[ { "id": 204253, "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-1961", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n18\n\nBIRDS OF HONG KONG\n\nCAPTAIN A. M. MACFARLANE, R.A.\n\nBased on a lecture delivered on September 22, 1960,\n\nThe birds of Hong Kong are notable for their variety. Over 330 different kinds of birds have been recorded here since 1860, and the list covers a wide range of types, with very few families found in China left unrepresented. I propose to cover the more common species, both residents and visitors, and to touch on a few of the rarities besides.\n\nI would normally hesitate to point out to residents of the Colony the geography of their surroundings, but a few features are worth remembering from a bird-watcher's point of view. First, Hong Kong is just inside the tropics, and therefore lies at the southern breeding limit of some of the typically northern birds such as the Black-capped Kingfisher, and at the northern breeding limit of some of the typically tropical or sub-tropical birds, such as the sunbirds and flowerpeckers. Secondly, the year is divided into quite definite seasons, some much longer than others, and so we get summer visitors who breed here, such as the Black-naped Oriole and Hair-crested Drongo; winter visitors such as certain ducks and many species of hawks and thrushes; and of course, passage migrants that pass through the Colony, sometimes in immense numbers, in spring and autumn to and from their breeding grounds in the far north. Examples of the more noticeable of these migrants are the waders, the swifts and the flycatchers. Thirdly, the Colony has a wide range of bird country within its small limits, from the top of Tai Mo Shan, over three thousand feet high, down through the wooded valleys such as the Lam Tsuen valley and the Tai Po Kau Forestry Reserve, across the open paddy-fields and marshes bordering Deep Bay to the rocky coasts and open sea off Hong Kong Island and Lantau. Therefore a bird-watcher can select different areas and hope to see different birds accordingly. Lastly, to the regret of all but bird-watchers, Hong Kong is subject to occasional fierce storms and even typhoons. If these last occur, then it is worth every effort to go out and brave the storm, for unusual birds are blown in, especially of marsh and coastal species.\n\nDuring the last few years, members of the Hong Kong Bird-Watching Society have found that just over 60 species nest regularly in the Colony. Despite the apparent scarcity of birds in the summer months, this number compares quite favourably with an area of English coastline of the same size. Although", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204479, "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-1962", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204761, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n53\n\nwhere the terraces are constructed running down a spur from the top, whereas tin denotes valley land which is terraced from a water-course upwards and stops at the toe of the hill around which flows the highest of the irrigation channels. A study can be made in the Lam Tsuen valley and in Pat Heung of the two systems of terrace; and one is often corrected by the locals if describing che as tin, or tin as che, though both are terraced and irrigated land. Whether this truly represents a new meaning given to an old word, or whether the Chinese reference books are wrong in describing che as dry cultivation, is another of the gaps in my puzzle which I hope can be authoritatively filled. Other indicator words which appear to be non-Chinese, though I cannot identify them as Yao, are quoted in my introduction to Mr. Tregear's Gazetteer, already quoted. The commonest among them are chun, kau, lek, pok, ting, to, run, tung, wat and yuen. In a paper presented at the Jubilee Congress of Hong Kong University I suggested that wongchuk and wongmai in local place names stood for left and right respectively. Another interesting specimen is the raised valley Wat Lo Fu northeast of Silvermine Bay, which preserves the original order (attribute after noun) of words in most of the non-Han languages of south-western China.\n\nRegarding the other tribe which is described as inhabiting our hills, the Shan Lao, I have not been able to obtain any distinctive marks of identification. However one easily observed feature of our hills, about which most of the present villagers disclaim all knowledge, is the system of low walls made of graded uncut stones enclosing rectangular areas of hillside which are either not terraced or only roughly terraced, with terraces at an angle; and since those of my acquaintance who have worked and lived among the Yao people say they have seen nothing of the kind in the Yao system of cultivation, it may well be that these old stone walls are a \"trade mark” of the Shan Lao people. If so, then the same people must also be responsible for a number of irrigation works, of which the two most conspicuous are the one that begins near Hau Tong and flows about half a mile, partly underground, to one of these walled enclosures about the village of Ko Tong on the west of Long Harbour; and another on the northwest coast of Lantao, part of which, owing to the tilt...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204790, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n81\n\nThe first ancestor came from Po Kat in Po On, then San On, district. He settled not far from the anchorage and the shops nearby, and the family flourished there for several generations, farming most of the cultivable land and planting an extensive forestry lot.29 But the position had changed for the worse by 1899. At the land settlement which followed the British lease, though the LUIs were credited with owning house land, four and a half acres of paddy fields, and nine and a half acres of dry cultivation and vegetable land on Peng Chau, all except their houses were mortgaged to different persons without hope of return.30 When my informant was a boy, the LUI houses were in a broken-down condition. They also owned a lot of land on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau, but much of this too was mortgaged by the end of the century.31\n\nThe CHUNG family are said to have been the next arrivals. According to old Mr. CHUNG, his great-grandfather, who was the family's first ancestor to live on the island, came together with his son, a boy of ten. Consultation of the grave tablet, which is dated 1834,32 shows that he probably arrived in Peng Chau in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, not long after the LUIs. He came from his parent village of Tin Liu Ha in the Lam Tsuen Valley near Tai Po in the present New Territories. In 1899, the family still owned very little land of its own on Peng Chau, having, besides houses, only one-third of an acre of dry cultivation, but they held the mortgages of nearly nine acres of the LUI land, including most of their paddy fields.33 The family farmed their own and the mortgaged land, but, as I have said above, fishing was their chief concern about ten years before the British lease, another seeming \"irregularity\" which warns against the assumption that our local communities have separate characteristics and perform distinct functions which do not overlap. It was very likely Mr. CHUNG's grandfather's success at sea which enabled him to loan money to the LUI family and so gradually obtain their land; and the lack of land which made this family concentrate on the sea in the first place.\n\nAnother family of Hakka settlers are the LAM ✯ clan who came in the mid-nineteenth century. According to family tradition, three brothers who were operating a pawn-shop in Shum Chun Market were \"squeezed\" by yamen runners when a murder...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205077, "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-1966", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "28\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\npoint in history at which the clans arrived, and with their subsequent development. Grant gives some maps plotting the regions of land of various qualities, dividing the land into categories according to the number of catties of paddy per dau chung per crop it can produce.38 Best quality land produces 300 catties and upwards per dau chung, and then he grades the qualities down in units of 50 to 150 catties per dau chung, the lowest category of production worth his recording.\n\nThe region of the New Territories which has the largest area of double-cropping land is the Kam Tin Valley, settled largely by the earliest comers to the district—the Tangs. The land is not all of the best quality, about two-thirds falling into the category of moderate productivity (200–250 catties per dau chung),40 but for sheer size, with good water supply, it is the best region of the New Territories. In the early thirteenth century the lineage segmented, one branch hiving off to the Ping Shan area, where again was a large region of paddy-growing land, double-cropping with moderate productivity,42 fairly well watered, and close enough to the parent village to be within the range of easy communications. Three generations later another branch hived from Kam Tin and established itself in Ha Tsuen.43 I have no information as to the quality of the soil in the area (though from Grant it would seem that productivity might not be very high44), but there is a large quantity of land. The Tangs thus secured to their near-exclusive possession the whole of the agricultural land in the Southwestern corner of the New Territories. When later other groups hived off to found villages on the Eastern side of the New Territories at Lung Kwat Tau in about 1368 A.D.,45 and at Tai Po Tau perhaps two generations earlier,47 they were less fortunate. Not only were they out of the immediate power sphere of the Tang Clan but they moved into an area where other clans were already settled or in the process of settling.\n\nThe Hau48, who were the next of the clans to arrive, settled in an area which was well watered but rather too low-lying to be safe against flood. They appear to have had little power, and after an initial period of growth, when they founded several new villages,49 seem to have lost all impetus. Their land is of good quality, but when they expanded to Ping Kong,50 Kam Tsin,51 and Yin Kong,52 they did so along a line of poorer quality soil,53 arguing perhaps prior settlement in the nearby rich Sheung Shui", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205079, "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-1966", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "30\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nvillage and lands and move over to the village of Tsung Pak Long64 in the inferior land area already partly occupied by the Haus. Nor is it possible now to discover what it was that enabled the Lius after only seven generations to drive out the Kans, while neither the Pangs nor the Haus had done so after a much longer period of settlement.\n\nThe Mans were the last of the five to settle. The lineage of Tai Hang secured the lower end of the fertile valley of Lam Tsuen, and with double-cropping, mostly above-average land, were well off.65\n\nThe Mans of San Tin settled in an area of marginal land, with access to some quantity of poor quality land recently risen from the sea, which would grow one crop of brackish-water paddy.66 There is reason to suppose that the area of this land has increased considerably since they settled there,67 enabling the lineage to support a large number of members and expand without segmentation to any great extent.\n\nThus the five clans occupied the majority of first-class land in the area. The possession of good land in quantity was one of the only ways perhaps in which a lineage of this area could rise to power, either on a local or a national basis. The best land of the New Territories was, and still mostly is, in the possession of these five clans, and certainly in the local situation it was these five clans which wielded power. The present-day situation plays down rather than emphasises the power which they formerly held; much of their land for instance being rented out to other lineages, so that the actual area of five-clan settlement is not a guide to the amount of land which they in fact own, while many of their old holdings have been allowed to lapse of recent years. The most powerful of all, and the wealthiest of all, was the Tang Clan, the clan which had settled on the most fertile and rewarding land. The rising of land from the sea near the Man village of San Tin, while not making the Mans wealthy, enabled them to support a large populace, which in turn led to their rise to a position of some power through sheer weight of numbers early in the last century. The acquisition of the Sheung Shui land enabled the Lius to expand as one undivided lineage. Shifts in land values have produced changes in wealth, as is particularly exemplified by the Pangs and their holdings of land which has turned out to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205083, "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-1966", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "34\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nare usually situated at some distance from the villages; in some cases up to several miles away. It becomes an opportunity for the clans to display their wealth and numbers in public. The first and most important of the graves of the Tang Clan is on a hill behind the new, large, industrial town of Tsuen Wan,82 and the Tangs always turn out in their thousands at Chung Yeung, going to the grave in fleets of lorries, cars, and buses. The Lius' First Ancestor is buried behind the Hau village of Kam Tsin, and the Lius march round the Hau village in great numbers on their way to the grave. On the second day of Chung Yeung, the Lius go to the grave of their Second Ancestor, which takes them past the Pang village of Fan Ling and the Tang village of Lung Kwat Tau. The procession is always large, and banners and ceremonial foods are conspicuously displayed. The major clans are remarkable for the large number of ancestors which they worship on this and other occasions, some branches having a ceremony and feast nearly every day for several weeks at Chung Yeung as their various ancestors are worshipped. The cost of these ceremonies is very high, and is quite beyond the reach of smaller lineages and clans. The money comes in as rent from the fields with which the ancestral halls and other segments of the lineage are endowed. The proportion of lineage-controlled land which is owned by the lineage itself and by its segments (as opposed to that owned by individual members of the lineage) may be very high indeed, often well over 50 per cent.83 Thus, not only do the lineages control vast areas of land, but they also actually corporately own much of it, and have high incomes from which to finance ceremonies, public works, etc. Again, land is important.\n\nBeing wealthy, the clans needed to resort to some form of protection from thieves. Each of the villages of the clans organised and ran its own village watch system.84 I am not sure whether the system was identical in each of the villages, but one practice was to allow lineage members to tender to the ancestral hall for the position of watchman. Those who tendered most were allowed to take the positions, the number of watchmen being pre-determined. These men recouped themselves by charging individual villagers for the property they were protecting according to a fixed rate (so much for a field of paddy, so much for a field of sweet potatoes, so much for a buffalo, etc.). If a buffalo were stolen or some other property made away with, it was the responsibility...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205087, "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-1966", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "38\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nmen temples were built and dedicated to them in many parts of the effected area. In the New Territories there were three such temples - one at Sha Tau Kok,10 one built by the Kam Tin lineage of the Tang Clan,102 and a third in the market town of Shek Wu Hui known as the Chau Wong Yee Yuen,103 which was built by the five clans and endowed by them with land for its upkeep. It was not the five clans as clans which did this, but rather lineages of the five clans which came together and each purchased a share in the temple.104 The Man Clan took two shares in the temple, one purchased by each of the two lineages; as was the case with the eastern Tangs.105 The Pangs, Hau* and Lius each had one share. Not only was land purchased and a temple106 built with this money, but also a ferry boat was bought to assist all members of the five clans to cross the Sham Chun River107 to get to the large market town of Sham Chun, with which all had dealings. The share-holding lineages took part in an annual feast at which the business of the temple was discussed, the feast being paid for out of temple funds. As might be expected, however, the history of this temple association has not all been peaceful, and recently a major dispute has arisen, three members108 claiming complete control of the funds to the exclusion of the others.109 The matter quickly escalated to a point where both sides hired lawyers and placed vituperative advertisements in the Colony's newspapers. Eventually, after three years of argument, it was settled in 1963.\n\nThe second example of cooperation between the clans is of the army which they raised between them to oppose the arrival of the British when they took control of the New Territories in 1899. Under the leadership of literati of the Tang Clan, working from the ancestral hall of the Ha Tsuen lineage,110 they mustered men, arms and supplies in quantity and attacked the British at their landing point in Tai Po. Unfortunately they lacked training and could do no more than fight an ignominious retreat back over the hills. Some records of the organisation of this force are still available through documents captured by the British at the time, and it is obvious that all the planning was done by and communications established at the level of the literati of the five clans. It seems that these men kept up some kind of informal contact, and there is mention of an organisation called the Tung P'ing Kuk112 in the first British reports on the area, which was said\n\n*Hau is the correct spelling, not \"Haus\". I've made the correction. \nPlease let me know if you need further assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205350, "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\nJ\n\n105\n\nThis officer established himself at a place then called Shak-tse-kong, the present Nam-tou, a part of which situated on a hill was surrounded by walls. But it was found that this officer was unable to rule efficiently the whole of the district, and some men of influence, supported by the high mandarins at Canton, demanded that the part of the country which they inhabited should be made a separate district.\n\nThe Emperor Wan-lik granted this petition in the first year of his reign; the new district was called \"Sanon,” new peace; and the walled part of Nam-tou rose to be the district town of Sanon, and accordingly received the name of Sanon Yuen-shing 新安城.\n\nThe Sanon district included the islands of Lan-tow, Hongkong, and all the small neighbouring islands. The mainland portion of the district was bounded to the North by the districts of Túng-kun 東莞 and Kwei-shin 歸善. The northern boundary is formed by the Pik-tau River, which flows into the estuary of the Canton River, and is navigable for small Chinese sea craft (such as passage-boats) for about 8 miles; and several chains of mountains further to the East. This boundary, however, is very arbitrarily drawn, as sometimes villages in the midst of Sanon belong to Túng-kun. The borders of the three districts join together in the neighbourhood of the mart of Kun-lan, a place notoriously unsafe, as being the abode of thieves and vagabonds, who can with facility escape from the jurisdiction of one mandarin to that of another.\n\nTo the East, the Sanon District is bounded by the estuary of the Canton River. This estuary is divided by the Chinese into several parts with different names: the part to the south of the Bocca Tigris into which the Pik-tow River falls, is called Hop-lan Hoi; the bay named by the English Lintin is designated by the Chinese Nam-low Bay, after the city of that name; Deep Bay is called Hau-hoi or Back-water Bay*. This bay is generally very shallow, a deep channel however running down the centre; the navigation is rendered more dangerous by the many oyster-beds which exist. The bay terminates in a considerable creek, which is navigable at high-tide for three or four miles, as far as the important mart of Sham-tsuen.\n\n&\n\nPA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205751, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n51\n\nA third letter explains the reasons for posting forces to Castle Peak and to Sha Kong, near Deep Bay. \"A strong force must be posted at Tai Po in order to resist with our full force. The two posts at Castle Peak and Sha Kong should have many flags flying in order to mislead the enemy. A force of the stronger men of your district should be detached to take part in the engagement [at Tai Po]. Sixty per cent should be retained for self protection. If troops arrive from Ngan Tin [Pan Tin] they should all be sent to Tai Po.\"66\n\nMonday, 17th April, began quietly for the British at Tai Po. H.M.S. \"Humber\" and H.M.S. \"Peacock\" arrived during the morning and anchored off-shore. A conference was held on the mat-shed hill and General Gascoigne indicated that he hoped to establish a new base camp, in the Lam Tsuen valley, by Tuesday evening. These leisurely plans were not realized. Shortly after three o'clock Chinese forces moved onto a hill some 3,000 yards away and commenced firing. The British artillery returned fire and 250 men from the Hong Kong Regiment moved off in an attempt to dislodge the militia.\n\nThe British force — Indian troops commanded by British officers — entered the Lam Tsuen valley and began to work to the southwest. The valley is about half a mile wide and two miles long. A narrow path ran down its centre and much of the level ground was devoted to rice. The militia of Kam Tin, Pat Heung, and Shap Pat Heung had taken up positions on the higher, wooded slopes. When the British moved into the valley, the militia opened fire. According to one British participant, they had \"chosen their positions well, and if they had fired well, the British troops would have fared badly.\" The Chinese had assumed their opponents would advance along the path down the valley and placed their guns accordingly. But immediately they came under fire, the soldiers abandoned the path for the hillsides and \"drove back the enemy from hill to hill and working admirably, like true Indian Frontier fighting men, took full advantage of cover.\"\n\n68\n\nIn spite of their initial mistake, the militia fought well and vigorously. They \"fired almost incessantly for one and a half hours, pouring in round shot 3.4 inches in diameter from muzzle loaders and dropping musketry fire all about our men. Fortunately", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205761, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "33 Ibid., p. 113.\n\nMILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n61\n\n34 This event has a tangled academic history. The establishment of the association by the twenty-four villages was originally reported in the Chinese Repository (IV, 1836, p. 414), and is quoted by Wakeman (op. cit., p. 63) from that source. It is also quoted by Hsiao (op. cit., p. 309) as an example of inter-village co-operation for the purposes of defence and the maintenance of order. Skinner (op. cit., p. 39, n. 80), quoting from Hsiao, argues its significance for the analysis of standard marketing communities.\n\n35 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 39.\n\n36 Skinner, G. W. \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China Part II\". The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXIV, no. 2, February 1965, pp. 207f.\n\n37 Only those aspects of the New Territories most relevant to the argument will be discussed. There is a growing literature about the area which, taken together, gives considerable detail. Freedman, op. cit., p. viii, provides a bibliographical note on published works.\n\n38 The land frontier of the territory begins just north of the Sham Chun river and runs eastward from Deep Bay to the market of Sha Tau Kok. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, the then Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong, was deeply opposed to this boundary. \"It cuts in two the rich valley of which Sham Chun is the centre, and, while excluding that town, divides the villages in the valley hitherto linked together by family ties and common interests; all these villages regard Sham Chun as their central and most important market, where they dispose their goods and make their purchases\" Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Extracts from Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899, Hong Kong, 1900, p. 196.\n\n39 Ibid., p. 187. Stewart Lockhart's population estimates cannot be regarded as very accurate. By 1900 he thought the number of villages to be 597. Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1900, Hong Kong, 1901, p. 252. The Hong Kong census of 1911 gave the total population of the territory as 104,101. In the Northern District alone, 398 villages were enumerated. Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1911, Hong Kong, 1912, pp. 103ff. On the other hand, as guesses go, Stewart Lockhart's count is by no means disreputable. His estimate of 100,000 is not all that far from the 1911 census figure cited above. Other examples could be given which suggest that his estimates are sufficiently accurate to indicate general magnitudes of population, if not precise numbers.\n\n40 Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Extracts..., op. cit., p. 188.\n\n41 This discussion will be confined to that part of the territory which used to be known as the 'Northern District' and will not consider the markets at Sai Kung, Tsuen Wan, Sham Shui Po, and Cheung Chau island. For brief accounts of these, see Hayes, J. W., \"The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898\"; \"Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 11, 1962, vol. III, 1963.\n\n42 Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1911, op. cit., pp. 103f.; Correspondence (December 15, 1903, to February 27, 1907) Relating to the Proposed Canton-Kowloon Railway, Eastern No. 88, Colonial Office, London, 1907, pp. 85ff.\n\n43 For example, the marketing schedule of the two Tai Po markets was 3-6-9. That is to say, the markets met on the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 13th, 16th, 19th, 23rd, 26th and 29th days of each lunar month. The same principle applies to the schedules of each of the other markets. Normally, in specifying a schedule, only the first three days are given.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205814, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "114\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\n(in an attempt to use the physical structures as a basis for a random sampling frame), and reached the conclusion that in the conditions of New Territories villages, it is strictly undefinable. The local \"village houses\" are built in terraced rows: each \"house\" consists of a single \"room\", which, although generally divided by a partition into living and sleeping quarters, is regarded as the living accommodation proper to one married couple and their unmarried children. It is very rare for an old and widowed mother to share the same \"house\" as her son and daughter-in-law: I have not come across a single instance of more than one married couple, however closely related, sharing the same \"house\". The correspondence between room, house, and household is by no means exact: not only may one household (defined as a group of kin sharing a common budget and a single stove) be spread over a number of \"houses\", but where one household is occupying two adjacent \"houses\", an interconnecting door may be opened between them, turning them, to all intents and purposes, into a single \"house\" of two \"rooms\". It might almost indeed be more logical to regard each unit in a terrace as a \"room\", and define \"house\" as that combination of \"rooms\" which is occupied by a single household, even when the \"rooms\" are located in more than one terrace; but Chinese usage does not support this — each unit is called uk, never fong.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government surveyors who numbered all agricultural and building lots in the early years of this century evidently came up against a similar problem of definition; and there are inconsistencies in the system of numbering they adopted. Where two adjacent units were owned (and occupied?) by one man, they are numbered together as one (double-sized) house-lot. There is one row in Sheung Tsuen, however, where the living quarters of each house are separated from their kitchens by the narrow lane that gives access to them: it is clear from the pattern of ownership in 1905 (when the Block Crown Lease was drawn up), and from the way these structures have been passed down the generations since then, that each kitchen is linked with a single\n\n* I use the Meyer-Wempe Romanisation of Cantonese terms throughout.\n\n† Sheung Tsuen (1) in the Pak Heung (^#) where Mr. Nelson carried out his research. See p. 171 of A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, n.d, but 1960), Ed.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205818, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "118\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\neasier and less shameful for a man without such extra house-room to borrow an empty house from a kinsman for his declining years. It would in any case, I believe, be inconceivable for a villager to bring his bride into rented or borrowed accommodation.\n\n11\n\nc) Adoption\n\n12\n\nMy informants distinguished clearly between two forms of male adoption: loh-faan-tsai5 and kwoh-kai-tsai#17 which correspond to a distinction between adoption from outside the localised descent group, and that within it. Different surname adoption was generally frowned on in the past13; I found that men who have entered the village in this way are still looked down on; and informants agreed that it is often an unsatisfactory way of ensuring one's descent. It has nonetheless been a frequent occurrence in Sheung Tsuen, and although the questions of its frequency in this, a mixed-surname village of relatively small lineages, as compared with its frequency in a single-surname village, and of the reasons impelling people to choose one form of adoption rather than the other, are fascinating and important ones, different surname adoption is for the purposes of this discussion the precise equivalent of the production by a man and his wife of a single son. I therefore omit it entirely from what follows.\n\n“Adoption” is not a good translation of kwoh-kai, though I am at a loss for a better one. The Chinese term means \"to cross and continue\": it denotes the transfer of a son from one descent line to another within the localised descent group.14 It is in theory, therefore, a straightforward means of redistributing property within the lineage when nature fails to provide the holder with an heir. In practice, however, it is rather less than adequate to the strains put on the system by the gross irregularities in the production of sons.\n\nIn general, a man is not regarded as capable of being an individual property-holder until his marriage15; and he does not achieve full control of his property until his rights are formally distinguished from those of his brothers.16 Thus a man is provided with a house when he marries, but the house is not ritually identified as the focus of a new and distinct line of descent until a separate ancestral tablet is installed at the time when formal division takes place. Families are not divided, however, unless", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206332, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG\n\n143\n\nwares in the shape of Chekiang celadons but with a soft red body, black glazed stonewares and white soft wares (probably from Fukien) and various ying-ching and greenish glazed porcellaneous wares. A large number of Southern Han (905-971 A.D.) and Sung coins were found with the pottery.\n\nThe Nim Shu Wan site extends over a beach and the slopes of the low hills behind the beach rising to a height of 60 metres. The site was considered by geomancers to be extremely lucky, being flanked at both ends by promontories; the one at the south end, being long and narrow, representing the \"green dragon\", and that at the north-east end, being wider and broader representing the \"white tiger\". A more basic factor favouring settlement was that both the beach and bay were well sheltered from the prevailing easterly winds. However, the long southern promontory which used to extend to a distance of about 200 metres into the sea has over the years been partially washed away by wave action leaving a few stacks to mark its former extent. By local tradition, this was one of the market places, hsü, for the villages along the coast of the mainland extending from Castle Peak to Tsuen Wan as well as for those on the islands of Peng Chau, Hong Kong, Cheung Chau and Lantau itself. Its location and geographical features made it an ideal market place for people who relied mainly on boats for transport. However, as the southern promontory began to disappear leaving the bay more exposed to the winds, the \"luck\" also left the place and by the beginning of this century only a few families lived there. In the last twenty years, as a result of population pressure, people from Peng Chau have begun to move into this area again, using the stones and bricks of the many ruins of old houses for building new ones and for retaining the terraced fields for cultivation.\n\nThe finds on this site include glazed earthenware funerary urns of a type that was prevalent in the Pearl delta during late T'ang and early Sung times (Plate 1). Apart from these, a large number of stoneware and porcelain sherds have been picked up on the beach from time to time. The fact that the quantity of sherds to be found on the beach remains fairly constant and that the breaks of the fragments are usually fresh and clean would indicate that the pottery has been washed down from higher ground and the pieces were broken on their way down the slope. There seems to be much greater variation in the colour and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207072, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "HONG KONG PLACE NAMES\n\n137\n\nTan Ka175, three kinds of Hakka137 and Hoklo138, Pun Yue Cantonese is widely understood but less widely spoken, particularly among the old men and women whom one consults for place-names. To this difficulty, combined with a simple misprint, is to be attributed the map name of the mountain north of the Lam Tsuen140 Valley. It is Tai To Yan1—Razor Cliff. The Nam Tau dialect pronounces this Tai Tau Yang, which became Tai Tan Yang by misreading the final letter of Tau.\n\nEven with field workers who are fluent in the local languages, it is not easy to keep the record straight. Country people the world over take a delight in mystifying strangers. Add to this the Chinese convention against direct question and answer, and it will be seen that the chances of a surveyor, working against time, getting a correct list of the names of topographical features, or even of the chief villages, are not good. The wonder is not that there are so many mistakes, but that any of the names are right.\n\nFinally, the best maps (such as they are) are not readily available even to many public servants, and the mountaineer and hiker, from whom corrections might come, often has to content himself with an old battered copy of an extinct edition.*\n\nFor all these reasons I welcome Mr. Tregear's gazetteer as I welcomed his map. As far as I can see from a careful check of the draft, all the important names are there, and they are down correctly. Such omissions as there are result from the fact that some features have an English name but no Chinese one—or if they have, nobody can be found who remembers it.\n\nOne thing which has not been included is a translation or explanation of each name. The reason will become clear to anybody who cares to read the second part of this paper, in which I have listed the principal elements of local place-names, for the understanding of some of which we have to extend our inquiries back to the days before the Chinese came to these parts.\n\nBefore the Chinese\n\nIn a talk to the Rotary Club130 of Hong Kong on 8th November, 1955, I said:\n\n'Under our very noses, and separated from our time by not more than 600 years, we have a linguistic problem which no one has\n\n* The position is now greatly improved as a result of new and extensive re-mapping of the Colony. See JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 131-140.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207165, "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": 236, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "230\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nGovernment to the representatives of the community for a Chinese school in 1847. (See \"Notes on Chinese Temples\" in the 1973 Journal of Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society). Thus the roots of the College goes back to the first community-organised effort of the Chinese in urban Hong Kong to provide education.\n\n(5) VISIT TO CERAMIC FACTORY AND SAM TUNG UK (NEW TERRITORIES)\n\nOn 16th November 1974, members of the Oriental Ceramics Society and of the Royal Asiatic Society visited the ceramic factory, Cerrarts, at Hung Shui Kiu in the New Territories and the village of Sam Tung Uk at Tsuen Wan.\n\nCerrarts\n\nMr. Lam, the owner, possibly one of the most experienced ceramists in Hong Kong, was a former student of St. John's University, Shanghai studying civil engineering. He was the first ceramist in Hong Kong to produce ceramics for the local and overseas market. He learnt his basic skill more than 30 years ago in China, continued making ceramics as a hobby, becoming more and more involved and eventually turned professional about 12 years ago. His interest has also influenced his son and daughter, who are now lecturers in ceramic and pottery in overseas universities.\n\n44\n\n'Any clay can be made into a fine piece of ceramic, given the correct treatment,” he said as he gently put down a freshly-painted Tang horse. He gets his clay from the hillsides around Hong Kong and adds chemicals to them e.g. refined powder cement. Through the addition of chemicals to the clay, the properties of the clay are changed. The type of chemical added also depends on the form required; e.g. for a Tang horse, dark clay and sand are used.\n\nFirstly, a mould is made. The form is shaped from clay and covered with plaster. When the plaster dries, it is removed from the form. It then gives an excellent imprint of the form and is used as the mould. An opening is produced on the mould and water-diluted clay is poured into it. The mould is then left to stand, with the opening at the lowest position. Any clay not sticking to the side of the mould is then drained through the opening. When the clay is dried, the mould is opened, and the bare body is taken out of the mould. Pieces are then pasted to the body to produce the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207662, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "# THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n35\n\na reflection of the general mutual animosity between Teochiu and other Chinese. Any further discussion of general patterns becomes less meaningful given the variation within the Teochiu population. The discussion in one of the following sections of the Teochiu population in one resettlement estate considers this variation and the processes discussed above in a particular social setting.\n\nThe geographical distribution of Teochiu in Hong Kong in 1971 is presented in Table 1. The only area of heavy Teochiu concentration in Hong Kong Island is the West census district, which of course includes Nam Pak Hong, the oldest area of Teochiu concentration. Hung Hom is the only area of substantial Teochiu settlement in the Kowloon census districts. More than one half of the Teochiu recorded in the census reside in the New Kowloon census districts, with one-fourth of all Teochiu in the Kai Tak district and almost one-fourth in Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun districts. The Kai Tak census district includes Kowloon City, an area of heavy Teochiu residential concentration. The Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun census districts roughly correspond to the industrial town of Kwun Tong. Thousands of Teochiu squatters were resettled into Kwun Tong's resettlement estates, particularly Ngau Tau Kok Resettlement Estate. Another census district in New Kowloon with significant Teochiu concentration is Shek Kip Mei; many Teochiu in this district reside in the Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate. The only areas of significant Teochiu concentration in the New Territories are Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long. Again, many Teochiu in Tsuen Wan reside in resettlement estates, mostly in Kwai Chung. Personal experiences in Tsuen Wan suggest that the actual number of Teochiu in Hong Kong is greater than the 1971 census figures.\n\nTable II indicates that more than 39% of Teochiu land domestic households are located in resettlement estates and almost one-half are located in one kind of housing estate or another. I would estimate that at least one half of Teochiu households at one time or another resided in squatter structures. In 1971 over 8,000 Teochiu households resided in \"temporary housing\" and another 4,700 households in \"stone structures\". These two categories refer primarily to illegal squatter structures, which suggests that a fairly large number of Teochiu are still squatters.\n\n1 The information in Table 1 and in the other tables was very kindly provided by Mr. M. C. Leong, Statistician, Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Government.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207672, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n45\n\nHong Kong can now be considered rural or non-urban given current development and planning in the New Territories centering on three New Towns (Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Sha Tin). This is not to say that there are no differences in scale or social organization between villages or small market towns in the New Territories and Mongkok, the area of highest population density in Hong Kong, but rather that these differences can no longer be usefully conceptualized as corresponding to urban and rural social systems. Some of these differences appear to be significant in influencing the nature of ethnicity, and in particular interethnic rivalry and competition.\n\nBlake's study of Sai Kung, a market town in the New Territories, indicates that the formation of ethnic categories is a process in which \"powerful men struggle for the land and status positions in the emerging organization of the market” [Blake, 1975:233]. Ethnic groups in Sai Kung are closely identified with particular ecological niches in the local area. For example, Tanka [Cantonese] fishermen do deep sea fishing while \"Hoklo\" Hoi Luk Fung fishermen are restricted to less lucrative shallow fishing. Blake found that inter-ethnic dynamics are largely centered upon these traditional niches and that immigrant Chinese have had to negotiate their ethnic identity with the traditionally dominant ethnic group in the local area, the Hakka.\n\nThe patterns of interethnic dynamics that Blake describes for Sai Kung are very different from those in the housing estates I studied. Apparently much of the dynamics of interethnic relationships in small market towns and villages in the New Territories are related to two factors: *\n\n(1) Competition over access and ownership of land and local markets between traditional lineage groups and the immigrant population, and between different ethnic groups.\n\n(2) Competition over control of formal political positions within the locality, such as village representative and membership of\n\n* These generalizations are based upon Blake's study and a paper read to the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, by Michael Palmer in March 1977.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207684, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "INTERETHNIC INTERACTION – A MATTER OF DEFINITION: ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG\n\nDOUGLAS W. SPARKS*\n\nThis article examines interethnic interaction and ethnic boundary maintenance in a public housing estate whose residents include many former refugees from mainland China. Attention is focused on relationships between two ethnic groups who are similar in language and culture and between whom there is some intergroup passing but which are, paradoxically, separated by rigid cognitive boundaries. The historical origins and relationships between these two ethnic groups in China are related to interaction and communication patterns in the housing estate. Variation and confusion in categorization of people from villages in the border area between the two ethnic groups in China is shown to be a function of participation in social networks which include people from the border villages.\n\nThe fieldwork for this research was undertaken in a resettlement estate in Tsuen Wan, an industrial new town in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and was primarily concerned with the Teochiu ethnic group which is generally described in the companion article in this issue of the Journal.\n\nThe housing estate in which I worked is located in North Kwai Chung, in the eastern part of the new town, an area of heavy industrial concentration and the location of several large housing estates. This particular housing estate was chosen as the primary fieldwork site largely because I had very good contacts with Teochiu leaders in local religious associations. My major concerns in the research were with the analysis of group dynamics and leadership within these associations and within the dense Teochiu networks within the housing estate.\n\n* The author is a postgraduate research student from The Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, who recently carried out 18 months field work in Hong Kong. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, for which he expresses his indebtedness and appreciation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207694, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG\n\n67\n\nto clearly demarcate the two groups, Organizations, ritual differences and stereotypes will be discussed shortly.\n\nThe number of Hoi Luk Fung in the housing estate is not more than one-tenth of the number of Teochiu, and there are only several hundred people from the Kap Jih area. The latter are sufficiently large in number, however, to be considered socially significant by local Teochiu, and for the label \"Kap Jih\" to have meaning within the local area. The primary concern of this paper is that the label has different meaning for different people, and some are not at all sure of the appropriate meaning.\n\nThe largest, most active and organized Teochiu association within the housing estate maintains an office and a small temple, which has been recently expanded, and is primarily concerned with the organization of public rituals. The latter are almost entirely supported by the local Teochiu population with very little participation by other ethnic groups. The other registered Teochiu association is organized around a spirit medium and his public presentations, and has recently built a tiny concrete temple (which is not in the immediate local area). The third Teochiu association is informal in that it is not registered with the government and is only active during a period of several months each year during preparations for the major Teochiu religious festival, the Hungry Ghost Festival. Most of the members of these associations are Teochiu, primarily from the district of Hui Lai, a few members are Kap Jih, and there are no Hoi Luk Fung members. There are a number of other Teochiu associations within Tsuen Wan, the industrial town within which the housing estate is located, as well as a large number of temples and temple organizations. The Teochiu associations discussed above have no formal contact with most of these; formal contacts between associations tend to follow the personal networks of the members. Thus, there are close formal ties between the three associations in the estate and other Teochiu associations in nearby housing estates in South Kwai Chung. These ties are very clearly a function of the extension of friendship and kinship networks from the one estate into the other estates, where fellow villagers, kinsmen, and old friends reside.\n\nThere is only one informal Hoi Luk Fung association within the housing estate, whose sole function is the organization of a five-day religious festival which in most respects is similar to the Teochiu Hungry Ghost Festival. The only substantive difference", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207714, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "\"PATTERNED BANDS\" IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG\n\nSignificance\n\n87\n\nDifferences in the design, colour, and pattern of bands are not random or solely a reflection of the weaver's preference. They also serve to express aspects of the wearer's identity. Their colour signifies the woman's marital status. According to my Tsuen Wan informants, silk bands which are predominantly pink or red, and white cotton bands with pink or red patterns are worn primarily by young married women. Older married women may wear red bands, but may also wear those with black patterns. Unmarried women wear those which are predominantly green, blue, or purple. Thus, a woman's marital status is obvious to all. As one man stated: \"When we saw a woman's patterned band, then we knew how to address her.\"\n\n8\n\nPatterned bands were also used to express the regional affiliation of the wearer. In pre-revolutionary China, the clothing and ornaments of the gentry were relatively uniform throughout China, reflecting the participation of the gentry in China's national literate tradition, and their residence in the towns. In contrast, the dress of the peasants, whose lives were more narrowly bounded by their local areas, varied by region, the people using their clothing to express their local identity. Such differences in dress are still visible in the New Territories, patterned bands being particularly used by Hakka people for this purpose. My informants described clear regional differences in styles, the regions being named by their market town -- Tai Po, Tsuen Wan, Yuen Long, Shatin, Sai Kung. Differences are indicated less by the patterns of the bands than by their colour combinations, and by the length and thickness of their tassels. There are also subtle differences in other aspects of dress which vary by market area. I have not yet systematically researched these differences and can only report what my informants stated and I observed. The information is by no means complete, and may be oversimplified, especially for Yuen Long, which is a socially complex area.\n\nTsuen Wan\n\nTassels of bands very long and thick, of silk. Band mounted inside hat so that nothing of it is visible except the tassels. Headcloth relatively short and wide, and apron relatively long and wide, untrimmed. Patterned bands may be worn on both apron and hat. Headcloth fastened with white band, or no band.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207715, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "88\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nTai Po. Bands, mounted on hat, predominantly of white cotton, with thick white tassels. One half the length of the band commonly has zigzag pattern. Bands commonly worn on headcloth, also of white cotton. Patterned bands not often worn on apron, which is fastened with a strip of cloth. Apron relatively short and narrow, with coloured trim at the top. Headcloth is long, hanging down the wearer's back.\n\nYuen Long. Band is used to fasten hat under wearer's chin, being drawn under the chin through rings mounted on either side of the hat, and then back to be tied under the chin. Such a band is very long and narrow, with thin tassels. These bands are silk and cotton with small patterns appearing less clear than those from other areas because of the use of a double weft thread, of white cotton and coloured silk. Similar bands, although shorter, are used on aprons, which are narrow like those in Tai Po, but longer. They are trimmed at the top and sometimes have ornamental frogs.\n\nShatin. Shatin bands are mounted on the hat and have long thick tassels like those of Tsuen Wan. The aprons are like those in Tsuen Wan.\n\nSai Kung. Pink and purple predominate in the bands. They appear to be rarely worn on hats, but are worn as apron bands and to hold head cloths. The tassels are less long and thick than those of Tsuen Wan.\n\nThe bands, and other aspects of dress and adornment, thus served as indicators of regional identity at a time when these differences were socially and politically significant. Topographic conditions in Hong Kong, with its mountains, islands and water, meant that enclaves with distinct identities developed. These were sometimes demonstrated in the form of alliances, as well as in the system of measuring land area. Tsuen Wan, for example, formed a self-conscious enclave of people with a shared identity and an ideal, at least, of cooperative relations.\n\nDespite the importance of regional identity, some Tsuen Wan men married women from outside the Tsuen Wan District. The reasons for this may have been to broaden their network of contacts, or perhaps to avoid the problems which sometimes resulted from living in too close proximity to relatives by marriage: or because the go-between arranging the marriage knew of a suitable match in another place. Interestingly, women upon marriage con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207716, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "\"PATTERNED BANDS\" IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG\n\n89\n\ntinued to wear the style of dress and patterned bands of their own native areas.\n\nMore broadly speaking, these aspects of women's dress and adornment serve as an assertion of Hakka identity. It is primarily Hakka women in the New Territories who wear patterned bands, the black-fringed hat, and small ornamental aprons. They also use distinctive forms of jewellery. There may be some use of these forms by other groups and individuals, including speakers of some variants of Cantonese, but they are most generally characteristic of the Hakka.\n\nWith the modern development of Hong Kong and heavy immigration, regional and ethnic distinctions are breaking down, so that these differences in dress are now less significant, and indeed are unrecognized by many people. In Tsuen Wan, only the most elderly of the indigenous Hakka people still wear traditional clothing. Virtually all can speak Cantonese, and intermarriage with Cantonese people is common. Patterned bands are rarely worn, and many of the young people know nothing about their existence, much less the technique of their manufacture. They are astonished to find that their mothers have this skill. The middle-aged and elderly women still have some treasured bands secreted away in their dowry chests, however, and the way in which they show them and talk about them demonstrates the significance they had until two or three decades ago.\n\nThis is not yet true of the more rural areas of the New Territories. A visit to the market towns of Tai Po, Yuen Long, or Sai Kung will show these traditional forms to be still in use among older women, with some available for sale, although it is unlikely that they will remain as these areas develop into urban centres like Tsuen Wan. Patterned bands are also still being made and worn in Tung-kuan County, Kwangtung, not very far from Hong Kong, according to visitors to a Hakka brigade of a commune there.12 Another visitor saw a different variety still in use in T'ai-shan county, in another part of Kwangtung.13\n\nA large collection of these bands exists at the National Minorities Institute in Peking, according to the anthropologist Fei Hsiao-t'ung.14 However, they are kept there as examples of minority handicrafts, specifically from the Yao, Miao, and Tung peoples. Dr. Fei said that they are also known in Tibet. As the backstrap", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207717, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "90\n\nELIZABETH L. JOHNSON\n\nloom does not appear to have been part of the inventory of Han Chinese material culture, this leads one to speculate that the Hakka may have learned the technique through contact with pre-Han people in the hill areas of Kwangtung where they settled. This is, at least, one possible explanation for their use of this technique.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The research reported here was done in Kwan Mun Hau Village, Tsuen Wan, during 1975-76, following my dissertation research which was done in the same village in 1968-70. The work was supported by the Joint Centre on Modern East Asia, at York University in Toronto.\n\n2 Recent research reports on Tsuen Wan include:\n\nGraham E. Johnson, \"Leaders and Leadership in an Expanding New Territories Town\", The China Quarterly, March 1977, pp. 109-125. Elizabeth L. Johnson, \"Women and Childbearing in Kwan Mun Hau Village\", in Women in Chinese Society, Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds., Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1975.\n\nAn exhibit of patterned bands, and Szechwan peasant embroideries, was held at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology from April 15-June 15 of this year, with the title \"Chinese Peasant Textile Arts: Kwangtung and Szechwan Provinces\". The exhibit was prepared by the students of Anthropology 431.\n\n3 I wish to express my gratitude to my informants in Kwan Mun Hau Village, who not only introduced me to the subject of patterned bands but were also very patient in supplying me with information about them. I should also like to thank my very able research assistant, Jennifer Woon Chi-yee.\n\n4 Dr. James Hayes has raised the interesting question of whether the bands used on these occasions would be woven in the colour and style of the wife's or the husband's village or would always be red (a lucky colour). Unfortunately I cannot answer this question without further research.\n\n5 Some of the mountain songs were learned while others were sung in a kind of spontaneous repartee between two groups, often of men and women. The form of the wedding and funeral songs was learned, but the content varied according to the feelings which the individual singer wished to express.\n\n6 See: James Hayes, \"Itinerant Hakka Weavers\", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch. Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 162-165. Aijmer, in his article \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society” (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 42-79 (p.48)) mentions home weaving of fabrics, but this was apparently not done in Tsuen Wan, at least in recent memory.\n\n7 For a general study of this phenomenon, see Aijmer, op. cit.\n\n8 G. W. Skinner states that this was also true of Szechwan peasant embroideries. G. William Skinner, \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I\" The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. xxiv, no. 1, November 1964, pp. 3-44 (p.40)\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207828, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 201\n\nthe Man and their allies rallied local support to form a new market on the other side of what in British times has come to be known as the Kwun Yam River. This was the beginning of the market town of Tai Po in its present form. (The story up to this point is told by Sung Hok-p'ang, 'Legends and Stories of the New Territories. I. Tai Po', The Hong Kong Naturalist, vol. VI, no. 1, May 1935. The stone slab recording the magistrate's decision no longer stands in the temple; when the temple was recently rebuilt the stone was cast into the yard where it now lies, often encumbered with rubbish, a neglected minor monument of late Ch'ing history).\n\n19. The new market in a short time consigned the old one to a decrepitude familiar to anyone who has walked behind the Jockey Club Clinic which now stands next to the Tin Hau Temple. Soon the founder of the new market put up the first of the bridges to span the Kwun Yam River; the subscription list for the bridge is recorded on two stone plaques set into the wall of the Man Mo Temple which had been built as a centre for the new market. A room in the temple still houses the public weighing scales from which the founders and their successors have derived an income.\n\n20. The story goes that the Man who led the revolt against the Tang monopoly called a meeting of the leaders of seven yeuk around Tai Po, each of these taking a share in the new market in the form of shops. The land on which the market was built appears to have been for the most part the property of the Man. Now it is probable that the Ts'at Yeuk dates from this point in time. My informants take this view. And there is one piece of information which tends to confirm it: one of the constituent yeuk is Cheung Shue Tan which, according to what I was told in Sha Tin, was previously a member of a yeuk-complex in this latter area; so that it may well have changed its allegiance at the time of the founding of the new market at Tai Po. But even if the Ts'at Yeuk came into being so recently, the yeuk themselves can hardly have done so for they appear to have been the material out of which the complex was formed. Many locals assert that the yeuk did not antedate the Ts'at Yeuk, but I am inclined to think that we are dealing here with a very old form of grouping, as comparative evidence will suggest. The seven yeuk were Lam Tsuen, Cheung Shue Tan, Ting Kok, Shuen Wan, Hap Wo, Tai Hang, and Fan Leng. Together they had over seventy villages, but the yeuk were of unequal size, so that while, for example, the Man settlement at Tai Hang formed a yeuk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207909, "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": 297, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "282\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n\"It was a serious offence to be a member of a secret society and, under Hong Kong law, possession of what was called the membership cloth or any of the regalia of such a society was regarded as sufficient proof of membership. The cloth was what a member had, instead of a card, just a scrap of cotton material, seven by four inches with the name of the holder and details of the society. I remember arresting a man in Hong Kong who was on his way to China and finding he had a membership cloth that had been stamped with a large gold seal on which were printed, in English, the words 'affiliated to the Chinese Freemasons of America' round a design of the Square and Compasses in the second degree.”\n\nThe Hon. Editor recalls seeing a similar sign \"Chinese Freemasons\" on a door in China Town, Vancouver, B.C. during his recent visit there in May 1977, but unfortunately did not take down the full English and Chinese text.\n\nSANDAL WOOD MILLS AT TSUN WAN*\n\nThe following extracts from various publications relate to this now almost forgotten but long established local industry, located at Tsun Wan in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Formerly a small market centre serving the surrounding villages, Tsun Wan is now a large industrial town.\n\nFrom J.H. Stewart Lockhart's Report on the New Territory, The Hongkong Government Gazette, 8th April, 1899, p. 544.\n\n“A large establishment exists near Tsun Wan for the manufacture of joss-powder, out of which joss-sticks, used in the worship of idols, are made. The powder is made from fragrant wood, which is pounded into dust by means of water-wheels, six of which were seen at work.\n\nAlthough there is a large force of water throughout the territory available for water-power, this is the only instance in which we saw water utilised for manufacturing purposes.\"†\n\n* Usually romanized as Tsuen Wan: see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer, n.d. but c 1960) p.\n\n† On his short visit, and necessarily cursory inspections, Mr. Stewart Lockhart appears to have missed the use of water wheels to crush clay at the Wun Yiu pottery kilns: see CSO1904 Ext/6929 in the PRD Hong Kong. For mention of Water Wheel Licences see Hong Kong Administrative Reports, Assistant District Officer, New Territories, Southern District, 1912 (p. I 15), 1913 (p. I 13) and 1914 (p. I 10).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208148, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n171 \n\nHigher up the mountain, there were those who were content with more modest quarters. Pre-war, Heywood found such a retreat beside some large rocks high on the mountain. \n\nKeeping always to the west of the stream, you will reach a secluded upper valley where there is a Buddhist settlement. Two of the charming and courteous people of this place once showed me round their home, which consisted of a cave under a huge overhanging boulder. A thatched porch shaded the wayfarer as he sat drank tea (and how very refreshing Chinese tea can be when you are out walking). Inside was the living room with beds and a table and a little shrine, all kept spotlessly clean, and down below was an underground kitchen, supplied with a clear trickle of water through a chink in the rocks.\" \n\nIn contrast to these newer institutions there is at least one very old Buddhist nunnery, the Ling Wan Chi (†). This is stated to be a fifteen-century foundation, associated with the powerful family of Tang of Kam Tin in the New Territories (JHKBRAS 13 (1973): 128-9). \n\n10. On all sides of the mountain, these earlier institutions have now been joined by a large number of smaller, more modest foundations, some in their own houses, others in rented accommodation. These, on the Tsuen Wan side, are largely Buddhist and most of them are intended for women, many of whom are retired domestic servants ending their lives in quiet. The outside and refugee origin of some of these persons is reflected in the names of their halls. A modest temporary structure in Lo Wai is named for the famous old Wing Ning hall (永寧堂) in Toi Shan city (台山城), in existence long before it became a county seat, as the owner told me proudly, whilst a larger pre-war hall is named Tung Po To, the 'Po To isle in the East' (=Kwangtung) after its founder's home monastery in Po To Island in the Yangtse, one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism.* \n\nMyths and Legends \n\n11. An account of this region written nearly 120 years ago by Rudolf Krone, a German protestant missionary of the Rhenish Mission, states, \n\n* For a more famous sister, the 'Po To in the South' situated at Amoy in the Fukien province see Pitcher: 78 and illustration at 161.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208150, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n173\n\nfamous mountains from Tung Koon, Sun On and to the east of Kwangtung' (JHKBRAS13(1973): 115.) Indeed, one of Po's poems appears on the tomb inscription of one of the first ancestors of the Tang clan who is buried on a little hill opposite my office in Tsuen Wan.\n\n14. In the case of our Tai Mo Shan, it is, I believe, far from being the case that its history, legend and mythology are fully known, either as recorded or oral history. An enquiry into this subject among the older residents of the hill villages and the larger settlements beneath its slopes would be a worthy subject, before what is still remembered in a long unbroken verbal tradition is lost amidst the disruptions of removal and the distractions of modernisation.\n\n15. I have come across several examples of its legends, one old and one new in the making. The older is a story of locomotive rocks, of the kind mentioned by Krone. It comes from Chuen Lung village on the west of the mountain, and is as follows:\n\nHeung Shek had already been in existence over three hundred years ago, before Chuen Lung Village came into being. The story goes that Heung Shek was a group of rocks lying on top of Tai Mo Shan. They gradually moved towards the fung shui \"mouth\" of Tsuen Wan (near the present Tsing Yi Bridge) intending to improve the Tsuen Wan fung shui as a whole. But then, seen by an expectant mother, they could move no more and stayed at their present location.\n\nNow Heung Shek is divided into two parts: the first being the 'gong' rock weighing approximately 20 tons and lying next to the 'drum' rock, the second being the drum rock weighing approximately 30 tons. Also, lying aslant the top of the second is a long flat boulder. If one picks up a stone and knocks against it, a hollow echo sound is produced. Amongst the rocks, there is a fissure wide enough to allow a man to go through. Inside there exists something like a stone chamber. Such things are really fantastic and too mystic to understand.\n\n16. The second, which I found in a 1951 Guide Book to Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, published by the well-known newspaper, the Wah Kiu Yat Pao, is about a rock called 'Hero's Rock'. I was, as you might expect, all set to expect a stirring tale of battles long ago, but when I came to track down the history, local worthies said that the name was given by the pre-war", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208154, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n177 \n\n26. Water was, of course, Tai Mo Shan's greatest natural resource. Before the construction of the Shing Mun catchwaters pre-war, and those for the Tai Lam Chung reservoir post-war, a tremendous flow of water ran down the mountain. It assisted in the gradual formation of land for houses and cultivation at its two main stream mouths in Tsuen Wan,* and was also used for industrial purposes. Water power drove the 24 incense mills located on the various streams of Tsuen Wan between 1900-1910 and before. (JHKBRAS 16 (1976):282-283). Stream water was also essential to the manufacture of bean curd and bean stick, another very old Tsuen Wan local industry, in which the quality of the product was directly related to the availability of a continually available pure water supply (see pp. 216-218 of this Journal). \n\nPublic Works \n\n27. In any hill area in which streams abound and become fast-flowing torrents in wet weather, there is a need for bridges across which travellers and villagers carrying heavy loads can proceed in safety. Tai Mo Shan has its share of such streams, and there are surviving bridges here and there in the hills and on its lower slopes. Among those known to me the largest is the Po Chai Bridge at Chung Hang, a few minutes' walk from my office in Tsuen Wan. Beside it is a battered slate-like tablet commemorating its repair in the 4609th year of the Yellow Emperor, a curious titling which owes its inspiration to the overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty in the same year as its reconstruction (see Dingle: 89 for a similar dating that gave me the clue to this one and illustrates the wave of Chinese feeling that linked places as far apart in these two cases as Hankow and Tsuen Wan). The subscribers were the leading villagers and shopkeepers of Tsuen Wan and places linked to it by social and business ties. \n\n28. Another bridge, further up the same valley at a place called Ngo Tei (#) or Goose Land—probably its geomantic name—has no tablet. However it is also an old bridge, and an elderly villager of Pak Shek Kiu, an abandoned hill village higher up, credits its repair fifty years ago by a city merchant from Hong Kong as the 'price' paid to the villages to allow burial of one of his relatives there. \n\n* The old name for Tsuen Wan was Chin Wan (**) or Shallow Bay which directly reflects the effect of the mountain on the bay. It was in use until the late 19th century, being replaced first by Tsuen Wan and then...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208156, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n179 \n\n32. Before we left the higher ground, however, the most striking feature of the walk was, suddenly rounding a bend of the path and topping a rise, to be confronted with a low roaring noise which some of the party thought was jet engine noise but which turned out to be the din of the Kwai Chung section of Tsuen Wan New Town! This was a noise that accompanied us along much of our foothills walk thereafter. \n\n33. The final stretch took us from the main stream above Lo Wai to Chuen Lung. It was marked by pine forests sowed, we were told by aeroplane, and by various large rocks and boulders. One of these was known locally as the Frog Stone (...), a name that it is claimed was given to it by the founder of the Tung Po To monastery at Lo Wai, the famous monk Mou Fung (***) who was fond of walking in the area, giving names to rocks whose shapes touched his fancy. \n\nHong Kong, 1976, 1978. \n\nJAMES HAYES \n\nBOOKS CITED: \n\nBourne, F. S. A., The Lo-Fou Mountains, An Excursion (Hong Kong, \n\nKelly and Walsh, 1895). \n\nDavis, S. G., The Geology of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Government \n\nPrinter, 1952). \n\nDingle, E. J., China's Revolution 1911-1912 (London, T. Fisher Unwin, \n\n1912). \n\nGiles, H. A., The Civilization of China (London, Williams and Norgate \n\n1911). \n\nHenry, B. C., The Cross and the Dragon (N.Y, 1882). \n\nHeywood, G. S. P., Rambles in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Kelly and \n\nWalsh, second edition 1951). \n\nPitcher, P. W., In and About Amoy (Shanghai and Foochow, The \n\nMethodist Publishing House in China, 1909). \n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY---VISIT TO THE TANG FAMILY GRAVES ON SATURDAY, 11TH DECEMBER, 1976 \n\nThe Tang family is the oldest, largest and most famous of the New Territories' Chinese lineages. It has been settled in the area for just over 900 years and has a long history of local dominance. It has also produced many famous scholars and officials in the tradition of large, wealthy Chinese lineages. \n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208158, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n181\n\nHe must have come by boat as the record states that \"he left his boat at Tuen Mun - the present-day Castle Peak Bay - and rambled through the woods of the New Territories and visited many mountains. He fell in love with the scenery, and found many excellent grave sites for he was an accomplished geomancer.\"\n\nAfter he finished his official tour of duty in Yeung Chun County, he returned to his native home at Kiangsi and brought down the exhumed remains of his great grandfather TANG Hon-fat (#) and his great grandmother and those of his grandfather TANG Kun () and his grandmother to this area for reburial, presently the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nHe buried his great grandfather and great grandmother in a grave at a site called Yuk Nui Pai Tong (#), meaning \"the newly married girl is presented to her in-laws\", at a small hill near Wang Chau (#), Yuen Long. He also buried his grandfather TANG Kun and his grandmother in a grave the site of which is called Kam Chung Fook Fo (4ƒƒX), “the golden bell covers the flame”, on a small hill behind the present Pok Oi Hospital on the main road from Kam Tin to Yuen Long. Both sites were considered auspicious.\n\nWe do not know whether TANG Fu-hip's father TANG Yuk (e) was brought here dead or alive. He and his two wives were buried in a grave on a small hill not far from the Tsuen Wan District Office. The name of the site is called Pun Yuet Chiu Tam (*AR), “a half moon is shining over the water pond”.\n\nOwing to the proximity to the urban area and its easy accessibility, the Tang clan led by their elders come here every year on the 19th day of the Tenth Moon (lunar calendar) to pay homage to this ancestor.\n\nThe record does not tell us how TANG Fu-hip brought the bones of his ancestors from Kiangsi, whether by boat or by the overland route.\n\nWhen TANG Fu-hip died, he was buried in a grave he had chosen himself. The name of the site is called Sin Yan Tai Tso (^) “the grand seat of the fairy\", and it is located not very far from where he buried his great grandfather and great grandmother.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208160, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe five graves may be summed up chronologically as follows:\n\n(1) TANG Hon-fat\n\n(2) TANG Kun\n\n(3) TANG Yuk\n\n(4) TANG Fu-hip\n\n(5) TANG Wai-kap\n\nHong Kong, Nov. 1976\n\n183\n\n(Yuk Nui Pai Tong) near Wang Chau.\n\nYuen Long.\n\n(Kam Chung Fook Fo) on a small hill\n\nbehind Pok Oi Hospital.\n\n(Pun Yuet Chiu Tam) Tsuen Wan on\n\nCastle Peak Road.\n\n(Sin Yan Tai Tso) near Wang Chau,\n\nYuen Long.\n\n(Wu Lei Kuo Shui) near Au Tau cross-\n\nroads.\n\nDAVID LIU\n\nACCOUNT OF THE VISIT\n\nOn Saturday, 11th December, 1976 some thirty members of the Society visited the five main graves of the Tang family of Kam Tin and other old established villages in the New Territories (see the programme notes above).\n\nWe first visited grave No. 3 in Tsuen Wan which is located on a small hill that was bought by the family in 1927 to protect the grave in the face of various encroachments. In addition to the grave, there exist two round granite pillars (similar to those at graves 1 and 4 but without their lion-dog tops). These are situated each at a distance of 132 feet and angles of 125 and 217 degrees from the centre of the grave, as measured standing at the main table with the compass pointing north.* Lower down, a little off the main road there is also part of an entrance, built of inscribed rectangular granite pillars, erected in the 4 year which the Tang elders say is, in this case, 1894.\n\nMr. Peplow was Land Bailiff, Southern District at the time the Tangs purchased the land in 1927, and his account,† quoting from a silk scroll given to him by one of the Tangs, is as follows:\n\n† S. H. Peplow Hong Kong About and Around (Hong Kong Commercial Press 1930) pp. 148-149.\n\n* I have since learned from the Tangs that the two pillars stood further to the front of the grave, nearer the former shore line, and that they were moved to their present location when the first Castle Peak motor road was constructed about 1917-1919.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208167, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "190\n\n4. The War\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAs stated, the war lasted for 3 years and followed the usual intermittent, spasmodic pattern of such events. During this time, each side made excursions into the other's territory, pulled down houses and set fire to them and killed each other. Thirty-four names are recorded as having died in this time, exactly 17 on each side (see section 6 below).\n\n13\n\nThe war was finally settled by the mediation of elders from a neighbouring village, as stated in the Tsuen Wan tablet, though it did not name the village in question. However, Dr. Johnson's informant has the story: 'No one could win because few people fought. They retreated after a few had been killed. It lasted three years. It was settled by a man in Chuen Lung13 of the Tsang surname, who was rich and not involved on either side. He found it very troublesome for his village to be used as a battlefield. So he didn't talk to either group, but took some livestock and money to Shing Mun and said Tsuen Wan wanted to talk. Another day he did the same thing in Tsuen Wan. He deceived both sides. They thought he was being a middleman. They had a peace talk in Chuen Lung, each thinking the other side wanted peace. They negotiated what should be given to each side, then there was peace.'\n\n5. After the War\n\nAs usual in such local struggles, the names of those killed in the disorders were commemorated and venerated thereafter. Dr. Johnson's informant stated that: 'the names of the people killed from Tsuen Wan were written on paper and put behind a big tablet in the Tin Hau Temple.14 They were worshipped every year. Later CHAN Wing-on, an educated man,15 spent a lot of money repairing the temple and built a small chamber for them and put their names on stone to be worshipped. It is called the Heroes Hall.' As noted below, it appears that the same thing happened in Shing Mun.\n\n6. Relics of the War\n\n(a) Shing Mun As stated earlier, the Shing Mun villagers were removed in 1928. The old village temple to the Hip Tin Kung (神) i.e. Kwan Tai (關帝) was also resited, to a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208297, "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-1978", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "in China we have taken steps to initiate a Society tour to major cultural areas particularly Luo yang (Long Men caves), the Gong Xian caves and Anyang (all in Henan), Da Tong; Tai Yuan and the Yun Gang caves (all in Shansi) and Sian. It seems unlikely that a visit can be arranged before early 1979. Meanwhile interested members can visit Kwangchow and/or Kweilin by joining the regular tours offered by major travel agencies in Hong Kong.\n\nPublications\n\nDuring the year the Journals for both 1975 and '76 were published and distributed, and Dr. Hayes, our editor, has already assembled most of the material for the 1977 Journal. We are very fortunate to have Dr. Hayes as our editor. Editing requires a great deal of time and work and despite his own heavy responsibilities as Town Manager for Tsuen Wan he has continued to work to bring our Journals up to time on publication. This has been no mean effort. I would also like to take this opportunity of congratulating Dr. Hayes on the publication of his own book based on his Ph.D. thesis and entitled The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside,\n\nThe Photographic Survey\n\nWork is also continuing on our intended publication of a book of annotated photographs of Hong Kong, in connexion with the Photographic Survey project of the Society. For the benefit of our more recent members, this survey was started in 1974 with the object of making a photographic record of Hong Kong as it appears today and before all the older buildings disappear beneath the swell of redevelopment. This record includes not only buildings but also street scenes and shots of such everyday sights—but for how long one cannot say—as hawkers' stalls, small workshops, fortune-tellers' booths. Such things have of course been photographed before, but rarely with full documentation of date or place. Work on the Survey has been greatly delayed since the departure in 1976 of Mrs. Edmunds who was responsible for organizing the files of prints and negatives. We have been fortunate, however, in finding two new volunteers to take over: Mrs. Mona Davies and Mrs. Maurisette Mellor, to both of whom I take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude. The collection is now taking shape. Nine schedules have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208782, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "212\n\n\"Five Belongings\"\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n(a) Belonging to the Religion (皈依)\n\n(b) Belonging to the Mean (飯中)\n\n(c) Belonging to the Truth (皈正)\n\n(d) Belonging to the Unity (歸一)\n\n(e) Belonging to the Void (皈空)\n\n\"Four Tests\"\n\n(a) Test of True Self (考自)\n\n(b) Test of Sincerity (考真)\n\n(c) Test of Dedication (考願)\n\n(d) Test of Sacrifice (考捨)\n\nAlso the Religion practised a rather sophisticated form of \"sitting cross-legged\" as a means to cure opium addicts.\n\n(d) Yan Cheung Villa (仁昌別墅)\n\nAccording to surviving elderly inmates, the Yan Cheung Villa was built by a group of persons from South China who belong to a society established about 1920—known as the Tung Sin She (同善社). It belongs to that body of the laity worshipping the 'Three Religions' of China i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism*. It had followers in various parts of Kwangtung but no major centre. In the early 1930s the Society's leaders were looking for a site to build such a place, but Kwangtung was often in a disturbed state and they were of the opinion that a remote site in the New Territories of Hong Kong would be preferable, as the Colony had an enviable reputation for law and order, peace and quiet. Accordingly, a search was made for a suitable site. Tsuen Wan was then a small market town with a very quiet and beautiful hinterland and yet possessed excellent communications by sea and land with Hong Kong and Kowloon. A site with good fung shui in a locality with a propitious name was selected and agents bought land from local villagers.\n\n* Mayers Chinese Reader's Manual p.298 describes them as the Three Systems of Doctrine (or Religion)' and states that they 'constitute the recognized systems of religion, philosophy and ethics among the Chinese'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208856, "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "EDITORIAL \n\nI have been sparing of editorials in the past, and so were my predecessors. In fact, editorials have appeared to date in only four Journals, 1961, 1965, 1968 and 1974, the first two of them by Professor Cranmer-Byng, the then Hon. Editor, and the others by myself.\n\nLooking back over fifteen years of part-time editorial work, I immediately think of the benefits conferred by being editor of the Journal. Whatever effort I have made has been rewarded in a number of ways. In the first place, I have made many new friends in the course of canvassing for suitable material and in meeting or corresponding with contributors in regard to their work. I have directly benefited from the knowledge that they have made through their contributions. One colourful instance may suffice. I think particularly of Keith Stevens with his interesting article “Altar Images from Hunan and Kiangsu\" Vol. 18 (1978): 41-48, which introduced me to the paper slips inserted by persons who commissioned images of popular gods and presented them to temples. I have since learned that this was a common practice.*\n\nSecondly, the Journal gave me a chance to encourage other people in their efforts - a most satisfying and rewarding duty. It also emboldened me to seek (and receive) contributions from scholars of the first rank, such as L. Carrington Goodrich, C. Martin Wilbur, Jen Yu-wen, and others. The Journal also enabled me to include the notes provided for my local tours, so that those members who were unable to go at the time could visit thereafter. In this connection, I thank those members who, over the years, have taken the trouble to write some kind remarks after the visits.\n\nI must confess to having had ups and downs. At one stage, I got rather down-hearted because, despite my apparent best efforts, the delays to the Journal, and the number of misprints that escaped my attention in some volumes during my busy years in Tsuen Wan, passed the bounds of acceptability. I was grateful to Tony Rydings for compiling a list of errata to the 1978 volume, which turned out\n\nSee L. Sickman and A. Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books Ltd., 1956), p. 99. See also L. Bachhofer, \"Two Chinese Wooden Figures\" in The Art Quarterly, Autumn 1938, for two examples dated 1282 and 1385.\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208861, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "Membership\n\nTotal membership of the Society on February 28 was 539 which breaks down as follows: 5 honorary members, 114 local life members, 309 local ordinary members, 69 overseas life members and 42 overseas ordinary members. Changes in membership between March 1979 and February 1980 were: 21 resignations, mainly departures from Hong Kong; 4 deaths; 7 notices returned, presumed resigned; 23 unpaid members, presumed resigned; and 33 new members.\n\nThe Journal\n\nThe Hon. Editor, Dr. James Hayes, has written his own short report on progress and problems with the Journal (see footnote). As Dr. Hayes says, and as anybody who has lived in Hong Kong for any length of time will realise, his official duties as Town Manager and District Officer Tsuen Wan are of a particularly demanding nature at present, and this has affected the speed of publication of the Journal. We have received a number of enquiries about delays from members, and concerning which journal they may expect to receive. Essentially, you receive those Journals for the years in which you were a member of the Society, but you may, of course, always purchase those for years your membership does not cover. The present situation is that vol. 18, that is for 1978, is expected from the press within several months, and 19, for 1979, is well advanced. Besides distributing free copies of our Journal to members, we do, of course, sell our publications. I would like here to record my thanks to Mr. Tony Rydings and to Mr. Geoffrey Bonsall of the University Press for their work on distribution of publications, and to Mr. Bonsall again for distributing the Journal to members.\n\nThe Hon. Editor has had special problems this year owing to the demanding nature of his official duties as Town Manager and District Officer Tsuen Wan, which have been intensified by the tight programme of land recovery, clearances and village removals for the construction of the Mass Transit Railway and its associated development. This has made finalization of the Journal slower than usual. He regrets the delay but reports that an advance copy of Volume 18 (1978) will be available for perusal at the AGM. It is expected from the printer in the early summer. Dr. Hayes will also provide a note for Members on the contents of Volume 19 (1979) which is advanced and expected to be finalized before his annual leave in August this year, making a late 1980 publication date likely. He hopes that the valuable contents of the two journals will in some measure make up for their delayed appearance. J.W.H., March, 1980.\n\nxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208875, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n9\n\nThese are the wooded valley running down from Lantau Peak through Luk Wu to Tai O, the wooded area around Lo Wai to the north of and above the new town of Tsuen Wan, and the oldest of all, the easterly wooded slopes of the hill known to foreigners as Castle Peak. (Plate 2)\n\nBuddhist temples can also be established by a monk wishing to set up an establishment of his own to earn credit. The usual pattern would be first to open a small temple consisting of a Buddha Hall, a living room and kitchen. As others join him, if of course they do and if the temple retains its popularity, so the establishment will thrive and grow. However, should he die prematurely, his establishment usually dies with him.\n\nBuddhist monasteries, nunneries and temples usually follow a pattern based on the origins of the monk who first founded or organized the establishment. Hence, a monk from Shandong will reflect his provincial background in the organization and iconographical features of the establishment.\n\nBuddhists rarely have simple temples. Whereas traditional folk religion temples consist of a single storey, monasteries tend to have an upper and lower hall. Buddhist and Daoist monasteries and temples may best be described as being a series of \"boxes\" which, unlike a very high proportion of traditional temples, do not need to be symmetrical. They tend to run to complexes with their numerous rooms and halls, separate buildings and shrines, each housing one or more images. In each devotional hall the main sanctuary or altar which holds the image or symbol of the deity (or in the case of the Halls of Long Life and Rebirth, the spirit tablets) serves as the focal point of devotions and rites. Some monasteries and a few temples have a separate hall dedicated to the Ten Judges of the Underworld (with Di Zang Wang on the main altar) or the Eighteen Luohan (the disciples of the Buddha Sakyamuni).\n\nThere are, in addition to the devotional halls, monks' and nuns' quarters, kitchens, visitors' halls, refectories, study rooms, reading and meditation halls. Many small images are to be seen in each, though they are not always Buddhist. The occasional state religion cult hero or folk religion deity may be seen usually donated by a not too discriminating devotee. Abbots rarely refuse an image, particularly if it is accompanied by a donation to the establishment.\n\n*路盧遮那寺 in Lo Wai.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208876, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "10\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nInside the library large cases of books cover the walls and some books, used more frequently, are individually wrapped in cloth and lie on tables and altars. The larger monasteries have rooms for the aged, and most have halls where ashes of devotees may be deposited.\n\nIn general, a visit to a Buddhist monastery would take you first past the shrine of the folk religion tutelary deity of the neighbourhood, the Earth God (1✯✯). (Illustration 3) Once through the gates and the entrance hall with its six \"guardians” (Mi Luo Fu, Wei Tuo and the Four Heavenly Kings) the layout follows a fairly standard pattern. The main altar will be straight ahead in the Great Hall which houses the main Buddhas. The main altar may be occupied by a single image, a group of three, or an array of a dozen or so. On and along the secondary altars, altars down the side walls and side halls there are images of other lesser deities. These, in twelve monasteries and temples in Hong Kong and Macau, include the well-known groups of eighteen or five hundred Luohan. Frequently, immediately behind the main altar and back to back with the main deity, stands the most popular and honoured of the Bodhisattvas, Guan Yin, with her two assistants.\n\nMahayana Buddhist temples contain a large number of images of Buddhas and major Bodhisattvas, some of which are considered to be more important than the image of Sakyamuni Buddha himself, unlike the Theravada Buddhist temples of Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Srilanka in which Sakyamuni is the most important.\n\nThere appears to be only one temple in Hong Kong in which Lamaist images are worshipped, although there is one other, above Tsuen Wan, where in a private room, some forty or so Lamaist bronze images are on display.* The temple in which the Lamaist images appear on its altars is a shoddy, fairly modern concrete and corrugated iron construction above a new estate in North Point, where an elderly and now deceased Cantonese gentleman settled after spending some years in Tibet. Most devotees appear to have little idea of the style or origins of imagery, and the rituals and ceremonies performed in the temple by the widow of the founder are identical with those in other temples in Hong Kong.\n\n* Guan Yin temple in Fu Yung Shan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208878, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "12\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nA typical Daoist temple is the very bare flatlet on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise block in crowded Shamshuipo, established by a widow from Fujian province in about 1965. Now in her early eighties, she lives alone in the flat, which has a resounding Daoist temple name, and has services performed once a week by a visiting lay priest. She recalled eight occasions when near death, she was saved by a specific Daoist Immortal, Lou Da Zhen Jun (**★**IA) who died late in the Ming dynasty, in Fujian, but who appeared again in spirit form in the twenties of this century in Amoy successfully to persuade a Bank of China manager to stop gambling. Lou's likeness is the only icon in the temple, and before it, services are held and sand-table prognostications obtained.\n\nA modern major religious complex above Lo Wai, Tsuen Wan, has on its main altar large images of Confucius, Lao Zi, and Sakyamuni, representing the three religions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Above the altar hall, which is a modern pagoda, there are several buildings dedicated entirely to memorials, and in two of these halls, Daoist services for the dead are frequently performed.\n\nFolk Religion Temples\n\nThere are some two hundred and forty-six folk religion temples in Hong Kong. When sub-divided into architectural groups, approximately two-thirds of them are traditional buildings, two-ninths are modern constructions, legally built with the Hong Kong Government's permission,18 and one-ninth resettlement shacks, huts, or other illegal constructions. These latter fall into those tolerated by the Hong Kong authorities and those not tolerated.* The latter are regularly pulled down, often to be built illegally again nearby.\n\nTraditional temples in rural areas tend to have flourished around a catchment area of a village or two and have been built on the outskirts of one of the villages. Frequently, there is an adjacent open space used primarily for holding elaborate festivities on the main deity's annual feast day.\n\nAlthough most traditional folk religion temples built before World War II have a similar plan and general layout, no\n\n* To be explained by the periodic amnesties given to older, but still not tolerated illegal structures. 1976 saw the last to date, the purpose being to provide a new, realistic baseline for demolition of new structures (Hon. Editor).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209014, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "144\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTai Lam Chung Sub-district:- Tai Lam Chung, So Kun Fat, Tai Lam, Tsing Fai Tong, Un Tan and Tin Po\n\nTsai 田箭仔、\n\nLung Ku Tan Sub-district:- Nim Wan, Tai Shui Hang 大水坑, Pak Long 北朗, Ha Nam Long 下南朗, Sheung Nam Long 上南朗 and Tuk Mi Chung 篤尾涌.\n\n18\n\nAt present, Tuen Mun consists of thirty-two villages; namely: Chi Tin Tsuen, Ching Chuen Wai † (mainly surnamed To 陶), Ching Shan Keuk 青山脚, Ching Shan Tsuen 青山村, Chung Uk Tsuen (mainly surnamed Chung), Fu Ti Tsuen 虎地村, Fu Hang Tsuen 福亨村, Ho Tin Tsuen 河田村, Ki Lun Wai 麒麟圍 (mainly surnamed Chan 陳), Kwong Shan Tsuen 礦山村, Lam Tei 藍地 (mainly surnamed To 陶 and Kwan 關), Lam Tei San Tsuen (mainly surnamed To), Leung Tin Tsuen 良田村 (mainly surnamed Ho 何), Lung Ku Taan 龍鼓灘 (mainly surnamed Lau), Nai Wai (mainly surnamed To 陶), Nim Wan 稔灣, Po Tong Ha 寶塘下 (mainly surnamed Tsui 徐), Sam Shing Hui 三聖墟, San Hing Tsuen 新慶村 (mainly surnamed Siu 蕭), San Hui 新墟, San Wai Chei 新圍仔, Shun Fung Wai »§ £, ♬ (mainly surnamed Cheung 張 and Leung 梁), Siu Hang Tsuen 小坑村 (mainly surnamed Tse 謝), So Kwun Wat 掃管笏 (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tai Lam Chung (mainly surnamed Wu 吳 and Wong 黃), Tin Fu Chai (mainly surnamed To and Choi), To Yuen Wai (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tseng Tau Tsuen 井頭村, Tuen Chi Wai 屯子圍 (mainly surnamed To 陶), Wo Ping San Tsuen 和平新村, Yeung Siu Hang 楊小坑 and Luen On San Tsuen 聯安新村.\n\nTuen Mun has now been developed into a large new satellite town. A major road, the Tuen Mun Highway, has been built, joining it with Tsuen Wan, and a light rail system within the town area will be developed in the near future.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The name 'Tuen Mun' appeared first in Chapter 43 of the New History of T'ang.\n\n2 Tuen Mun Shan was also known as 'Pui To Shan'. Nowadays, it is also called 'Castle Peak'.\n\nThe Bay was also known as Tuen Mun O.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209025, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nLOCAL REACTIONS TO THE DISTURBANCE OF\n\n'FUNG SHUI ON TSINGYI ISLAND, HONG KONG, MARCH 1978 — DECEMBER 1980*\n\n155\n\nThe Chung Mei and Lo Uk villagers moved to their new houses in April/May 1979. Preparations were then made for a start to the engineering works and excavations in the sensitive hill area.\n\nWe then discovered that the opposition to interference with this area came also from the four old villages located round the lagoon. These face directly (in some cases indirectly) on to the fung shui hill. They had requested and been granted payments for periodic tun fu (**) ceremonies at the same time as the villages of Chung Mei and Lo Uk. Also, in connection with their temporary removal to public housing pending completion of their new resite villages in three to four years' time, a temporary resiting for ancestral halls for all these villages had been agreed and was being effected. Notwithstanding these considerations, village objections continued to be received.\n\nIt was becoming clear that though work might start on excavations, it was likely to cause incidents and to lead to interference with the contractors and further delay: in turn incurring claims from the companies engaged in the work. We were virtually back in the same situation that had led to the 1974 decision to resite Chung Mei and Lo Uk. Thus, when it was learned that the new public housing blocks into which the villagers were to be temporarily cleared would not be available for another year owing to heavy commitments to house large numbers of people from ongoing clearances for major public works in other parts of the Town and District, we decided to face facts. It was agreed to leave the Four Villages on their old sites until mid-1980 when new public housing blocks would be available, and not to start excavations till then.\n\nFortunately this decision was also made necessary on other grounds. Owing to financial stringency, tightened controls and the need to continue financing for engineering and building works already in progress, it was not possible to commence the Tsing Yi contracts scheduled for 1979-80. However, all the necessary arrangements were made, including the detailed planning for the villagers'\n\n*This is a sequel to the note at pp. 213-216 of the 1979 issue of the Journal. It details the difficulties faced by the District Office Tsuen Wan in arranging for development works to proceed smoothly.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210325, "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": 296, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "275\n\nA large clump of such \"public\" trees (HAB) exists, for instance, on the north-east slope of Kowloon Peak.\n\n10 See, however, section 2 of this Note. The late Mr. T. S. Woo, MBE (formerly of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department and the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association) stated that local “Hill Tea” was once dealt in by Gibb, Livingston, but that this later died away, probably as a consequence of the great growth in Indian and Ceylonese tea exports in the late nineteenth century (Note by K. C. Iu).\n\nPlate 39.\n\n12 Elsewhere in this journal, D. Faure in \"Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan\" mentions tea growing on Tsing Yi and at Chuen Lung in the earlier part of this century.\n\n11 Section 3 of this Note discusses this \"tea\" more fully.\n\n14\n\nPlate 40.\n\n15\n\nSessional Papers 1907, p. 221.\n\n16 \"A Notice of the Sanon District\" reprinted JHKRRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, p. 122.\n\n17 The Mau Tso Ngam Village Representative, Mr. Cheng Kau-hung, has also spoken to me (PHH) about herb collection. He stressed that knowledge of herb collection was kept as a secret and handed down from father to son, the father going to remote spots on the hillside to point out herbs to his son where prying eyes could not see what was done. Only some of the Mau Tso Ngam village families knew how to collect herbs, and this information was kept even more carefully from villagers from other villages. The prepared herbs were sold to shops in Kowloon City, a few cents being paid before the War for a well-prepared catty of the less frequently found herbs. The herbs were usually not those found in the Standard Pharmacoepia but \"Mountain Drugs\" (山藥), representing local folk remedies. Sellers of “Mountain Drugs\" can still be found in the New Territories Market towns. Mr. Cheng stressed the difference between medicinal herbs the identification and preparation of which was kept secret, and those herbs usable as food in famines, which it was the duty of the elders to ensure every villager could recognise, and know how to prepare, in case the need ever arose (Note PHH).\n\nDr. Chong Siu-cheung, with a group of local herbalists, has prepared a 5 volume book in English and Chinese “Chinese Medicinal Herbs of Hong Kong\" (Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 1978-84) describing and discussing the uses of about 1,100 species of plant with medicinal properties found in Hong Kong. This book, however, does not cover the place collection or preparation played in the village society or economy (Note KCI).\n\nPlate 41.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211233, "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": 294, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "269\n\nfortunate to get back to the New Territories, to the Tsuen Wan District, in 1975 and I stayed there until 1982. This was the time of the most tremendous, fast-paced, redevelopment programme I ever wish to be involved in. At the same time, it produced good opportunities for collecting documentary material, if it existed, because (again) we were moving old villages out of the way of development.\n\nWhen I was in the Southern District in the late 1950's, I was rather down-hearted, despite what is now being said about the exciting and encouraging documentary side of the Oral History Project, at the absence of certain types of material, especially land deeds. There really were not a lot of land deeds around from the late Ch'ing period, and I found it was just the same in Tsuen Wan 20 years later; not because of those 20 years of ongoing development but because there really were not many available. The reason for this was that the British Administration, having surveyed the land and set up its land courts, naturally requested villagers to bring in their evidence of title to their holdings. Thereafter it did not seem to have given them back. I have met old villagers who have been very vehement on the subject, and have also come across a few hints in official documents that indicate that at some time between 1905 and, say, the end of the Second World War, these retained documents disappeared. It is conceivable they may still turn up one day. When and if they do, they will be the most magnificent source of information on the economic and social background of the New Territories when set beside other documents.\n\nThat was one thing I wanted to mention, and reaffirm, from my Tsuen Wan days.\n\nAnother point is that I have always been very interested in genealogies; in other words, family records. Again, and until fairly recently, the \"mythology\" of scholarship—and I call it that deliberately—was that it was only gentry families and very large clans which kept such records, that these were usually kept in the form of printed books, that manuscript ones were not found very frequently, and that small families and small clans did not have any.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211234, "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": 295, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "270\n\nWell, I found that this was just not so in Tsuen Wan. Practically all the lineages there had had a genealogy at one time, and about two-thirds of them still have. Moreover, if you consult the 1905 Block Crown Leases for land in Tsuen Wan, and look at the descriptions of house lots in the villages of the sub-district, you will get the impression that there were not any ancestral halls in places like Tsuen Wan. This again turned out to be quite wrong. Going through the villages, old people would say \"This is our ancestral hall\" or more often \"That was the site of our ancestral hall”. Even a small clan with, say, only 5 or 10 houses at the turn of the century had its own ancestral hall. Also, there were old schoolrooms and other institutions which indicated that the infrastructure of local village society was greater than the written records would show.\n\nMy third point and I am just over my time concerns another clue to the nature of local society. I had done collecting in \"Town\", i.e. Hong Kong's central areas, at second-hand bookshops, stalls and so on and I had found quite a lot of printed guides to letter writing, social etiquette, and how to carry out a wide range of family, village and business affairs. I thought \"Surely these must have existed in the villages too, and it would be interesting to find if they have the printed versions or the manuscript versions of them, or both\". To cut a long story short, there were such guides to be found in the Tsuen Wan villages. They were practically all of the hand-written type, copied no doubt from generation to generation. They were often kept by the school teachers, and (I was told) dictated to promising pupils or passed on to them. Some elders also possessed them.\n\nSo these were the sort of things I found in Tsuen Wan over my seven year stay. The only other thing worth noting in this connection is that we were in the business of trying to preserve a few old villages, and that in fact we managed to preserve two. One of them, Sam Tung Uk, was located in the middle of Tsuen Wan, right next to the new Mass Transit Railway. Another was up in the hills at a place called Yuen Tun where the main block has been preserved. It is inside the Civil Aid Services camp site, and is a magnificent building to go and look at. I say that with enthusiasm. It is a perfectly ordinary village building, but is a fine example of its kind. These initiatives came mainly from a few officials.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211939, "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-1989", "page_number": 354, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "329\n\nLoi Tung, among other places, including some to Dongguan and Xiangshan counties. The cousins of Hung-Yi moved away to nearby Ha Tsuen and Xiangshan county, among other places. Hung-Yi's brother Hung-Ji moved to Ha Tsuen. Thereafter, all the remaining Dangs of Kam Tin were descendants of Hung-Yi.\n\nCasually asking the Dang elders about the relationship between lineage segmentation and settlement, one is given both concrete examples that suggest a correspondence as well as general observations that there is no correspondence. For example, one would be told that the descendants of the third branch (Yeui), which are very few in number, all live in Wing Lung Wai, and that all the others of that village were descendants of the first fong. Unless one asks about a particular segment, the answers would be in terms of the four branches of the lineage, and the conclusion will be that no single segment lives in a village of its own except in the case of Tai Hong Wai where all the villagers are descendants of Man-Wai and his brothers.\n\nGoing down the level of segmentation, to the lineage divisions focussed upon ancestors of the 17th to 19th centuries, there is correspondence in the sense that members of these segments all live in the same village. As already mentioned, all the members of the third branch live in Wing Lung Wai. Similarly, all the Ji-Ga Tong people live in Shui Tau, all the descendants of Wan-Yu live in Wing Lung Wai, and all the descendants of Gwong Yu Tong and Lei Ging Tong live in Tai Hong Wai. Another example is the descendants of Wan-Gaan, who, according to one account, had three sons: Fau-Ng, Jan-Ting and Gai-Jau. Gai-Jau's segment live in Kat Hing Wai. Fau-Ng's descendants are divided into three sub-segments. One of the three lived in Ko Po, another in Kat Hing Wai, and the other in Kam Hing Wai.\n\nSome segments of the lineage settled elsewhere. The descendants of Hung-Yi's second son Jan had moved to Ying Lung Wai near the Yuen Long Old Market at a very early date. I was told by its head of branch that many more lived in Zhongshan county. Some of the descendants of San-Fung, a son of Wan-Guk, also had settled elsewhere. I was told that most of them live in Kat Hing Wai, but some had moved to Tong Fong near Ping Shan. The ritual handbook for Ching-Lok's ancestral hall had a special provision for the descendants of San-Fung, which said that they had moved to Naam Tau, in a street outside the city wall.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212082, "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-1990", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE OLD POPULAR CULTURE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTRIBUTION\n\nTO STABILITY IN TSUEN WAN\n\nJames W. HAYES*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is aimed at investigating the very marked social stability which was so clear a feature of Tsuen Wan society in the early post-War years. What were the factors which, in the virtual absence of external controls, enabled so many people to live for so long in an orderly and peaceful manner in unhygienic and sometimes unsafe conditions in hillside squatter huts and urban hovels, or in the over-crowded conditions of the early resettlement estates? What was it that the incoming squatters shared with the indigenous villagers which allowed both groups to run their affairs so peacefully and effectively, and with so little external pressure or assistance? Finally, what were the roots of the generally co-operative attitude towards removal and relocation upheavals which were essential for development of the Tsuen Wan New Town, and a prerequisite of steady progress with construction and modernisation, but nonetheless always traumatic for those affected?\n\nPART ONE: The Influence of the Past\n\nAs I see them, the answers to the questions posed above lie in the Chinese character; but more specifically in some leading features of the traditional upbringing and education.\n\nThat traditional upbringing and education was deeply rooted in a reverence for the past, and for the moral standards which the heroes of the past were believed to exemplify. This reverence was invariably noted by those Westerners with a familiarity with the Chinese countryside and a rapport with its inhabitants, as the following statements from the 1940s show:\n\n* The author was District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan from 1975 to 1982. He has recently completed a book about the growth and development of this, Hong Kong's first New Town, which is expected to be published by Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, in mid-1993, under the title Transformation: a Century of Tsuen Wan and its People. (Editor),\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212085, "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-1990", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "4 \n\nmodernity has been, on the whole, so successful.\n\n2. Traditional Self-Management in the New Territories\n\nThe large, indigenous, long-settled population of the New Territories possessed managerial talents in abundance, and, after 1898, the new British officials were willing to let their leaders continue to exercise them, though within a more effective framework of law and order than had been possible under Chinese rule. In the 1920s, an experienced District Officer South, Walter Schofield, saw this self-management in action among the larger communities in his District (it included Tsuen Wan) and commented on local leadership and the prevailing official attitude to it as follows:\n\n\"We never went closely into details of how or why so and so acquired the status and duties of village elder; we just accepted the natural leaders we found.\"7\n\nDecades later, in the mid 1950s, the same capabilities were still to be found among the people of Tsuen Wan. This was indeed very fortunate. Although the town's population had risen to around 80,000, it was yet without a local management office. The District Office Tsuen Wan was not established until 1959, and, in the interim, the local people had had to cope with many problems, initially at least by themselves and largely unaided. Austin Coates, the District Officer responsible for the area a few years earlier, has given a vivid account of the burden carried by the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee, the only local body that was able to fill the yawning gap between the Hong Kong government's responsibilities and its then capabilities:\n\n\"As can be seen, their [Rural Committee's] duties are varied and, if done properly, heavy. In Tsuen Wan, these duties have become overwhelming, and the same may happen elsewhere. The Chairman of Tsuen Wan Rural Committee is in effect a sort of magistrate and mayor rolled into one. All day long he has a stream of problems to attend to. He is obliged to work a full day from nine to five and maintain his own clerical staff in addition to what is paid for by the Committee. ... There is no time whatever for the running of his own business, so great are the demands made on his public services.\"8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212098, "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-1990", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "17\n\nwith its inculcation of “right thinking\", the complete process has been summed up in a few well-chosen words by Dr. Monlin Chiang, one of the most prominent educationalists of the early Republican period:\n\n“These moral precepts came from the Confucian classics. Moral ideas were driven into the people by every possible means — temples, theatres, houses, toys, proverbs, schools, history and stories until they became habits in daily life, 233\n\nThe effect of both the legacy and the drilling was not lost on competent Western observers. Writing over 150 years ago, in his standard work on China first published in the 1830s, a future governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Davis, then only lately returned to England from many years' membership of the Honourable East India Company's Select Committee at Canton, had this to say: \"The Chinese lower classes are better educated or at least better trained than in most other countries”.\n\nPART THREE: “Right Thinking\" in Action in Tsuen Wan\n\n134\n\n+\n\nTsuen Wan District (like all the rest) provides plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of the indoctrination, as well as occasional examples of emulation and performance. People knew what to think and what to do, and recognized the attainment of the prescribed high standards of conduct and behaviour even if they themselves did not measure up. Men who did so were greatly respected, to the point of veneration.\n\nIt is the general opinion among Tsuen Wan natives, then and now, that such a one was the late Mr. Chan Wing-on, a former Tsuen Wan Rural Committee leader and also Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk. Mr. Chan, who unfortunately died comparatively young, left a fine reputation behind him. He is commemorated by a tablet in a traditional-style pavilion, named for him, which was erected the year after his death near the entrance to the Chuk Lam Sim Yuen, one of the large religious houses located above the town. The memorial tablet records his life and achievements as a teacher and as a public figure; with an emphasis on his virtuous conduct and character and how it had influenced others for good:\n\n\"Entering the teaching profession, he taught the village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212115, "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-1990", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "34\n\nsocieties to indigenous agricultural communities. His second book concentrated on descent and territorial groups and ritual theatre. It analyzed the basic structure of worshipping groups, examined their organizational concepts and the structures of rites and customs, and, finally, speculated on how different aspects of rites and operas are reflected unconsciously.\" In his 1985 book Tanaka analyzes different festivals celebrated in the New Territories. He categorized those festivals which focus on the worship of “local deities” as “Gaishin Saishi\" (Worship of external deities). Such festivals are organized according to the territorial connections of different groups. Contrasted to this, he uses the term \"Naishin Saishi\" (worship of internal deities) to describe festivals dedicated to ancestors.\" Tanaka attempts to establish a theatrical and worshipping strata which is closely related to the complexity of a society's structure. The structural complexity of a society can be examined by three indicators: the society's worshipping area, members and economic capabilities. The rural communities are categorized into different levels according to complexity. In the lowest level is the single-lineage village community where conservative Confucianist rites are performed during worshipping. As the structure of community becomes more complicated the role of recreational theatre becomes more important, and the emphasis on traditional rituals declines. Jiao festivals celebrated by village alliances or market town districts are placed by Tanaka in the most complex stratum.\n\n41\n\nAn undeniably significant contribution of Tanaka's work to the study of Jiao festivals is his detailed information. His books provide field records which are invaluable to students of the festival.\n\nFaure, in his study of Chinese rural societies in the New Territories, sees the festival as a means to set up community bonds. Recognizing the complexity of the festival, he concentrated his interest on how the territorial community is represented in the Jiao festival **through the layout of the (festival) ground, through the interaction between the priests and the villagers and through the villagers' own rites\".\n\n42\n\nClose to Faure's study on the Jiao festival is Segawa's work on the Ha Tsuen Jiao festival. He illustrated a “dualism\" in the villager's world. This he refers to interactions between and coexistence of the secular and sacred world, and between the local deities and the higher level gods, the great and little traditions of Chinese culture. Through", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212119, "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-1990", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "38 \n\n48 \n\nfestivals in the nineteen eighties. These communities are of different occupational (agricultural, fishery, market town), ethnic (Punti Cantonese, Hakka), territorial (a village, village cluster, local territorial alliance) and descent (single-lineage, dominated, multi-lineage) natures. Diachronic and synchronic comparative studies of Jiao festivals celebrated by communities of different natures in Hong Kong before and after 1997 will show how local traditional values and customs are preserved and modified in changing social and political environments. Moreover, such studies can also pinpoint which elements are essential to the lives of the villagers.\n\nIV. Jiao Festivals after 1997\n\nAs Dean suggested, the impact Jiao festivals have on the communist mainland can only be observed through a comparative study of the same Jiao (celebrated by the same community) over different time periods. A different situation exists in Hong Kong where the approach of 1997 threatens the survival of the Jiao. Scholars like Segawa, asked an essential question as to whether or not the festival will continue to be celebrated after 1997 when Hong Kong is officially returned to China.\" A villager in Fanling told me that they certainly would continue to celebrate the Jiao festival once every ten years even after 1997. “However, he said, \"the magnitude of the celebration may be more restrained unless the Chinese government is totally 'open\"”. To terminate a religious activity like the Jiao festival is not an easy thing, for no villager would like to bear the sole responsibility. After the 1981 celebration, rumours spread that committee members of Lam Tsuen had decided not to celebrate the Jiao festival any more. On Dec. 1 1990 when I arrived at the Jiao area of Lam Tsuen, I saw rituals and decorations not very much different from the 1981 one. The only notable difference was that the priests were replaced by some younger ones. Mr. Cheung [Zhang] the JP and senior elder of Lam Tsuen told me that in fact not one of the villagers dared to speak out about discontinuation of the festival,\n\nWe do not have sufficient evidence to prove that every village in the New Territories celebrated the Jiao festival, as an independent community or as a member of an alliance at one time or another. We know however, that Jiao festivals developed differently from one community to another. Some communities, such as Ping Shan and Pat Heung, have completely abandoned the festival. Others like", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212383, "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-1990", "page_number": 325, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "302\n\nNOTES\n\nL\n\nThis same carver also referred to the Fukienese Pestilence Wang Yeh as \"pan-shen pan-kuei\" (Note 1: Page 59 of Vol 29: 1989 Journal) as they too are neither gods nor demons, but 'humans of the other world'.\n\nSee Plates 7-9.\n\nTHE MAKING OF A HUSK-GRINDER\n\nMr Chung Yick Ming, the Chairman of Tai Po Rural Committee took me to see Mr Chung Koon Tai (#) who is a villager of Chung Uk Village in Lam Tsuen Valley in Tai Po, New Territories.\n\nMr Chung Koon Tai is now 76 years old. He first joined the trade of husk-grinder (A) making when he was 16 years old as an apprentice. His teacher was a fellow clansman. He retired in 1980. He also got an apprentice to succeed to the craft of husk grinder making. Because of the decline of rice farming in the New Territories since the 60's, the apprentice could not find a living with his profession, and therefore has migrated to UK.\n\nIn those golden days of husk-grinder making, Mr Chung received orders for grinder making from villages all over the New Territories. He had to travel to these villages on foot and stayed there for three to four days to make a husk-grinder. He also made husk-grinders for rice-grinding shops (*) in the old market towns in Tai Po, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun. Chan Yat Sun (H), the former Heung Yee Kuk Chairman, was also his customer when he owned a rice-grinding shop in the town of old Castle Peak (Tuen Mun today).\n\nThere used to be two skilled workers working together to make a husk-grinder. When they arrived at the village, they first went to find some bamboo which was available almost everywhere in the New Territories. They cut down some bamboo and then stripped the bark off layer by layer into long narrow pieces of a quarter to a half inch wide. They then wove these long narrow bamboo strips into the upper and lower parts of the outer framework of the grinder, which looked like two empty baskets. The upper part was fixed with a wooden handle and a wooden funnel which helped the grain to go to the grinding surface. The lower part was also fixed with an axis of iron in the centre.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212871, "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-1992", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "165\n\nThere is available to me a wealth of material bearing on this important subject: and that without so much as stirring a foot outside the confines of Tsuen Wan District. The District Office was itself a repository of information, since public works in and around the New Town had long involved its land staff in the removal of many local graves. Where the age and importance of a grave warranted, compensation was paid both for removal and resiting (where this was approved) and there was much detailed information in the files dealing with these matters. Also, in 1980-81, the junior land staff had tramped over the hillsides, in a systematic attempt to record the many old graves located in what are now country parks. This was in connection with new public health regulations. All hill burials were by now technically illegal, and new ones were prohibited.\n\nDevelopment needs and these other official preoccupations apart, many local villagers had sent letters to the Office over the years. These usually contained requests for permission to repair old graves or to resite them in new locations when it was felt that their good fung-shui qualities had been spent or been rendered malevolent by changes in the landscape.\n\nThe letters, documents and minutes in the files are thus a rich source of information on villagers' beliefs and practice in regard to graves and the family. They can also be important adjuncts to local history, through providing information on family and settlement, especially in regard to families no longer in existence. Copies of the texts of the grave tablets were often included on file, and the longer inscriptions on some of the older graves are particularly useful in giving us the \"feel\" of the rural communities to which they belonged. A few instances from this particular source of information are given below.\n\nLocal Burial Practices\n\nBut first it may be useful to explain that the formal graves were not the first stage in a traditional burial. It was the practice first to bury the deceased in a coffin on the hillside for a number of years, usually about seven, this being the average time for the fleshy parts of the body to disintegrate, leaving the bones behind. At this point, the grave was opened, the remains exhumed and cleaned, and an expert was called in to arrange them in proper order inside a burial urn. This was the second stage in a burial. The urn could then be placed on a hillside in what was considered to be a favourable location, and might perhaps never be moved again. Other urns would be moved from place to place, the responsible\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212925, "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-1992", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "219 \n\nis a typical example of 'chaos'. \n\nFor the reader interested in finding out something about 'chaos' the book by J. Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science is a better introduction. For the reader interested in getting a thought-provoking and deeply insightful exposition of the subject, this book by a Professor of Meteorology is a must. \n\nCHARLES K. KAO \n\nJames Hayes, Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and Its People. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993. xx + 227 pp. Notes. Glossary. Index. \n\nOne of the long traditions of British colonial government has been the existence of a small band of administrator/scholars who have seen their role as extending far beyond the mere paper-shuffling of local bureaucratic processes, into developing a long and deep understanding of the cultural diversities of the societies with which they have become involved. This involvement has been not only to better understand the societies themselves, but also as much to explain to the wider world. There is therefore a long history of erudite and carefully-researched study of colonial cultures and societies written by such officers, and it is well known that Hong Kong has also had its share over the years. \n\nThis tradition still continues, and as a visiting academic also writing on Hong Kong over the years the reviewer has often been reminded of the recent work of two contemporary members of that illustrious band — James Hayes and Ted Pryor. Both continue to uphold the tradition of careful scholarship, and when something new comes from either, one knows that it will be interesting, that scholarship will have been applied, and that because of the unique official position of both within government (until recently) some new and authoritative insight will be given into contemporary British colonial administration. James Hayes' new book on Tsuen Wan and its development one of Hong Kong's nine new towns is no exception. \n\nJames Hayes is well-known in Hong Kong for his interests and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212926, "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-1992", "page_number": 235, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "220\n\nperceptive writings on the cultural history of the Territory, and in this instance he has been able to add to his long experience in this field his particular advantage of having worked personally in the new town for many years, first as a District Officer and then as Town manager; both as a government officer within the Hong Kong New Territories Administration. In the Preface to his book Hayes sets out his basic approach to the study succinctly:\n\nAs a former career civil servant, my approach to writing has inevitably been coloured by the knowledge and experience gained as an official. However, this book is not a thinly disguised 'official version' of events in Tsuen Wan. The motivation has been wholly personal, and readers should view it as the work of an interested writer who was also the man doing the job'.\n\nThis view is fully reflected by the text, and it is not an overstatement to suggest that at times the narrative comes across as a labour of love in which the author is very much expressing his personal involvement and feelings on the events that he is unfolding in the text. The result is a unique blend of academic scholarship and personal interpretation.\n\nThis is not to say that the book is in any way polemical or less than fairly researched. It is a text packed with carefully reviewed and assessed detail, and put into that wider cultural context that only this author can provide. It is thus not only about Tsuen Wan's development itself, but also its place within the wider contexts of recent Hong Kong history over the twentieth century. The book is organised into eleven chapters, with very full notes, bibliography and index. All but two of the chapters are largely chronological: the remaining two (VIII and IX) concentrating rather more on the various processes and policies of government and management at the local level with which James Hayes was himself so intimately involved during the formative years of the town's development. The joy of the book is that its style is not at all the dry factorial text that some historians are apt to produce, but rather the author has been able to intersperse the chronology with intense personal reminiscence, both of his own and of the many other participants of the Tsuen Wan story that he has been able to interview over the many years of his involvement with the town.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212927, "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-1992", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "221\n\nThe book is therefore both factual and interesting, and at times even amusing. The reader is thus able to learn much about Hong Kong's new town development process through the personal insights of many of its past and present inhabitants. The result is therefore a very readable variety of perspectives on the growth of Tsuen Wan, from government and newcomers alike, but perhaps more than any other through the eyes of the many indigenous inhabitants who grew up with the early town and endured the heady expansion of the 1960s and 70s.\n\nHaving worked on parts of the Hong Kong new town story before, the reviewer is well aware of how much remains to be learned and told of this amazing story which has been created largely over the last thirty-five years. In this book James Hayes has added a large and unique addition to that academic enterprise, and has been kind enough to add some very important gaps in our knowledge of that story that only he could fill. For that we should be grateful, for the result is a text that not only gives the wider public the first detailed account of just how one of Hong Kong's nine new towns has developed, but perhaps even more importantly it has been put into a social and cultural context that has rarely been touched upon before. It can well be said that a town is its people. In Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and Its People James Hayes has given us the very best of an account of how such a new community has grown up to form one of the dynamic new centres of contemporary Hong Kong.\n\nMICHAEL BRISTOW\n\nAnne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore and London, John Hopkins University Press, 1993. xix + 322 pp. Bibliography. Indices.\n\nAnne Birrell's Chinese Mythology is unquestionably the best book on the subject in print in English. Despite Birrell's obvious and acknowledged debt to Yuan Ke's works in Chinese, her book is a vast improvement over Yuan Ke's recent publication in English, Dragons and Dynasties (Penguin), which supplies a single version of each myth (usually a composite of several versions), with no attribution to any Chinese text. Birrell's Mythology is to be applauded for the care with which it lists variant versions of the same myth and gathers different myths on the same theme. All the major subjects in early Chinese myth", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213133, "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-1993", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "183\n\nTK\n\nin the market would sometimes be carried round by hawkers who brought them from the bigger cities further away. Twice a year, in the Spring and the Autumn, these hawkers would carry around the villages the vegetable seeds needed for the forthcoming half year. The villagers did not know how to produce good vegetable seed for themselves. There were some specialist villages in China which produced large quantities of seed. There the hawkers bought their stock. The hawkers kept the locations of these villages a secret - no villager contact seems to know where their seeds came from.\" Many of these hawkers who carried things around the villages were Hoklo: few local people entered this trade except for the people who hawked salt and fresh fish around the villages near their homes. There were quite a significant number of these itinerant hawkers, who bought in the towns and carried wares around the villages: unfortunately, very little is known about them.\n\nSome local villagers did make a living in the itinerant sweet trade. In Tsat Muk Kiu there was a villager, for instance, who made sweets and hawked them through the Wu Kau Tang and Plover Cove villages. These sweet hawkers often sold their wares, not for cash, but for broken metal which they then sold on to the market town blacksmiths, who were always short of metal.\n\nThe coolie trade was not very formally organised. Those stores wanting coolies to carry goods would let it be known, and would hire whom they pleased from those who showed an interest - most shops in the carrying trade developed a relationship with a particular group of women, however, - or the women from a particular village or section of a village - and always called on that group for coolies. After the 1870s, many of the young adult men of the Sha Tau Kok area began to travel abroad for a few years to make their fortunes. It is likely that, before local society began to be marked by this temporary emigration of young adult males, the local coolies had been young men, but, by 1900, the trade was mostly conducted by women. Thus, the Colonial Secretary hired 11 persons in 1899 to carry his baggage from Wo Hang near Sha Tau Kok to Tai Po - a full day's march of 12 miles - and 7 of the 11 were women. In the 1920s, shops in the market at Sha Tau Kok would sometimes send groups of women as far as Tsuen Wan (more than 15 miles away) to bring back goods for sale not available nearer at hand (pineapples especially) - a very long day's work. Many of the carrying coolies came from the lowland villages - the women of the mountainside villages were probably too.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213361, "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-1994", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "166\n\nHai Journal, no 12 | August 1981, pp 191-201)\n\n1\n\nLo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842 The History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival (Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963)\n\nBarbara Ward, \"Rediscovering our social and cultural heritage\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (JHKBRAS) 20, pp 116-124, p 124\n\nSee Jack Potter Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant. Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley, Calif University of California Press, 1968) He contradicts the theory that the industry and commerce of the treaty ports were the principal reasons for the bankruptcy of the Chinese countryside by showing how in Ping Shan, the effects of capitalism were beneficial to peasants.\n\nJames Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut Archon Books, 1972), The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983), Tsuen Wan Growth of a New Town and Its People (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1993)\n\n7 For the special nature of the District Officer's duties, see Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin Memoirs of a Special Magistrate (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1975)\n\nSelina Ching Chan, \"Tradition Inherited, Traditional Reinterpreted. A Chinese Lineage in the 1990s\", (Unpublished Ph D thesis, Oxford University, 1995)\n\nAlan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years the Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45 (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1982) and Captive Christmas (Hong Kong. Heinemann, 1979)\n\n10 Most of the Rev Smith's work was published in articles in various, often obscure, journals, but more recently they have been collected in anthologies - Chinese Christians, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co, 1995)\n\nSee especially, DJ Dwyer (ed) The Changing Face of Hong Kong. Proceedings of a Weekend Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1971)\n\n12 Editorial, JHKBRAS, vol 7(1967)pp 1-3,p 2\n\n13 PH Hase and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Beyond the Metropolis Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd, 1995)\n\n14 Marjorie Topley, (comp) \"Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars\" Proceedings of a Symposium, February 8-9, 1969 (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969)\n\nSee Ian Diamond, \"The Paper Chase - Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213581, "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-1995", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "147\n\nincense or joss sticks. According to Lo (1959, quoted in Iu, 1983), these trees were introduced into Guangdong Province from Vietnam in the Tang dynasty (619-907 AD) and were planted in large numbers in the New Territories during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD). In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned throughout China for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories) (Chan, 1989). In the Kuang-tung hsin-yu (Ch’u, 1974), it is noted that many people in Tung-kuan made their fortune from Kuan-heung (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. Incense trees were very suitable for the decomposed granite soils of the area and were particularly grown in the area of Shatin and the lower part of Lam Tsuen valley, whose name means \"forest village\", and around Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau. Interestingly, Schofield (1983) referring to the fine fung shui wood at Sha Lo Wan adds “In a suitable light, ancient log slides can be seen running straight down the steepest hills on this stretch of coast\", although whether these have anything to do with the incense trade may never be known.\n\nThe successful cultivation of the incense tree depended on three conditions, the suitability of the soil, adoption of proper methods of cultivation and the mastering of tapping and cutting methods for the collection of resin, which had a medicinal use. The general name of the varieties of incense produced in Tung Kwun, Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those times, was \"Kuan-heung\" (Iu, 1983).\n\nThe logs were collected at Tsim Sha Tsui from where it was shipped by small boats to Shek Pai Wan near present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, where it was re-shipped onto Chinese seagoing junks to Canton, SE Asia and as far away as Arabia.\n\nIt has been suggested that the cultivation of and trade in incense trees gave rise to the name of Hong Kong (meaning incense harbour). \"Little Hong Kong, or Heung-kong-wai, is said to have been so-called on account of the quantity of Pak-miu-heung-shu then growing there, the wood of these white-wood fragrant trees is called \"Nga-heung\" (i.e. fragrant wood white as a tooth), is odoriferous when burnt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213582, "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-1995", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "148\n\nalthough the woodcutters have left but few trees there and at Wong-nei-chung, yet formerly it grew abundant there. In the time of the Hon Dynasty, this wood, it is said, was highly valued, and formed an article of tribute\" (HKDP, 1873).\n\nThe incense industry received a severe blow from which it never recovered during the coastal evacuation ordered by the emperor K'ang-hsi from 1662-1669. The Kuang-tung hsin-yu notes that, \"there were very few people left after the evacuation, and less than one tenth of the incense growers were left. Most serious of all, old trees had been cut down, and those which were left were only ten to twenty years old”. Those who survived this evacuation experienced another disaster during the reign of Yung-Cheng (1723-1735) when a magistrate, obsessed with a love of high grade incense, killed a number of incense growers. The remaining growers then cut down the rest of their trees and fled (Chang, 1963). The trade in incense wood, however, continued with supplies of sandalwood from New South Wales imported during the nineteenth century and milled into powder by water-powered mills in the Tsuen Wan area. A detailed account of the history of this trade and the manufacture of incense is given in Chan (1989).\n\nThe statement that Aquilaria sinensis is not native but was introduced from North Vietnam is questioned by Iu (1983), as the species appears to be indigenous to Hong Kong and is commonly found in fung shui woods where it freely regenerates to form a component of the subcanopy layer. Dunn and Tutcher (1912) stated that in 1912, in a one-acre plot of fung shui woodland on lower ground in Hong Kong, 31 out of 125 trees examined were Aquilaria sinensis (then known as A. Grandiflora). A report by Nichols (1978) found that at Uk Tau on the Sai Kung peninsula, a third of the trees in the fung shun wood were incense trees, ten times as many as in neighbouring natural woodland, and that an old man in the village said that heung trees were cultivated there in living memory for the incense trade.\n\nBecause a tree was once grown in plantations, of course, has no bearing as to whether or not it is native. Whether or not the present-day incense trees are remnants of former plantations or whether incense trees were ever cultivated in fung shui woods may never be known, but none of the village representatives questioned during a study carried out by the author into fung shui woods between 1990 and 1995 ever", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213645, "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-1995", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Book Review\n\n217\n\nJAMES HAYES (1996), Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 11 chapters, appendix, glossary, index, 320 pages.\n\nJames Hayes needs little introduction to most members of the Society. He was a former editor of the Journal and President of the Council for many years. He is also an extraordinarily nice human being with a passion for bow-ties. He allegedly retired, to Bondi Beach, Australia, in 1987 but there is little evidence that he is taking this seriously. Au contraire, he continues to write prolifically for the Journal and has also added many new books to the Society's collection through his constant forays into used-book shops.\n\nAll-in-all, James spent 32 years in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Administrative Service of the Hong Kong Government from August, 1956 (he was here briefly in 1953 with the Army). Although he had the varied career that characterises the Service, he spent almost half his time in the New Territories as District Officer South (1957-62), District Officer (and Town Manager) Tsuen Wan (1975-82), and Regional Secretary, New Territories (1985-87). He was, and remains, a noted sinologist and accomplished in the Chinese language. Academically, he was very sound with a PhD from the University of London and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters bestowed by the University of Hong Kong in 1992.\n\nJames has decided to share his memories of his service in Hong Kong with us in a new book. Autobiographies by former Hong Kong Government civil servants, and by Hong Kong people generally for that matter, are relatively rare events, almost as if the majority are reluctant to write their memoirs for fear of criticism or ridicule, or have little in their careers worth writing about. James has no problem on either count. His career was rich and varied, filled with achievements and may truly be said to have added value to public life in Hong Kong. As for the telling of it, he has avoided the inclination to embark upon a literary ego trip although he is not averse to describing the highlights in detail. Few will be offended by the style.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213682, "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-1996", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "6\n\nIn New Kowloon, Tsuen Wan, and the Islands, enumeration was conducted by the police stationed there, or by the water police. The police were assisted by a headquarters team consisting of an experienced enumerator and translator. The enumerations undertaken by the police were conducted on the same house-to-house basis as those undertaken by the civilian enumerators, and the same books of schedules were used.\n\n7\n\nDetails of age, sex, place of birth, dialect spoken, occupation, religion, married state, degree of education, and infirmities, were recorded for each resident. The schedules were worked up into tables by experienced tabulators in the Census Office, this work being completed by October 28th. Table 1 below gives a summary of the 1911 census tables which refer to the New Territories. For the New Territories the population was tabulated for each village as well (broken down into male and female), as a single-handed contribution to the census by Mr. S.B.C. Ross, the district officer - this was not repeated for later censuses.\n\n20\n\nTable 1\n\nIX\n\n1911 Census Tables Referring to the New Territories\n\n \n Table\n Description of Table\n Comments\n \n \n XII\n The total population of the colony\n By district, age, and sex\n \n \n XIII\n Birth places of the Chinese population of the NT (Northern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n XIV\n Birth places of the Chinese population of the NT (Southern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Dialects spoken in the home (NT: North. District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Dialects spoken in the home (NT: Southern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Chinese population of the villages of Hong Kong\n HK Island, Po Toi, etc. Given for males and females separately.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213701, "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-1996", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "25\n\n5%\n\nwide divergence where females are concerned cannot be due solely to the transfer of Tsuen Wan alone. This wide divergence can probably be ascribed to the large numbers of women busy in the fields during the 1921 Census period and thus being missed by the 1921 enumerators. The 1921 Census Officer, as noted above, remarked on the problems the peak agricultural season caused for the enumerators, who, clearly, were able to compel the presence of the heads of household, but not always the womenfolk of the family.\n\nThe higher numbers of females as compared with males recorded in both 1911 and 1921 (at ages above about 26 in 1911, and about 32 in 1921) can be ascribed to the temporary absence of many of the males in the City or abroad. As is to be expected, this feature is much less marked in 1921, because of the return of so many males for the Ching Ming Festival, and the greater effort made to record the boat-people, many of whom were prime-age males, whose families were resident outside the New Territories. The higher recorded figures for females at ages above 55 are more likely to be due to differential death-rates, with females living longer.\n\nSouthern District. An Immigrant, Urban Society\n\nWhile the censuses show a settled agricultural society in Northern District, in Southern District they show a society dominated by the land and floating populations of the market town seaports of Cheung Chau, Tai O, and Ping Chau, and marked by significant temporary immigration of young adult males.\n\nAs mentioned above, the census figures are problematic for Southern District. Because of differences in the treatment of New Kowloon, Tsuen Wan, and the floating population, only two tables provide fully usable data: the 1911 figures for the islands' land population, and the 1921 figures for the Southern District floating population. However, even though the series of usable figures is short, nonetheless they clearly show a society radically distinct from that of Northern District.\n\n00\n\nTable 9 shows the reported population figures for the 1911 land population of the islands. As in Northern District, the figures suggest under-reporting of infant children. At 35 births per thousand, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213740, "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-1996", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "Table 28\n\nUrban Population: New Territories. 1911\n\n63\n\n \n Northern District: Town\n Males\n \n Females\n \n Total\n \n \n Yuen Long\n 458\n 81.9%\n 101\n 18.1%\n 559\n \n \n Sai Kung\n 320\n 62.5%\n 192\n 37.5%\n 512\n \n \n Hang Hau\n 262\n 67.7%\n 125\n 32.3%\n 387\n \n \n Ha Tsuen Sh\n 120\n 67.4%\n 58\n 32.6%\n 178\n \n \n Shek Wu Hui\n 29\n 67.4%\n 14\n 32.6%\n 43\n \n \n Tuen Mun San Hu\n 72\n 67.3%\n 35\n 32.7%\n 107\n \n \n Tai Wo Shi\n 377\n 79.9%\n 95\n 20.1%\n 472\n \n \n Tai Po Old Market\n 104\n 53.3%\n 84\n 44.7%\n 253\n \n \n Tap Mun\n 168\n 66.4%\n 85\n 33.6%\n 253\n \n \n Sha Tau Kok\n 43\n 70.5%\n 18\n 29.5%\n 61\n \n \n North District Total.\n 1910\n 70.8%\n 789\n 29.2%\n 2699\n \n \n Southern District: Town\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Tai O land population\n 1159\n 51.6%\n 1089\n 48.4%\n 2248\n \n \n .boat population\n 3159\n 58.4%\n 2254\n 41.6%\n 5413\n \n \n Total\n 4318\n 56.4%\n 3343\n 43.6%\n 7661\n \n \n Cheung Chau land population\n 1918\n 59.1%\n 1326\n 40.9%\n 3244\n \n \n :boat population\n 2601\n 58.6%\n 1841\n 41.4%\n 4442\n \n \n Total\n 4519\n 58.8%\n 3167\n 41.2%\n 7686\n \n \n Ping Chau\n 434\n 67.6%\n 208\n 32.4%\n 642\n \n \n Mui Wo Kau Chun\n 11\n 61.1%\n 7\n 38.9%\n 18\n \n \n Southern District Total\n 9282\n 58.0%\n 6725\n 42.0%\n 16007\n \n \n New Territories Total.\n 11192\n 60.0%\n 7514\n 40%\n 18706\n \n\n* Most of Sha Tau Kok was in China this is the New Territories part of the town\n\nTsuen wan is not included as the census includes a large rural population with the town. Some of the Cheung Chau boat population was probably at Ping Chau, and some of the Tai O boat population was probably at other anchorages on Lantau, but only a small percentage in each case\n\nIt will be noted that there was no town in the Northern District as large as Ping Chau, and that Cheung Chau was more than 24 times as large as all the Northern District towns put together. There were rural populations included within the total for, especially, Tai O, but, nonetheless, the differences are very real. The 1921 Census includes population figures for only one town, Sai Kung the figure it gives (an overall figure of 606) is in line with the 1911 figure.\n\nIt is noticeable that the population engaged in “urban” occupations can be comfortably fitted into the recorded populations of the Southern District towns, with a substantial excess over to cover the fishermen and ocean-going seamen living in the towns In Northern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213742, "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-1996", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "65\n\nburners, who oral evidence suggests were common, are noted in the 1921 Census16 in Northern and 183 in Southern District, as also are the brick and tile makers, with 83 male and five female workers noted in Northern District in that year. The other traditional trades noted by the 1921 Census as present in numbers (vegetable oil pressers, shipbuilders, blacksmiths, carpenters) were mostly working within the market towns.\n\nIn some places the “industrial” villages can be traced in the 1911 Census, even though the residents in them do not appear specifically in the \"Occupations\" Table. Thus, there was an area where incense wood was pounded into dust for manufacture into joss-sticks at Pak Kiu Tsuen outside Tai Po Market, and another at Tso Kung Tam outside Tsuen Wan. At the first, the census records the village of Wong Ka Uk, with 10 males but no females, and, at the second, the villages of Tso Kung Tam and Pak Shek Kiu, with 36 males and only nine females between them. These imbalanced populations strongly suggest that the villages in question were essentially industrial. Shek Tsai Po, outside Tai O - a centre for the drying of fish and the manufacture of shrimp paste - had a similarly imbalanced population of 71 males to 47 females. Villages next to important ferries - Liu Pok, Lo Wu, Yuen Chau Kok, Sha Kong, Ha Mei, Mui Wo - also tend to have recorded populations with more males than females, reflecting the boatmen and similar traders living at the ferry pier. Suburban industrial trades are probably the reason also why many of the villages on Hong Kong Island and the rural parts of Kowloon (especially Ma Kong, Chung Hom Kok, Lan Nai Wan, To Tei Wan, Tai Tam Tuk, Tong Po, Deep Water Bay, and the Quarry Bay villages on Hong Kong Island, and Ma Tau Kok, San Shan, Shek Shan, Lo Lung Hang, Wong Nai Yue, Fo Pang, Tai Shek Kwu, and Ho Man Tin in Kowloon)* show a significant excess of males over females. Suburban villages with significant excesses of males are also to be seen immediately outside most of the New Territories market towns in 1911. These villages had commercial market-gardens, industrial premises which required large areas (dyers, joss-stick makers, sawyers, etc.), and offensive trades (tanners, lime-burners, brick and tile works, etc.), and should be considered as part of the market town complex. The ring of villages with high male-female ratios around the city in 1911 should be seen in the same way, as subordinate to the commercial life of the City.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213749, "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-1996", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "72\n\nOf course, in some cases the emigration was over a short distance, to the nearest market town. It is likely, as noted above, that the absent males of the Yuen Long plain villages were working in the Yuen Long markets, and possible that some at least of the Lam Tsuen males were in the Tai Po Market. Some Lamma villagers were probably working in Aberdeen, and from all over the New Territories there were villagers working in the city - so many that their return to the villages for the Ching Ming Festival in 1921 could bias the census in that year, as noted above. But much of the emigration, as the Basel missionaries, the temple donation tablets at Shan Tsui and Tsuen Wan, and oral evidence, all make clear, was to overseas.\n\nThe implications of villages with surplus males are less easy to identify (see Appendix II and Table 32; these identify villages with more than 56% recorded males in their populations: villages with fewer than 35 total population are excluded, except where the surplus of males is extreme). In many cases, just as the villages with low male female ratios identify villages with significant temporary male emigration, so villages with high male: female ratios identify places with temporary male immigration. One group already discussed which stands out is the market towns, almost all of which have high male: female ratios. Nearly 82% of the recorded population of Yuen Long market was male, and almost 80% of that of Tai Po new market (Tai Wo Shi). Even Shek Wu Hui, Ha Tsuen and Tuen Mun San Hui had over two-thirds of their tiny populations male (Table 28). These figures need to be put into perspective. In 1911, within the City of Victoria (i.e., omitting the Peak and the Hong Kong Island villages) there were 151,303 males out of a total Chinese population of 217,668. Males represented, therefore, 69.5% of the total Chinese population.1 Thus, the male domination of the larger New Territories market towns was significantly more substantial in 1911 than that of the city, and even the smaller New Territories markets had at least as high a level of male domination. The only exceptions to this are Cheung Chau, and Tai O, in Southern District. While these towns have more males than females, the imbalance is less than in the Northern District towns or the city: however, it seems likely that small rural populations are included with those towns, and that this causes distortion in these cases. Most of the New Territories towns also, as noted above, had suburban villages which shared the male domination of the town itself.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213937, "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-1997", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "# STYLE SHEET\n\n# THE OLD POPULAR CULTURE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTRIBUTION\n\n# TO STABILITY IN TSUEN WAN\n\n## JAMES HAYES\n\n### Introduction\n\nThat the old popular culture of China had a significant effect on the stability of Tsuen Wan there can be no doubt...\n\n## PART ONE\n\n### The legacy of self-management and local leadership\n\n#### Story-telling\n\n#### Table 1\n\nDistribution of ethnic groups in Tsuen Wan\n\n#### Figure 1\n\nOld map of Tsuen Wan\n\nThe author is a former Hong Kong civil servant [short biographical note]... This paper was first presented at [if the case]...\n\n2 A former market town in the western New Territories of Hong Kong and now a major population centre.\n\nPage vi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214029, "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-1997", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "64\n\nto Leng Shan in Fanling from Dongguan in 1190.5 In 1220, they were then driven out and moved to Fan Ling Lau, as their residence was appropriated by neighbouring Tangs. In the Ming Dynasty, due to population pressure, some Pangs moved to what is now called Fanling Wai and built forty-two houses and the village walls. Fanling Wai is composed of a walled village and its extensions which are referred to by the Pangs as Wai Noi Tsuen, Nam Bin Tsuen, and Pak Bin Tsuen. The houses in the past were built one-storey high of clay bricks with tiled roofs. Wooden ancestral tablets were placed at the center of the house for worship. Nowadays, due to population growth, nearly two hundred village houses stand in a row in the village. They have been built and rebuilt into two- or three-storey cement houses since the 1980s, and they contain paper-made ancestral tablets for veneration. The Pangs call this type of house zu wu (literally means the ancestor's house) and point out that they should be passed down the male descent line, usually from fathers to sons, for maintaining the Pangs' lineage community.\n\nOutside the walled settlement, there are many village houses with dark-red tiled roofs, white walls, and a balcony. Villagers call it the Spanish style. These houses were mainly built in the 1980s, under the 1972 Small House Policy. The policy allows every New Territories male villager, whose ancestor had settled there before the British Government took over the lease in 1898, to apply for building a house in his village. The house is allowed to be built of no more than 25 feet in height (three storeys) and 700 square feet covered area. Since this type of village house is built by male inhabitants (nan ding), villagers colloquially call these houses ding wu (male's house).\n\nFrom the 1980s onwards, the Pangs have rented out their available village houses for profit when the demand for rural housing increases substantially. After the Second World War and the unstable political period in China in 1949, a huge influx of immigrants from China to Hong Kong, together with the subsequently increased birth rate, exacerbated the housing problem in Hong Kong's urban area. In order to relieve the over-crowded living conditions, the government has not only provided low-cost public housing but also commenced the development of satellite towns (nowadays called new towns) in the New Territories. Housing is nevertheless still in substantial demand because of its inadequate supply. In the 1980s, the private housing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214033, "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-1997", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "68\n\nPangs for achieving the common goals mentioned before. Their adaptation to spatial changes associated with the redefinition of the transfer practice of property delineates succinctly how traditional identity is strategically preserved and reinforced when the local society has been experiencing modernisation and industrialisation from the late 1970s on.\n\nA New Type of Village House Emerged: Ding Wu\n\nSince 1972, the government has introduced a new housing policy—the Small House Policy—which allows every New Territories indigenous inhabitant to build a village house of 700 square feet covered area and 25 feet in height. The timing of the introduction of this housing policy coincided with that of the ten-year housing program in Hong Kong, which the government anticipated would be able to provide accommodation for 1.8 million Hong Kong people within ten years, aiming at improving the overcrowded urban living conditions. Since this housing program mainly favoured the city dwellers, the Small House Policy was, as scholars argue, intended to improve the New Territories indigenous inhabitants' housing conditions.\n\nA male indigenous inhabitant aged over eighteen can apply for building a ding wu. They can build houses by converting their agricultural land into building land without premium or purchasing government land at a concessionary price. In 1978 the Pangs successfully built a total of fourteen ding wu. From 1979 to 1982, they built twelve more. All were built on the outskirts of the village territory, and the building lands included both private land and Crown land. The total construction costs of a house were around a hundred thousand dollars, and at that time only a limited number of the Pangs could afford the costs.\n\n18\n\nThere has been no deadline to hand in an application, but the Pangs usually do it at the age of eighteen. Applications have been gradually increasing from the 1980s on, and it has to do with the government's resumption of their lands for development. In the late 1970s, the government started to develop Fanling and Sheung Shui into a new town, of about 780 hectares, to accommodate a population of 226,000; and On Lok Tsuen in Fanling (about ten minutes' walk away from Fanling Wai) was designated to be an industrial site. For this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214149, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 7, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "# THE OLD POPULAR CULTURE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO STABILITY IN TSUEN WAN\n\n## Introduction\n\nThat the old popular culture of China had a significant effect on the stability of Tsuen Wan2 there can be no doubt...\n\n## PART ONE\n\n### The legacy of self-management and local leadership\n\n#### Story-telling\n\n| Table 1 | Distribution of ethnic groups in Tsuen Wan |\n\n[Figure 1: Old map of Tsuen Wan]\n\n2 The author is a former Hong Kong civil servant...\n\nThis paper was first presented at...\n\nA former market town in the western New Territories of Hong Kong and now a major population centre.\n\nvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214709, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "88\n\naltered work for the railway had not been held up, as so often happens with New Territories' projects similar to this. This was in spite of the protracted discussions that had taken place regarding the removal of the graves at Pat Heung. By comparison a dispute between the Government and Ping Shan villagers, in the northeast of the New Territories, about the moving of an agnate's grave, has been going on for several years. This has resulted in the closure of some buildings along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail by the Tang Clan (Cheung; 1999, 570). At the time of writing they are still closed.\n\nAfter bussing the large group back to Sheung Tsuen a further ten-minute ceremony was held by the Taoist priests in the Kwan Yin Ancient Temple, opposite the matshed (see Plate 6). Again there was a repeat of chanting, bowing and the sprinkling of rice wine. This was to pay respects to the gods in the temple and was not really a formal part of the tun fu ceremony.\n\nWhether it is a wedding, a funeral or celebrating the completion of the refurbishment of an ancestral hall, in Chinese culture food usually plays an important part. Now, after the tun fu ceremony was over, it was time to feast and what and how people eat can reflect complex social messages. The banquet consisted of a basin meal. For some this was in the open and for others under cover, close to the temple. Before the meal there were speeches in Cantonese from both government officials and village representatives. These were followed by Cantonese opera. Only about 20 women (some of whom sit on village committees) were present among the over 1,000 people who sat down for the basin meal which included the crisp, golden-brown roast pigs which had been offered up to, and was food fit for, the gods. After this latter ritual the pork had taken on magical qualities. Later, by eating it, we the living were able to fortify our chi (prank or life-force) (Waters; 1996, 125) (Leung; 1992, 27). As is the custom in the New Territories on such occasions, all ‘ate from the common pot'. This was placed in the centre of each circular, Chinese table (Watson; 1987, 389). Eating together like this is intended to imply that all diners co-operate and depend on and trust one another. A basin meal is a great leveller. But it is not just how you eat. It is also what you eat. Consequently, many of the layers (frequently totalling nine which is a propitious number) of food in the 'common pot', in addition to the pork previously mentioned, were auspicious. For example faat choi, ‘sea moss' (or, as it is commonly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214718, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "97\n\nin tun fu and other religious ceremonies. 'It is not really worth making a fuss about and upsetting the system', seemed to sum it all up.\n\nBut by comparison, even if western women would probably not accept a 'second-class citizen' situation in a similar way, nevertheless it should be remembered that only men are allowed, still, to become Catholic priests. Women have however been accepted, in a number of cases not so long ago, as clerics into the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church. Again showing leanings towards men, even in the West, the Author recalls his 90-year old English mother saying, in the 1980s, \"It's a pity Mrs Thatcher (the then Prime Minister of Britain) isn't a man. People would respect her more.”\n\nWill tun fu die out?\n\nWith the population of Hong Kong expected to reach somewhere in the region of eight-and-a-half million by the year 2010, this can only mean additional new towns and greater urbanisation in the New Territories. Such growth must bring drastic changes in lifestyles as has happened in the past. Western style bars, karaoke and other hostess services are now not uncommon in the Yuen Long and Kam Tin area, signifying the move towards globalisation (Chu; 1999)(Yu; 1999). In addition, what sociological changes will Route Three Highway, the West Rail Link and a possible new town close by bring to the district (Shum; 1996, 41)?\n\nBut in spite of inevitable changes, Sheung Tsuen, where the main Pat Heung tun fu ceremony that the Author attended was held, is still a pleasant, peaceful village. In spite of paddy fields having long disappeared and derelict cars being dumped together with other eyesores, there is still a country atmosphere. The Koel and other birds call from atop camphor and banyan trees. To an observant person, the number of tun fu ceremonies held in the New Territories still does not appear to be exceedingly small. But with the continuing rapid increase in population and concomitant developments, they are likely to become endangered, although the custom is likely to be around, in smaller numbers, for some time to come.\n\nConclusions\n\nTun fu ceremonies are held because a previously quiet area of the countryside and its feng shui are threatened. Perhaps a hill in which the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214814, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "195\n\nTHE CHARACTERISTICS OF CHINESE RELIGION: MAINLY TAKEN FROM 19TH CENTURY\n\nWRITINGS,\n\nBUT YET RELEVANT FOR CONTEMPORARY HONG KONG\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nIntroduction\n\nSome years ago, when preparing material for my book Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and its People (Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1993), I spent a lot of time compiling a statement on Chinese religion as it was seen and practised at the local level. This material was drawn from my readings in a variety of sources, coupled with my own observations on the subject in over thirty years' residence in Hong Kong.\n\nThe writings of the leading missionaries to China, mostly Protestant and from the late 19th century, were especially helpful. Their keen interest and first-hand experience enabled them to make statements that are as vivid and illuminating as when they were penned, and notwithstanding vastly changed times, are still useful and often valid today, owing to the lingering influence of old ways of thought and deed among the Hong Kong population. Other writers, including eminent Chinese scholars, provided complementary information for the text and in the notes attached to it.\n\nReading through this material again, and notwithstanding the immense amount of published writings on every aspect of this huge topic, it has yet seemed to me that others may get as much enlightenment (and enjoyment) from reading this compilation as I did from its production, and since it could not be used in the Tsuen Wan book, I offer it here, hoping that it may prove useful to readers of our Journal.\n\nPART ONE\n\nWorship and Teaching in Chinese Religion\n\nAs is well known, the three main religions of China are Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.1 Each derived from the lives", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215530, "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": 307, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "257\n\n250 square feet, to be known as the Sung Him Tong Sung Chan Wui Kei Tuk Kau Fan Cheung (#*******) near Tsung Hom [sic] Tong in D.D. [Demarcation District] No.83 of the Northern District of the New Territories of Hong Kong, 142\n\nAnother Chinese Christian cemetery was also appointed in 1931. It was known as 'Cheung Chau Chinese Christian Cemetery' and contained about 10,000 square feet. 43 In the same year, the \"Tao Fung Shan Christian Cemetery' was also in use. 144\n\nIn 1932, both a cemetery and an urn cemetery were approved in the coastal market town at Tai O on Lantau Island, which was called 'The Tai O Cemetery'. The cemetery contained about 250 acres.\n\nA tiny cemetery was appointed in Stanley in 1933, which was 'to be known as New Stanley Cemetery, the piece of land containing approximately 2.5 acres, situated to the south of St. Stephen's College at Stanley.' 146 This cemetery was extended to approximately 4.26 acres five years later. 147\n\nA government notice 148 in 1933 ordered that a certain Telegraph Hill Urn Cemetery be closed, however, no other reference examined has anything about this cemetery. In the same year, with the closure of Kowloon Cemetery No.1 (European Protestant) at Fo Pang near Ho Man Tin, a new European Protestant cemetery was authorized in Kap Shek Mi Valley in substitution for the closed cemetery. 149 The new cemetery, containing an area of about 11 acres, was to be known as 'New Kowloon Cemetery No.6'. 150 However, no further information in regard to this cemetery has been found yet, though the boundary of the cemetery is shown in a 1954 map. 151\n\nThe next new cemetery, 'Sai Kung Catholic Cemetery,' in Lot No.1697 'in D.D.221 of the Northern District of the New Territories,' was approved in 1934.\n\nIn 1935 a Chinese permanent cemetery in Tsuen Wan, similar in nature to the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, was set apart for 'Chinese who shall have been permanently resident in the said Colony (of Hong Kong).' 153 Again, as with the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, the care and management of the new cemetery", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215845, "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-2002", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "77\n\nprovided an account of one failed scholar in the Appendix.\n\nTeachers as helpers\n\nLike the scholars, local schoolmasters had long performed a vital role in the literary segment of the popular culture, including assistance with mounting local events and ceremonies. Even after the depopulation or abandonment of many old settlements, and the amalgamation or replacement of schools in places altered by development, had changed their situation, their successors in today's modern and much larger schools in the new town areas of the New Territories are still valued by the rural committees and a wide range of social and cultural associations. Some are calligraphers and scholars in their own right, and assist the associations' leaders and their secretaries in various ways. I used to meet many principals in the course of attending district functions and association dinners, and can bear witness to their major contributions to community life. In the old Southern District (present day Sai Kung and Islands), they were well to the fore, particularly on Cheung Chau, a large and always vibrant though outlying community, with a number of regional associations, some of which provided schools.\n\nWho paid?\n\nThe secretaries of kaifong and other urban associations were usually hired and paid for by their chairmen. For this reason, salaries and running expenses were generally kept low, and when a wealthy man was prepared to underwrite the cost, there were in general few changes of chairmen. In the New Territories, a small monthly subvention was paid to rural committees from 1961 on, to assist with running expenses, reflecting official recognition of the work they were performing in the public interest, assisting government and people alike in a period of ever-accelerating development and the disruptions it created for ordinary folk. Later on, similar small monthly sums were made available to federations of societies and to mutual aid committees across Hong Kong. (See Friends and Teachers, p.308, and my Tsuen Wan, Growth of a New Town and its People (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1993), Pp.212, 231 and 243 for these several payments).\n\nThe cost of the ceremonies and anything that went with them, and in the case of religious festivals of hiring the priests, the opera troupes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216298, "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-2003", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "6\n\nincorporating the existing country park in Ma On Shan, marine park, hiking trail, holiday camp, water sports centre and festival market in the town. Moreover, Tai Long Wan - a traditional dwelling with its nearby beautiful beach in the eastern part of Sai Kung - was also included in its developmental guidelines for selected areas pending the preparation of Outline Zoning Plans (OZPs). However, the contested issue in Tai Long Wan is going to be the first case I will introduce.\n\nTai Long Wan is especially well known among hikers and trail-walkers due to it being situated on the way from Long Ke to Pak Tam Au, forming the MacLehose Trail Stage Two. Nonetheless, we realize that the Town Planning Board (TPB) also deferred the Tai Long Wan zoning decision which was included in the SENTDSR for the intensive tourism/recreation and conservation/landscapes planning in Sai Kung area. After the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) rejected plans to build the Sheung Shui to Lok Ma Chau spur line project and the Lantau North-South Road link between Tai Ho Wan and Mui Wo, it perhaps was not surprising that the main reason for the postponement of the decision was the existence of certain rare plants in the area. And, TPB worried that natural resources in the proposed village zone area, in which indigenous people want to build houses, would be negatively affected in relevant development. A closer investigation of the situation in Tai Long Wan highlights the significant role of the government and implications of its policy and plan in balancing indigenous livelihood and the natural conservation.\n\nTai Long Wan\n\nTai Long Wan is a traditional settlement consisting of five villages and villagers with different surnames living together. It was probably founded more than 200 years ago even though we are not able to tell whether they came before or after the Coastal Evacuation 1662-1669.* Historically speaking, in 1899, there were already 700-800 villages including tsuen (not walled) and wai (walled) in the New Territories, and the two major dialectic groups were Punti who spoke Wai-tau language, and Hakka who spoke Hakka language. Those villages were grouped together in different regional alliances; however, after the official land registration at the beginning of the British colonial regime, the previous Chinese administrative units of heung and yeuk were strongly affected as well as weakened. In South China, the heung,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]