[ { "id": 205463, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nEDITORIAL NOTE\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1967\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1967\n\nARTICLES CONTRIBUTED:\n\n✓ Chinese Religion and Rural Cohesion in the Nineteenth Century MARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nThe Hankow Steamer Tea Races - T. J. LINDSAY\n\nNotes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century - H. A. RYDINGS\n\nFurther Notes on the Sung Wong T'oi Being Caught by a Fishnet; On Fêngshui in Southeastern China\n\nFan Lau and its Fort: an Historical Perspective - ARMANDO DA SILVA\n\nPlover Cove to Taipo Market: A Study in Forced Migration - MORRIS I. BERKOWITZ\n\nSun Yat-sen and Chinese History - STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nReview ARTICLE:\n\nCapitalism and the Chinese Peasant; Social and Economic Change in a Chinese Village (Jack M. Potter) H. G. H. NELSON\n\nARTICLE REPRINTED:\n\nChinese Street-Cries in Hong Kong J. NACKEN\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nNotes on Some Vegetarian Halls in Hong Kong belonging to the Sect of Hsien-T'ien Tao: (The Way of Former Heaven) MARJORIE TOPLEY and JAMES HAYES\n\nJardine, Matheson & Company's First Site in Hong Kong - DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nResearch on Family Values and Culture Change in Hong Kong's Modern Chinese Novels - KLAUS MADING\n\nHong Kong's First Government House - DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nA Reaping Knife from Lantau Island, Hong Kong - JAMES HAYES\n\nItinerant Hakka Weavers JAMES HAYES\n\nThe Tung Chung Fort (Lantau Island, Hong Kong) - JAMES HAYES\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nLIST OF MEMBERS\n\nPage 1\n\n2\n\n6\n\n9\n\n44\n\n56\n\n67\n\n74\n\n82\n\n96\n\n109\n\n119\n\n128\n\n135\n\n149\n\n154\n\n156\n\n161\n\n162\n\n165\n\n168\n\n178\n\n200", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209110, "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-1981", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ... 1\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT 6\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT.\n\nTRANSACTIONS:\n\nFolk Medicine in Borneo: Diagnosis and Cure-Stephen Morris 10\n\nAnother Look at Land and Lineage in the New Territories, c. 1900-Edgar Wickberg 25\n\nARTICLES:\n\nReligious Response to Modernization in Taiwan: the Case of I-kuan Tao-Hubert Seiwert 43\n\nThe Public Records Office of Hong Kong-A.I. Diamond 71\n\nHong Kong and China in the village World-David Faure 75\n\nThe Chinese Church, Labour and Elites and the Mui Tsai Question in the 1920's-Carl T. Smith 91\n\nResidential Mobility and Kinship Ties among Urban Chinese Families in Hong Kong-Lee Ming-kwan 114\n\nEducation as a By-product of Fish Marketing-T.A. Acton 120\n\nJuan Yuan's Management of Sino-British Relations in Canton, 1817-1826-Wei Peh-t'i 144\n\nThe Hong Kong Origins of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Address to Li Hung-chang-Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha 168\n\nREPRINT:\n\nBro. Tsung Lai Shun in Massachusetts 179\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nThe Yung Muk Tong Factories in Macau-David Faure 185\n\nLetters from World War II-David Faure 187\n\nTraditional Funerals-Patrick Hase 192\n\nNotes on Rice Farming in Shatin-Patrick Hase 196\n\nFuneral pots from an Ancestral Grave-David Faure 206\n\nBOOK REVIEWS 207\n\nMEMBERSHIP AS AT 31ST DECEMBER, 1981 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209121, "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-1981", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO: DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nDespite the rather grandiloquent title of this paper, its aim is less pretentious than it sounds; it is concerned with the ideas held by the Melanau people of Sarawak on illness and what to do about it. How far anything in the Melanau vocabulary corresponds with European notions of medicine, diagnosis or cure is in a sense incidental. The main purpose of the paper is to make clear the Melanau notions.\n\nThe Melanau\n\nThe Melanau are a people who live on the northwest coast of Borneo. They speak a language that is distantly related to Malay, and today there are about 50,000 of them. They live in a rather specialised environment on the banks of slow, meandering rivers that wind through dense and swampy tropical jungles and flow into the South China Sea. The swamp land is often a little below sea level, and when the raised banks are breached by floods (as happens quite often), the terrain becomes very difficult to cope with. It is also unhealthy — fevers, mosquitoes, snakes, crocodiles, bears, and all kinds of creatures are common and are not really on the side of human beings.\n\nThe environment also imposes a number of limits on the economic and social life of the people who inhabit it; this is not the place or the time to discuss those limits, but a little does need to be said about the social system because it is so closely bound up in Melanau thought with their view of the environment and the beings who inhabit it. Correct relations with the environment and all other creatures in it are essential, the Melanau say, if men are to prosper and be healthy.2\n\nA hundred years ago a Melanau village (usually separated from its neighbours by two or three miles along the river) consisted of one or\n\n* Dr. Morris spent many years studying the Melanau people of Sarawak, and has just retired from a Readership in Anthropology at the London School of Economics.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209123, "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-1981", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "12\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\ndetermined by the fact that the two people were neighbours or strangers, kinsmen or not, of equal or unequal rank. And in addition they were, of course, either male or female, and young or old. Within the social order an individual's behaviour was regulated by the elders acting under the adet, which was thought to be changeless. In the symbolic order an individual's behaviour was also regulated by the adet administered by the elders who, in this field, were helped by other experts thought to know more about the rest of the natural order of the universe than was fitting to a dignified aristocrat.\n\nIndeed, the main premise underlying Melanau thought was that the universe is held together in a system of natural order, and that if that order was disturbed, whether inadvertently or by deliberate foolishness, trouble would follow; and, until the cause of the disorder was diagnosed and steps were taken to restore proper order once again, the trouble would remain. The rules governing the behaviour of the members of the different ranks to one another in the human social order was as much an aspect of the universal adet as the behaviour of a man to animals or spirits; and improper behaviour anywhere brought disorder, often in the form of illness.\n\nTo finish this brief sketch of the Melanau view of the world, of which men shared only a part with a variety of other beings, I do need to say a little more. For a Melanau his village lay at the centre of his social and symbolic worlds. Beyond the village were the forests, the hills, the sea, and other rivers whose inhabitants, human, animal, vegetable, and supernatural were, or were believed to be, at best indifferent to humans and at worst really dangerous. Above this world is the overworld and below the underworld. These worlds were thought of as countries, as rivers, like the river on which a man's own village was situated. The over- and the under-worlds were more elaborate than I have described and consisted of seven separate worlds above and seven below this our middle world; but the essential point is that each one was by and large a replica of this one, and like it was inhabited by humans, animals, plants and spirits. Since mythical times there have been barriers between these different worlds; and though spirits can still travel freely from one to another, humans, except for special ones like shamans, cannot. One of the underworlds is the Land of the Dead (likou matai); it is also fenced off and once a soul has passed its guardian the soul cannot leave the land of the dead. Ghosts are those unhappy souls who for one reason or another have not been allowed in and wander unhappily and dangerously between two worlds.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209125, "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-1981", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "14\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nbalance of the human person, the first thing to be upset is the feelings or the emotions. This shows itself by paleness, trembling, or nervousness, and the soul begins its journey to the land of the dead, leaving behind it only the body, which is still animated by the principle of life. If the soul does not return, death is inevitable.\n\nThe world, as I said a little earlier, also contains other beings than humans. No Melanau doubts the existence of spirits, though if you ask him about them, he is likely to say: \"They are things which cannot be seen; how can we be sure what they are like?\" Even so everybody knows what quite a large number of them do look like; I have the detailed descriptions of about 150 spirits. Many people who are not experts have sufficient knowledge of the appearance and attributes of several spirits and the afflictions they are thought to cause. They are also able to carve spirit images for use in curing illness.\n\nThe most general classification of spirits is by the region they inhabit; for like men, they all have their proper homes and settings. In this middle world are found air or sky spirits, and forest, and river, and sea spirits. The upper and the under worlds have the same types; and all can move from one world to another in a way that a man cannot. Spirits are male and female, and most are anthropomorphic. Some people think that like the Melanau they are hierarchically ranked within their categories, each of which has its own leader with authority over all his kind, whatever world he may inhabit.\n\nAlthough people tell myths and stories of marriages between humans and spirits and of men becoming spirits, others deny that any of this is possible. At the same time all agree that animals, plants, humans, and spirits are distinct and separate orders of being who happen to share the same environment - a fact that entails ordered rules of behaviour. Contact between these various orders is inevitable, but it carries considerable risk with it; the likelihood of over-stepping the bounds of proper behaviour and so causing trouble is very great indeed.\n\n―\n\nThe Melanau's technical equipment gave them little control over the natural forces of their environment; but they did have an extensive and detailed knowledge of its variations and dangers. By personifying those forces and placing them in a system of moral relationships, stated in much the same terms as they used in handling the social order and backed by the same kinds of sanctions, they were helped", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209127, "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-1981", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "STEPHEN MORRIS \n\nliving space of the man he has attacked; and it is the task of the elders, the guardians of the adat, to exact material compensation for the attack and expiation in the form of symbolic gifts, usually of gold and iron, graded according to the rank of the injured party. So also spirits, with the help of human intermediaries who have special knowledge can be made to see the offence they have committed in attacking a human and made to understand that they must co-operate in putting matters right, thus restoring proper order.\n\nHere I have to confess a difficulty that faces me; my knowledge of illnesses and the western medical classification of them is exceedingly poor. The Melanau themselves used a limited number of terms to describe the symptoms of being ill. My notes are full of words which I translated as wounds, sores, pains in the belly sharp or small, pains in the head, in the chest, in the eyes, and so on. People were feverish, hot, cold, confused, ‘felt bad', had a ‘dark face', a leg or an abdomen was swollen, and so on. Children cried incessantly and dribbled, people sweated beyond reason. To bring some order into the subject I once set a student, who was a state registered nurse, to try and classify the long list of symptoms I had collected in a way that perhaps made sense to her and that might correlate with illnesses as we understand them. She ended in very confused condition and I put her on to another project.\n\nIn 1950 one of the Medical Officers in Sarawak came to the village I was then working in, and with my help took a hundred blood samples for analysis. At my request he made a quick medical diagnosis of twenty-five of the people he saw. For what it is worth his results showed 6 people to have had syphilis or gonorrhea, 6 more, mostly women, were suffering from anemia; 6 were suffering severely from tuberculosis; 3 showed active signs of malaria; 2 had glaucoma; 1 had epilepsy; 1 had rheumatoid arthritis; and 1 showed signs of beri-beri. In other words, the doctor's classification and that of the Melanau were rather different; and though both the doctor and the villagers were agreed that in most of the cases all was far from well, their ways of arriving at that conclusion and their views on what to do about it were rather different. Both looked at a syndrome of symptoms and diagnosed a cause for the imbalance in the bodily economy; and on the basis of a theory about that economy both prescribed a course of action to set things right. For certain kinds of illness the doctor was, on the whole, more successful than the Melanau.\n\nBoth the Melanau and westerners have techniques for avoiding\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209129, "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-1981", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "18\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nomens warning him against some action, he has only himself to blame if he becomes ill or meets an accident.\n\n+\n\nOn most occasions it is the human being who is the offender; but it does sometimes happen that a spirit gratuitously attacks a man, or it may even be that a spirit takes a liking to some human, and in order to make him aware of the fact will cause him to fall ill; so that he is obliged to call in a shaman, who through his own friendly spirits can get in touch with the one who is causing the trouble and make the situation known to the patient. Sometimes the spirit will tell the sick man why he is ill and what he has to do in order to be cured. Sometimes the disrespect; the breach of proper boundaries between the different classes of being is the work of an animal. Crocodiles, for example, have the power to entice the soul of a human and keep it, knowing that unless something is done the body will follow, looking for the soul, and provide a meal for the crocodile. The symptoms of this kind of theft, paleness, lethargy, fatigue, are usually indistinguishable from those of an attack by a spirit or any other cause for the soul's departure from the body. Only a shaman, with the help of his spirit friends and guides, can diagnose with any certainty what has happened.\n\nFinally there are some illnesses caused by witchcraft or sorcery. Witchcraft, in the sense of malice projected symbolically without the use of material means, by a living member of the victim's society is rare among the Melanau; and it occurs only when a shaman's moral character is not sufficiently strong to control the potentially nasty habits of his spirit friends. They persuade him to send his head out at night to suck the blood of victims, and so feed the spirits. A weak or a bad shaman is not strong enough to prevent that kind of thing. The result is what I suppose we should call anaemia; and it is eventually followed by death, if the shaman is not stopped in time - usually in former days by killing him. Illness can also be caused by sorcery (though not often I think) by carving images of particular spirits, bringing the carvings to life, and then ordering the spirits to disregard the rules of the ader and hunt down the sorcerer's enemy.\n\nTo summarise what I have been saying: the principal causes of illness in a Melanau diagnosis on the basis of symptoms are\n\n(i) Improper relation of hot and cold elements in the body.\n\n(ii) An act of disrespect that flouts the proper order of things, usually an action by the sufferer but sometimes by another being - a spirit, an animal, or even another human.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209131, "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-1981", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "20\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nand calling them up. A spirit, as one shaman said, may not be just casually summoned: it would be like making unintelligible noises at people, and could be as dangerous as it would be to summon an aristocrat in the village without the proper courtesies. Even so, to summon spirits is always dangerous; and the shaman and the patient go into the ceremony armed with iron for strength, and only after the ritual area has been cleansed with water and incantations. When the ceremony is over the patient is only gradually re-introduced to the mundane world over a period of three days, during which he is required to observe taboos.\n\nThe curing ceremonies that a shaman can perform are three in number. The first, and by far the commonest, is what is called caring for the sick. This ceremony is the shaman's simplest routine for diagnosing and curing illness; it lasts only one evening. The shaman and his equipment—a drum, a spearhead, and a bunch of fresh green leaves with ritual qualities—are fetched by a member of the sick person's household. When the shaman and his patient are prepared and ready, the former covers his head and face with a cloth and beats his drum, chanting an invitation to one of his spirit friends to come and help. When the spirit arrives—signalled by a shaking of the head and a hissing—the spirit, speaking through the shaman, sometimes in another voice and even in another language, asks why he has been summoned. He is shown the patient and asked to help. The shaman, with the spirit in him, then examines the sick person. He may hold up his drum (which is open at one end) and place a lighted candle between the drum and the patient and look through it into the patient's body to see if the spirit can discover what is wrong. If the inspection is successful, the spirit, through the shaman, tells the assistant and the audience what is the matter. Everybody then asks him to help. He may refuse and depart immediately, in which case the shaman hisses violently and shakes his head until the spirit is gone. He then yawns several times and asks the audience what has happened. After some discussion the shaman then summons another spirit,\n\nIf, however, the first spirit does diagnose the cause of the illness, he will usually help cure it, though he may have to leave the shaman, still in trance, in order to fetch another spirit to help in the cure. This second spirit may not be one of the shaman's familiars. When the diagnosis and the treatment are both agreed on, the shaman holds up his open right hand and sings, asking for gifts in the form of invisible stones and flowers from sky spirits. When these are given he shuts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209133, "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-1981", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "22\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nship. He may resist for a time and continue to be ill, or the spirit, in order to make his point doubly clear, may not reveal his intentions at a simple domestic caring for the sick ceremony; and so the patient goes on being ill. But sooner or later he has to undertake the next curing ceremony called escorting the spirits.\n\nThis ceremony lasts three nights, and is a considerably more elaborate and expensive affair than a simple caring for the sick; and a household is unwilling to go to the expense unless it is very necessary. In its essentials, however, the procedures are the same as in the caring for the sick, except that in three nights a great many more spirits can be summoned to advise and help than can be done in one night, especially if more than one shaman is employed. In most cases the curing of an illness stops at an escorting of the spirits ceremony. If, however, the condition is serious or persistent, or if the attacking spirit really means to establish a permanent relationship of friendship with the patient and so turn him into a shaman, then the sick person has to go on to the third and the last ceremony, the cradling ceremony. But before doing that, a man will do everything else he can to cure himself because the ritual is expensive, and, as the Melanau say, 'it is the end of our medicine'. If it fails there is no more to do but die. Indeed in the two previous ceremonies spirits may well have advised him to try more Malay herbal medicine, to see what a Chinese doctor can do, or even go to one of the European dressing stations, which are not unlike the barefoot doctors of the Republic of China, and which in Malaya and Sarawak have existed for seventy or eighty years,\n\nBut to return to the cradling ceremony. It lasts five days and nights and can go on for seven or nine. Except for the annual cleansing of the village itself, a cradling ceremony is the most festive occasion on which humans and spirits meet. It is called 'cradling' because the patient is placed on a swing made of rattan rope hung from the rafters of the house, and is swung backwards and forwards to be possessed by the spirit who is attacking him and who wants him for a friend. If this is the cause of the illness the fact that the patient is willing to sit on the swing is a sign that he has surrendered and is willing to accept the friendship, and even to become a practising shaman if that is what the spirit wants. Whether the spirit will insist on the patient's becoming a practitioner is an open question; for even spirits are not wholly unreasonable, and will not often insist on an aristocrat's undergoing the indignity and loss of all good manners involved in frequent possession and trance in public. Besides, to be really effective,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209135, "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-1981", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "24\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nto face the very real perils of their lives. Moreover, the facts of daily life, as they understood and used them, did not contradict the more important elements of that organised system of knowledge. It is a pity, they said, that so many people do die in spite of all that men can do to cure them of illness; but that, after all, is the way things are; and in the end all men do have to die.\n\nNOTES\n\n1See Morris, H. S. \"The Coastal Melanau” in Essays on Borneo Societies, ed. V. T. King (O.U.P. 1978).\n\n2See Morris, H. S. \"Shamanism among the Oya Melanau” in Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, ed. Maurice Needham (London 1967).\n\n3See Morris, H.S. \"The Decline of an Aristocracy” in Politics in Leadership, eds. W. A. Shack and P. S. Cohen (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979), Morris, H. S. “Slaves, Aristocrats and Export of Sago in Sarawak” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, ed. J. L. Watson. (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980),", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210439, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "KAU SAI, AN UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT\n\nBARBARA E. WARD*\n\n27\n\n1. INTRODUCTION\n\nEvery traveller to Hong Kong remembers the junks. They swarm in the harbour: fishermen, cargo boats, pilot craft, countless small passenger sampans, wooden lighters clustering around the ocean-going ships like suckling pigs around their dams, Chinese boats of every shape and size. The men and women aboard them are the Boat People. Traditionally they were born, married, died on their boats. They went ashore permanently only after death, for it is unchancy to be buried at sea. In the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong today they number about 250,000. Their counterparts (perhaps two or three million) are spread all along the Pearl River and its branches, throughout the intricate network of navigable inland waterways in Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and all along the Chinese coast southeast from Fukien.\n\n2\n\n3\n\nWater dwelling is not unusual in China (or Japan, or, indeed, most of South East Asia) but the Boat People of Kwangtung and Kwangsi seem to have acquired a special notoriety from at least the Sung dynasty onwards. Known as Tanka, a name rightly resented by them as a term of derision and disrepute, they have been despised, placed at the bottom of local systems of social stratification, and often referred to as exemplars of loose sexual morality and other un-Chinese characteristics. They are still frequently explained away as being not really Chinese, or even not really human. I have heard well-educated landsmen expatiating upon their non-Han descent, their non-Chinese language, their utterly alien customs (which are often alleged to include matriliny), and the special biological distinction which gives them all six toes on each foot.\n\n* Barbara E. Ward passed away in 1982 before completing this manuscript, obviously an early draft for a full-length book. It is published here by kind permission of her husband, Dr. Stephen Morris, who has also supplied the plates. Miss Ward was, for many years, a member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 } ]