[ { "id": 204707, "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-1964", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "# PRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\n1963\n\nThe year 1963-1964 - the fourth year of the Society in Hong Kong after its revival - was a very successful one. The membership has steadily increased each year. At the end of the first year, we had 160 members, of whom 20 were life members; at the end of the second, 266, of whom 25 were life members; at the end of the third year, 280, of whom 33 were life members; and at the end of last year, the fourth, we had a total of 371, of whom 41 were life members. Since then, more than 30 have joined as ordinary members and 2 as life members.\n\nThe great increase in the number of members last year is doubly welcome in that it reflects the increasing interest of the younger generation in the objects and activities of the Society. It is a healthy and gratifying sign of the intellectual vitality of the young people of the Colony to see them join. We rely largely on them to ensure the future success of the Society.\n\nDuring 1963, we had twelve meetings, all of which were very well attended. On several occasions, the capacity of the City Hall was fully taxed. The expedition to Tung Chung on Lantao Island was a highly popular feature.\n\nThe lectures given were:\n\nJanuary 21st\n\nMarch 4th\n\nMarch 25th\n\nApril 22nd\n\nProfessor S. H. Hansford\n\n\"Some Problems of Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes\"\n\n(Illustrated by colour slides)\n\nJ. D. Bromhall\n\n\"Underwater Photography in Eastern Seas\"\n\n(Illustrated by colour slides made by the speaker)\n\nDr. Maurice Freedman\n\n\"Social Anthropology and the Study of China\"\n\nMiss B. T. Chiu\n\n\"Flowers of Hong Kong\"\n\n(Illustrated by colour slides taken by Miss Chiu and Mr. F. A. Nixon)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204708, "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-1964", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "2\n\nMay 13th\n\nJune 17th\n\nAugust 19th\n\nProfessor C. P. FitzGerald\n\n\"The Succession Crises in the Manchu Dynasty after the Death of the Tung Chih Emperor\"\n\nProfessor Yao Hsin-nung\n\n\"K'un Ch'u — The Classical Chinese Drama” (Illustrated with colour slides and a demonstration by Miss Hsiao Fang-fang in full make-up and costume)\n\nMr. Ho Tickon\n\n\"Method and Technique of Chinese Painting\" (Illustrated by the artist/lecturer)\n\nSeptember 30th \"Conquest of Everest\"-film (British Council)\n\nOctober 20th\n\nExpedition to Tung Chung, Lantao island to visit the old fort.\n\nOctober 25th\n\nDr. W. Hellmich\n\n\"Tasks and Results of the Research Scheme Nepal Himalaya”\n\n(In co-operation with the Faculty of Science, University of Hong Kong)\n\nNovember 18th Mr. K. M. A. Barnett\n\n\"Hong Kong before the Chinese — the Puzzle and the Missing Pieces\"\n\nDecember 10th Documentary films on Hong Kong:-\n\n\"This is Hong Kong\"\n\n\"Sea Festivals of Hong Kong\" \"The Boat People\"\n\nthe Frame,\n\nIt is no mean tribute to the standing of the Hong Kong Branch of the Society that it has succeeded in attracting as guest speakers such eminent and world-wide authorities as Professor Hansford, Dr. Freedman, Professor Fitzgerald and last month Professor Fairbanks. It is equally a tribute to the rich local talent of the Society that six of the addresses — all of high standard and of great interest — during the year were given by local members, while the more recent address by Mr. Cranmer-Byng proved to be one of the most appreciated of all.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "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": 205416, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "171\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nCHINESE LINEAGE AND SOCIETY; FUKIEN AND KWANGTUNG. Maurice Freedman. London, The Athlone Press, New York, Humanities Press Inc., 1966, pp. x, 207, 37s 6d.\n\nThis monograph, in my opinion, will repay study by anybody interested in enlarging his serious knowledge of how Chinese local society has worked traditionally in this part of the world. The picture given is built on both factual material and logical argument.\n\nIn an earlier book (Lineage Organization in Southeastern China, Athlone Press, 1958 and paperback re-issue 1965) the author set out some reflections on the subject based on ideas from material collected by him during a field study in Singapore, and a wide and thorough reading of written sources. The present work is a sequel. His argument here is reinforced and extended by many new facts from studies now completed in the New Territories (members will recall a talk given to the Society by Professor Freedman while he was here conducting one of these studies himself) and in Taiwan. It is also strengthened by additional material taken from other new and traditional sources.\n\nIt should be pointed out at once that the book is one of a series of works on Social Anthropology and thus has a theoretical relevance related to this discipline. The author's discussion is within the context of the problem: how do unilineal descent groups (such as the lineage) function in socially differentiated and politically centralised societies? In terms of China it is more specifically: how did locally based Chinese lineages fit into complex society at the local level?\n\nBut this theoretical concern, directed to the specialist, should not dismay the non-specialist looking for new facts and ideas on how Chinese kinship worked, and to some extent still works here today, above the level of the family. The functioning of the lineage is not a subject which lends itself to a popular \"things Chinese\" description. If we want precise information we must go to the expert. We cannot have things both ways.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205634, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n171\n\nThe author's collection of photographs and other materials relating to his scholarly works is in fact famous, and now reposes in the Royal Library and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. It is a pity, perhaps, that the many really excellent photographs from his collection appearing in this work could not have been reproduced on glossy rather than matt paper for the Hong Kong edition (since the book costs $250 anyway). But perhaps there were problems in doing so. This is still, certainly, a very elegant edition. It should add importantly to the libraries of individuals, and both public and private institutions, and it would be an excellent present to grace the coffee table of a civilized friend.\n\nHong Kong, 1968,\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nSOCIAL ORGANIZATION: ESSAYS PRESENTED TO RAYMOND FIRTH, ed. Maurice Freedman, Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1967, pp vii 300. 75/-.\n\nCollections of essays by different specialists in a single field or in related fields of scholarship are becoming very popular, and rightly so. They enable a book to cover a wider range of topics and materials on a selected theme than would normally be possible if undertaken by a single author. This is particularly so today when knowledge in all fields becomes increasingly complex and inter-penetrating.\n\nThe thirteen essays in this book deal with matters of Social Anthropology. They are written in honour of Raymond Firth, one of the great contemporary British anthropologists and the authors, some now leading figures in their own specialities, have all studied or worked under him at some time. In order to illustrate Professor Firth's considerable variety of interests the topics discussed have been selected to cover a very wide range of subject matter, problem, and also region and type of society. The book thus gives the non-specialist reader a very good picture of the sort of questions anthropologists set out to study and answer.\n\nA particular interest of this book for members of the Branch lies in the two contributions on Chinese society. One is provided by the editor, Professor Maurice Freedman, the other by Miss Barbara Ward, and many members will be acquainted already with some of their work through lectures they gave the Society during field trips to Hong Kong in recent years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205635, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "172\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nDr. Freedman's essay is concerned with problems in an area to which Professor Firth has made significant contributions. This is the role of the deceased in the organization of the society left behind them (see for example, Firth, Frazer Lecture, 1955). The particular concern here is with the deceased as members of a kinship system.\n\nIn \"Ancestor Worship: Two Facets of the Chinese Case”, Dr. Freedman discusses first the question of geomancy (fêng-shui) in regard to buildings and to tombs (the yang and yin of geomancy), and differences found in the incidence of the two types in two parts of what he calls the sinicized world. China, Vietnam and Korea all practise both kinds of geomancy, but Japan has only that of buildings. He suggests this situation might be explained in terms of the kinship system of these countries. In Japan we do not find the kind of agnatic descent system which we associate with China and can be seen in Korea and Vietnam. He also suggests a relationship between the elaborateness of the geomancy of graves and that of the lineage structure, saying it is probably no accident that in the south-east part of China (principally Fukien and Kwangtung) both lineages and geomancy of tombs have been carried to extreme forms of development.\n\nThe principal argument is that where the authority of past generations represented in the cult of ancestors weighs heaviest, there men redress the balance by recourse to the geomancy of the tomb. It is pointed out that geomancy delivers a man's ancestors into his own hands, so to speak (he may determine fortune by siting one or more graves in a way so that influences of the landscape are channelled through the ancestors' bones to agnatic descendants); but in ancestor worship, which Dr. Freedman then goes on to discuss, ancestors are beings with rights and duties.\n\nThe problem here is why Chinese ancestors are essentially benign. An interesting argument is developed relating this to the connexion between ancestors and the nature of command of those taking over from them in the world of the living. The weight of ethnographical evidence is that ancestors, by being displaced, resent their successors, and also endow them with authority to rule in their place. But in the last two millennia in China there has been a situation whereby the family is a property-owning estate dissolving on the death of each senior generation to reform into successor-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205636, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n173\n\nestates of which none can be said to have the identity inhering in its predecessor. The so-called joint family has a short life.\n\nRitual primogeniture is inherent in the worship, but rests on a true primogeniture of a much older phase. No one son can step effectively into his father's shoes and exercise authority over the same range of people. Married sons are not seen as a threat to the father's position and the father, also, does not, once in his soul-tablet, support the authority of sons over their juniors. In a nut-shell then, the ancestor is worshipped but cannot be used as a major instrument of domestic discipline.\n\nMiss Ward's paper is very different in subject matter and theoretical interest to that of Dr. Freedman's but again is concerned with matters on which Professor Firth has done considerable work: peasant communities, including fishing communities, and their economies. \"Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: their Post-Peasant Economy\" is based particularly on data derived by Miss Ward from the village of Kau Sai which is on the shores of a narrow strait between two small islands in the Port Shelter area of Hong Kong's waters. It was there, in the early 'fifties, that Miss Ward first began her field work on the boat people.\n\nThe essay discusses problems of economic and social change. Miss Ward talks of the rapid technological changes in the fishing industry (whereas in 1952 in Kau Sai all but one boat had been wind-driven, by mid-1963 only one was not mechanized). She argues that this was possible because the economic attitudes of the fishermen and the social structure of fishing communities were already favourable. When the opportunity to adopt useful technical change was offered, it was likely to be seized upon unless blocked by something else. By 1950 the opportunity to mechanize did appear -- engines were available. By then the possible educational block had also been partly removed, and government action in freeing the market, injecting money and providing training courses and encouragement was all that was required to set a revolution in action.\n\nThe essay deals with the effects of mechanization and change on different kinds of fishermen, and changes in social structure consequent on such developments, highlighting as a factor of general importance the movement of boat-people to land-dwellings. This affects particularly the position of women, changing their opportunities to earn an independent income either by working in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205731, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "31\n\nMILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE:\n\nCHINESE RESISTANCE TO THE OCCUPATION OF HONG KONG'S NEW TERRITORIES IN 18991\n\nR. G. GROVES*\n\nIntroduction\n\nViolence, or the very real possibility of violence, was endemic in southeastern China during the nineteenth century. The provinces of Kwangsi, Kwangtung, and Fukien were notorious to imperial official and foreign observer alike for their varieties of armed conflict. Brine, a British naval officer with contemporary experience of the coastal provinces, described the mid-nineteenth century situation as follows: \"the whole history of the period is little else than a continual series of local insurrections, bursting out in all directions. The coast was infested with pirates, who not only caused great injury to the coasting trade, but frequently landed and sacked the villages lying adjacent to the sea. In the two Kwang provinces armed bodies of men moved from town to town, and committed large robberies in open day... the Pekin Gazettes were full of reports from the provincial governors acquainting the emperor with the disorganized state of the country, and complaining of the inadequacy of their troops to quell the interminable revolts.\" To this catalogue of ills may be added the Opium and Arrow Wars, inter-lineage and clan warfare, ethnic conflict, and major and minor rebellions.\n\nThe prevalence of violence was by no means new. Writing of the Hsin-an District of Kwangtung Province, just over a century ago, the German missionary Krone noted: \"Hung-mo the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary... to appoint an officer with the title ‘Shou-yu-sho'... Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.\"3 More recently Professor Maurice Freedman, surveying a mass of evidence and arguing that organized violence\n\n* Mr. Groves is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia. He conducted field research in the New Territories between 1963-65. His article \"The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories\" appeared in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories (ed. M. Topley) published by the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. in 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205759, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n59\n\npart of further studies of militia, both within Kwangtung Province and elsewhere in China. It is possible that the approach to militia used in this article could be applied to other, more significant, military organizations as they existed in nineteenth century China. For example, recent studies of the regional armies of Tseng Kuo-fan and Li Hung-chang indicate that they were, initially, amalgamations of local militia forces.78 A more detailed analysis of these militia could contribute to a greater understanding of the particularistic relationships which appear to have been important in maintaining regional armies as viable organizations over relatively long periods of time.\n\nNOTES\n\nThis article is based upon research in Hong Kong between 1963 and 1965. I am grateful for the financial support provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies. A number of colleagues have commented upon the subject matter of the article during its various stages of preparation. I would particularly like to thank the following for their advice: Dr. Christopher Turner, Dr. George C. Bond, Mr. James Hayes, Professor Maurice Freedman, and Professor Göran Aijmer. A draft of the paper was read to the Sociology Seminar, School of Social Studies, University of East Anglia. I am grateful to my colleagues in this context for their comments. Place names will be rendered according to A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, Hong Kong, n.d., but published 1960.\n\n2 Brine, Lindesay. The Taeping Rebellion in China: A Narrative of its Rise and Progress. London, 1862, pp. 11-12.\n\n3 Krone, [R]. “A Notice of the Sanon District\", Article V, Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, pt. VI, Hong Kong, 1859, p. 71.\n\n4 Freedman, Maurice. Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung. London, 1966, p. 115.\n\n5 The Governor of Hong Kong, commenting upon robbery and piracy during the year 1903, said: \"they are the most common offences in the Southern provinces ... the Provincial Authorities do not attempt to deal with such cases until some village is reported as being specially notorious as harbouring robbers, when, if the authorities do not consider them too strong, a force is sent out and as many as possible arrested or the village destroyed.\" Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1903, Hong Kong, 1904, pp. 348 ff.\n\nFreedman, op. cit., p. 112, quotes an account of such an expedition which took place in \"about 1870\" and resulted in the beheading of more than a thousand people.\n\n6 Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960, p. 503.\n\n7 For a detailed account of these events, see: Wakeman, Jr., Frederic, Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205821, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n121\n\nof the two should in fact have proportionately more empty houses than its poorer neighbour22; it is not impossible that the sort of inefficiencies in the descent system that I have described whereby the swelling of a descent line in one generation may leave the next with more house-property than it needs or can redistribute — may account for this anomaly.*\n\nH. G. H. NELSON.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. Göran Aijmer, \"Being Caught by a Fishnet: On Fengshui in South-eastern China\", J.H.K.B.R.A.S., Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 74-81.\n\n2. Field data drawn on in this paper are derived from a period of work in Sheung Tsuen, Pat Heung, from June 1967 to October 1968. I was employed as a Research Officer of the London School of Economics, on a project financed by a grant made to Professor Maurice Freedman by the Social Science Research Council. Much of the information from the Hong Kong Government's land records was collected by my wife, whose fare to Hong Kong was provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies, financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation. I am very glad to acknowledge their generosity.\n\n3. See for example J. E. Spenser, \"The Houses of the Chinese\", Geographical Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1947, pp. 254-273.\n\n4. Cf. J. W. Hayes, ‘A Chinese Village on Hong Kong Island Fifty Years Ago Tai Tam Tuk, Village Under the Water', in I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 33.\n\n5. Block Crown Lease, Demarcation Districts Nos. 112 and 114, 1905; various Memorials in Yuen Long District Office; and ‘A-Roll' volume X.14. I am most grateful to the New Territories Administration for their courtesy in allowing me access to the invaluable information contained in their Land Records.\n\n6. The current records conceal the difference between inhabited structures and \"house-lots' (Crown Rent being assessed on the site rather than the structure) - a difference of which the villagers are aware. Many of them, when asked how many houses they own, will say, \"so many houses and so many lots \"(uk-tel_£)\". It seems to me possible that some villagers may, in 1905, have been far-sighted ---or fortunate enough to register both their houses and their ruined lots, thereby avoiding the expense and complication of obtaining a New Grant Lot when they wanted to rebuild on an old site.\n\n* Groups of houses, bigger and more durable than usual, have also been built as a form of long-term investment (and prestige expenditure) by particularly wealthy men; but their hopes of producing enough sons and grandsons to justify this deliberate over-production of houses are often sadly unfulfilled.\n\n* On the subject of this article see also Mr. Hayes' note at pp. 158-160.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205847, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# THE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI\n\n147\n\nthe characters in such a way that ambiguity or overcrowding was successfully avoided. However, Liang's commendable standard of calligraphy was not matched by his ability to translate and hence the references to the lead mine, Canton River and ‘As far to Canton' were expressed only in English. Was it the intention of Volonteri that these should remain so, or had he overlooked these particular items? This is but a trivial point compared with the fact that in at least three cases the local place-names recorded in English were neglected by the Chinese scribe who, in turn, independently inserted more than twenty references to villages, islands and mountains, unaccompanied by their transliterations. It is of interest to note that practically all these incongruities, like the others mentioned earlier, occurred in western San On, the area which must have been less familiar to both partners.\n\nIt is not the intention of this introduction to the Map of the San On District to belittle in any way the splendid effort and significant contribution of Mgr. Volonteri, but it is hoped that by pointing out some of the limitations in the information, the value of this magnificent piece of work as a fundamental document in the study of the history and geography of San On could be enhanced.\n\nAcknowledgement.\n\nThe author wishes to express his gratitude to Professor M. Freedman and Professor M. J. Wise for pointing out to him the existence of the Map in the R.G.S. Collection and for commenting on the manuscript; to Brigadier R. A. Gardiner, Keeper of the Map Room, for providing a copy of the original map as well as making available a wide range of cartographic material; to Fr. J. M. Tai, S.J., for locating important sources of reference; and to Mrs. L. Quartermaine, for translating excerpts of the biography from the Italian.\n\nREFERENCES*\n\nHayes, J. W. 1962 The pattern of life in the New Territories in 1898. J. R. Asiat. Soc. (Hong Kong) 2.\n\nHong Kong Government 1961 A gazetteer of place-names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong Government Printer.\n\nJournal of the Mission of the Propaganda of the Light Kuang-tung yu-ti Ch'uan-tu (Atlas of Kwangtung Province). Chinese text, 1967.\n\n* These are given in the form used in the original printing. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206327, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "138 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nwith a passion for tidiness disliked them intensely. In this case, I suspect, the Registrar General bowed to the will of the Committee. \n\n26 There was a marked tendency for the committees of such associations to grow very large in size-so many affluent Chinese wanted their names recorded as committeemen, and to donate money, without of course doing any committee work. Professor Freedman supplies an explanation for this phenomenon in Singapore: 'Since office-holding occupies a strategic position in the formation of social status, it is not surprising that the structure of associations seems adapted to this function. This adaptation is clear in two features: the elaboration of offices, such that many positions are made available, and the institutional arrangements for filling the offices with the well-to-do', Maurice Freedman, Chinese Marriage and Family in Singapore, London, H.M.S.O., 1957, p. 95. \n\n27 In 1903 the proposed scheme of detectives under the control of the Committee was not approved; but permission was given at a later date, apparently during the First World War and probably because of the shortage of European policemen. \n\n28 In 1938 there were 5 Head District Watchmen, 6 Assistant Head District Watchmen, 26 detectives and 103 uniformed men. The position was approximately the same in 1941. \n\n29 In 1902 the rate paid by Chinese shops was increased slightly and in 1924 it was increased by another 1/4 per cent. \n\n30 Butters writes that the figures which appear annually regarding the cost of living in the report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs are based on information obtained from the District Watch Force. At my request figures were furnished from the same source showing the cost of living of an ordinary labourer': H. R. Butters, Report on Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong, Sessional Papers, No. 3 of 1939, p. 137. Applications from guilds and trade unions to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs for permission to hold 'sing songs' were granted conditionally on a district watchman attending the meeting to see that nothing unlawful transpired. See Butters, p. 126. The watchmen were always regarded as a source of information about the Chinese population. When the commission on chair and jinricksha coolies attempted to discover whether there was a secret union of public transport workers, the first people they contacted for information about the matter were district watchmen. See Report of the Commission on Chair and Jinricksha Coolies, Sessional Papers, No. 47 of 1901, p. 56. \n\n31 The Registrar General in his report for 1868 made this quite clear: 'the chief object of the Chinese paying these watchmen is to drive away thieves, the cardinal evil of a shop-keeping population, And it is thought that the watchmen succeed, not only in arresting actual offenders, but also in keeping away those who live by pilfering'. \n\n32 These constables were recruited mostly from Weihaiwei, a territory leased to Britain on 1 July, 1898. \n\n33 These facts are taken from the reports of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs for the respective years. \n\n34 See above: note 33. \n\n35 The Lok Sin Tong was an association established by officials and village gentry in Kowloon about 1879 to perform charitable works in the surrounding district. See James Hayes, 'Old ways of Life in Kowloon: The Cheung Sha Wan Villages', Journal of Oriental Studies, vol. viii, 1970, p. 167. The Chung Sing Charitable Society, originally known as the Chung Sing Opera Society, was founded around 1917 by a leading merchant, Tsang Foo. This charity also maintained a free school.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206427, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "218\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nIn answer to the review in the Journal of the previous book, one of the authors wrote \"I am impelled to emphasize that we wrote avowedly as dealers. Our objective has been achieved and the work has brought us a substantial volume of business\". Where desire for success prevails over truth, accuracy and scholarship, one gets only gallery patter. The present volume has all the bad points of its predecessor.\n\nPeabody Museum\n\nSalem, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1971.\n\nF. B. LOTHROP\n\nJ\n\nFAMILY AND KINSHIP IN CHINESE SOCIETY, edited by Maurice Freedman. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1970., pp. XV, 269.\n\nStudents of Chinese society are not able at present to undertake field studies in the Chinese homeland, the People's Republic of China. The last major social investigation was carried out in the vicinity of Canton by Professor C.K. Yang over twenty years ago. Despite this formidable obstacle - the fact that China is closed to direct sociological observation - the study of Chinese domestic institutions by Western and other scholars has quickened rather than slackened. A small group of dedicated social scientists have been active since 1949 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other areas of Overseas Chinese settlement. Paradoxically, since 1949 much data have been collected, some important hypotheses formulated, and some parts of theory tested. As this volume makes clear, we have learned much about Chinese society since 1949 - at least about the older China now being transformed by political, social and economic developments.\n\nIt is natural, I feel, that the editor of this volume should be Professor Maurice Freedman, whose two major studies of this area - Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (1958) and Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (1966) — have deeply influenced many other researchers in the same field. Professor Freedman, as the bibliographies appended to his works amply\n\n* A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition and The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution (both M.LT., 1959),", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206429, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 246, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "220\n\n \nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n \nsupport his thesis about variations in the three components of the chia. But ideally of course — and one is asking too much — we would like to know, if only by some crude measure, the statistical frequency of these variations. Were some variations so rare that they were clearly aberrations evolved by a few families? Thus in Western societies typically most husbands and wives live together; there are however some few cases — they do exist — in which eccentric husbands or wives live in separate households but continue to meet at need. How much attention should one pay to this rare family form? How many cases would make a variation significant in terms of social structure? The question is a worrying one.\n\n \nThe essay by Mrs. Margery Wolf on child training and the Chinese family is brilliantly written: sensitive, perceptive, acute. She shows how the way in which Chinese children are raised — the elder brother having to defer to the younger for some years — helps to develop tensions between them when they become adult. She also traces the process of fen-chia (partition of chia) to the competition that develops between the wives of married brothers; for wives come from stranger families and, unlike brothers, their loyalty lies primarily with their own little tribe of husband and children. Professor Freedman has been accused in a review of cutting the Chinese father down to size: Mrs. Wolf pursues this theme. She argues that the Chinese father, but not necessarily the mother, becomes a lonely and pathetic figure in old age, an authority in decay, with the power to make family decisions gradually eroded as the son or sons reach the plenitude of their vigour and manhood. Mrs. Wolf discusses not only the 'typical' family but variations — the sim-pua (hsin-pao) (little daughter-in-law), the practice of providing sons with wives by adopting an infant girl, and the custom of uxorilocal marriage. The treatment of these variations forms an important segment of her paper and throws much light on the developmental cycle of the family. Reading her paper, I was immediately reminded of the picture presented by Arensberg and Kimball in their classic study of the Irish small farmer and of his destiny when old.* Mrs. Wolf's paper is full of subtleties and insights, as one would expect from the author of The House of Lim.\n\n \n* Family and Community in Ireland (Harvard University Press, 1940).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206430, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 247, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n221\n\nProfessor Jack M. Potter's essay on land and lineage in traditional China draws heavily on the data collected for his Hong Kong study, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant (1968). He sets himself the problem of trying to account for differences in the distribution of strong lineage organization in various parts of China, of lineage structure Type Z, as described and formulated by Professor Freedman. The hypothesised factors favourable to the development of a strong lineage are given by Professor Potter as a rich agricultural environment, frontier conditions, the absence of strong governmental control, and commercial development; all present, he concludes, in the New Territories of Hong Kong, where the Ping Shan Tang lineage flourished. He also argues that in all areas lineage organization would tend to be weaker under strong dynasties and stronger in inter-regnal periods or under weak dynasties. Professor Potter affirms that the four variables 'can form a set of inter-related hypotheses that, if validated by further research, would allow us to predict when and where strong lineage organization tended to appear in Traditional China'. But I should also think that strong lineages must depend very much on the quality of the personnel contained within them; for some human groups do seem to produce a more adroit leadership for a longer period of time than others. An institutionalization of virtue, as it were, may take place in some groups (lineages) more readily than in others.* And the task of plotting the frequency of powerful lineages in China has scarcely begun, so far as I know.\n\nThe study of Chinese society by Western scholars has been mainly androcentric in its selection of problems, thus reflecting Chinese views of their own social universe; but both Professor Freedman and Professor Arthur P. Wolf in their respective papers pay attention to the ambivalent and ambiguous status held by women in Chinese society. Professor Freedman's essay on ritual aspects of Chinese kinship and marriage discusses, among other matters, the problem of 'how is a woman to reconcile her duties as wife and daughter-in-law with those she has as sister and daughter?' The rites of marriage, he argues, \"are not to be taken as simple statements capable of being given clear and unambiguous meanings by those who participate in them. Rites, as symbolic\n\n* Dialect groupings may constitute another variable that has not yet been examined.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206431, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 248, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "222\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\naffirmations, are the opposite of jural rules. Jural rules rely for their value on their relative clarity; rites derive their strength from their poetic vagueness. Indeed, when the jural rules are themselves lacking in clear definition and are internally contradictory, then the rites exploit them by exaggerating their ambiguities and discrepancies. It seems to me that the Chinese rites of marriage above all stress the ambiguity of affinal relationships'.\n\nProfessor Wolf in an essay on Chinese kinship and mourning dress shows how his informants in the Taiwan town of Sanhsia, an old riverport near Taipei, gave conflicting versions of the mourning attire to be worn by daughters. As he writes, 'where disagreements occur, they reflect conflict in the kinship system. . . . Disagreements between people are inevitable because there is ambiguity in the kinship system. The only way to avoid variation in mourning dress without imposing an arbitrary code would be to resolve the conflicts that it reflects'.\n\nThe conflicts discussed by both Professors Freedman and Wolf take us further away from an idealised and literary version of Chinese society: they supply data and arguments that allow us to see the Chinese family and kinship group as it really is. Contradictions are the heart of the matter.\n\nThe other essays in this volume deal with a variety of interrelated problems. Mrs. Irene Taeuber, a demographer, takes another look at the data collected on farm families by J.L. Buck in 1929-31 and shows that there is some adaptation of family size (and family structure) to primary economic resources. Mrs. Ai-Li S. Chin analyses samples of short stories from the Mainland and Taiwan and concludes that, whereas in tradition-oriented Taiwan the writers concentrate on portraying the problems of the alienated and isolated individual, the Mainland writers seem to accept (in the period under review, 1962 to mid-1966) the family itself, if it is ideologically sound, as a source of happiness for the individual. Professor Johanna Meskill discusses the Chinese genealogy as a research source, describes different types of genealogy, and demonstrates its uses and limitations.* Professor John McCoy writes of Chinese kin terms of reference and address. This is a highly technical but interesting paper. Finally, in a terminal paper Professor\n\n* Hugh D. R. Baker has used genealogies with effect in his A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (London, Frank Cass, 1968).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206432, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n223\n\nJohn Pelzel compares Japanese and Chinese Kinship. As Professor Freedman sums up in his introduction to the volume, 'it seems that the perduring units of kinship structure are in Japan the ie and in China the lineage, the “lineage” in Japan and the chia in China are passing phenomena.'\n\nThis volume of essays does not form a textbook on Chinese kinship and family; rather it summarises contemporary thinking on and research about family and kinship in China and discloses, I feel, some likely future developments. More attention needs to be given to the study of matrilateral relationships, a topic hardly explored in any major research project or study. There is also a need to explore relationships that do not depend on kinship. Chinese, after all, do become members of guilds and trade unions and other associations; and some of the non-kin relationships they enter into are as meaningful and sociologically significant as those connected with family and kinship; and, after reading Professor Cohen's essay, it seems clear that somebody should take a very close look at the Chinese firm or business, at the Chinese business-man in his economic habitat. Lastly, there is a need for a more comparative approach. Professor Freedman states, 'China, we are discovering more and more, can be profitably studied within the context of the group of societies with which it shares a classical tradition.' He refers to Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Most scholars would concur: sinologues tend to be obsessively preoccupied with China.\n\nAlthough there are some ideas in this volume which would be obscure for the non-sinologue or non-anthropologist, there is precious little obscurity of expression. This is an important book, elegantly written, and should interest historians, students of comparative institutions, and the educated common reader.\n\nHong Kong, June 1971.\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nTAIKOO: Charles Drage, London, Constable, 1970, pp. 298, appendices, illus, £2.25.\n\nThis book is a tapestry woven around the office and private lives of the Eastern Staff of Butterfield & Swire. It is set against", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207199, "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": 270, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "264\n\nLIST OF MEMBERS\n\nORDINARY OVERSEAS MEMBERS:\n\nANDERSON, Dr. Eugene N., Jr. Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, Cal. 92502, U.S.A.\n\nBERKOWITZ, Prof. M. I. Professor of Sociology, Dept. of Sociology, Brock University, St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada.\n\nBEVERIDGE, R. J. 13, Hartwell Hill Road, Hartwell, Victoria, 3124, Australia.\n\nBINGHAM, Mrs. Annette Welby Croft, Chapel-en-le-Frith, SK12 6CY, Cheshire, England.\n\nBLACKMORE, Michael \"Highfield\", 37, The Hollow, Bath, Somerset, BA2 1NB, England.\n\nBOXER, Prof. Baruch 167, Laurel Circle, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, USA.\n\nBRAGA, J. M. c/o National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia.\n\nBUNGER, Dr. Karl 53, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Lukas-Cranach-Strasse 14, Germany.\n\nCHAR, Tin Yuke 3898, Diamond Head Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96816, U.S.A.\n\nCLARK, Mrs. A. T. c/o Government House, Honiara, British Solomon Islands, Protectorate.\n\nEITZEN, Mrs. J. 155, Mt. Pleasant Road, Singapore 11.\n\nFITZGIBBON, Desmond J. c/o British Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon.\n\nFREEDMAN, Dr. Maurice 187, Gloucester Place, St. Marylebone, London, N.W.2\n\nHAMILTON, Bill G. 13768 Howen Drive, Saratoga, Calif. 95070, U.S.A.\n\nHARNISCH, Mr. & Mrs. D. 204, South Ellen St., Homer, Illinois, U.S.A.\n\nHARRISON, Prof. Brian 26, The White House, St. Paul's Bay, Malta.\n\nHARTWELL, Lady c/o Barclays Bank, Piccadilly Circus Branch, 52, Regent Street, London, W.1., England.\n\nHARTWELL, Sir Charles c/o Barclays Bank, Piccadilly Circus Branch, 52, Regent Street, London, W.1., England.\n\nHAYDON, E. S. Old Castle Farm, Buckland St. Mary, Somerset, England.\n\nHAYWARD, G. W. White Mill End, 5, Granville Road, Sevenoaks, Kent, England.\n\nHENSMAN, Prof. Bertha c/o St. Anne's College, Oxford, England.\n\nHILSDALE, Mrs. K. H. 1105, Armada Drive, Pasadena, Calif. 91103, U.S.A.\n\nHORMANN, Prof. B. L. 2520, Malama Pl., Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A.\n\nHOWARTH, Richard H. c/o American Embassy, Merchant Street, Rangoon, Burma.\n\nJOHNSON, Dr. Graham E. Department of Anthropology & Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, B.C., Canada.\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207818, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A REPORT ON SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis report by the late Maurice Freedman, Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University and Fellow of All Souls at the time of his death in 1975, has hitherto been available only in mimeographed form. It was written for the New Territories Administration, Hong Kong Government, which gave assistance during his field study visit in 1963, as recorded in the opening paragraphs. The report is reproduced in full, with the permission of Dr. Judith Freedman and of the Hong Kong Government.\n\nBeyond making a few trifling corrections necessitated by the fact that Professor Freedman wrote the report away from his sources of reference (para. 2), I have abstained from amending the text or adding notes. Were I to do either, the report would lose some of that distinction that he gave to any study of place, time and context.\n\nFor those members who are interested in Professor Freedman's later work, some of the contents of this report were incorporated in his Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London and New York, 1966) and part into other work. A bibliography of his writings is appended to Professor G. William Skinner's obituary notice which appeared in the American Anthropologist, 78, No. 4, December 1976: 871-885. A useful collection of his essays will appear soon, edited by Professor Skinner.--Ed.\n\nThe Report\n\n1. On 8 February 1963 I began a study tour of the New Territories. I planned to spend some three months making a general appraisal of social conditions and assessing the possibilities of detailed social research. This period was to be followed by a further three months during which I would undertake some intensive study in one place. My visit to Hong Kong was financed partly by the London-Cornell Project for research into Chinese and South-East Asian societies (a body which came into existence in August 1962 and which receives its funds from the Carnegie Corporation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207980, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "3\n\ngenerously gave up his Saturday afternoon to conduct the three parties of members, and we are pleased to welcome him as a guest to dinner tonight.\n\nIn March Mr. Lapierre, a noted journalist, lecturer and author, known internationally perhaps most for his book \"Paris Burning\", showed a documentary film about India and Pakistan on the eve of independence and the conspiracy leading to Gandhi's assassination in January 1948. This lecture was held at the Union Church and Mr. Dennis Rogers, pastor of the Church, who was to act as our projectionist as he had on many occasions, died on the day of our meeting. We will miss him very much both for his help, and his enthusiastic attendance at meetings as a member of the Society. Our last lecture of the year was on March 14, when Charles Grant, Professor of Geology and Geography at the University of Hong Kong, talked about the changing coastline of the Canton Delta, the delta of the Pearl River. Professor Grant is also arranging a symposium later this year on old maps of Hong Kong. Several other events have already been planned for the first part of the next year. Two are Mr. Emerson's talk on the Japanese Occupation with a related tour of the Stanley prison area occupied by the internment camp; and Mr. Michael Stevenson's talk on the organization of Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong.\n\nPublications\n\nDr. James Hayes has been working hard to bring your Journal up to date on publication and during the year the 1974 issue was distributed. The 1975 Journal is now in print and will be distributed shortly—we hope at the end of April. The 1976 Journal is coming on well and several items have already been received and prepared for printing. They include the unpublished 1963 Report on Anthropological Fieldwork in the New Territories by the late Professor Maurice Freedman. Professor Freedman did much to open up the New Territories to anthropological research, and his observations in the Report still have influence on research choices of students working in the area today. During the year Professor Brian Lofts' illustrated symposium on the fauna of Hong Kong was published and well reviewed. We have also been fortunate in obtaining the help of Mr. Geoffrey Bonsall, Director of the Hong Kong University Press, who joined the Council as a result of a vacancy during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208799, "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": 256, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n229\n\nThis book, then, places a major part of Freedman's material in the context of his career. It reviews one aspect of its contribution and points up the significance of Freedman as a promoter of future research. Many have been influenced by both his ideas and his standards of excellence (this writer included), and as the editor comments in his introduction; Freedman's own students together with those from American, European and Chinese universities \"produced during the 1960's studies that in number and scope exceeded the sum total of the anthropological work done in China proper before 1949. Nearly all of this research was inspired by Freedman's work\".\n\nHong Kong,\n\nJune, 1980.\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nTHE CHINA STATION; WAR AND DIPLOMACY, 1830-1860, Gerald S. Graham. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. pp. XX, 444, appendixes, bibliography, index, maps.\n\nIt has been over ten years since Professor Graham published his most useful study of the British navy in the Indian Ocean (Great Britain in the Indian Ocean 1810-1850, Clarendon, 1967) and established himself as a leading authority on naval history. He had been for many years the Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London.* The book under review is Professor Graham's long awaited study of the British navy in China during the most crucial period of the development of China's contacts with the western world in the nineteenth century. And because the Royal Navy played the major official role in \"opening China\" the book covers the full sweep of British policymaking and its implementation on the China coast during a period that saw the change from mercantilist principles to \"free trade\" - the ending of the British East India Company's \"monopoly\" of the Canton trade and its replacement by private trading houses, loosely shepherded by a new British official, denominated Superintendent of Trade, who was given consular powers.\n\n* Where the Hon. Editor studied British Colonial History and a Special Course on the Development of Dominion Status under his guidance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208955, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n85\n\nThe basic premise of geomancy is the location of ch'i, the cosmic breath, of the site in question. This ch'i is dispersed by wind and carried by watercourse; too much of each or both will drive the site's good influences away, and too little movement will cause stagnation of the influences. An ideal site should be south-facing and constitute the following topographical features: The hills should have the formation of an armchair; those in the rear should fence off evil spirits brought in by the cold bitter northerly wind, those on the left and right should flank it like embracing arms, and the front should be opened or unobstructed such that view, airiness, and sunlight can be brought in by the yang spirit. These features are represented by the four numinous animals: the azure dragon on the left, the white tiger on the right, the red bird in the front, and the black tortoise in the back. Thus, the point where the two forces meet, and in a proportion of three to two of the azure dragon and the white tiger in elevation, is the perfect location for burial and building. As to water, a site with confluence of streams brings good influences; conversely, branching does the opposite. \"Sharp bends are bad since they make straight arrow-like lines, meander being the natural path of good influence...\" However, favourable and auspicious sites are not always readily available, and less desirable ones are remediable by means of tree planting, or building a fung-shui pagoda at proper places, or removing contours and watercourses according to geomantic principles. As fung-shui can bring good influences to people if dwellings are properly placed, so can it cause ill fate if they are placed otherwise. According to a geomantic professor I interviewed in Hong Kong, inauspicious fung-shui can induce illness or even death in the family if, for example, windows or doors or kitchen stoves are mislocated. The same fatality may occur if a beam of a house is erected directly over one's head in a sleeping area. Or a house is in a baleful location if it is situated at the crossroad of a Y-junction. My investigations concur with the Yang Dwelling Classics, which says in the opening paragraph: “All dwellings should not be at the mouth of a thoroughfare, or in a monastery (Buddhist temple grounds), nor come near to a shrine, nor be where plants and trees do not grow (to screen and protect), nor in an old battleground ... nor at the gate or opening of a large wall, nor opposite a prison gate.\"12 In Maurice Freedman's research\n\nyang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210534, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "122\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nGraeco-Roman religion, one badly misses the kind of lively discussion that Maurice Freedman's claims about the nature of Chinese religion have generated among sinologues. Freedman vigorously contends that \"a Chinese religion exists; or, at any rate, we ought to begin with that assumption;\" and further that it is possible \"to trace ruling principles of ideas across a vast field of apparently heterogeneous beliefs, and ruling principles of form and organization in an equally enormous terrain of varied action and association.\" Arthur Wolf just as vigorously denies the existence of a Chinese religion, \"in part because priests were not preachers. Rather than attempting to educate the masses, they treated their knowledge as a professional secret. This allowed different sects, and within each sect different lines of descent, to develop their own ideas, and eventually created a vast gulf between the ideas of the priest and the beliefs of the peasant.\" Whether one agrees or disagrees with Freedman is immaterial; it is as a heuristic device that his argument is most useful, for it compels us to think analytically about the vast body of data for Chinese religious practices now at our disposal.\n\nInterpretation of the evidence is obviously, therefore, the second fundamental difficulty that diversity of belief creates for historians of Roman society. It would be fair to say that at present we know much of the facade and little of the substance of Roman religion, for however exhaustive, a mere cataloguing of the evidence will never yield insights into the meaning of the various religions practised within the empire, nor will it explain how their interaction could be at once conflictive and syncretistic. Fortunately, it would also be fair to say that the search for answers is now underway, and that it is pushing scholars in new and promising directions. In his recent book Death and Renewal, Keith Hopkins, the newly appointed Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, challenges us \"to develop ways of expressing Roman experience. This involves wondering 'What was it like to be Roman?', and 'In what ways were their experiences and reactions different from our own?'\" He invites us, in short, to explore what he defines as \"the limits of the value of empathy as a tactic of historical analysis.\"\n\n17 The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of a comparative approach, and particularly the potential inherent to comparative analyses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211218, "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": 279, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "254\n\nTHE HONG KONG HISTORY PROJECT\n\nThis note is based on a taped recording of the meeting of the Society, 22 May 1984, when this subject was discussed by James Hayes, David Faure, and Patrick Hase, with questions and comments from the speakers and the floor.\n\nJames Hayes\n\nThis evening, we are going to hear about the \"Hong Kong History Project\". This aims at rescuing something of the social, economic, and political history of the communities of this area before 1841, and indeed right up to the eve of the modernization of the New Territories in the 1970s.\n\nThe late Maurice Freedman, who was Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and then at Oxford University before his death in 1975, said that until the 1950s, Hong Kong was almost totally neglected by all manner of social scientists. It was regarded as of no importance to scholarship, being viewed as \"no more than the railway route into Guangdong\". Thereafter, a few mainly overseas scholars, people who were mostly anthropologists engaged on researching doctoral dissertations, came now and then to Hong Kong. This continued, and is going on at the present time. Among the first of them was our member Barbara Ward — unfortunately for us, she died at the beginning of this year — who went to study the boat people of Kau Sai in 1952. She was followed by Hugh Baker and Bob Groves, who came in the early 1960s to work in Sheung Shui and Tai Po Market, and there were one or two others before that. They were the pioneers of the anthropological study of Hong Kong's past and present, and its social history, too. You will note that the researchers mainly came from outside. Neither Chinese nor European staff of the University of Hong Kong were interested in the subject, and it also took some time for people at the Chinese University established in the 1960s to become aware of local history.\n\nI want now to say something about my own interest in the subject, how it began, and its relevance for the efforts made later", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 } ]