming of age of young women, their betrothals, and coming marriages.\n\nThe latter point is somewhat puzzling. The period for betrothals of young people, and also marriages, started generally at, or after, the Chong Yang festival on the ninth day of the ninth moon, the culmination of the wedding season being on New Year's Day and around that time. This autumnal period was the social season that followed after the harvest of rice when the fields were left fallow and the life force of Nature withdrew into the ground.49\n\nIt seems then as if the Flower Dawn was a spring alternative for the celebration of relations of affinity. Both She Day and Flower Dawn appeared in a period of the year that saw a seasonal near-balance of the cosmic forces of yin and yang—complete at the Spring Equinox.50 Yin had now started to wane and yang was growing into dominance. In the world of death, the deceased in their yin guise in the graves were growing in ritual importance, while the dead in their yang semblance, as celestial phenomena and manifest in the form of ancestral tablets, were coming out of focus. These two festivals each explored one dimension of Nature's seasonal balance:\n\n49 The autumnal equinox gave towards the end of the year.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215371,
        "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": 148,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "At the end of one or both lower straps, the corners were folded over to the centre to form a pocket in which to carry a few coins. Gradually the overall size of the carriers became smaller during the 20th century.\n\nThe style favoured by Cantonese and Hakka women followed the old shape with a decorated centre, on average about 25cm square, with straps which were a continuation of the top and bottom edges (Plate 1). Modern versions were usually made with a red cotton embroidered centre square and brightly patterned cotton surround, with the extensions of the straps in plain red cotton. Those made for presentation on special occasions had a red satin embroidered centre, brocade surrounds and red cotton extension straps.\n\nThe style preferred by the Hoklo and Tanka fishing people was slightly smaller overall, with the ornate centre having a patterned cotton or decorated surround. Longer straps were fixed diagonally to the four corners of the square, sometimes with white stitching to decorate and strengthen. Head supports were often attached to these baby carriers. These were made of folded strips of cotton, about 1cm wide, stitched at intervals to form a lattice square and attached to the top edge of the carrier to support the baby's head (Plate 2). Some were made from a plain piece of cloth to shield it from the sun.\n\nThe third style, once used by both land and sea dwellers, was the simplest, being a plain, undecorated strip of red cotton or hemp, approximately 2.7m long by 30cm wide. In the past it was a tradition for the bridegroom to wear a strip of red cloth draped across one shoulder of his long gown and tied on the opposite hip. After the wedding day it was put aside for later use as a baby carrier, by winding the strip of cloth twice round the child, then tying in a knot in front of the wearer (Plate 3).\n\nCarrier Covers\n\nWhen the weather was cold a cover was placed over the baby in its carrier. Chinese Lunar New Year is traditionally the time when new clothes are bought and worn to signify new beginnings. Carriers and covers made for this festival were most spectacular in colour and design, and continued to be used on special occasions such as clan festivals and weddings. Covers were made of two layers of brightly patterned",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215835,
        "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": 134,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG'S CHINESE ASSOCIATIONS: THEIR CEREMONIAL OCCASIONS AND THEIR HELPERS\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n67\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe close involvement of the District Offices of the New Territories Administration in the pre-1997 Hong Kong Government in the celebration of festivals and major religious rituals by local communities throughout the lunar year was described in Chapter Seven of my Friends and Teachers, Hong Kong and its People 1953-87, published by Hong Kong University Press in 1996. This particular feature of the Administration's work had seemed worthy of special notice, since its personnel's interaction with their leaders, their many helpers, and less directly with the audiences and participants, had always helped to build up and sustain the \"government and people\" relationship.\n\nSuch occasions provided the connecting links of community life across the decades. Some were regular annual events, like the main festivals of the lunar calendar and the birthdays of the gods in the local temples, often with accompanying opera or puppet shows. Less frequent, but equally regular were the important, quasi-religious Ta Chiu or periodic protective rituals, still held nowadays by large villages or linked groups of villages in the longer settled districts of the New Territories, but held practically everywhere a century ago.\n\nThe officials' participation extended to many other community events, especially those held or organized by Hong Kong's Chinese associations in town and country, individually or jointly. They attended at ceremonies marking a special occasion, such as the completion of a new school building provided by a kaifong association or religious body, or the finalization of a local public works project by a village or rural committee. They might help to inaugurate or close the district summer youth programmes held from the late 1960s onward, or the local community's evening of entertainment for the elderly. Other major events attracting their presence might include associations' dinners connected with fund-raising drives for a special project or a charitable purpose, usually with a singing or even opera performance.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215959,
        "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": 258,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "192\n\nChalmers (Zhán Yuehàn, 1825-1899) in 1861.15 The dominance of the \"Confucian\" or Ruist traditions was symbolized by the central place that temples to Master Kong (\"Confucius\") held in all the major towns. So it was very appropriate that in the city of Poklo there was a large and impressive temple to the \"Master of myriad generations.\"\n\n16\n\nFrom the brief description of the Fūzi miào (“Temple of the Great Master [Kong]\") recorded by Legge in 1861 as well as from some descriptions preserved in other contemporary sources, a scenario of Ch'ea's role as a \"keeper\" can be partially reconstructed.17 Situated in a place lacking both \"large population\" and \"flourishing trade\" because of the more competitive neighbouring cities of Shek-lung (M. Shilóng) and Wye-chow (M. Huizhou), Poklo was a relatively poor walled town of about 15,000 inhabitants. In spite of its obvious shabbiness, the town's \"temples and ancestral halls\" were regularly maintained and attractive. Within the relatively elegant “temple of Confucius\" were \"images of the sage, of his four assessors, and of the twelve more distinguished of his followers.\" (Having published his first volume of the Chinese Classics only a few months earlier, Legge knew very well who these were because he had described them in detail in one of his essays in the prolegomena.) These were probably life-size sculptures of each figure, the Sage himself seated while the others were standing in his presence.\n\n17\n\nTemple rites offered in the presence of the Chinese Master Teacher were often described in local gazettes, and were intimately woven into the fabric of the civil examination system and the literati codes of honour. Ch'ea, as the keeper of the temple in Poklo, most likely had to maintain the temple's appearance and may have sometimes even offered the regular sacrifices at the first (\"of fruits and vegetables\") and fifteenth (\"a solemn burning of incense\") of each month. Similar ceremonies would be performed in the adjacent school to the Poklo temple, where students were tutored in the Ruist canon by a qualified teacher. Twice in each lunar year, all the temples to Master Kong throughout the Qing empire were filled with successful graduates, their teachers, and ...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216161,
        "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": 460,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "394\n\nfood in village culture. Early last century, the meals in most village families were basic for most of the year: consisting of rice with salt fish or preserved vegetables, with meat once or twice a month. During my initial researches into Hong Kong's rural history, a local leader impressed upon me how people so looked forward to the major festivals of the year, for it was only then, most notably at the lunar new year, that they could have a greater variety of food, and more of it. Major family events, like the marriages of sons and the celebration of old age, were welcomed for the same reason. Anticipation was heightened by the confident expectation that even if they could not afford the expense and had to borrow cash or mortgage land, families would provide the proper feasts on these occasions, or else \"lose face\" in the community.\n\nLike much else in Chinese culture, the dishes prepared at such times were named so as to have auspicious meanings. For instance, at the lunar New Year, oysters, in Cantonese pronunciation named ho si conveyed the sense of good luck, whilst a dish of green vegetables, faat choi, expressed the wish that all those attending the feast would get rich. There were, and are, many such examples - see, pp.46-7 of T. C. Lai's book, At the Chinese Table (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1984), also in the Images of Asia series. Even more focused on this topic is another interesting book, recently reprinted (2001) from the original edition of 1991 by Graham Brash, Singapore: namely Koh-Hwang I-Ling's Symbolism in Chinese Food. This is recommended reading, albeit it relates to Singapore Chinese of Hokkien descent, rather than the Cantonese and Hakka who are the subject of my book.\n\n-\n\nA certain type of food eaten at village feasts had (and still has) a distinct social function. This was the \"basin food\" provided for, and often by, the whole village on celebratory occasions. Consisting of very fat pork, with bits of turnip, dried mushrooms, beancurd and the like, cooked and mixed together, it was meant to indicate the equality and solidarity or brother-hood of participants. It was and is not confined to men but includes women and children. It is communal in every sense of the word, and is intended to be such. Its preparation involved persons from each family in one or other of the many tasks involved, from providing or marketing for the ingredients, the building of an outdoor stove and its covering, the collection of dried grass and firewood to feed the stove for the cooking, fetching water, washing crockery before and after, bringing tables and benches to the site, and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216162,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 461,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "395\n\nso on. I owe this information to our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, who has also referred me to an article on the subject by Professor James L. Watson, \"Eating from the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society\", published in Anthropos, Vol. 82, 1987, pp. 389-401.\n\nIn the course of enquiries (1970s) into foods made at festival time, I came across some interesting facts about the preparation process. This was often laborious. The \"cakes\" made at the lunar New Year are a case in point. The materials comprised pounded glutinous rice and cane sugar. According to men from two of the former Tsuen Wan villages, sixteen hours were needed to cook the mixture in a very large, deep wok (the Chinese frying pan) in effect for a whole day, from dawn till dusk or later. Cooking in an old-fashioned village stove, fuelled by dried grass or firewood, was essential; since the taste would be different were charcoal or gas to be used. Some of the Sham Tseng elders (also Tsuen Wan District) said that each \"cake\" might require between 30 to 50 catties of glutinous rice, resulting in very large \"cakes\". In one household of my acquaintance (originally from Shek Pik on Lantau Island, resited to Tsuen Wan in 1960), it had been usual for them to make four large \"cakes\" every lunar New Year. These were distributed as goodwill gifts to shops in the market towns of Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the boat people's families in the Shek Pik anchorage - indicative of this household's economic and social ties. People also gave and received portions of such cakes during the customary visiting to mark the arrival of the New Year.\n\nThe Sham Tseng men had also mentioned a rather curious requirement involved in the preparation of the dumplings made for the fifth day of the fifth lunar month festival, commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. The dumplings had to be made with a preparation of wood ash, placed between bamboo leaves, and filtered with water. This watery ash, known as kan shui [the character I was given for 'kan' is that for 'root', but though this sits oddly with the context, I have not been able to find anything more suitable in a dictionary search] had to come from \"new\" wood, though not necessarily of any particular kind. It was no use trying to filter ash from anything that came to hand, like old boards or drift-wood.\n\nTurning to other topics, I had earmarked but subsequently overlooked two interesting items in the course of shaping the chapters.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216346,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 105,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "54 \n\nChina Coast Pidgin English in JHKBRAS, Vol.35, pp.113-141. See also note 75 below.\n\n56 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, p.75.\n\n57 cited in Parkinson, op.cit., p.341.\n\n58 See pp.179-180 of my The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside. Hampden, Conn., 1977.\n\n59 Chinese text at No.28 in Vol. 1 of the three volume set of Hong Kong's Historical Inscriptions published by the Hong Kong Urban Council in 1986.\n\n60 Inscribed tablet dated 11th lunar month of the 6th year of Daoguang (1826) at the \"New Temple\" near the Barrier gate at Macau, which refers back to an earlier tablet on the subject dated in early Jiaqing.\n\n61 China No.4 (1864) Commercial Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls in China for 1862, p.62.\n\n62 Ibid, p.39.\n\n63 Ibid., p.67.\n\n64 See Bodde, Derk, and Morris, Clarence (1967). Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases. University of Pennsylvania Press.\n\n65 Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.263-9\n\n66 Ibid., Vol.IV, pp.281-3.\n\n67 The journal kept during his imprisonment was later published. See 'Edited by a Barrister', Journals kept by Mr. Gully and Capt. Denham during a captivity in China in the Year 1842. London, Chapman and Hall, 1844. This episode, and the much worse one involving the nearly 300 passengers and crew of a military transport from India, the Nerbudda, are also mentioned by Ouchterlony, pp. 499-509).\n\n68 Journals, op.cit., pp. 3-4.\n\n69 Gutzlaff, Sketch of Chinese History, op.cit., p.42.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106",
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