[ { "id": 208385, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n93\n\nwould hold a meeting. Attendance usually ran upwards of twenty people and various items of business to which the union had to see were dealt with, such as: a response to a letter from the Registry of Trade Unions of the Hong Kong government; preparations for the October 1st celebration; discussion of the wage raise to be demanded and ultimately attained in 1973, planning of a picnic which was to take place on the birthday of the historic founder of the carpentry and carving trades, Lupan (discussed below), etc.\n\nOn occasion a representative from the Federation of Trade Unions would sit in on a meeting to see how the union was doing, bringing with him or her news of significance to the labor movement in general for workers to discuss, and these discussions were usually fairly lively, most participants doing their best to give a favorable impression of the workings of their union.\n\nOnce a month the union receives copies of a Federation of Trade Union newspaper entitled Hong Kong Worker (*1st) in which various sorts of articles concerning the working class in Hong Kong appear. There are also articles about China, explanations of current policy initiatives, sports news, a regular women's column and political cartoons as well. On March 29, 1973 I was invited to sit in on a discussion of the articles in the latest issue. The headline article concerned the death of several construction workers who had fallen from scaffolding during the construction of the new Connaught Center Building on Hong Kong island. A free-ranging discussion followed the reading aloud of the article, with those workers who could read with facility taking turns reading successive paragraphs. Industrial safety and industrial accidents in Hong Kong were the main topic of the discussion and the question of how this topic applied to workers in the art carved furniture industry was raised and discussed as well. Lest one think the extrapolation to the furniture industry a bit strained, Labor Department figures for industrial accidents for the first four months of 1973 \"were the worst in Hong Kong's history, with an average of one death and 70 injuries every day\" (Hong Kong Standard, June 29, 1973).\n\nA high degree of class identity was expressed by the workers during the discussion and the question of industrial safety linked to relations between workers and capitalists, the drive for profit, lack of concern for workers' welfare, etc. The sessions occur on a regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208391, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n99\n\n171). The Woodwork Carvers' Union preserves the form of these presentations, substituting an updated political content more consistent with its pro-communist ideology. Indeed, apart from the infusion of such political themes into the proceedings of the Woodwork Carvers' Union yearly meeting, one would be hard pressed to distinguish it from the guild meetings of early twentieth century Chinese guilds as described by Gamble.\n\nClearly the Woodwork Carvers' Union has seen fit to make use of this traditional niche in the social structure of craft production to promote a somewhat different collection of values.\n\nThe second occasion, which highlights how gracefully the union has stepped into the traditional milieux of craft production, is its observance of the lunar calendar birthday of the founder of the carpentry and woodcarving crafts, Lupan. On this day the industry still closes down and signs are posted on factory doors explaining the reason.\n\nThe Woodwork Carvers' Union, being of communist persuasion, does not go in big for such \"feudal\" customs as temple worship or offerings to Lupan, although a Lupan temple does exist on Hong Kong island, maintained in part from contributions from unions in other construction trades, and in small measure by the Merchants Association in the art carved furniture industry.\n\nThe members of the Woodwork Carvers' Union take the occasion of their founder's birthday to enjoy themselves in more secular fashion. In 1973 the union organized a picnic and hired a boat to Cheung Chau (one of the outlying islands which together with Hong Kong island, Kowloon and the New Territories make up the Crown Colony of Hong Kong) where a day was spent swimming, hiking, playing basketball and engaging in other kinds of secular sport. Many tables of mah jong were in evidence. Wives and kids were in abundance. The boatride back was spent with organized games for the kids; anagrams of Chinese characters to be arranged into pro-communist slogans; answering riddles that implied the names of Chinese leaders, cities, etc.; guessing the number of plums in a bag; with small prizes being awarded to the winners.\n\nThe union makes the traditional observation of the founder's birthday its own, but it does so very much on its own terms, and the celebration is governed in practice, generally speaking, by an ideology consistent with support of the People's Republic of China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210770, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "NICHOLAS TAPP\n\nTraditional kinship systems have been largely maintained despite the recent influence of the family planning programme, although there is evidence of a growing strengthening trend towards monogamization and patrilineality in the more settled villages, under Han influence, and a general rise in the status of women owing to increased educational and political opportunities. Periods of matrilocal residence after marriage have been greatly reduced among the Dai people and sections of the Zhuang (China's largest national minority). In the richer minority areas, it is still quite common to find households where generation has followed generation since pre-Liberation day (shi shi dai dai: ##). Shifting cultivation persists in many areas: even in the Yi areas of Lunan County, 128 km from Kunming, some dry rice was cultivated, while maize which is common at all altitudes can only be supported on the same soil for a limited number of years, after which it must be left fallow or alternated with winter wheat crops if it is to recover its fertility. Wheat with a small amount of barley is the staple diet in many of the highland areas, where potatoes also grow well, and can be exchanged for rice. In the valley regions maize is grown mainly as animal fodder and wet rice, which can be glutinous or semi-glutinous, remains the staple diet. Gourds, eggplant, sweet potato and leafy vegetables are commonly intercropped with the maize; other fields are devoted entirely to different types of beans, while tea, tobacco, sugarcane and chili are extensively cultivated by the minorities of southwestern Yunnan.\n\nOn the highlands pine and fir have been aerially planted in a great majority of the minority regions, which has reduced the acreage available for cultivation. At the same time many highland groups have moved down or been resettled at lower altitudes, while Han households have begun to cultivate areas in the foothills formerly reserved for the minorities. This has resulted in an intensification of the conflict over scarce resources. During the 1950's and 1960's large numbers of Han settlers moved into the Dai areas to cultivate rubber and this, combined with population increase among the Dai, has led to serious competition and rivalries.\n\nThe economic responsibility system, introduced into minority areas after 1980, has wrought great changes in minority regions as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213802, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "125\n\nHH\n\nThe volume entitled the Genealogy of the Chens of She Shan contains two or three separate genealogies of Chen surname from which I cannot trace common descent. It seems that some pages were missing in the copy in the Hong Kong University collection. The name pujao, if indeed an ordination name, does not follow the usual long or fa format. It is probably an ordination name from another, more well-known \"folk\" religion, Luozu Jiao, which have ordination names in a format of Pa followed by another character, according to an account in a Qing work of anecdotal literature quoted by Fu Yilin's article \"Qing Qrankong kupan Cilaoguançaizong Qislu Kao\" – first published in 1942 and included in his Fu Yin Zash wusht man Wengao Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 1989. The pantheon and practice of Laiozu Jio is not related to the tradition that is the subject of this article.\n\n* According to Lo, op cit, p. 216 n 21. So Lo Pun was a member of an alliance including Lai Chi Wo, a multi-surname village. With one exception, which is not So Lo Pun, all member villages were lineage extensions related to Lai Chi Wo. I know of some Huang people in Lai Chi Wo, but do not know their genealogical relationship with So Lo Pun or whether they celebrated the Fengchao in the past. The genealogy contains a spirit tablet related to Lu Shan and the Three Ladies, a passage of invocation, and two talismans. It is unlikely that the genealogy belonged to a wang specialist, whose repertoire will take up many volumes, not just a few pages in a genealogy as in this case.\n\n*I fail to date any of the generations. Some dates are given in the genealogy using Dynastic year names which cannot be found in reference books for year names. I have not checked as thoroughly some of the year names and title of emperors in the prefaces.\n\nCopied during an interview with the ritual specialist by Lee Lar-mu, then of the Oral History Project of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For part of the memorial, I have a tape recording of the priest's recitation demonstration during the same meeting for comparison.\n\n12. The Xu's genealogy of Shek Pik, Lantau Island in the British Library collection of genealogies from the New Territories contains a list of offerings for grave worship which begins with one raw pig and one cow. Rubie S. Watson, in her Inequality Among Brothers, Cambridge University Press 1985, p. 43 mentioned the division of raw pork after the ancestral hall ritual at Ha Tsuen but does not say if the four pigs purchased for the occasion were first offered to the ancestors as offerings.\n\n41\n\nHuhur Xinwen Yi hun Xu Zhi, Beijing Zhonghua 1986, p. 181.\n\n\"For the note see Luo, op cit, p. 230. For his picture of the Hakka as \"farmer-scholars\" see ibid, pp. 16-18.\n\n**Luo Op Cit, p. 255-263.\n\n* The description is in vol. 2. In the table of contents, the author has inserted xiang (\"incense\") between Ahuan and Huo. The rite has some interesting features. It uses a long piece of red cloth stretched from the \"lower\" end near the entrance of the hall to the \"upper\" end of the ancestral incense burner, and the ashes were carried over the \"bridge\" thus formed to the incense burner. That additional ancestors are incorporated into the ancestral hall in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 } ]