[ { "id": 205288, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n43\n\nHalf-way up the valley Plum Grove Village (Mui Tsz Lam) climbs the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain peak, overlooking a widening stretch of land. No flat land is to be found here and farming takes place on stone terraces built on the slopes. There is plenty of water, running down the hillsides in small brooks. The third and uppermost settlement is another composite one, Grass Field Village (Mau Ping). It comprises three hamlets and some isolated houses. The valley ends in a bowl-shaped area, and the settlement is spread around on three steep sides. Farming is done entirely on stone terraces. Parts of this bowl are densely forested.\n\nRice production is a prominent feature of the valley. The irrigated fields are double-cropped but the yield is and has, within living memory, never been sufficient to cover the local consumption. It seems that even in a good year the basic food supply would last only for about seven months. Small holdings are characteristic of this valley. Bad soil and lack of arable land limit the possibilities of agricultural expansion, together with the frequent and serious damage caused to crops by typhoons. The torrents of rain accompanying the storms sometimes flood the whole area. The water carries away fertilizers and soil. On the other hand, the crops, especially the first, are exposed to periods of drought since, however well-watered the valley is, people find it extremely difficult to make use of the supply. There is a constant want of rain-water as the fields are often too far away from the brooks. The main stream pursues its way in a deep ravine and is hardly of any use at all, whilst its mouth is, as mentioned, filled with salt water during high tide. The hillsides are steep and the run-off of water is rapid.\n\nIn earlier days the rice produced in the village was consumed on the spot. According to the rice merchants in the market towns the quality of the grain from this mountain area is as good as any from the New Territories' plains. When rice mills operating in the Sai Kung and Sha Tin markets after the Pacific War (1941-45) started an exchange system, the villagers were presented with a new alternative. They could transport their high-quality rice crop to the market and there exchange it for inferior broken polished rice, generally imported from Burma or Thailand. This is now usually done, and on a 'picul for picul' system;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205290, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n45\n\nOrchards with pineapples and tangerine oranges are located in Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village. These orchards seem to be much exposed to typhoon damage, and are more or less of an experimental nature. Orchards form a new feature in the valley and have been introduced only in the last decade. They are not very profitable.\n\nThe terraces mentioned above were once used for tea plantations also. It is possible to trace the remains of such terraces on the steep slopes all along the valley. They are the remains of plantations of tea and a shrub giving a dye, most probably the indigo plant Indigofera tinctoria, common in South China. The tea plantations are mentioned in an early report:\n\nTea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill. The bushes are grown in lines on narrow steps or terraces out in the rich soil of recently felled woods or along the dividing banks of sheltered vegetable fields, in either case only in fairly elevated situations. There is a tradition that tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces similar to the above are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation has diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone count for it.5\n\nTea plantation in South-eastern China experienced a general crisis towards the end of the last century as Indian and Ceylon tea invaded the Western market. There is no reason to assume that these circumstances had a direct effect on the New Territories plantations, but generally unsettled conditions on the tea market might have contributed to the actual decline. Wild-growing tea shrubs are still plucked of their leaves for local use. As to the dye plant cultivation, it seems reasonable to suggest that the introduction of foreign artificial indigo and aniline dyes in the beginning of this century was the main reason for the abandonment of these plantations. During an earlier period, however, the production of tea and dye-stuff will have been prominent features in the economic activity, complementary to rice production.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205291, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "46 \n\nL. G. AUMER \n\nAnimal husbandry is another traditional feature in the economic life of the villages. In an earlier period, every household used to raise two or three pigs. This was not only for immediate profit but also as a kind of saving economy. The animals were sold off when circumstances required activation of capital. Pork has always been a luxury in the villages and is eaten only on special occasions. Roast pigs for ceremonial display play an important part, and a status-bestowing one, on festive occasions. Stimulated by the increasing market demand for meat in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, villagers increased their stocks to three or four pigs per household. Around 1960, however, the market price was heavily affected by the steadily increasing import of relatively cheap pigs from China. Pig breeders now acutely experienced the chronic disadvantage of poor transport facilities to the markets. The saleable price does not exceed HK$100, and it is calculated that the breeding costs for about six months, together with labour and transport costs, do not make the venture worthwhile.\n\nCows are kept in the villages for a double purpose. Rice farming requires draught animals, and buffaloes are not suitable for mountain areas. A certain profit can also be made on selling. It is calculated that a cow-owner will get a new calf every two years. The feeding is not very expensive since the animals are grazed on the hill sides and on abandoned fields. They are used in agricultural work for about five years, after which period they are sold off. In this case, marketing offers no difficulties as brokers in the butcher trade turn up in the villages whenever they hear of a possible deal. They pay in cash and take the cows with them. Weak animals are sold as soon as possible. Together with pigs, cows fulfil another most important function. The manure is used for fertilizing the fields, and villagers depend greatly on this supply.\n\nSmall-scale chicken breeding has always been carried out in the villages. People from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village now sell their fowls in the new Sha Tin Market, where the presence of wholesale dealers from Kowloon improves the market situation; though there is heavy competition from specialized chicken farms run by immigrant peasants from China. In Grass Field Village, breeders wait for the main festivals to obtain a better price in their traditional market town, Sai Kung.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205292, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n47\n\nThe last procedure is likely to have prevailed formerly. In addition, some ducks are found in each village, but they are kept entirely for local consumption.\n\nIt is reasonable to assume that pig rearing and fowl keeping were important, although not vital, in filling the widening gap between production and consumption demands in this valley. However, villagers had always had access to another natural resource. I have mentioned earlier that the steep hill sides, now covered with shrubs, were once densely forested. These woodlands were exploited by the people through extensive firewood cutting.\n\nThe importance of this activity is reflected in the fact that defined areas of interest were recognized by people in the three settlements in this connection. Alleged intrusion seems to have given rise to long-drawn disputes as to accepted rights. At the side of the path leading from Big Stream Village to Plum Grove Village, at a fairly equal distance from both, a small stone has been erected. There is an inscription stating: 'Ng Area-Mountain Border.' Ng is the kin name of all the Plum Grove people. It is said that this border stone was erected sometime around 1900 in order to establish more clearly-defined village regions for firewood cutting. This arrangement should have reduced the amounts of incidents and quarrels considerably. Similar stones seem to have been set up over the whole of this mountain area, thus providing borders of economic interest. The firewood used to be carried to Kowloon and sold there.\n\nIt is interesting to note that these definite borders, indicating an increasing interest in the exploitation of the woodlands, were marked off at a time when decline in the tea and indigo production affected the economic situation. The woods also supplied raw material for a kind of small-scale industry in the valley; charcoal burning. The remains of ovens can still be traced. It is difficult to estimate the extent of this trade, but it is very likely that charcoal burning together with firewood cutting were the most important activities that supplemented the limited agricultural production. People often characterize elderly persons like: 'He has been a farmer and wood-cutter all his life.'\n\nProfessional wood-cutting is not practised nowadays; nor is charcoal burning. The latter industry was revived during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205294, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n49\n\ntion called for new solutions, implying a widening of the economic horizon.\n\nThere were, however, then and now, some local people operating partly outside the framework of village production. Before the establishment in 1952 of the Sha Tin Market, Tai Po was the natural choice of market town for Big Stream people. Communication was by boat, and the ferry traffic was operated by a few families. One old type of rowing sampan is still in use, but only intermittently. Now people usually go to the Sha Tin Market by two ferry-boats equipped with engines. They leave Big Stream Village around 10 a.m. for Ho Tung Lau across Tide Cove, or at high tide for Sha Tin directly, and return in the early afternoon. These two boats are owned by a family who make their living entirely from this traffic. They not only serve people from this village, but take passengers from Plum Grove Village as well.\n\nOne elderly woman in Big Stream Village has got a small store of sweets, which she sells to village children. This tiny 'shop' has a stable market, and gives the old lady a small profit. However, this is the only instance of anything like shop-keeping or retailing within the valley. None of the three villages seems to have had any permanent stalls or shops in any of the market towns of the New Territories or in Kowloon. However, for a time, one man from Plum Grove Village ran a grocery shop in the Sai Kung Market. It was closed during the Japanese Occupation and never reopened. This shop was not for retailing of local products from his home village.\n\nII\n\nI have so far tried to describe traditional means of livelihood, and their disappearance or persistence up to today. It is now convenient to outline essential changes, relevant to our theme, in the general economic milieu.\n\nBy the year 1876, great plans were entertained for creating a new town at the southern end of the Kowloon Peninsula. Once launched, this project led to rapid urbanization, so that at the end of the first decade of this century, the Kowloon population was estimated to be 27,000. Industrial plants were set up, e.g.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205297, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "52 \n\nL. G. Aijmer \n\nthis century, followed in very much the same way as their fathers though many men stayed on as sailors. The old men in this village are well-travelled. They stayed away from the village for twenty to forty years, remitting money home for their families. External income became increasingly important as a complement to agricultural production, then as now largely in the hands of the village women. \n\nIn Plum Grove Village there was no specialised skilled labour trade like masonry in Grass Field Village, nor was there specialisation in going abroad to seek employment. Emigration was an important factor in the economic life of this settlement also, but it started later than in Big Stream Village. \n\nIt seems to the present author unreasonable to dismiss the problem by merely referring to accidental choice. Some points call for brief discussion. There is reason to consider the market situation. Grass Field Village had its traditional economic ties with Sai Kung, about one hour's walk away over hill paths. Today it is a market town of some importance with about 1,500 inhabitants. An item of information from 1899 tells us that there were 800 people living there at that time, although the 1911 Census, reckoned as very reliable, gives the figure 512. A very knowledgeable man in Grass Field Village recalls from his childhood in the beginning of this century that Sai Kung was then a small place with only about 300 people, a few shops, and a tea-house. He was also of the opinion that little business was done there, and that villagers went fairly seldom to the market town. Life in the village was self-contained. Nevertheless, Sai Kung would have been important in the economic life of the village as the principal market for its products, at least before the establishment of the urban community at Yau Ma Tei on the Kowloon Peninsula. Tea, dye, charcoal, fire-wood, and pigs will have been sold in Sai Kung in traditional times. \n\nAs mentioned earlier, Big Stream villagers had their traditional connections with the important market at Tai Po. However, the situation in this town was entirely different from that in Sai Kung: \n\nIn the 1880's the Tai Po market was controlled by a localized lineage of the Tang people who, as masters of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205298, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "the market, permitted themselves to claim excessive privileges and to harass marketers from other lineages. Tang control of the market was repeatedly challenged by the Man people of another village, and on suffering a decisive setback in their campaign to force a relaxation, the latter organized a league of already existing intervillage units in order jointly to establish, in 1893, a new market in the close vicinity of the old.10\n\n53\n\nAlso, Tai Po was relatively distant, and by rowing-boat the trip there would take a couple of hours in good weather. The conditions prevailing at the Tai Po Old Market will have created economic difficulties that did not exist in the Sai Kung Market, and which placed the Big Stream people in a relatively bad situation.\n\nThe Plum Grove villagers used the market at Sai Kung, and often do so still but its possibly declining importance may have been less decisive in determining the extent of their work outside the old-style village economy. The land under cultivation around this settlement is regarded as the best land in the valley, though a large proportion of the fields here is owned by people from Grass Field Village, and also by people from Yellow Bamboo Mountain Village in another valley. In a small village the agricultural output might still have been sufficient enough to make emigration less attractive. The Plum Grove people also had some bad experience as some 10 men left the village for Southeast Asia around 1910 and were never heard of since.\n\nIII\n\nI wish now to turn aside to provide a background for migration in the context of the social structure of these villages.\n\nThe youngest children in Grass Field Village are of the 25th generation of a patrilineal kin group, all members of which share a common surname, Lau. The early ancestors lived in Mui Yuen (Mei Hsien, M), a Hakka district in the north-eastern corner of Kwangtung Province. A branch of the Mui Yuen people migrated down to what is now the New Territories, where they first settled in the Sai Kung area. A group soon branched off, and left the immediate coastal area, supposedly because of the constant threat\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205301, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "56\n\nHe continues:\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nIt was apparently open to any man of means to tie a portion of the property he left either to the maintenance of an ancestral hall already in existence or to the establishment of a new one in respect of himself or some recently dead forebear. New segments coming into being were physically reflected in the ramification of halls.17\n\nFreedman, arguing in terms of domination processes, isolates the accumulation of wealth, implying power, within certain sections as the seed of lineage proliferation; the transformation from section to segment being manifested by the establishment of a new ancestral hall.\n\nSome features of traditional Hakka society need to be examined in this context. Major lineages tended to have small numbers; for instance, in 1911 Big Stream Village had 173 inhabitants. Plum Grove Village 59, and Grass Field Village 124.18 Surveying the 23 purely Hakka villages in the surrounding mountainous area, we find that at that time Big Stream Village was the most populous place; the number of residents in the 23 villages ranging between 173 and 6, giving an average of 64.19\n\nHere in the mountains there was very small differentiation as to occupation, all people being agriculturalists cultivating small pieces of land, owned and controlled by themselves. Poverty was a characteristic of these settlements. With the exception of a few paddy fields, said to be the lands of the village founder and connected with ancestral ceremonialism and occasionally with schools, no common property was shared by villagers. Some economic differentiation will have arisen from different forms of external income, and perhaps in relation to ownership of ferry boats, charcoal ovens, and hill plantations. The ecological setting, limiting any expansion of local production, provided the framework of an unstable situation, sensitive to any increase in population or decline in economic capacity. The small numbers of inhabitants in the Hakka mountain villages seem to reveal, therefore, that growth within the social and ecological framework was not possible.\n\nThis picture of Hakka society displays localized communities on a major lineage basis, connected only through occasional common ancestor worship expressing the idea of clanship as a con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205302, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n57\n\ntinuum of generations. The Hakka concept of major lineage is intimately connected with a process of fission and resettlement; it seems impossible that one particular, geographically distinct, settlement could contain more than one tsu (M) or major lineage of the same clan. Minor lineages — fang (M), tracing descent to the different sons or grandsons of the first village founder, are always present and tend to live in hamlets separate in space, but close enough to form together a distinct compound settlement. If a fraction wished to manifest itself as a segment within the localized group by way of establishing a new ancestral hall, it remained part of the existing system, and became merely an addendum to a series of lower order segments already in being.\n\nThis kind of segmentation, the result of accumulation of wealth and status, does not appear to have been frequent in Hakka society. In none of the three villages studied has ramification of ancestral halls occurred below the minor lineage level. This might be correlated with the small amount of social and economic differentiation pertaining to the small-sized hill settlements in 'traditional' times.20\n\nAnother factor may be of importance in this connection. As far as my experience allows me to generalize, Hakka ancestor ceremonialism differs from that of the Punti population in the arrangement of the ancestral halls. The Hakka do not have individual tablets symbolizing particular dead persons, but they have one tablet for the collective unit of dead ancestors in the centre of the table for ritual paraphernalia. All ancestral halls in the valley have been rebuilt after the war, and on a smaller scale than before. A look at the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British takeover in 1899, seems to reveal that in Big Stream Village and Plum Grove Village, where segmented ancestral halls on minor lineage basis could be found, the different units were erected side by side, thus probably expressing the unit of higher order.21 Ancestral ceremonialism, expressing unit, thus seems to have been instrumental in a process of fusion, discouraging segmentation within the existing structural framework.\n\nSegmentation implying an expansion beyond the limits of the localized settlement, requires some consideration. Freedman, in scrutinizing social conditions in the provinces of Kwangtung and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205305, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "60\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nExtension in Hakka society took different forms. Banditry seems to have been one,29 occasional work in the countryside,30 tenant farming in the plains,31 employment in towns or overseas others. These forms imply different depth in the extension, and it seems reasonable to assume that such differences were due mainly to ecological factors, such as the proximity to urban milieu, and facilities of communication. My attempt at interpretation of the difference in depth of extension between Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village, based on the differences in the socio-economic situations prevailing in their respective market towns, will serve as an illustration.\n\nThose who take part in the extension process live a life oscillating between their focus of social interest and their focus of economic interest. They spend much time away from home, often the main part of their lives, but they are always planning to return to the place of origin and they seldom feel attached to their place of work. They are sojourners.32\n\nOscillation is well illustrated in the career of an elderly man from Plum Grove Village. His early contact with an urban milieu was when, as a teenager, he carried fire-wood to the market in Yau Ma Tei, on which occasions he spent some four hours in town. His experiences there stimulated him to settle in Kowloon, where for a period he worked as a cook. Next we find him working in Singapore for some time. Returning home he took up a position as a salesman in a grocer's shop in Kowloon. A labour recruitment office in Kowloon offered opportunities of coolie work in the West Indies, and a four-year contract with these people brought him to Jamaica and Trinidad. The contract period over, he went to work in the phosphate mines of Nauru in the Central Pacific. Back in Hong Kong once more he took employment in a grocer's shop, but left soon again, now as a member of a ship-crew. He spent 18 months in jail in Holland, returning to Hong Kong just before the Japanese Occupation in 1940. This difficult period he spent entirely in Plum Grove Village. Immediately after the war he succeeded in going back to Holland, where he entered illegally. Finally we find him in his own village engaged in chicken raising, ginger cultivation, and pineapple planting, all on a small scale and rather unsuccessfully. He is now living entirely on remittances from his son who is working in England. During his wandering life", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205306, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205307, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "62\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\nIllegal immigration in the countries of Southeast Asia and elsewhere seems to have been rather difficult in the post-war period. With regard to legal immigration, people from the New Territories have one advantage in their competition with the crowds of recent immigrants from China. A Hong Kong Chinese who can prove that he was born in the Colony is able to claim British nationality. In the 1950s, an increasing number of New Territories residents left Hong Kong to seek employment in Great Britain. This movement reached a peak during 1961-62 when at least 2,270 people are known to have left for work in Britain. Most of these emigrants take up jobs in the restaurant trade. The Chinese-style restaurants in Britain have boomed since 1957, at which period some 50 establishments are said to have existed in the whole country, whereas the corresponding figure today is differently estimated between 1,000 and 2,000. It is said that pre-war London had only about eight or nine Chinese restaurants, but at the present time the number in the capital city may be some 300. The Hong Kong Chinese in Great Britain are now supposed to exceed 30,000 and the whole Chinese community there is estimated at about 45,000. The main part of the Hong Kong Chinese are from villages in the New Territories.33\n\nNearly all young and middle-aged men in the area of study have left their home communities and are now working in Britain. This absence of grown men is one of the most striking features of all Hakka villages in this particular mountain area. The village scene is completely dominated by women of all ages and small children not yet in their teens. Old men are found there, but generally they seem to prefer an indoor life. Sometimes one may meet a young man on an occasional visit to his home village. Agricultural work is entirely carried out by the women. At harvest, the children assist. A few of the old men, however, also work in their fields; one is a non-emigrant in Plum Grove Village who has devoted all his life to farming, the two others are masons in Grass Field Village, who work their fields when the masonry trade is not so good. It is difficult to estimate the efficiency of the women in their work in the fields, as compared with that of men. Some elderly men do not think too much of woman-labour, but on the other hand, Hakka women have traditionally taken part in all kinds of agricultural activities, and their toil in the fields is no innovation.34 What is certain is that during this last", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205313, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "68\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ncost, compared with the first scheme, being due to some difficulties in the terrain, and to higher labour costs.\n\nThus the two main groups were not able to co-operate in this affair. The overseas members of the major lineage acted along lines in accordance with their minor lineage solidarity. The example illustrates the position of the overseas sub-community in the home village situation. The first suggestion on this matter came from an overseas employee on a temporary visit to the village. The consent came from the others in Britain, that is the people who had to pay for this investment. The decision was then made by the overseas group supplying the economic resources for the village, on the suggestion of one of its members. The council of old men does not seem to have played a part in this affair — at least not until the second tank project was considered.\n\nOther examples of how vital affairs are handled by the community members residing abroad could readily be found. In Plum Grove Village the construction of a small bridge over a brook was in progress. The District Office had supplied the village with some building material but the remaining cost of about HK$4,000 was paid by members of the community working in Britain. I was told that the decision to build the bridge was made by the overseas villagers at an assembly, when they raised a contribution fund for this purpose. At first the District Office was reluctant to approve the project, and instead suggested a less ambitious scheme to erect some concrete blocks. 40 bags of concrete were supplied. It is typical that in this situation, an overseas villager who had just returned home took charge of the affair, contacted the Plum Grove men in Britain for money, and at last work on the bridge could start. The formal Village Representative, an old farmer who has spent the whole of his life in the valley and holds the position as the oldest man in the major lineage, was apparently circumvented in this matter.\n\nAs in Big Stream Village, there is an informal council of old men in this village also. It is made up of the Village Representative, and two old, but poor, former emigrants. However, it was openly admitted that most decisions came from Britain.\n\nAt the time of my work in the valley, two villagers, about 50 years old, were on a visit to their families in Plum Grove\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205316, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n71\n\ngeneral rule. Unlike the Punti population, among whom it was customarily expected that groom and bride were total strangers to each other,40 the Hakka go-between arranged a meeting on a selected day at a tea house in a market town. The boy and the girl each brought along their 'friends', which presumably meant mainly the age-mates of their respective major lineages. The parents were not present on this occasion. If the couple consented, the boy's parents selected an auspicious day and informed the girl's family at least a month in advance of the date of the wedding.\n\nThe bride's family now started to arrange the dowry, which mainly consisted of clothes, at an amount that was supposed to be sufficient for her entire lifetime, and which was maintained under her control after the marriage. If it could be afforded, the dowry also contained some jewellery.\n\nAt the wedding the bride was transferred from her native village to her future one by means of a sedan chair. This ceremony is supposed to have limited the area in which a marriageable girl was to be found, as in this mountain district it would be difficult for a bridal procession to move too long a distance. Most wives of the valley seem to have been recruited from the surrounding mountain villages and from the Three Fathoms Cove area. Big Stream Village also has had many wives coming from one particular village in the Lam Chuen Valley in the hinterland of the Tai Po Market. It was also pointed out that in 'old times' marriage connections stretched as far as the border town of Sha Tau Kok and Sham Chun Market in Chinese territory.4 Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village have frequently had marriage connections with the Sai Kung area. Some of the community members working overseas took secondary wives in the country they were working in.42\n\nAdoption of infant or child brides into the household was also very frequent, as this was a more economic solution for poor people who had not then to feed an extra mouth until the girl was of marriageable age and provide a dowry for her. In both cases the woman maintained the surname of the clan of which she was born a member.\n\nAt the present-day go-betweens are not used. The youths make their own contacts during work and recreation. Bonds of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205318, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n73\n\n2 There are indications that this mountain area at one time was inhabited by non-Chinese Yao people; Barnett 1957, p. 261. The present inhabitants, however, are all Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese, settled here for only about 300 years.\n\n3 The estimated average price for local unmilled rice is (1965) HK$28 per picul for first crop rice. The corresponding figure for second crop rice is HK$36 a picul.\n\n4 Chiu 1964, p. 77.\n\n5 Bot. Report 1906, p. 221.\n\nIt could be added that a fish hawker is touring the area daily. He is from Sai Kung and his route includes Grass Field Village and Plum Grove Village. There are also other occasional peddlers, trading in food and sweets. Some shops can be found at the mining workers' settlement at Ma On Shan. Fishermen call at the pier there every morning. People from Big Stream Village often take advantage of these facilities.\n\n7 S., D. W. 1900, p. 202f. See also Tregear & Berry 1959, p. 12ff, and Hayes 1966, p. 128f.\n\n8 In a village just outside Canton, \"almost all those who went to work on ships were Wongs. This was chiefly due to the functioning of kinship relations in economic life. One who knew of an opportunity in one's own occupation usually recommended it to a kinsman. A Lee already engaged in business in Hong Kong would hire his own relatives as help or recommend them to fellow businessmen who might need help. A Wong in the 'hard labour' business, an activity tightly controlled by secret societies, or in marine work, did the same for his own kinsmen.\" Yang 1959, p. 73.\n\n9 Lockhart Report, p. 557. Census 1911, p. 103.\n\n10 Skinner 1964/65, p. 202. For further details, see Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n11 The Ng people in Plum Grove Village have no connections with the former Grass Field people of the same surname.\n\n12 The coastal area of Kwangtung was the scene of a dramatic mass deportation, executed by the Ch'ing occupants as a counter-measure in the struggle against raiding Ming loyalists. This course of action was carried out from 1661. Eight years later the coastal strip was declared open for settlement and an active policy by the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, A Ke-min, lured immigrants to the waste lands. The main influx of Hakka to the New Territories was in the following decades. If this is correct it may be that the Lau people appeared in this area during the course of this re-occupation. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff.\n\nSee Hui 1963, p. 89ff. However, Professor Freedman (1967) has quite correctly pointed out that the data are by no means conclusive on the effective evacuation of the area.\n\n13 Skinner 1964/65, p. 37.\n\n14 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n15 In the Hakka village in the Tolo Harbour area, studied by Jean Pratt, at the Chinese New Year 'all the men go to the lineage hall in a village across the valley, where they claim their ancestors lived. Pratt 1960, p. 149. But note supplementary information in Freedman 1966, p. 41; this issue, however, has no bearing on my argument. Similar social ceremonialism seems to have occurred among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population. See Hayes 1962, p. 28.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205320, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n75\n\nVaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement.\n\n28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282.\n\nA Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui.\" Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27.\n\n29 \"Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long.\" New Territories Report 1917, p. J2.\n\n30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home.\" New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55.\n\n31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction:\n\nIn the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162.\n\n32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest.\n\n33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon,\n\n34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci.\n\n'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205537, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "74\n\nBEING CAUGHT BY A FISHNET\n\nON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nBig Stream Village is situated on the east shore of Tide Cove in Hong Kong's New Territories. It is a Hakka-speaking settlement exclusively inhabited by people of the surname of Zhang (*) all members of one major lineage. In 1964 there were 146 persons in the village and 33 members of the community working elsewhere. Big Stream Village is located at the mouth of a mountain valley. About one mile and a half further up this valley the small Plum Grove Village is picturesquely situated on the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain. It is inhabited by a localized major lineage of the surname of Wu (吳). In 1964 their number was 74 but over 20 members were then away.1\n\nI was told a story about these two villages. Formerly, the story has it, the people of Plum Grove Village were living on the spot now occupied by the Zhang; and the Zhang were living where the Wu are now. Because of influences emanating from the natural surroundings the Wu were not too happy about their location at the mouth of the valley. It is said that the Zhang people pointed out to the Wu that the mountain on the other side of the fields in front of the village was a fishnet. This fact, it was pronounced, had a very special effect on the settlers there. The local Hakka pronunciation of Wu, their shared surname, is Ng. But ng in Hakka also means 'fish', and the Zhang assured the settlers at the mouth of the valley that they were, for certain, in the process of being caught by the net. The Wu seem to have agreed with this suggestion, and the result was that both communities exchanged their locations for their present-day situations.\n\nThis story may need some comments. It deals with influences emanating from the natural surroundings, a believed-in order that in Chinese is designated fengshui – ‘wind — water'. It implies an aspect of ecological adjustment in that it is concerned with natural\n\n* Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Dr. Aijmer, whose article \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society\" appeared in Vol. VII of the Journal, is Assistant Professor in the University of Stockholm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205539, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "76\n\nGORAN AIJMER\n\n4\n\nIf we return to the story about the two villages we find that it is concerned with two localized groups and their dependence on the natural surroundings. The mountain is a fishnet — a symbol in the set constituting the fêngshui language. The people were in a similar way classified as fishes, and a fishnet is obviously something to be avoided by fish. Now, the grammar of fêngshui is structured on the concepts of the two fundamental systems of wuxing and yinyang. Wuxing implies a correlation and classification into five categories of the features of the universe. Yinyang is a classification of the universe into binary oppositions. In the actual story we may, I think, substitute fish for water and yin — the female, passive and negative cosmic force. Fishnet may be substituted by mountain and yang — the male, active and positive force. In the locality under discussion yang influences dominated, and the people, by virtue of their shared surname affiliated with yin, had better escape a situation that was for them negative and out-of-balance.\n\nWu lineage bad luck\n\nmountain\n\nfish\n\nyin\n\ndestroying\n\nfishnet\n\ndominating ◄ yang\n\nIf we turn to the content of the story, it will be recalled that the essential thing expressed is that the two populations in the villages had exchanged their abodes at one time. Yet if we scrutinize what can be reconstructed of the history of the two settlements we will find no evidence whatsoever that such an exchange has ever taken place. From a historian's point of view the story is a poor document. But the sociologist may still have something to learn by comparing its content with other data of the past.\n\nA glance in the 1911 Census Report reveals that at that time the population of Big Stream Village amounted to 173 persons and that of Plum Grove Village to 59. Already in this period it is known from other sources that the former community had several overseas members while Plum Grove Village had few, if any.5 The population actually present in Big Stream Village in 1911 was 2.9 times as large as that of Plum Grove Village. If we then turn our attention to the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British take-over in 1899, we will find that the area of arable land available around Big Stream Village was nearly the same as that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n77\n\navailable in Plum Grove Village. In Big Stream Village rice land occupied 16.8 acres and dry cultivation 8.6 acres. The total was then 25.4 acres. The corresponding figures for Plum Grove Village are 17.9 and 6.5 giving a total of 24.4 acres. The ratio between Plum Grove land and Big Stream land is then 6.9, 1.3, and 1.0 respectively.\n\nThere is yet a complication to be taken into account. Plum Grove villagers were not the sole occupants of land around their own village. Three other settlements further up in the mountains own a considerable amount of paddy fields and dry cultivation land there. A very old lady in one of these other villages thought she had heard that these fields were bought ‘a very long time ago' and that they were then very expensive. The land around Plum Grove Village is generally considered the best in this mountain area. It is not possible to establish how outsiders were vested with rights in this land. My guess is that this small village could not supply labour enough to make full use of what was at least potentially arable land, and outsiders were let in. There may also have been an earlier decrease in population. Out of the 24.4 acres registered soon after 1899 only 15.5 were controlled by local villagers. The outsiders from the other three villages had together 8.6 acres of rice fields and 0.3 acres of dry land. Thus only 64% of the local arable area were in the hands of Plum Grove people at the turn of the century. If we then compare the actual land-holdings of the two villages at this period we still find that the 2.9 times larger population of Big Stream Village had access to arable land that was only 1.5 times as large as that of Plum Grove Village; which means roughly that five persons in the former village had to live on what three persons were dependent on in the latter. As to the more vital rice land the proportions are the same.\n\nTo this basic situation could be added some other factors that were to the advantage of Plum Grove Village. They had a better supply of water for irrigation, they had better-quality soil, and they had better conditions for the formerly important complementary tea plantations. Their situation up in the mountains offered more security than could be obtained on the coast in a pirate-haunted strip of land. Plum Grove people will also have had better marketing conditions in that their traditional market town Xigong (Sai Kung) was situated in a predominantly Hakka-speaking and small-scale lineage area, while Big Stream people were dependent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205541, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "78\n\nGORAN AIJMER\n\non Dabu Jiuxu (Tai Po Old Market), dominated by a single mighty Cantonese lineage, who tried their best to harass market visitors.\n\nThis rather tedious exercise provides us with evidence enough to justify an assumption that the people of Plum Grove Village were better off than their neighbours of Big Stream Village.10\n\nA key factor for the understanding of social change in this area is the rapid urbanization on the Kowloon Peninsula after 1875. For the villages in question this process implied a set of new choices, e.g. the use of a new, comparatively lucrative market developing at Youmadi (Yau Ma Tei). Here they came to sell firewood, and once in town they encountered new possibilities. The demand from overseas for Chinese labour had led to the establishment of labour-recruiting bureaux and agencies. The expanding shipping trade in the Hong Kong harbour offered opportunities for jobs on board transoceanic steamers. At the same time the appearance of new industrial products on the market drastically reduced traditionally complementary incomes from home industries.\n\nThe men of Big Stream Village soon jumped at the new opportunities that were displayed in Kowloon. Many of them ended up in the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. Through their remittances the home community now had access to an inflow of external incomes. As time passed considerable accumulation of capital brought about changes in the economic status of the village. Before the Pacific War several large and spacious houses were constructed by a handful of very successful emigrés. Conditions had improved, although economic differentiation within the community now was more marked than in the traditional situation. The general location of the village will also have become more favourable as the Kowloon-Canton Railway and a modern road were constructed on the other side of Tide Cove in the opening years of the 20th century.\n\nThe possibilities displayed in Kowloon did not have the same attraction for the people in Plum Grove Village. Land was still sufficient, the yield in normal years will have been reckoned as satisfying, and the firewood cutting, charcoal burning, and other home industries could for a long time bridge the slowly emerging gap between increasing population and static means of production. Part of the land that in 1906 belonged to outsiders seems to have been bought back by local people, but such expansion of produc-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205542, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n79\n\ntion was limited as the population pressure increased in the two other land-owning communities as well. Generally, new land was not available. As time passed people of Plum Grove Village reached the optimum point where they had to look for new alternatives to traditional local production. The men started to emigrate, mostly to Southeast Asia. But the prospects of these areas were very different from those in America. Around 1910 some ten men left for Nanyang. People have never heard from them since. It is supposed that they were killed by the effects of the damp climate. But the movement had to continue. Later emigrants set out for Singapore but they returned as poor as they went, and there was no accumulation of capital at all. Today it is very apparent that Plum Grove Village is a much poorer place than Big Stream Village.\n\nWhat has been exchanged between the two lineages Zhang and Wu is not their respective localization, but the image of their relative prosperity. What is communicated in the myth is that the economic situation of one settlement has improved while that of another has declined. The shift of the respective conditions is referred to as emanating from natural influences.\n\nFengshui is not just a way to communicate, but is a believed-in-order. In Big Stream Village one can still find traces of earlier attempts to minimize negative influences; large stones inscribed with the conventional trigram — yinyang patterns and series of characters have been erected outside some of the houses in order to avert negative forces in the natural surroundings. The four character series are completely meaningless to villagers, who nowadays know nothing about the stones, except that they realize that they have been erected there for fengshui purposes. It is apparent that special knowledge is required to make sense out of a combination of words meaning 'purple', 'minimal', 'first month', and 'illuminate'. These stones, however, are evidence that people in Big Stream Village were really concerned about their bad fengshui position at one time. But this aspect cannot be separated from the aspect of communication. The stones carried a message telling about misfortune. They made the poverty of the locality explicit and understood by others. Nothing comparable to these stones is to be found in Plum Grove Village. In the latter place they now explain their decline, in a less explicit way, by referring to the bad", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205543, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "80\n\nGORAN ALMER\n\nposition of their ancestral hall into which the dragon of the hill behind is 'crashing' all the time.\n\nBy way of summing up, we may say that social and economic differentiation is projected on the natural surroundings. The phenomena of nature in their symbolic aspect project back the image of differentiation in the form of rational models concepts of systems of natural influences affecting man and social life. These models can be manipulated by their constructors. They also carry messages that can be communicated between individuals and between groups.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 For a somewhat fuller description of the two villages, see Aijmer 1967. Big Stream Village (Dashuikeng) and Plum Grove Village (Meizilin) are in Hong Kong known under the Cantonese designations 'Tai Shui Hang' and 'Mui Tsz Lam'. Grass Field Village (Maoping) is 'Mau Ping'. They can be located with the help of Gazetteer 1960. Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Field work was financed by six Swedish funds; I gratefully acknowledge their support. Thanks are due to Mr. James Hayes, Hong Kong, and my wife for comments.\n\n2 Freedman 1966, 118f; 1967; Baker 1965.\n\n3 An alternative to, or perhaps rather a facet of, manipulating was fleeing. Examples of how people broke away from localities considered having bad fengshui have been given by Hayes (1963; 1967).\n\n4 It may be of interest to point out that nets are instrumental in exorcistic ceremonies, when malevolent spirits may be caught or scared away with fishnets. I have this from a Buddhist monk whom I interviewed in Macau in 1965.\n\n5 Census 1911, 103:27.\n\n6 The sources classify Plum Grove land as third class land whereas Big Stream land is rated as second class. In the former place farming is done on terraced fields only.\n\n7 In Plum Grove Village 35 houses were registered in 1906. If we compare this with the population figure of the Census of 1911, we will find that, if in use, each house unit was inhabited by 1.7 persons. This is an amazingly low figure, as we would have expected something around five or more as an average. Even if we allow for the ten men mentioned below, the figure would increase to just about two. The implication of these facts must be a reduction in population, perhaps by way of a lineage segment breaking away to settle elsewhere. In Big Stream Village 77 houses gave shelter to average families of 2.2 persons. Not even male absenteeism, discussed later, can explain this low figure to satisfaction.\n\n* Information obtained from the District Demarcation Maps and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 188' of 1906 and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 196' of the same year, to be seen at the Tai Po District Office, New Territories, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205544, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n9 See Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n81\n\n10 In an attempt to recover an even earlier period we may assume that at one time all house-units were inhabited by one household each and that the land at the same period had the same acreage as in 1906. If we disregard the possibility of outsiders as landowners we will find that one average household in Big Stream Village owned 0.33 acre whereas the corresponding figure for Plum Grove Village is 0.70, which is more than twice as much as in the former place.*\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAijmer, G.\n\n1967 'Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 7.\n\nBaker, H.\n\n1965 'Burial, Geomancy and Ancestor Worship', in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Brochure of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.d.\n\nCensus 1911\n\n1911 'Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1911, Hong Kong.\n\nFreedman, M.\n\n1966 Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, London, The Athlone Press,\n\n1967 'Ancestor Worship: Two Facets of the Chinese Case', in Social Organization, Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, M. Freedman (ed.), London, Frank Cass and Co., Ltd.\n\nGazetteer\n\n1960 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong, Government Printer, n.d.\n\nGroves, R.G.\n\n1965a 'The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories* in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories Hong Kong, n.d.\n\n1965b Report of Field Work in Hong Kong, London-Cornell Project, mimeographed.\n\nHayes, J.W.\n\n1963 'Movement of Villages on Lantau Island for Fengshui Reasons', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 3.\n\n1967 'Geomancy and the Village' in Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, M. Topley (ed), Hong Kong, Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\n* It is hoped to include in the 1969 Journal a note on the occupancy level of village houses in the Hong Kong region in the early 20th Century. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205820, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "120\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\nkwoh-kai him: so that his line might well be allowed to die out, and his house to stand empty until it fell into ruins.\n\nAdoption seems on the face of it to be the ideal mechanism for balancing the uneven distribution of houses and sons in different branches of a localised descent group, but the above indicates that people neither seek to adopt sons (for themselves or others) unless they have to, nor part with sons in adoption (or transfer themselves to other descent lines) unless strong material advantage is offered\n\n20\n\n...and their abandonment.\n\nI have not touched on the problem of out-migration, which, as Aijmer recognises, may be a major cause of the abandonment of village houses. It is worth pointing out, however, that it is very rare for Chinese deliberately to leave their ancestral home for good; their sojourn abroad may be extended, but there is always the hope of an eventual return. For this reason, houses are not transferred when migrants leave. The annual Crown Rent payments may be made by close kin, but they would not feel justified in presuming on a migrant's probable failure to return by actually moving into his house. Even after his death abroad is reported, or becomes virtually certain, there is no mechanism by which his house may be passed to somebody else — a son can only be adopted to a man who is known to have died sonless and although the Crown Rent payments may be continued for many years by people uncertain of the precise meaning of the numbers on their papers, there is no way of preventing the eventual lapsing of the payments, and a re-entry by the Crown of the migrant's long-ruined home,\n\n21\n\nConclusion\n\nBy way of conclusion, I have taken the figures given by Aijmer, divided the total population of each of his two villages in 1911 by 5, his own reasonable estimate of household size for that time – and divided the number of registered houses (in 1905) by the result. This gives us the more useful information that at that time, there were about 35 households in Big Stream Village, owning on average 2.2 houses each; and that Plum Grove contained 12 households, with 3 houses each. It is a little curious that a community which by all other measures appeared the better off", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n123\n\n15 Unless exceptional circumstances make him de facto a property-holder; when, for example, a man's parents die before his marriage.\n\n16 This is an extreme over-simplification of the very complex pattern of property rights between father and son, and between brothers: I hope to use material from Sheung Tsuen in a fuller discussion of this topic elsewhere.\n\n17 The eldest brother, usually, who will have assumed responsibility for the family's ancestral tablet when he took over his father's house on his marriage.\n\n18 The result of this being merely to delay the division of the family property by one generation.\n\n19 Traditionally, in default of a close kinsman, any boy of the same surname might be adopted, though I have heard of very few cases of this. As far as the distribution of property is concerned, however, an adoption from outside the localised lineage is no different from a different surname adoption.\n\n20 J. Goody, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective\", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1969, pps. 55-78, has an illuminating comparative survey of adoption in Roman, Greek, Hindu-Indian, Chinese, and West African society; but he is concerned to point out the differences between Eurasian and African practices, and therefore does not discuss the significance of differences within the Eurasian group itself. However, his demonstration of the general primacy in these societies of the inheritance of property over succession to an ancestral cult is most strongly supported by material from Sheung Tsuen. Studies of inheritance and succession in traditional Chinese society which rely exclusively on legal and literary sources (e.g. Klaus Mäding, Chinesisches traditionelles Erbrecht, Berlin, 1966) tend to overlook this vital point.\n\n21 And his abandoned land. There is similarly no mechanism in Chinese customary law by which a non-returning migrant's land can be transferred to his kinsmen or fellow-villagers.\n\n22 And although Plum Grove had practically no migrants; if one adds the migrants from Big Stream Village to the population figure for that village, the average number of houses per family is still further reduced,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205860, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "160\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAt the two villages of Old and New Heung Kong Wai near Aberdeen a group of villagers had to come before a Squatter Board in 1893 to help determine and register legitimate holdings. From the information then recorded, and happily preserved, the following facts emerge:\n\n(a) the New Village was built entirely by inhabitants of the Old Village;\n\n(b) two of the houses in the New Village were built 1860-70 and some earlier, some later;\n\n(c) many families owned houses in each village;\n\n(d) many families owned 2 or 3 houses;\n\n(e) none of the cultivated land in the valley was (1893) owned by outsiders.\n\nElsewhere on the island I obtained and wrote down the following account of house occupation in the small Hakka village of Tai Tam Tuk for the period before this village was removed to make way for a reservoir in 1914:\n\nSome of the houses were in a ruinous condition in 1914, which is usually the case in the smaller and poorer villages in South China where frequent typhoons and heavy rains combine to shorten the life of these simply-constructed dwellings. Perhaps in consequence, most families in the village had several houses. For instance, one of my informants, her husband, his parents and his younger unmarried brother shared three houses and one shed, but ate together as one household.\n\nThese examples seem to bear out Mr. Nelson's reinterpretation of Dr. Aijmer's figures i.e. that at that time (1911) there were about 35 households in Big Stream Village, owning on average 2.2 houses each; and that Plum Grove contained 12 households with 3 houses each.*\n\nHong Kong 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n* Since writing the above I also recall a case at Law Uk, Pui O where, speaking of her early married life there well before 1900, a very old village woman said theirs was \"a three table household\" with something over 20 persons eating together. It was also a multi-house one.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214325, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "147\n\nPLUM PUDDINGS AND SHARP BOYS “ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN”\n\nAN ANALYSIS OF THE CHINA COVERAGE IN THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,1\n\n5 JANUARY TO 23 SEPTEMBER 18612\n\nGILLIAN B. BICKLEY3\n\nWhether or not the British public had a particular interest in China before 1861, it is impossible that their interest can not have been heightened by the stirring diplomatic news coming out from China in the last days of 1860 and the early days of 1861. This raised interest was further fuelled by the human interest touches written into features appearing over the next several months, and by the media's developing focus on a desire for a better understanding between the British and Chinese peoples.\n\nWhat British readers could have known previously about events in China was briefly as follows. After the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin on 26 June 1858, the Allied land force of Britain and France had evacuated Tientsin on 6 July without any force having been sent – even as a token – to the Chinese capital, Peking. It was generally considered, however, that the retirement of the troops was premature and that eventually a force would have to be sent to Peking to prove that the allies had established their positions in China.\n\nThe expected peace demanded under the Treaty did not materialise. Small attacks continued to be made by armed parties on British occupied positions. On 8 January 1859, correspondence was found which confirmed that the Emperor had no intention of keeping the Treaty, and had in fact issued orders that the British were to be prevented from entering the Pei-ho River and trading on the Yangtse, contrary to the provisions of the Treaty.\n\nIn June 1859, the British fleet escorting Lord Elgin, the first British Minister, to Peking, to exchange the ratifications, was brought up sharp by the forts at Takoo, at the entrance to the Peiho River. Men and material were lost, and there was grave damage to prestige.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]