[ { "id": 207971, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "179\n\nAmong smaller villages, arrangements for co-operation often extended beyond the village itself. Hang Hau and nearby Seung Sz Wan, for instance, were closely involved in each other's celebrations. When there were celebrations in one village, members of the other village could come without invitation.44 Inter-village co-operative arrangements of one sort or another were sufficiently strong for most of the smaller villages to identify themselves as being parts of permanent village alliances. Tai Mong Tsai, Tai Po Tsai, Shek Hang, Tit Kim Hang, Tam Wat, Wong Mo Ying, Ping Tun, and She Tau formed the Paat Heung (Eight Villages); Nam Shan included also Fu Yung Pit, Kak Hang Tun, Keng Pang Ha, and Lung Mei; Pak Tam Chung included Pak Tam, Tsak Yue Wu, Wong Keng Tei, Sheung Yiu, Wong Yi Chau, and Tsam Chuk Wan; and Ngong Wo, Wo Liu, Shan Liu, Tai Wan, Tso Wo Hang, Sha Ha, Nam A, Wong Chuk Yeung, Long Keng, and O Tau formed the Shap Heung (Ten Villages). The Paat Heung had a joint school in Tai Mong Tsai; the Pak Tam Chung villages jointly worshipped the Great King earthgod near Sheung Yiu; the Shap Heung had its joint school in Tai Wan, and used to maintain collectively the T'in Hau Temple at Wong Chuk Yeung (now ruined). The larger villages, e.g. Ho Chung, Mang Kung Uk, Sha Kok Mei, Nam Wai, Tseng Lan Shue, and Pak Kong, were apparently not parties to such alliances, but regarded themselves as forming complete units in themselves.45\n\nInter-village disputes were not common, but there were some long-standing ones. Sha Kok Mei disputed with Nam Shan over tree-cutting rights. Nam Wai and Ho Chung fought over a quarrel that had started when the cows of one village damaged the crops of the other.46\n\nFestivals and customs\n\nThe major festivals in the village were the New Year, and the T'in Kei (birthday of Nui Woh, the Earth Goddess), Ts'ing Ming (spring worship at the ancestral graves), Dragon Boat, Tsat Tse (Seven Sisters), Mid-Autumn, Double-Ninth (autumn worship at the ancestral graves), and Tung Chi (winter solstice) festivals, the temple festivals of the local temples (in this area Ch'e Kung, T'in Hau, Koon Yam, and Hung Shing), the festivals of the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211199, "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "235\n\nAnother speaker rose to suggest that it would be appropriate to have a statue of one of the Chinese gods in the library. He suggested that of Tze Tso, the founder of Chinese literature. Ho A-mei objected. There were Chinese temples for the gods. The proposed building was not a suitable place for them.\n\nThe chairman of the meeting then suggested that as there seemed to be no opposition to the proposal, it be formally placed before the meeting.\n\nHo A-mei proposed: \"That the celebration of the Queen's jubilee, by the Chinese residents of this colony, take the form of the building of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Public Library and Reading Room.” Mr. Wei Yuk seconded it and the meeting unanimously approved it.\n\nA committee of thirty-seven was chosen. The president was Ho Kwan-shan (Ho A-mei), the vice-president was Wei Yuk, the treasurer Lee Yuk-hang (Li Shing), and the secretary Ho Yuk-shang (Dr. Ho Kai)\n\nThe meeting ended amid satisfaction over the harmony that had prevailed. With enthusiasm the committee set about its task of soliciting funds.\n\nCHANGING FACE OF CHINESE SPORT\n\nThe decision by the Chinese to mark 1887, the jubilee year of Queen Victoria, by building a hall for a Chamber of Commerce, as reported in the Daily Press, “really put an extinguisher on the projected Victoria Park.”\n\n\"The coup de grâce to the scheme\" came when the acting Governor informed the committee that he could not approve of the public taking up a project which had been accepted as a Government scheme by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.\n\nTwo letters which appeared in the press before the project had to be abandoned are interesting commentaries on life in Hong Kong at that time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211561, "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-1988", "page_number": 278, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "254\n\nHowever, changing fortunes or circumstances later led two of the other surname groups to move away altogether. The other remaining surname group continued to reside in the village until 40 years ago when they too moved away, leaving behind an ancestral hall and several plots of land which still remain untouched. More importantly, outside of how insiders and outsiders were defined and accepted, which is the petty substance of membership criteria (and rights of settlement), lies the more relevant issue of how any village or village cluster is understood as a particular kind of moral community. Why does Faure not talk about rights of settlements in the context of a market town or an urban flat? As it is only in the context of the rural Chinese village that the newcomer (as \"non-agnate\") becomes a problem (in terms of rights of settlement). Are we not suggesting in other words that there is something special about the nature of the village as a moral community which transcends the hard and fast rules of settled residence? That something special, I would argue, ultimately lies at the core of that principle of locality which constitutes the village.\n\nTo a villager, his village is not a chuen (C) (= ts'un (M)), which is the literal dictionary translation, but instead his heung-ha (C) (– hsiang-hsia (M)) or his \"country\". That villager might not necessarily be an actual resident of the village; he could be a person living and working in Hong Kong, or even an overseas Chinese born and raised overseas, several generations removed. Everyone has his heung-ha, unless of course he has moved his roots to a new heung-ha (as in the idea of hoi-kei (C), \"to open up one's base\"). I would argue, moreover, that one's definition of one's heung-ha is a highly intangible one variable to change and not necessarily reducible to the hard and fast rights to territory that are indicative of Faure's rights of settlement. To cite a personal example, I was recently instructed by my father to inspect the sites of our ancestral graves to assess the feasibility of re-burying them at a central site. As my father had lived overseas most of his life, the task of providing sacrifices every year on Ching Ming had always been in the hands of a close relative living there. Our 13th generation ancestor moved away from Cha Sai village to settle in the village of Tso Po several kilometers away, which had been inhabited by another Chun segment (fong) from Cha Sai descended from a 4th generation ancestor as well as members of the surname Ou. After having lived in Tso Po for four generations, our 17th generation ancestor moved to the market town of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211562, "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-1988", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "255\n\nLam Pin near the original village of Cha Sai to start a business. Upon his death, the 17th generation ancestor like those of the 13th to 16th generations was buried near his heung-ha of Tso Po. Not long after getting married, however, the 18th generation ancestor (my father's father) decided to emigrate overseas, leaving the family business to his four brothers in Lam Pin. My grandfather never returned to China and was buried overseas, where the rest of his family continued to live. The four brothers of this 18th generation ancestor died, unfortunately without male survivors and were buried near Lam Pin. Our house in Lam Pin has since been occupied by close (affinal) relatives, and the old house in Tso Po was eventually abandoned, remnants of which still stand. I was told also that those family members living overseas are now the only living survivors of that fong beginning from the 13th generation ancestor in Tso Po. Despite the many generations, there were a few other descendants from the 13th generation once or twice removed, but they too died without male survivors, leaving us therefore with the task of tending to their graves. These graves now include all those from the 13th to 17th generation ancestors at Tso Po and those of the 18th generation at Lam Pin. The funny thing about this explicitly genealogical account, however, is that my father never knew we had ancestors at Tso Po.\" He had likewise passed on to me the firm impression that we were Cha Sai villagers, and we usually address ourselves as Cha Sai villagers living at Lam Pin. According to elders, there was no question that our heung-ha was Tso Po. Bad fortune was probably what led the 17th generation ancestor to move to Lam Pin, but it was the 18th generation ancestors who began to dissociate themselves from Tso Po (due to bad fortune rather than change of residence). Thus, our change of heung-ha to Cha Sai represented less a nostalgic return to the past than a change of circumstances in an ongoing (re-)definition of that local life-situation.\n\nIf the meaning of locality is as complex as suggested by the above example, then what about the so-called \"single-lineage village\", one may ask? Contrary to appearance, such villages are less conscious of the fact that they live as a common descent group than of the fact they share relations of closeness (chan (C), ch'in (M)). It is easier perhaps to explain why a single-surname village remains a single-surname village than to explain how such a village came to be so in the first place. The continuity of a single-surname village has less to do with the descent principle per se than with a customary rule of marriage residence. A", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214656, "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-1999", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "35\n\nby renting arable from the ancestral trusts of which they were members. 28.91% of the total arable land owned by the Ngs of Nga Tsin Wai was held by ancestral trusts. As usual in the New Territories, these trusts ranged from the very tiny to the very large. Thus, the Ching Yam Tso (in the name of the pivotal ancestor of the twelfth and most junior of the descent lines of the Ngs) owned only a single house within the walls, and 0.13 acres of arable land. There were only three descendants alive at the time of the Block Crown Lease. There can be little doubt that this house was a Tso Uk, used by the descendants to hold their ancestral tablets and to perform family funeral and other rituals (this was a common practice at Tai Wai in Sha Tin, where, as at Nga Tsin Wai, the houses within the walls were just too small to cope with rituals). The arable land was doubtless rented out to provide income for maintenance of the family graves. Similarly, the 0.14 acres of the Man Hing Tso, the 0.12 acres of the Shing Pak Tso, the 0.07 acres of the Tsak Tai Tso, and also the 0.1 acres owned by the Li Yung Fat Tso - all of these probably reflect small areas rented out for the maintenance of graves.\n\nAnother reason for these tiny trust estates which is quite likely in some circumstances (and which would reflect similar practices in Sha Tin) would be trusts set up by brothers on the division of their father's estate on his death, when some part of the estate was found to be difficult to divide, and so was put into a trust, so as to be held by the brothers jointly - examples in Sha Tin include small orchards, rice-drying grounds, buffalo wallows, and so forth. This is almost certainly the case with the King Tai Tso, where the trustees and sole beneficiaries in 1902 were the King Tai Ancestor's younger son and the son of his already deceased elder son - this trust owned only 0.04 acres of land.\n\nOther trusts, however, were devices for holding family property. The Chiu Pak Tso owned a large house in Kowloon Market, and 0.99 acres of arable land. The two trustees, Ng Shing-po and Ng Loi, were the only members of this trust: individually, the two owned only houses (Shing-po owned two houses within the walls and one without, and Loi owned one within and two without), and one small plot of arable each (probably the family vegetable garden - 0.04 acre in the case of Shing-po, and 0.03 in the case of Loi). This trust was probably set up in the name of the ancestor who was the grandfather of Loi and the great-grandfather of Shing-po: this was effectively another uncle-and-nephew land-holding, but where the family preferred to hold the joint estate more formally, as a trust. Other similar situations are likely to lie", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214687, "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-1999", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Sham Sam, Shan] Yarn Tso, tr. Ng Tsuk [Tseuk] Ming, Tso Sang\n\n1/1\n\n0.55\n\nSome lots have one of the trustees, others the other, or both. Tso Sang holds no individual land\n\nShi Tsun Tso, tr. Ng Yuk Tsun\n\nShing Pak Tso, tr. Kun Po with Tsing Yam Tso & Chau Yam Tso\n\n0.60\n\n0.54\n\nTr. holds no individual land\n\n0.12\n\nTr. holds no individual land\n\nShing Tat Tso, tr. Shui Po (1{Anc.Hall}) (6 sites)\n\nKC2/8\n\n0.78\n\nWith Li Shing Kwai Tso and Chan Chiu In Tso (1(Tin Hau Temple & Vill.Office)) (2 sites)\n\nShing Un Tso\n\nSz Ko Tso, tr. Chuk [Tseuk] Ming\n\nTak ko Tso, tr. Ng Fuk with Hon Ko Tso, Fung Ko Tso\n\nTing Fuk Tso, tr. Ng Kam Tak\n\nTsak Tai Tso, tr. Ng Tsun San\n\nTseuk Lai Tso, tr. Ng Shing Hi\n\nTsing Yam Tso\n\nKCL1/2\n\nSP1/3\n\n8.73\n\nSee Yat Un Tso. Some lots show Tsun Shau or Kun Shau or Tak Lap us trustee. Some agric land is in Po Kong village area.\n\n0.68\n\n1 lot has Man Hi as trustee.\n\nI has Yuk Sing [0.46]\n\nSP1/3\n\n0.37\n\nTr. holds no individual land\n\n0.07\n\n1/1\n\nKC1/9\n\n0.56\n\nSee Sham Yam Tso\n\n99", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]