[ { "id": 210181, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "131\n\nalike, they made their own arrangements for self management in clan, village, sub-district, coastal centre and market town. So long as they paid their taxes and did not commit crimes or affrays they were left alone by the authorities. Being settled, in many cases, for so long, the inhabitants had intermarried over generations, sending their daughters to other villages and taking wives from neighbouring settlements as well as from further afield, from Kowloon and nearby places in the present New Territories. Some villages were linked by blood ties in the male line, as at Little Hong Kong and Pokfulam where the Chans and Chaus had settled or branched off, and some Wong Nei Chung clans had male cousins at Little Hong Kong. These links made it natural for the villages to join together in periodic communal protective rites like the ta chiu (打醮) which according to old residents still persisted into this century; whilst the temples attracted large gatherings at major festivals, especially on the birthdays of their patron deities.\n\nThis is not the place to provide yet another description of the forms which the local village communities used to provide for the regulation of their society. Full descriptions have been given elsewhere of the role of the clan, centred on the ancestral hall and the ancestral graves; of the village, centred on the earthgod shrines, village school, and the village fields and water supply; and of the market town and the nexus of villages it served, centred on the kaifong, the temple and its management committee, and the ta chiu.1 All that is needed here is the emphatic confirmation that all the parts of this traditional system, so well-known from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Territories, were present on Hong Kong Island in and before 1841.\n\n79\n\n80\n\nAncestral halls certainly existed in all the major and some of the minor villages although few now survive. Tai Tam Tuk and Law Uk (Chai Wan) both had one, and there were others at Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung, and the Tai Tam villagers had two, although it is likely that both were built after 1841. Earthgod shrines equally certainly existed - the very name of To Tei Wan village (\"Earthgod Bay\") suggests this, and we have seen that the Hung Shing Temple in Wanchai probably originated in an earthgod shrine. Several of the quarry hamlets in the Quarry Bay to Shaukeiwan area had shrines, and others survive built into the\n\nBL", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210472, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "60\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nusually returned to anchor at the festival anchorage (long-liners for the evening performances, purse-seiners for those in the afternoon), instead of going back to Kau Sai.\n\nThe other occasions for making offerings in Kau Sai's temple, like those for visiting a family's graves, were “private” affairs. That is, the rituals were performed by each family independently. There would be a homeward movement of all Kau Sai junks at these times, but there was neither coordination of ritual observances nor village-wide ritual significance. There were, however, two exceptions to this rule. The exorcism of the Hungry Ghosts, in the 7th month, and the General Thanksgiving, in the 12th, were communal occasions. For the former, ritual experts from Sai Kung were employed, their payment coming out of communal funds; but it was not necessary for all Kau Sai people to be present, and my records show no indication of particularly high attendances at the anchorage on these occasions. The General Thanksgiving (chow shan) was a different matter again. This was the only ceremony in the year at which sacrificial meat was shared out among the families, and everyone who counted himself a Kau Sai man came. None of these occasions drew outside visitors.\n\nSome of the celebrations connected with the life cycle and having, like the annual ceremonies, recreational and sociable as much as ritual aspects, took everyone from time to time to Sai Kung and Shaukiwan where the floating restaurants were. Not every boat family could afford a restaurant party for a new baby's \"coming out\", or a special birthday, but anyone who could afford it would try to hold one. Weddings in particular required that one's guests be feasted, and such parties and most of the ceremonials connected with them were always held on restaurant boats. Other occasional feasts would also be given there. For instance, the owner of a new junk usually received congratulatory gifts from his friends; in return, he would invite them to a dinner on one of the floating restaurants in Shaukiwan or, more usually, Sai Kung. Funerals, too, took place ashore. The proper accoutrements and officiants had to be brought from one or other of these two towns, but the actual burials were in quiet places on the coastal hills.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215521, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 298, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "248\n\nThe Chinese Burial Ground having become offensive in consequence of the corpses being so close to the surface it was found necessary to spread a quantity of quick lime over the whole area at a cost of £20.16s this was provided for by Requisition 5 of 1856.\n\nIn was in the same year that an ordinance was passed to regulate Chinese Burials, and to prevent certain Nuisances, within the Colony of Hongkong. This Ordinance 12 of 1856 became the first step taken by the government to regulate Chinese burials by the establishment of special Chinese cemeteries. In addition to regulating the burial grounds, due to the 'nuisances' described above, the ordinance also stated that 'a Grave of less than Five Feet in depth from the ordinary surface of the ground to the uppermost side of the Corpse or Coffin therein deposed, shall for every such Offence forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding Fifty Dollars, nor less than Five Dollars.'\n\n58.\n\nHowever, it was only fifteen years later in 1871 that the first designated Chinese burial ground was created, which was located in Kowloon. The plot of land was ‘situated about one Quarter of a mile to the North-east of the Village of Yau-ma-Tee.' It became the only lawful place for the Chinese inhabitants of British Kowloon to inter their dead until the establishment of another cemetery in 1885. But no designated Chinese burial ground on the island has so far been traced prior to this announcement. The first Chinese cemetery on the island was selected and appointed in 1882, at Mount Davis ‘measuring on the North thereof 40 feet, on the South thereof 40 feet, on the East thereof 60 feet, and on the West thereof 60 feet.”59\n\nIn 1882, the first two cemeteries for Chinese Christians were authorized. The first one was located ‘on the Eastern slope of the Shaukiwan Hills, on a contour line about 300 feet above the level of the sea, marked by four boundary stones and measuring on the North thereof 200 feet, on the South thereof 200 feet, on the East thereof 400 feet, and on the West thereof 400 feet.\" The second one was on the west side of the island, ‘on the Western slope of the Hills below the Pokfulam Road, marked by five boundary stones, and bounded on the North by Mount Davis on the South by Crown Land, on the East by the Pokfulam Road, and on the West by the Sea (Sandy Bay) high water mark, and containing about 43 acres.\n\n61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]