[ { "id": 204444, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE \n\n65 \n\nwas contrary to the intention of the cadres. The distribution of confiscated animals among the slaves and bondsmen was at first regarded as a glorious opportunity to have a religious splurge of sacrifices and feasting instead of an investment for production. Sacrifices are required to placate the various spirits that were thought responsible for every evil and ill, from accidents to rheumatism.\n\nWinnington found that the Wa or K'a-wa of southwest Yunnan represent a different society, although Hsi-meng district to which he was taken by his Communist Chinese hosts lies only in the fringes of the Wa territory and may not be entirely representative. The Wa inhabit both sides of the south Yunnan-Burma borders and are divided into the \"wild Wa\" and the Wa tamed by contact with Burmese or Chinese civilizations. The \"wild Wa\" in British Burma in 1935 were still addicted to headhunting, both on other Wa and on non-Wa people coming into or living near their village areas.15 A Chinese account of the \"wild Wa\" on the Yunnan side related the headhunting to efforts to ensure good harvests. In any event, the \"wild Wa\" decorated the approaches to their thorn-fence walled-village with a double column of skulls mounted on posts. A person entered their territory at his peril.\n\nIn the Sinicized northern part of the Wa territory there is a transition zone of intermixed hill Shan, La-hu and other mountain people as well as of Wa. Slavery here is practised in a very relaxed form, according to Winnington. Slaves constitute only about five per cent of the villagers as compared with over 90 per cent of the population in the Black-bone country. A slave suffers no social discrimination among the villagers and takes part in village and clan ceremonies open to other villagers. He can marry whom he pleases, and when the new couple sets up separate housekeeping, the master is bound by tradition to help them on pain of community criticism for failure to do so. Such a marriage virtually ends the slavery status, although the slave is expected to make payments to his master until his price is paid for.\n\n1 Great Britain Treaty Series No. 80 (1947), Exchange of notes concerning the Burma-Yunnan boundary, 18th June 1941, London, 1947, 4.\n\n16 Li Sheng-chuang, Yün-nan ti-yi chih-pien chü-yü nei chih jen-chung l'iao-cha (Research into the ethnic groups within the First Border Settlement District of Yunnan), Researches on the Yunnan Frontier Problems, Kunming, 1933, 194.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204464, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n85\n\nexamination by the District Magistrate at Nam Tau and by the Kwang Chau prefect at Canton, proceeded to the Viceroy's yamen in the same city where eventually a favoured few would manage to pass the first degree of sau choi. This in theory entitled the scholar to qualify for an official post. In practise there were many more sau choi than there were posts and a scholar had to pursue further study and pass other examinations before he stood a real chance of becoming an official. In every district there were sau choi who would never obtain posts. Many became local schoolmasters. Others by virtue of wealth and position became the local gentry who, by report, were sometimes a help to the magistrate and frequently a nuisance, both to him and to the litigant or criminal public. They sat on the local tribunals kuk and advised the magistrate on local affairs. Being literati like himself they had ready access to his yamen and to his ear. Sometimes they even outranked him. Elders, on the other hand, rarely sat on the kuk. Lockhart estimated that there were one hundred and fifty sau choi in the whole district.20 In 1898 the elders of important villages like Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan were literati. Several of them played a leading part in the planning of operations against the British take-over.27\n\n20\n\nSometimes the wealthier village elders enhanced their position by purchasing degrees. In the late Ch'ing period the sale of examination titles appears to have been considerable. Smith mentions it in his Village Life in China** and I have come across several such persons in villages in the Southern District of the New Territory. They were usually substantial villagers. Such a one was CHAN Tak-hang4 of Cheung Kwan O in Junk Bay who died in the seventeenth year of Kwong Shui (1892) at the age of sixty-four. According to his descendant, the present Village Representative, he was a man of substance who built a guest house in the village which is still standing to-day, gave money for the upkeep of the stone tracks which linked the villages of the area with Kowloon, and was well known locally. His portrait, painted at the age of fifty-seven, shows him in his borrowed finery as a kwok hok sang, for which he paid an unknown consideration to Government. A man such as this would obviously play a considerable part in the affairs of his immediate neighbourhood.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204760, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "52 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\n(which would be amusing if it did not add so much to the difficulty of gathering information) where a district representative at a public function used in his speech a name for a certain mountain and ten minutes later, in conversation, denied ever having heard the name. For many years, while I was still adding to my field notes on the subject, I refrained from naming in any published material the villages where I found positive evidence of the former cult of Pan-ku. But now that I have applied the test to every village I do not think that future workers will be seriously hampered if I now disclose the result. The test is positive, on this score, for only three out of nearly a thousand villages. They are the sub-village of Tsau Uk160 on Ping Chau Islandt09 in Mirs Bay,41 where the stone associated with Pan-ku is in a small grove of trees immediately east of the village; the village of Pak Mong5 on the north shore of Lantao Island, where it is behind the village on the southwest side, but I could not get my informer to take me to the actual place; and in the village of Nam Shan Tung97 on the north side of the Saikung126 peninsula, where the grove is said to have been behind the present village of Pak Sha O,7 half a mile down the hill to the northeast. If to these three villages we add the villages still identified by the name of yonge we have positive identification for a little over 1%. Identification by the word kan53 is inconclusive, as the word has been borrowed into both the local Cantonese and the local Hakka dialects, but the abandoned village of Shek Shui Kan129 in the Sha Tau Kok114 peninsula, from what I might call its \"anti-fung-shui\" location seems unlikely to have been a Chinese site. \n\nAnother word which is definitely identified by Chinese books of reference as having connexion with the Yao is che.19 Though a recent change in Cantonese pronunciation has now obscured the fact, this word was unique in both local dialects and therefore was evidently taken into Cantonese and Hakka without substantial alteration, and was also given a character of its own, which is not to be found in the Kanghsi Dictionary150 but is to be found in the Tzu Yuan24 and Tzu Hai,25 where the meaning assigned is hill-land cultivated in the manner I have described. Hill paddy is also known to Chinese agriculturalists by the name of che10,21. Locally however the word che has been given a new meaning, being used by all our farmers to mean that type of terraced land", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205015, "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-1965", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "114\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe concerned with what happens outside their village life. \"politically effective people\" make up only a small fraction of the total. Among these there exists a certain disdain of “impatient condescension\" toward the majority of their countrymen. Oligarchies of the ruling classes are in control, and Mills seems to accept that oligarchies will continue to be the norm. The problem would seem to be the outlook for some sort of check upon the oligarchies, and yet still bring about stability and economic progress. Mills notes some hopeful signs of checks and balances developing. For example, a Supreme Court decision in Thailand in recent years went against the government and succeeded in criticizing it openly. Again, in the Philippines an aroused citizenry was able to force the ruling oligarchy to restrain its use of brute force in electoral campaigns, and to reduce to \"acceptable\" proportions its demands for graft.\n\nOne could hope in such a work as this for some pondering on the possibilities of the emerging of alternative leaders. Leaders perhaps of a potentially more capable bent than the present batch. The author touches on this in the case of the Philippines. But what of alternatives to Sukarno? What, by the way, has happened to Mohammed Hatta? And what of the outlook for the development of representative institutions in government? Mills does not go deep enough into this subject,\n\nHis analysis of strategic concepts from several points of view - American, Australian, Indian, Chinese - is valuable. But he avoids mention of the implications for the United States in the conscious Philippine tendency toward a pro-Asiatic orientation. Perhaps he does not feel that this will in the foreseeable future affect United States-Philippine relations. But he does not say so.\n\nMills has a realistic view of Chinese power and Communist activities. His chapters on the Chinese and on Communism are particularly revealing of the methods of infiltration. The \"technique of the inside job\" for some time has been the chief instrument of Chinese Communist imperialism.\n\nOn the economic side he enters in detail into all the familiar subjects: low living standards, low income levels, slowness of industrialization, the sluggishness of agrarian reform, lack of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205081, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "32\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nable foodstuffs. On a more speculative level, however, it is worthy of note that relics of an old market called Kak Chun Hui7% are still turned up by the plough near Hang Tau Tsuen.\" Apparently this market disappeared some 300 years ago, possibly with the original rise of Shek Wu Hui. It is close to the Hau villages of Ho Sheung Heung and Yin Kong, and may have been controlled by them, in which case its demise may have been the result of rivalry between the Haus and the Lius. Obviously, with high rents coming in from markets, the two clans would have had reason to try to monopolise local buying and selling.\n\nIn general, land-holdings may be equated with wealth. The possession of wealth meant changes in the life of a lineage. The leadership based on the age-hierarchy tended to lose its importance when there were wealthy men in the village, and this seems to have been the case in the five clans. With unequal wealth in a lineage, one or two men must be thrown up who are clearly richer than the rest, and it was these men who assumed unofficial leadership in the group. This situation has been dealt with at some length before and need not be gone into here:78 but it is worth stating that at the present time the leadership in lineage villages is of exactly the same kind. The age-hierarchy leadership still exists formally, but the actual leadership rests with men who are educated, and wealthy and powerful in their own right—though now they are dignified with an official title, 'Village Representative',79 by the British Government.\n\nA wealthy lineage could afford to educate its sons, and in nearly all of the villages of the five clans tutorial schools were run. Frequently these would be held in the ancestral halls, but some villages had special school-rooms-cum-libraries built, and these survive to the present day in Fan Ling, Kam Tin, Tai Po Tau, Lung Kwat Tau and several other places. Education was a means to consolidate wealth, for it was through education that men could enter official life up the steep path of the examination system. A scholar-official was in a position not only to make money, but also to advance the interests of his kin through his contacts with other officials. All the five clans have produced scholars, some of whom became officials, the Tangs being particularly noteworthy in this respect—a fact which accords well with their having superior wealth. During recent years the clans have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205309, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "64\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nemigrants who had left the Colony. The masons in Grass Field Village, who had their village within a day's journey, naturally had a word in all village affairs; but the Big Stream men working in Vancouver or on Aruba in the West Indies had a very limited influence on decisions made in the home community.\n\nVI\n\nTraditional leadership in these Hakka villages was gerontocratic in nature. There were no formal isu (M) or fang (M) leaders. An informal council of old men met occasionally in the ancestral hall to discuss current problems. These persons' influence was directly correlated to the distribution of economic control within the community. As long as this differentiation was small, all elders would have had fairly equal status. Age differentiation within the group does not seem to have been of vital importance.\n\nThe process of emigration created new economic groups. In Big Stream Village, where emigration abroad early dominated the scene, the informal council of village elders is made up of four former overseas Chinese. Two of them have worked in the United States, one in Canada, and one on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. The last-mentioned man has quite a good house and has apparently had some resources, but he is in poor health, struck by rheumatism, a fact he ascribes to excessive use of alcohol in his younger days. His sight is bad and is hardly improved by the smashed pair of spectacles on his nose. This 76-year-old man said that he was 'willing to accept anything, whatever it is and whenever it comes.' He has no children. His influence on village affairs is apparently very limited. It seems as if he is taking part in the village council meetings merely to represent the first minor lineage, even if I was never able to confirm a strict rule that all fang (M) should be represented there.\n\nOf the other three leaders, two are men who have spent much time in New York in the United States, and one who has been working in Vancouver, Canada. One of the New York men is Village Representative and the official spokesman with the British administrative authorities. He is 73 years old and a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205310, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\nmember of the third minor lineage.\n\n65\n\nHe returned from the United States in 1941. After the Japanese Occupation, he took a job as a foreman in the nearby Ma On Shan Mining Company, from which he is now obtaining a pension. He still spends most of his time on the Company grounds playing mahjong and gossiping with his friends there. On his arrival from America, he constructed a large and spacious house on two floors and with a balcony.35 Rumour had it that he had lost some 10,000 dollars in the Canton Trust Bank crash in February 1965, but when I left the valley, there was no visible sign that his economic position had been altered or that his social prestige was affected thereby. He has one son on the island of Aruba, who is doing well. His brother, 75 years old, is the man who returned from Canada. His house is also good but is somewhat smaller than that of his younger brother. He is expressly of a conservative disposition; he clings to old ways and believes firmly in Fêng-shui. His economy is apparently very good. The son of this man is working in England.\n\nThe other New York man is 70 years old and belongs to the second minor lineage in the village. He possesses the biggest house in the valley and the surrounding areas. It was built forty years ago. He returned from America in 1959, but preferred then to reside in town. Later on, he moved back to his native village, the main reason being that all his friends in town went back to America. He is a sceptic, distrusts geomancy, and is passively in favour of modernization. He is supposed to have a considerable fortune by village standards. One of his two sons, also a former American resident, is now staying with his family in Tai Po Market. The younger son is working in England, and his family stays in the father's house.36\n\nThree other old men do not take part in the informal village council. One is the very old uncle of the Village Representative, whose affairs seem to be handled by the nephew. He is suspicious and successfully avoids anthropologists. Another is a man about 70 who is strikingly poor. He is an old emigrant too, but his country of destination was Singapore, and like many other sojourners in Singapore, he returned home as poor as when he went off. He is now trying to make a living by operating a traditional rowing ferry, taking villagers across Tide Cove in competition with the family who run the two mechanised boats.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205311, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "66\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nand Hoklo fishermen operating from Ho Tung Lau across the water. He is mainly dependent on the remittances from his son working in England. It seems likely that his exclusion from the informal council is due to his low economic status. The third, 86 years old, is completely deaf and cannot communicate with people.\n\nOn the basis of the above we may generalize and say that during the transitional period the earlier, fairly non-differentiated, gerontocracy in Big Stream Village was transformed into a system, still gerontocratic in nature, but one marked by unequal distribution of power within the set of old men. Power was directly correlated with the accumulation of wealth which, in communities involved in processes of extension, was dependent on the economic opportunities pertaining to the destinations of the sojourners, and their fortune there.\n\nVII\n\nThe new phase in the extension initiated after the Pacific War took, as we have seen, a more systematic form as emigration was almost entirely concentrated on Great Britain. The difference in the new situation lies in the circumstance that the emigrants from the same village, although scattered over the whole of Britain, are still not too far away from each other to be able to keep in touch. Some of the 33 men from Big Stream Village working overseas, on an occasional visit at home, told me that villagers working in Britain in Chinese-style restaurants stay in London, Liverpool, and other places. They have frequent contacts and meet each other fairly often. Sometimes they even hold meetings.\n\nThe different solidarity groups within the major lineage at home mark off relations also in the overseas settlement. The village at home is now almost entirely dependent on the remittances flowing in from Britain. In this situation those working in Britain, who now constitute a kind of localized sub-group in the community, feel that political influence should go along with the flow of money. They are young and middle-aged men with a latent dissatisfaction with the passive conservatism of the old men still in power at home. The Village Representative is constantly blamed for his lack of interest in village affairs, supposedly reflected in his daily visits to his former place of work, the Ma On Shan Mine, where he spends his days at the mahjong table.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205312, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n67\n\nHe is seldom in the village. Opposition is prominent among the men from the first minor lineage who feel dissatisfaction, seeing that power is concentrated in the hands of three old men from the third minor lineage and the single-household second minor lineage, and that their own old man is completely excluded. People from the first minor lineage feel oppressed by the almighty third minor lineage which is strong in numbers, while the first and second were heavily reduced during the war. They are reluctant to cooperate with their remote kinsmen, a fact which is illustrated by the following example.\n\nDrinking-water was earlier a problem in Big Stream Village. The women had to walk up in the valley to the main stream, above the point where the tidal waves cease to have any effect, to collect water every night. A man from the first fang (M) or minor lineage, working in England but on an occasional visit to his home, got the idea that a water tank should be constructed and tap water installed in the houses. The suggestion was approved by the villagers, but the project was, in fact, achieved on a minor lineage basis. This man wrote a letter to the males of the first fang in Britain outlining the plan and asking for financial support. They approved of it and collected a sum which was sent back to the village for this purpose. No financial aid was asked for from the New Territories Administration or any other fund; apparently in order to exclude the Village Representative from this affair, and also in order to expedite the construction work. The originator himself has a good knowledge of this kind of work, and taking the lead he employed two skilled workers and with the assistance of the women of this minor lineage they started on the project. Three months were required, and the costs are estimated to have amounted to nearly HK$1,200.\n\nPeople in the third minor lineage now began to think of having their own water tank, and in a similar way they contacted their overseas members who provided funds for the project. The single-household second fang joined in and the man responsible for the first improvement scheme was once more appointed to lead the construction work. This time, however, he was paid for his participation as the matter was no concern of his primary solidarity group—the first minor lineage. The costs for the new tank were estimated at some HK$3,500, the difference in...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205313, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "68\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ncost, compared with the first scheme, being due to some difficulties in the terrain, and to higher labour costs.\n\nThus the two main groups were not able to co-operate in this affair. The overseas members of the major lineage acted along lines in accordance with their minor lineage solidarity. The example illustrates the position of the overseas sub-community in the home village situation. The first suggestion on this matter came from an overseas employee on a temporary visit to the village. The consent came from the others in Britain, that is the people who had to pay for this investment. The decision was then made by the overseas group supplying the economic resources for the village, on the suggestion of one of its members. The council of old men does not seem to have played a part in this affair — at least not until the second tank project was considered.\n\nOther examples of how vital affairs are handled by the community members residing abroad could readily be found. In Plum Grove Village the construction of a small bridge over a brook was in progress. The District Office had supplied the village with some building material but the remaining cost of about HK$4,000 was paid by members of the community working in Britain. I was told that the decision to build the bridge was made by the overseas villagers at an assembly, when they raised a contribution fund for this purpose. At first the District Office was reluctant to approve the project, and instead suggested a less ambitious scheme to erect some concrete blocks. 40 bags of concrete were supplied. It is typical that in this situation, an overseas villager who had just returned home took charge of the affair, contacted the Plum Grove men in Britain for money, and at last work on the bridge could start. The formal Village Representative, an old farmer who has spent the whole of his life in the valley and holds the position as the oldest man in the major lineage, was apparently circumvented in this matter.\n\nAs in Big Stream Village, there is an informal council of old men in this village also. It is made up of the Village Representative, and two old, but poor, former emigrants. However, it was openly admitted that most decisions came from Britain.\n\nAt the time of my work in the valley, two villagers, about 50 years old, were on a visit to their families in Plum Grove\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205405, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "160\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nof Hong Kong, when the latter was studying Chinese in Canton, and in later years, so the villagers say, the two used to claim to be fellow students (同窗) (F). Although in his youth he did not take any of the Imperial examinations, he had some reputation as a literary man and wrote fine characters.\n\nHe was married to a CHENG (鄭) from the nearby Cantonese village of Pak Kong (白崗), and also had a concubine from a fishing family. His ancestral tablet perversely records the wife as KAN (簡) and the concubine as CHENG (鄭). Both wives apparently lived amicably in Tseung Kwan O, where Chan spent much of his time.\n\nAt the New Territories survey of 1905 he was recorded as the owner of 2.3 acres of agricultural land and 6 building lots in Tseung Kwan O, and was the manager of the CHAN Hok-yin Tso (陳學賢祖) with 2.7 acres of agricultural land and 2 houses. He also owned 4 shops and a house in Hang Hau market. It was during this period that Hang Hau was at the peak of its prosperity as a porterage town for produce to and from Sai Kung and Hong Kong.\n\nAccording to local gossip he did not pay much attention to business, but smoked opium and lived on the wealth he had inherited from his father. The Yi Hing shop in Kowloon City lost money and had to be sold in about 1930. In spite of this he apparently continued to play a part in the affairs of Kowloon City and of the Lok Sin Tong.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Most of this information was supplied by Messrs. Chan Shui (陳瑞) the village representative and Chan Kin Ming (陳健明) the supervisor of the village school.\n\n2 See S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong Before the British\" in Tien Hsia Monthly, 1936.\n\n3 See Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963), Chapter IX for the Tang clan.\n\n4 The three large Cantonese villages of Ho Chung, Pak Kong and Sha Kok Mei, which dominate the three main valleys of the Sai Kung area, also give foundation dates of late Ming or early Ching. For brief notes on Ho Chung and Pak Kong, see my note \"Visit to Ho Chung pp. 46-47 of M. Topley (ed), Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1965), and James Hayes, \"Visit to Villages in the Sai Kung District\", ibid., pp. 41-42. Hong Kong. 1967.\n\nBERNARD WILLIAMS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205567, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "104\n\nMORRIS I. BERKOWITZ\n\nwhile 21 said that they chatted \"very often.” Thirteen indicated they also talk very often with new neighbors and tenants. Early in the research project we had done a great deal of intensive non-participant observation and had noted that it was a rare thing to see a woman, or a man for that matter, walking alone towards the market. In addition to the frequent social interaction on the streets, in the market and around the resettlement area, there is a lot of informal visiting in apartments, but most of it only if the people involved knew one another prior to resettlement. Table III summarizes this data, but it is incomplete in that it fails to show that twice as many (24) villagers see their former intimate friends in their homes than out of them (12).\n\nTABLE III\n\nWHERE CHAT WITH NEW NEIGHBORS AND TENANTS*\n\nBY KNOWLEDGE OF PRESENT NEIGHBORS BEFORE REMOVAL\n\n \n \n Inside flat\n Outside flat\n \n \n Knew present neighbors before removal?\n \n \n \n \n Did know\n 16\n 10\n \n \n Didn't know\n 3\n 4\n \n\nVillage Power Structure\n\nEvidence from these villages tends to indicate that, before removal, decisions by individual families were taken by the father of the family, when he was present, with occasional reference to elder male members of the village in a rather loose but nevertheless effective decision-making process. The villages each had village heads who were not elected, but nominated to their positions by consensus of the family heads. The source of their power seems to have been wealth and age. The dissemination of information in the villages verified this --- 21 villagers asserted that \"gossip\" was their sole source of news about important happenings in the village or the world. Nine said that more formal village contacts (village representative or village meetings) were involved\n\n* Where respondent replied that visiting took place both inside and outside, the reply was scored in the Inside category.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205822, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "122\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\n* Records covering 380 houses from 1905 to 1968 reveal 55 sales of houses. This includes sales within (the majority) and between surname groups of which Sheung Tsuen has seven, formerly eight -- but does not include sales to outsiders; these do not in any case become significant until after 1963. The 55 house-sales include 12 houses which were sold twice, which for reasons given below, may be regarded as a significant reduction of the total; and also include sales of empty sites, cowsheds, and latrines. These latter are sometimes, but not invariably, indicated in the Memorial of sale, so it is likely that there were more of this type than the records reveal: I estimate the total at about 10. The number of original sales of habitable houses in this 63 year period is therefore a little above thirty.\n\n9 I occasionally heard the term chinguk EA used to describe such a house; but strictly speaking this refers to the house which contains that version of the ancestral tablet which has been passed down the eldest son line.\n\nT\n\nT\n\n10 The question of the completeness of the records may be raised: in general, I think it is safe to say that in as important a matter as title to house-property, transactions are almost certain to be registered eventually at the local District Office. The only exception to this is the adjustment of property rights which may involve a sale between brothers after a division: this often occurs before the brothers' succession to their father is registered, so that the sale does not reach the Land Records. In one such case that I know of, however, the sale between the brothers was felt to be important enough for it to be documented and witnessed by \"the Village Representative and all the elders\". This took place in 1960 or 1961.\n\nThe Hon. Editor has drawn my attention to non-registration of transactions in the early years of the British administration of the New Territories, citing the District Officer's report for the Southern district (1912) which says:-\n\nEight hundred and sixty-five deeds were registered during the year. This is only slightly above the average for the last seven years during which the Land Ordinance has been in force. There is no doubt that much land changes hands without registration; and it is probable that not more than 10 per cent of mortgages on land in the less accessible parts of the district are registered. The journey from Lantao is an almost insuperable obstacle and a \"stamped paper\" is generally considered sufficient security.\n\nIn this case the principal reasons for non-registration were distance and poor communications. At Sheung Tsuen the main land office was at Tai Po until the Yuen Long District Office was established in 1947. (though it appears there was some kind of Land Office-cum-Court at Ping Shan pre-war). If people had to go all the way over Tai Mo Shan to Tai Po there would have been similar disincentives to registration here too.\n\n11 Cf. M. C. Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1965 edition, p. 40: although this instance comes from a very different part of China, and a village where domestic architecture is different from that in Hong Kong.\n\n12 The institution of k'ai-tsai ## often loosely translated as “godson' - is not relevant here.\n\n13 See for example H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, London, 1969, p. 49.\n\n14 Apart from its obvious restriction to a unilineal descent system, kwoh-kai also differs significantly from Western forms of adoption in that the initiative may come either from the adopter or the adoptee, as indicated below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206415, "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": 232, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nto the top of the inscribed bamboos. The inscriptions seemed to be in pairs, three pieces with different writing on the right and again three on the left, similarly written.\n\nAfter this was done, wine was poured in three cups and tea poured in the other three, the candles lit, and the geomancer took up his position at the head of the table and started his incantation.\n\nAfter about five minutes of prayer he seized the young live cockerel by the head in his left hand, and taking hold of the nail from the rice bowl, plunged it into the cockerel's eye. On the impact the young cockerel almost struggled free, fighting so hard that the geomancer had to tighten his grip and to push the nail in its eye once more. With a crunching noise he pierced the nail right through the cockerel's head and out of the other eye. Thereupon the cockerel ceased struggling and lay limp, as if dead.\n\nStill holding the cockerel with the nail through its head in his left hand, he ordered the Village Representative and his assistant to place the bamboos in the two pots with sand, three in each pot with a cup of tea. He sprinkled some of the blood from the cockerel's eyes on the bamboos and then nailed the cockerel on to a tree, suspended by this nail through its eyes. Joss paper was then burnt under the tree, wine was poured on the ground in front of the tree, and crackers were fired.\n\nThe geomancer then took the cockerel off the tree and more crackers were fired. Holding it in his left hand, he pulled the nail out with his right, and put some water from the rice bowl in the cockerel's blinded eyes with his finger. Crackers were set off again. The limp cockerel was placed on the ground and the geomancer then filled his mouth with water from the rice bowl and blew on the cockerel twice, hitting it on the rump at the same time. Surprisingly enough, the cockerel got up and started staggering about, not knowing where to go, as it was still dazed and couldn't see.\n\nOne of the pots with the three bamboos was then taken up by the Village Representative on the geomancer's instructions. They brought it to the end of the village and placed it under a tree chosen by the geomancer. The assistant then went with a pick and started digging into the hillside behind the village at intervals of about ten feet. Then the other pot with the other three bamboos...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206416, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n207\n\nboos was taken to the other end of the village and similarly placed.\n\nLastly, the geomancer declared that work could start in three days' time and said the ceremonies were over.\n\n18 January, 1960.\n\nPostscript. The Village Representative came into our office two days later and I asked him about the cockerel. He said it was quite healthy and could see. I said I didn't believe him and asked to see the victim that afternoon. He had a good laugh and explained that the nail was stuck in the eye socket in such a way as to avoid the eye. I still insisted and arranged to see it that afternoon. When I saw the cockerel I was indeed surprised. It looked quite healthy and appeared to be the same one. On closer examination I found that one eye was blinded. Apparently the geomancer fumbled a bit.\n\n21 January 1960.\n\nDETAILS OF A TUN FU CEREMONY HELD ON 23 MARCH 1960 IN FRONT OF THE TSUI (#) FAMILY ANCESTRAL HALL AT SAI KUNG MARKET TO PROTECT THE CLAN FROM THE EVIL INFLUENCES OF WIDENING HIRAM'S HIGHWAY\n\nThese notes and pictures* are supplementary to the Pak Wai Tun Fu. This ceremony differed in many details from the one held previously, especially in that the cockerel used was not sacrificed. The attached photographs* show the ceremony in proper sequence and the differences between the two ceremonies are pointed out.\n\nCompared with the other Fung Shui Sin Sang† who conducted the ceremony at Pak Wai, this one was rather untidy and did not seem to care where the offerings and gadgets were placed on the altar; but his manner and style were far more impressive and he gave the impression that great and mysterious things were happening.\n\nPhotograph No. 1.\n\nWriting on the bamboo stakes that will protect the village.\n\n* Unfortunately not now available.\n\n† Geomancer,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206656, "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-1972", "page_number": 204, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "198\n\nChinese Woodcuts\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nby Max Loehr (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 1.\n\nColumbia University, 1971.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nUNUSUAL TREES IN HONG KONG: THE CANTON WATER PINE\n\nIf you leave Kowloon and proceed along the Tai Po Road, shortly after passing the Hong Lok Yuen orchard, you will come to an open area with villages and flower farms by the roadside and with hills in the background bounding the valley.\n\nNear milestone 184 on your left is a large Cantonese village, Tai Hang, and in this village at the back of Fei Sha Wai, there are two fascinating but often overlooked trees standing at no great distance from the road. These are Chinese Deciduous Cypress, or Canton Water Pine as it is sometimes known. The scientific name is Glyptostrobus pensilis. Belonging to the family Taxodiaceae, Glyptostrobus is a genus which contains only the single species pensilis. Its distribution is confined to the Provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in South China, and mature specimens are very uncommon in Hong Kong.\n\nThe tree may be recognised by its light-brown, fibrous bark, and its foliage which demonstrates two types of leaves: overlapping scales on fruiting twigs and thin needles on the sterile twigs, both of which are a delicate green in spring, turning brown and falling in autumn. The long-stalked cones are pear-shaped and about one and a half inches long.\n\nThese two old specimens are said to have been planted by one of the ancestors of the village. On asking about the possible age of these two trees, the Village Representative Mr. Man Tse-leung said that they had been planted by one of his ancestors in the Ming Dynasty with seedlings from Law Fu Shan, Canton from where the Man family came some 400 years ago. The Village Representative's account of the origin and age of these two ancients is not without precedent. It is a world-wide practice for an emigrant to take something representative of his old country with him to his new home, in order to give later generations something from his country of origin. Mr. Man's ancestor apparently did just such a thing.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206657, "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-1972", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n199 \n\nDating ancient trees is difficult because recorded dates of planting of trees before this century are very rare. The precise age of the biggest conifers may be ascertained, within reasonable limits by counting the annual rings. However, there are limitations on the application of this method when applied to ancient trees. In their later years, ancient trees maintain their viability with only a few leaves and they scarcely grow at all. During this period, increases in girth are extremely small, and are of no value in assessing age for these two trees: Mr. Man's account is the best guide to their growth.\n\nObservations show that both trees have lost their crowns and survive only on a few green branches, giving the appearance of aged trees, and it is certainly possible that they may be as old as the Village Representative claims. One tree is now 50 feet tall and 6 feet 9 inches in girth. From 30 feet up it has few limbs which still leaf out to the tip. The other is now 61 feet tall and 5 feet 5 inches in girth. From 30 feet up, it has a few limbs but two of these have died back. These data represent trees of considerable size. Thus it appears that the Chinese Deciduous Cypress can grow to a considerable stature, despite the fact that Dallimore and Jackson in their Handbook of Coniferae (1954) described the species as \"a small tree\". It could be that the information given by Dallimore and Jackson quoted a description from Canton where, I have been told by my colleagues, no trees as big as these two remain living and only small ones exist. The form of these two trees is good, with a single bole, round and straight. They are also in reasonably healthy condition; one bole has no hole in it, and the second has a shallow cavity which is healing well and shows strong callus formation around the edge of the wound. There is no sign of fungal decay or pest attack anywhere. Because of their rarity, they are in fact registered seed trees of the Conservation and Forests Division, Agriculture and Fisheries Department.* The wood of this species is said to be very durable, light and fragrant, and to be used for making boats and life rafts. Boat people in the Pearl River Delta traditionally tie a piece of this wood on their children's backs for safety.\n\nThe Village Representative recollected an interesting point concerning these two trees. Some 20 years ago, the then Forestry Department distributed seedlings raised from the seed of these trees to\n\n* See Plate 30.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206658, "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-1972", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "200\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nU.S.A. and Britain. One day, his uncle, an expatriate Chinese in New York, noticed a Water Pine in a garden bearing the Village Representative's name as donor. Mr. Man was obviously very proud of this. He also recalled that some 15 years ago the Director of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had given him ten seedlings to plant in the village, but unfortunately none had survived.\n\nMany prominent persons have come, paused to admire the longevity of these two trees and heard of the interesting story about them. They are probably the oldest living trees of this species in the New Territories. They are valued not only for their longevity but also for their capacity as producers of viable seed. In 1969, germination tests were carried out with this seed and results showed 60% germinative capacity. Requests for the supply of seed have frequently been received from overseas by the Conservation and Forests Division of the Agricultural and Fisheries Department.\n\nThe condition of these two remarkable trees remains reasonably healthy but they will undoubtedly lose vigour with advancing age. How to perpetuate them is a matter of concern. The best way of achieving this would be to propagate seedlings and to plant them out in localities similar to their natural habitat. In the last two decades seedlings of Water Pine were planted in the Royal Hong Kong Golf Course at Fanling and at Tai Po Kau and Tai Lam Chung forest reserves, but only a few have survived. The largest surviving group is on the Golf Course where 10 trees are growing. The biggest of these is now 18 feet tall and 15 inches in girth, with an average growth rate of 0.2 inches per year over the last 10 years. In view of the rarity of the species, it is advisable to plant more of them in suitable localities throughout the New Territories and on Hong Kong Island. The species has not yet been included in the collections in the Botanic Gardens but planting stock is being made available and this omission will be rectified in the next planting season.\n\nEditor's Note. This article is reproduced with kind permission of the Director, Agricultural and Fisheries Department, Hong Kong, from the department's publication Wildlife Conservation, Newsletter No. 12, April 1971. The bulletin is prepared for game wardens, and is in English and Chinese. Persons who are interested may be provided with copies, if available, on application to the Department. The author, Mr. Shen Dze-chia, Assistant Forestry Officer until his recent retirement, is a graduate of the University of Nanking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206720, "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-1972", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Plate 30. Mr. Man Chi-leung, Village Representative of Tai Hang, standing beside one of the Canton Water Pines mentioned at page 198.\n\n(Photograph by courtesy of the Editor, Wildlife Conservation. Agricultural and Fisheries Department, Hong Kong).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207052, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n117\n\noverlooked in 1898 when only the inshore islands were included in the territory that Britain requested be leased to her at that time.\n\nWhat were the islands like? I have spoken with several old men who now live on Lantau but were born on two of the eight or more islands in the Lo Man Shan group in 1891 and 1893, and with several younger men. Their accounts show that there were long-settled villages there, with padi and sweet potato fields. There were also flourishing inshore fisheries using the largest types of stake net.1 These were owned by village families, and the catches were salted and taken to Macau by a public ferry operated by local people. Salt, which was needed in large quantities for the stake net fisheries, was bought mostly in Cheung Chau, where it was said to be cheaper than in Macau. This was the position in my informants' youth, early in this century. Some of the islands belonged to Hsin-an Hsien, others to Hsiang-shan, but this allocation for administrative purposes was less important than the economic and other ties which dictated the connections favoured by its inhabitants. Wind and sea also affected links in the different seasons of the year.\n\nHsin-an and the outlying islands were thus part of the historical, strategical, social and economic life of the Canton Delta in the late Ch'ing period. The safety of their seaways was likely always to have been an important consideration with the provincial government. This contrasts with the relative unimportance of Hsin-an's history and record of scholarship when compared with the older hsien of the Kuang-chou prefecture.\n\n2. The principal events in the local history of the Hong Kong region since the establishment of Hsin-an hsien in 1573\n\nAs already mentioned in the Introduction, the Hsin-an district, to which the Hong Kong region belongs, was established as a separate administrative division of the Kuang-chou prefecture in 1573. The area was then separated from the old Tung-kuan district in response to problems of defence. It followed upon a petition from local persons which complained that because it was 100 li from Tung-kuan City, ‘barbarians and dwarves’2, had been able\n\n1 The village representative of Shek Pik on Lantau island (b. 1899) and friends of the same age had found regular work there in their youth.\n\n2 HNHC 14/2. I have followed Peter Y. L. Ng's rendering of the character, pp. 143-144.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "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": 207814, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE ANCIENT MON--PAGAN, PERU & NAKORN PATHOM 187\n\nend of the last century. The iron shed that covers it exactly reproduces the architecture of railway stations at the turn of the century, and the quality of the decoration is likewise Burmese Victorian. The clumsiness of the feet, which are iconographically incorrect, does not however apparently disturb the local people in their veneration of the statue. The four-imaged Kyaikpan pagoda is much ruined; the Buddha's back on to a central solid square core. It was originally built by Dhammaceti (Damuazedi), a Mon king of great piety who reigned from 1472-1492. The images, of plaster on brick, have been much restored.\n\nRangoon was at first a Mon village called Dagon centred around the Shwedagon pagoda, the origins of which are lost in time. The shrine is said to cover a number of the Buddha's relics. The Mon king Binnya-U is recorded to have raised the height of the stupa to sixty-six feet in 1362. The present height of 326 feet was reached in 1774. The shape is that common in Burma, of a square base to the main terrace for the pradakshina, then the beginning of the bell after a square base with recessed edges: multiple mouldings, the bud and the hti follow. The whole is gilded where it is not actually covered with gold plates and the hti is gilded and encrusted in stones. Of perhaps greater interest are the innumerable baroque shrines round the bases of the stupa and the vast crowds of pilgrims coming for their devotions. By night the illuminated gold stupa is to be seen from the distance in impressive display.\n\nThere are no other monuments in Rangoon of interest; the Sule pagoda, reputed to be ancient, is a modern jumble. The bargaining in Scott's market or the buying in the diplomatic shop is more representative of the capital today. But the National Museum, consisting almost exclusively of the relics of Thibaw's regalia taken by the British and kept until quite recently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, have now been returned and are well displayed. They have often been described before; the luxury of the jewel-encrusted objects, the ornamental hamsa, and the robes are in complete contrast with the austerity and constraints of present day Burma.\n\nIn Rangoon can be seen a 'cultural show' representing various traditional dance forms. The uncourtly little jumps and hops in the classical dances are as surprising as they are interesting. But the soul of Burmese dance and entertainment is not in this, nor in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207823, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "196\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ntime than I could give it; and I am aware that I raise more questions than I can answer.\n\n11. It seems to me, if I may interpret behaviour only intermittently glimpsed, that administrators in the New Territories today are often in the dark about the kind and extent of the influence wielded by the men known in official language as Village Representatives. Are they elders or do they in some sense stand in opposition to elders? Are they mere spokesmen or do they in fact exercise independent power? Are they supported generally by their 'constituencies' or do they represent factions? Are their motives selfish or are they attempting to maintain and improve the general welfare? Do they provide a satisfactory channel for the expression of public opinion or do they represent as a class some sort of New Territories elite cut off from the ideas and aspirations of the ordinary people? Of course, the New Territories do not, even traditionally, form a homogeneous area; leadership in one of the big settlements in the Yuen Long District must differ in its sources and expression from leadership in a small Hakka village in the east. If, in gross terms, villages differ from one another in their clan composition, their riches, their education, and their contacts with the wider world, then we may assume a priori that their leaders will be different kinds of person. Moreover, the situation becomes further complicated by the role of immigrants in supplying a source of support (or not supplying it, as the case may be). There can be no simple rule for determining that the New Territories will have such and such a kind of leader. The question then arises whether we can isolate some typical situations in which particular characteristics of leadership are likely to be found. Again, formal leadership as exemplified by the Village Representative cannot realistically be treated independently of other institutions in which, within local communities and groupings of them, interests are promoted, disputes settled, and political decisions made.\n\n12. Let us consider how the predecessors of present-day administrators saw and tackled the problem of leadership. To deal with the newly leased territory the Administration set up a land system, which was in its day a workable compromise between traditional Chinese land tenure and the requirements of a western bureaucracy, and, after an abortive attempt to systematise (in the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899) what it romantically thought to be the customary mode of local government and law, achieved a practical solution", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207837, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "210\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nof a pauper, an idiot, or a rogue, so that they could not be relied upon to be elders in the final sense; effective and reliable community leaders. In fact, the affairs of the clan and its segments were not left in the hands of men selected solely for their genealogical status. Clan and segment elites developed which were composed of men whose riches, connexions in the world outside, and individual qualities endowed them with the qualifications to be leaders. Politically, and in some contexts ritually, they displaced genealogical elders whose only claim to status was their seniority. In some clans, of course, the effective leaders were also gentry.\n\n33. In the course of British rule gentry-elders have disappeared, or virtually so. Elders as routine points of contact between state and people have been converted from despised underlings to political persons of high status (the present-day Village Representatives) Elders as genealogical superiors have faded further into the background as clan organisation in general and the segmentary system in particular have waned in importance. They are still to be seen, especially on the occasions of ancestor worship, but they appear to have even less influence than their predecessors had two generations ago. But elders as effective leaders of their clans and villages are still very much to the fore. The idiom in which they express themselves may have changed in the course of sixty years, but these men continue to be definable in terms of their wealth, their contacts with the outside world, and their personal qualities.\n\n34. The question is mooted in the New Territories today whether it is the Village Representatives or the elders who have the greater influence. If 'elders' means what I have put into the fourth group then the question is of course largely meaningless because the Village Representative is the same kind of person as an elder. Naturally, the Village Representatives as a collection differ very much from one another: they are thrown up by differently structured village communities, so that, for example, the Village Representative of a rich community which has for long produced educated men will not resemble very closely his counterpart from a village both poor and largely illiterate. But each Village Representative is likely to be drawn from a group of men in his community who share many characteristics. In many cases, the Village Representative is a kind of primus inter pares, working with his equals to produce what, if the language be not too inappropriate, is a local power elite.\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207838, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 211\n\n35. Village Representatives differ among themselves in respect of the 'constitutional' conditions in which they come into office. In some communities, perhaps the majority, elections never take place, the Village Representative commanding enough general influence to enter unopposed. In others a ballot is held and then the question of the franchise arises, especially in regard to the newly immigrant population who can lay no claim to be established villagers and whose interests have nevertheless to be represented. If they are in fact given the vote then it must be because each candidate has decided that he can win their support. In the Tai Po District, and I suppose generally in the New Territories, the vote is given to the heads of households, so that the electorate may be said generally to represent mature male opinion.\n\n36. Who would be a Village Representative? He draws no pay and belongs to a body, the Rural Committee, which has no formal powers. But in fact candidates are forthcoming, and there is evidence that many men are willing to work hard in office. They gain prestige, and if they are ambitious enough, they may eventually reach the Heung Yee Kuk. Certainly, Village Representatives give the impression of being very busy men, running constantly to the District Office, mediating between the Administration and their constituents, and consulting with one another. From the Administration's point of view Village Representatives are what their name implies, but it is a matter of common observation that in their own communities they are called 'village heads' (ts'uen cheung). What power do they in effect have? They are not a sole channel through which relations between the villagers and the Administration flow, for any individual is free to approach the District Office or one of its staff in the field, and many exercise this right freely, especially in areas where communications are good. But a villager's claim on the attention of officials is presumably strengthened when he has his Representative (his headman from his point of view) to speak for or stand by him, and from this position the Village Representative is able to extract a power advantage which in reality raises him above the status of a mere mouthpiece for his constituency. Again, when he is called upon to represent to the Administration the state of opinion in his community on a particular issue or to aid in conveying to the community an instruction from the Administration, the Village Representative is able to some extent to manipulate the reactions of his people, perhaps sometimes for his own ends,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207839, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "212\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nbut more generally to suit his own view of what is desirable. On the other hand, precisely because he is a politician, and not a blank sheet of paper on which the opinions of others are written, he must manoeuvre within the limits of what he assesses village wishes and demands to be. So that there are occasions when, in order to retain his position, he must take a stand which is not the one he might himself have chosen. Fung shui disputes may illustrate this case. A Village Representative may consider that the claim made by his villagers is unwarranted or at least ill-advised, but if he is to maintain himself as a political figure he may need to support the claim and press it hard enough to assure his constituents that he is acting as their leader. Village politics are non-ideological; few questions of principle are involved; and a man who has made up his mind to be and stay a Village Representative may need to move very freely in the positions he takes, more especially if there are rivals for the post.\n\n37. Power comes to the Village Representative from the position he enjoys vis-a-vis the outside world. He confers with other Village Representatives and may be sought out by men who have conceived some economic interest in his village, from the humble immigrant who would like to establish himself there on a plot of land to grow vegetables (and whose chances of success in getting himself accepted may depend very directly on what the Village Representative is prepared to do for him) to the land speculator who may have to rely both on the Village Representative's detailed knowledge of the complex land tenure of the village—some Village Representatives appear to be considerable authorities on Land Office records—and on his good will and good offices in securing what he wants. The Village Representatives of many villages in the economically developed areas of the New Territories are oriented in their interests towards the local country town and beyond. Some of them live in the towns and are involved in urban economic activities; a few have residences in Kowloon. The higher they climb in New Territories politics the closer their relations seem to become with business men from the city, and since the New Territories grow as an area of interest to urban investors and industrialists the local politicians tend to increase their external contacts. I was struck by the evidence that the clan associations in the urban area are trying to draw New Territories leaders into their ranks, using the kinship tie which is implied in the possession of a common surname.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207840, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 213\n\nto create local contacts; and some of the politicians are certainly not unwilling to be drawn into this, for them, new organisational version of kinship. In the spring rites in the main ancestral hall of one big clan there was represented this year a Hong Kong association based on the surname of the clan but largely recruited from among townspeople with no original New Territories connexions. One of the politicians of this same clan is the sponsor of an occult religious group which is a branch of a widespread esoteric religion in Hong Kong, the members of which are chiefly immigrants. At the only meeting of this group that I was able to attend the great majority of the people present, including all the specialists, were immigrant business men from the urban areas. It is not easy to disentangle the politician's motives in agreeing to sponsor the group, but it is at least clear that his own economic interests, on some of which I am informed, are likely to be served by the ties he has in this way created or strengthened. Indeed, the penetration of New Territories leadership by urban interests and residents, and the orienting of New Territories leaders to the city are a significant index of the way in which in recent times the once partly isolated back garden of the Colony has become a part of the city's organisational life. Many aspects of this increasing loss of autonomy by the New Territories need to be looked into, for, apart from anything else, it suggests that in the planning of research we can no longer assume that town and country can be treated separately.\n\n38. Between the abandonment during the first decade of the century of the idea that there was a regular and readymade system of leaders and tribunals for the Administration to make use of and the development after the Second World War of the institution of the Village Representative (based, it seems, on innovations made by the occupying Japanese), the elders and leaders appear to have been anybody whom administrators might from time to time place trust in and care to consult. The accessibility of the administrators was so high and their prestige so great that they came to assume a chief role in the field of social control. It was not simply that they were magistrates and land officers; their courts were informal and they were prepared to help settle disputes on an even less formal basis. (Present-day administrators lament the disappearance during the war of the New Territories Administration papers, for they look back on them as a lost guide to Chinese custom and its application. The social historian and the anthropologist should join in the mourning...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207841, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "214\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ning, for they are now cut off from the intensive study of a period in which British administration and Chinese law and society were mutually adjusting themselves). Many disputes must have been dealt with in the communities within which they arose, and the remoter villages may in fact have had little to do with the Administration directly; but over a large area of the New Territories it came to be accepted that the administrator was a sure and final arbiter of major differences. In his report on the Northern District for 1913 Ross wrote: 'Some years ago by tacit consent parties did not bring forward cases relating to the \"tso\" and the settlement of ancestral property. Now a large number of cases heard are applications for a declaration as to the parties entitled to share in the property of a common ancestor...\n\n39. The powerful role of the pre-war administrator in social control has left a legacy which weakens the effectiveness of modern attempts to divert the settlement of disputes to other channels. The Rural Committees are now expected to take over a large share of the burden of mediation. In fact, the tendency still seems to be that differences which cannot be composed within a village (where the Village Representative and the other elders are often incapable of exerting the authority to settle the matter) pass first to the District Officer whence they may be referred to the Rural Committee, sometimes returning to the District Officer when the Rural Committee finds itself unable to produce a settlement. And in some cases a settlement is never reached, because as matters have stood in the last couple of years, the District Officers no longer exercise many of the judicial functions with which they were formerly endowed. Land and small debts cases now fall within the competence of the new District Court.\n\n40. Two questions are raised about the operation of the new court. First, is it so court-like in comparison with the informality of the old system practised by administrators that it attracts to itself the unfavourable attitudes which Chinese traditionally displayed towards the yamen? As well enter the jaws of hell as pass through the gates of the yamen.\n\nSecond, are the subtleties of Chinese custom likely to be taken account of in the new court as they were in the days when justice was administered by officers trained to study and respect these niceties? It is of course too soon to say anything definite about the first question; the reactions of people to the court will need to be watched over a period of years; but as\n\n+ + + + +", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207843, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "216\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nFor the time being disputes in the New Territories continue to be essentially a matter for mediation by the District Officers, the Rural Committees, and the ‘elders', and if in default of settlement a case drags on, no effective and generally accepted machinery can at the moment be brought into action to force it to a conclusion. (A number of important aspects of the legal situation have necessarily been ignored in this brief discussion. Some civil cases involving large sums of money fall within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The kinds of cases dealt with by the New Territories Magistrate would be an interesting matter to look into. The whole realm of family law—marriage, divorce, maintenance of wives and children, adoption, and inheritance—requires to be treated in detail).\n\n43. I come now to a point made by this discussion of some aspects of the political and legal situation in the New Territories. An approach to the study of leadership could conveniently be made by collecting some basic information on the Village Representatives. This task, it seems to me, might be discharged by the District Officers if they have the time to undertake it. A sample of Village Representatives could be drawn by a simple statistical procedure and the following data collected in respect of each of the men selected: his age; his birthplace; where he lives; where he lived before he became a Village Representative; whether he has ever lived outside the New Territories, and if so where and for how long; the length of time he has been in office; whether he was elected, and if so on what franchise; his occupations, main and subsidiary, past and present; his education (kinds and where acquired); the number of people living in the area he represents; the number of households in this area; the numbers of 'new population' in these last two figures; details (surnames and numbers of members) of the clans in the area represented; the number of men in the most senior surviving generation in his own clan; the age of the oldest man in this generation; the ages of the ten oldest men in the clan; the names of the previous Village Representatives, including the man appointed under the Japanese and any men acknowledged to be 'headmen' before the war; his precise kinship relation to these men; the number of his brothers; his birth order among them; their occupation; the ages of his sons and daughters; the education they are receiving or have received; their occupations, if any. The answers to these questions (some of which must already be known to the District Officers) would provide an indication of the position", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207844, "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": 232, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n217\n\nof the Village Representatives in their communities, and, taken together with other available information, would furnish a basis for assessing the kind of men who have come forward as leaders.\n\n44. But leadership cannot be studied simply by enumerating characteristics. The Village Representative operates within economic, legal, religious, political, and 'social' fields all of which need to be examined; and he is enmeshed in complex relationships with people both inside and outside his community. These are matters for detailed field studies and they can most conveniently be examined in the course of investigations concerned very broadly with the life of particular communities. And it is to be hoped that a large enough variety of communities will be studied for all major variations in leadership patterns to emerge.\n\n45. In the old days, as we have seen, there was much scope for the exercise of leadership in intervillage relations; the central government being remote, the responsibility for local affairs fell on gentry and elders. The field for the deployment of local governmental talents has now contracted, but it becomes all the more important to discover just what it is that extra-village politics entails. In the study of this theme the Rural Committees (and perhaps ultimately the Heung Yee Kuk) must take first place, but these are not the only wide associations to be looked into. Chambers of commerce, the associations for particular businesses, co-operative societies, sports clubs, and so on, are bodies within which certain men take the initiative, rally support, and—since we are dealing with a society in the full flood of change—direct group activities along new paths.\n\n46. I have touched on the role of the Village Representative in settling disputes. To understand the present legal situation in the New Territories it would be desirable to begin with an analysis of the relevant work of the District Officers and Rural Committees, and I suggest that it might be of interest to the District Officers to undertake a survey of the cases that have come before them in recent years, classifying them by their nature and describing the typical courses they have taken. This work could then be brought into relation with material on the cases heard in the various law courts to which New Territories people have recourse. Again, such field studies of communities as may be made by anthropologists would show how differences are settled at the local level or passed to outsiders for mediation or judgment. If a field study were made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207866, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 239\n\na travel agency with its main office in Tai Po which, since 1960, has arranged loans for the bulk of the fare, the travellers being required to pay a small deposit and discharge the balance of the sum out of their earnings abroad over a period of one or two years. (There is a close relationship, evidently, between migration to the United Kingdom and the rise of banking in the New Territories. Banks are now to be seen everywhere, but the first to open began business in 1960). To incur an expense of about $1,500 and pay off the bulk of this sum at interest in the course of working in Britain has not, in general, been a heavy burden, since earnings in the restaurants have been fairly high, even for the lowly dishwasher. But the initial capital outlay, amounting perhaps to only a few hundred dollars, has represented a barrier to many would-be emigrants, and it is clear that there have been many men who wanted to go\n\nbut who could not, either in the form of cash or security, put down the starting sum. Naturally, before 1960 the problem of raising the fare was even more difficult. It follows from this that the poorest layer of the population has not been very much affected by the movement to Britain. True, some poor men have managed to get away, but they have done so because they were members of families or communities in which men of means were willing to stand behind them. In one of the villages I got to know, the Village Representative some years ago put up a sum of money ($7,000) to encourage workless men of his community to emigrate. Repayments of loans were made to a revolving fund from which further emigrants were financed.\n\n76. Earlier forms of emigration, because they were largely bound up with sea-going (a man might make one trip and then jump ship), seem to have drawn on the poorest areas and communities of the New Territories. The modern movement to the United Kingdom, while certainly being general and in many cases recruiting in the communities from which men used in the old days to go as seamen, seems to have been biased in favour of the better-off settlements, pumping money back into communities which, to begin with, were the ones suffering the least economic hardship. Traditionally the large and powerful Punti settlements were not emigrant areas; now their men play an important role in the restaurant trade in Britain. It may seem to us that to be a waiter or dishwasher in a restaurant is no advance in social status on being a small farmer, but in fact the incentive to undertake strange and menial tasks has lain in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207887, "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": 275, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "260\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nare discarded, inscriptions neglected. I have already referred to the cast out stone in the Tin Hau Temple in Tai Po Kau Hui. The stock of genealogy books and old land deeds is being fast depleted by loss and decay. The apparatus of ancestral halls is in many cases being allowed to disintegrate. (I came across a village where only the initiative of the Village Representative restored to the ancestral halls the honours boards which villagers had filched to make beds). Now people are at liberty to do what they like about their past and I am not in favour of any artificial antiquarianism; but it is surely a good argument that both the world at large and their own future generations will be grateful to the New Territories people for the preservation of their historical relics. Would it not be possible for the Administration to undertake to register all monuments, to collect unwanted documents, to copy those which their owners are unwilling to part with, and generally to preserve what can stand as a witness to the past of an interesting corner of civilisation? I am told that it is the intention of the new City Hall Museum in Hong Kong to start collecting at some future date objects illustrating the art and material culture of the New Territories, but I fear that if action is long delayed there may be little to survive.\n\n101. I have covered many subjects in this report and made a number of suggestions for research. In many cases I have implied the degree of priority I should give to particular kinds of investigation, but I have not attempted to offer a neat arrangement of subjects on a scale of usefulness, because it is for the Administration and not me to say what is more or less important to its needs. I have tried to indicate the kinds of research that I should sponsor if I were in a position to do so and within the limits of the talent and money at our disposal my colleagues and I hope to be able to pursue some of the investigations I have proposed. If the New Territories Administration is interested in the private research to be undertaken and should itself wish to sponsor investigations then a plan could be drawn up to co-ordinate more closely the needs of the Administration with the interests of the social scientists.\n\nHong Kong, Singapore\n\nMay-July 1963.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208163, "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": 202, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "186 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nrelating to it. The tour will include a visit to the Tin Hau Temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, where there is a memorial to the war and a tablet to the Tsuen Wan villagers who were killed. Also to the Kwan Tei Temple at Kam Tin, where part of the Shing Mun villagers were resettled in 1928, which contains a tablet to the Shing Mun villagers killed in the struggle. \n\nFrom the Tsuen Wan ferry pier, the party went first by coach to the Shing Mun reservoir, sometimes called the Jubilee Reservoir because of its completion at the time of King George V's jubilee year (1935). A picnic lunch on one of the vantage points with barbecue and sitting out facilities was followed by a talk by Dr. James Hayes, Tour Leader, on the history and livelihood of the former villagers who lived in the valley for nearly 300 years before their removal in 1928 for the reservoir project. \n\nAfter lunch, the party moved to Kam Tin where the main body of the Shing Mun people moved in 1928. Here our intrepid and helpful bus driver got into difficulties in a confined space between a USD refuse trailer and the gate to the school compound. He was rescued by the action of a group of Members who dismantled a tied up, projecting hawker cart whilst, with characteristic energy and flair, Professor Tony Reynolds directed the driver, conjuring up visions of problems expertly handled many years ago in far Yenan!* \n\nAfter this episode, we were welcomed by the village representative Mr. Cheng Siu-fong (*) and the Headmaster of the Shing Mun New Village School, Mr. Cheung Sze-man (X). We were entertained to tea in the school which has an interesting history. It bears the same name as the old school at Shing Mun Tai Wai built for the villagers by their leaders very many years before their removal in 1928. After the move to Kam Tin it was reprovisioned in the ancestral halls and in 1958, under a subsidized village school building programme supported by the Education Department and New Territories Administration, it transferred to the present six classroomed school building. \n\nOver tea our hosts told us something of the village history after the move to Kam Tin. The main difference was in livelihood, because their agricultural holdings by purchase and rent were only a fraction of those held at Shing Mun, inevitably since Kam Tin had been long densely settled by the Tang clan and later inhabitants. \n\n* See his article at pp 43-54 of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208270, "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": 309, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "N\n\n5 6 7\n\n10 11\n\nPlate 42\n\nPlate 43\n\nPlate 42. Shrine in a side room of the Tin Hau temple, Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan. Above, the memorial to 17 heroes: below, the account of the war given by Yeung Kwok-shui of Yeung Uk, Tsuen Wan.\n\nPlate 43. \"Little Duck-bill\", the spear from Muk Min Ha village, Tsuen Wan,\n\nby courtesy of Mr. Ho Cheuk-hung, Village Representative.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208382, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "90\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nalso keeps them closely informed of events on the Mainland. Membership in an affiliated union may also facilitate return trips to one's native village in China during New Years and at other times as well, since the Federation provides a link up with Chinese representatives and bureaucracy in Hong Kong.\n\nThe contradiction between the interest of the Hong Kong worker in his own material well being, and the requirement that he subordinate his immediate interests to the long run national interests of Peking, has surely not made life easy for the constituent unions of the pro-communist Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions in their organizing efforts in the post-war Hong Kong setting.\n\nNevertheless, in more recent years, as Peking pursued the resolution of what it took to be \"principle contradictions\", namely admission to the U.N. and the liberation of Taiwan, developments in Hong Kong tended to bear out the appropriateness of their strategy. In 1971, when the Peking government displaced the Taiwan government as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people at the United Nations, the political influence that Peking was able to exercise in the political balance of Hong Kong grew enormously at the expense of the Nationalists. Organs of Peking power like the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions gained an enormous legitimacy in the new aura that came to surround the Peking government. Allegiance to the People's Republic, long an obstacle to effective organizing among Hong Kong's largely political-refugee population, became somewhat more of an asset for groups like the Woodwork Carvers' Union. 1971 marked a turning point in the fortunes of their organizing. Indeed one could argue that the relegation of the \"Hong Kong problem\" to the status of a secondary contradiction made a great deal of sense, as the political balance tipped noticeably in favor of the Peking government after 1971 with the resolution of a higher order contradiction, i.e. the seating of the Peking government at the U.N.\n\nThese developments have helped the Woodwork Carvers' Union immeasurably in its attempt to organize an increasingly proletarianized work force according to principles consistent with Maoist ideology, although the apparent contradiction between genuinely class oriented, as opposed to nation oriented, loyalties and its peculiar configuration in Hong Kong remains.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208434, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "142\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThis individual is particularly interesting to the student of self-government in China, for he is almost the personification of that very thin tie which links the government of the village with that of the nation. Moreover, this Ti-pao takes on attributes and authority from both sources, being a semi-governmental official at least approved by the Hsien magistrate, and performing certain very definite governmental duties; yet being one of the members of the village in which he works, theoretically chosen by the people themselves, and performing for them many duties of purely local significance. Although the agent of the central government in all local matters in which the government interests itself, yet the Ti-pao is in some sense the representative of the people to hold the central government away. On close analysis his position seems to be a compromise between the government, which was interested in the people at least to the extent of taxes and peace, and the people, who wished for nothing better than to be left alone.\n\nThere are degrees of disharmony in this compromise, however, either the government stepping further into the precincts of village administration through the Ti-pao than the people desire, or, on the other hand, the villagers disregarding the Ti-pao as completely as they dare. The general opinion one receives from all reporters is that through the Ti-pao the government is succeeding in going more and more into the life of the village; in other words it is the present trend for the position of the Ti-pao as a petty government official to become fixed and to bulk larger than his function as a representative of the people. Whether this analysis is correct cannot be affirmed, however, and must remain a hypothesis.\n\nJamieson traces the rise of the position of the Ti-pao to the ancient system of tithing,1 a system which seems to have originated late in Chou times. Starting with the people as an aggregation of families, they are grouped first by tens into Chia (十) and then by hundreds of families into pao (保) or Li (里), although these numbers are merely theoretical, and the terms for the grouping differ in various regions, and through recorded history.2 Usually the Pao or Li is the only grouping which is kept at all, and this unit is the single one between the family and the Hsien, or magistral district.\n\n1 Jamieson; op. cit., p. 67 ff.\n\n2 See Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology, p. 105 ff: for a chronological citation of the system from Chou times to the present with the successive manners of grouping and the different names applied.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208447, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n155\n\njudged according to the intrinsic moral value which it has, measured by the supposedly-known natural law. Government measures are therefore obeyed, in so far as they correspond with this popular sense of rightness, not merely because it is positive law.\n\nA partial explanation of the situation may also be found in the philosophy of Taoism, which stresses an indifference to government. Several factors make this hypothesis seem correct. Taoism is strongest in rural districts; in fact, it arose out of the conditions of rural life. Its doctrines, moreover, apply to the life of the village more than do those of Confucianism, which better fit the urban and ruling classes. One of the central doctrines of Taoism is Wu Wei (§) “inaction”, and one of its precepts is that the best government is no government. But such a force is entirely unmeasurable, and the hypothesis can only be advanced for what it is worth.2\n\nTimes occur, it is true, when Hsien government becomes intolerable to the people. In such cases, the first impulse with the Chinese villager is not, as with us, to elect representatives to go as a delegation to make complaint. Rather, the whole village is liable to rise up to a man, armed with what weapons and implements are at hand, and to descend upon the Yamen to demand redress. Demonstrations of this sort are quite embarrassing to the magistrate, for if wind is gotten of them by his superiors, he is liable to be heavily punished. This direct method of self-assertion on the part of the people is therefore often quite effective.\n\nThese two attitudes, on the one hand a positive avoidance, and on the other a profound indifference to the central government, are basic in the relations of the people toward any government greater than their own village polity. And it is these two attitudes, inherited from the Ch'ing dynasty, which will be among the chief obstacles to any form of democratic and representative government which the Republic may attempt to establish.\n\nV\n\nAs a conclusion to this chapter, it seems appropriate to outline the most recent developments in rural government under the Republic, and to indicate something of what the future may bring.\n\n1 Duyvendak, J. J. L.; The Book of Lord Shang, p. 129-130.\n\n2 For this idea, the writer is indebted to Dr. D. W. Lyon, in a conversation on Dec. 12, 1932.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208451, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n159\n\nattempts to force a new type of political organization in rural districts. As a matter of fact, Ching Ho was probably a more fertile ground for innovations than a typical rural area would be. How slow the process of change and development will be, therefore, is not hard to guess. The study of Ching Ho seems to indicate that when changes come they will be successful only when they are built upon the already established system, and that innovations will not succeed well when the changes are too radical, or when entirely new organizations are introduced in an attempt to displace traditional ones.\n\nThe most hopeful sign in the whole scheme of reform is the interest which the National Government, the Kuomintang and other organizations have taken in the training and education of the rural citizenry. Training schools for rural leaders, and lecture bureaus for the teaching of citizenship are part of the plan of both the government and the party. The Mass Education Movement likewise is strongly marked by the desire not only to give the common people the rudiments of education, especially in the written character, but also to make them effective citizens for a democratic state. The textbooks used by the movement emphasize good citizenship, and the leaders of the movement seem to realize, what the leaders of the Kuomintang party, at least, do not seem to have grasped, that in the system of village government of the traditional sort are to be found all the essentials for a successful form of democratic, representative government. As the leader of the movement reports,\n\n\"The main work of the Movement in the field of training citizens is the extension of the noble moral practices prevailing in the clan and the family unit, and of the political institutions operating for centuries in the 'village republic', to the larger units of the district community and the nation, so that there may be active and intelligent participation on the part of the people in national and international issues.\"\n\nThe task of training between three and four hundred millions of people in the duties of citizenship, which today faces the leaders of China, is a stupendous and appalling one. But without this foundation of an educated citizenry no truly representative demo-\n\n1 Yen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China, p. 14.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208456, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "C. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nregistering himself and his land. A second psychological attitude of the people is one of profound indifference to the government. This circumstance seems to be based upon at least two cultural factors: the idea that government is only for the lawless, and secondly, Taoism, which teaches the unimportance of any government at all. Occasions arise, however, when the villages are compelled in the defense of their rights to revolt against the government of the magistrate. This direct action is very effective as it is liable to cause the official to lose his position.\n\nThe National Government is attempting at present to introduce profound changes in the government of rural areas, changes which if put into practice should give the villager much more power than he now enjoys in controlling his own political destiny and the affairs of the state. At present, however, very little seems to have been accomplished along this line.\n\nThe greatest hope in the new situation is the emphasis which responsible groups and individuals are putting upon the education of the rural masses both in letters and in the duties of citizenship. With the basis of the “village republics\" to build upon, and with an educated population, it is not impossible that a democratized state with a representative government may some day evolve.\n\nThe evolutionary development of village government has been an extremely slow process. On the whole, it seems to have differed from movements for self-government in the West in that it has not been marked by concentrated efforts on the part of the people themselves for this end directly. The succeeding gains seem more to have been the result of official government action in the form of altered legislation. These reforms have been made, in the main, because the government understood the fundamental connection between a prosperous and contented people and a strong state. Changing conditions brought about by the development of civilization or the forces of nature have necessitated modified legislation to meet them.\n\nAt the same time, the people have themselves slowly evolved the customary practices by which they governed themselves—the practices of the family, the clan, and finally the situation of the multiple clan village. By the end of the Manchu regime, they had fully developed a technic of self-government which could effectively handle\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208840, "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": 2, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "201\n\nI would like to add two more passages to this note, both of which came my way after I wrote the above. The first passage was kindly given me by James Hayes, who was given it by Mr. Ho Kei Fook, of Kei Ling Ha village, born in 1928, and educated (1937-1941) in the neighbouring village of Tseng Tau, previously village representative, and Vice-Chairman of the North Saikung Rural Committee. The second passage I came across in Ch'en T'ieh-erh5, \"Huang Hsiao-yang yu Pai-e t'an\" (Huang Hsiao-yang and the White Goose Pond), in Kuang-tung wen-hsien chi-k'an vol. 15 no. 2 (1985) pp. 60-62.\n\nPassage 1\n\n\"It is said that in the Ming dynasty there was this man Ho Tsoh Shing who obtained a wonder book. The book recorded thirty-six grave sites at the mouth of the dragon. [The family] buried there would achieve great wealth for its descendants and even produce an emperor. Ho Tsoh Shing was already an official at court, holding the post of Minister of the LeftE. But his mother did not have the good fortune to support this achievement. When his wife was pregnant, his mother scolded her saying, 'My son is an official at court many mountains and seas away, so how is it that you are pregnant?' The daughter-in-law said, 'He comes back every night'. What happened was that every night Ho Tsoh Shing rode home on a bamboo-rigged flying horse, and early in the morning he rode the flying horse back to court. The daughter-in-law said, 'If you don't believe me, you can hide by the courtyard tonight and watch him as he comes in'. [This the mother did] and saw that that was what really happened. The horse stopped at the courtyard, and the mother, being curious, rode on it. The horse could not fly, because it was bogged down by the woman's breath. When Ho Tsoh Shing rose the next morning to go to court, the horse was still bogged down by woman's breath. So immediately, he went to cut some bamboo to rig another horse to fly to court. He was late. The emperor was in his court calling the rolls. When he came to Ho Tsoh Shing's name, Ho answered from the outer court [in such a loud voice] that it shook the emperor. The emperor then suspected that Ho Tsoh Shing was scheming to take the throne, and other officials also made many comments. They found out that Ho Tsoh Shing possessed the thirty-six grave sites at the dragon's mouth. When this was known, Ho Tsoh Shing was killed by the emperor, and the fungshui was\n\nto", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209022, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn addition to the renewal of these seven pots, a small ceremony was held at one other location. There were prayers and burnt offerings, and a tall bamboo frond with a charm attached was set up, but there was no incense pot at the site. This spot was thus symbolically included in protective rites, but at the same time it was not granted full inclusion, and it is indeed a spot about which Fung Yuen villagers feel some ambivalence. One of the lineages was approached a few years ago by an urban clan association of the same surname, thus claiming descent from a common ancestor long ago, which was seeking a place with good fung seui to erect a clan association hall; Fung Yuen was just such a place. The local lineage is small and poor, and evidently realized some financial gain by making some land available to their urban tuhng sing. The widow of the former village representative, the man who was apparently instrumental in the deal, is the caretaker of the new clan hall, and burns incense there regularly. But I have heard other members of the local group speak disdainfully of the hall. Moreover, it was built directly in front of the ancestral hall of one of the other lineages, and there has been a dispute about the geomantic effects of its orientation on the older hall. Nonetheless, it is a place of religious significance which, theoretically at least, embraces one of the local lineages. For that reason, it seems, it cannot be left out completely when rites of propitiation and protection for the valley and its inhabitants are conducted. So, the clan hall was given half a ceremony - better than none at all, but stopping decidedly short of granting it full inclusion in the valley community.\n\nA final observation I would like to mention in passing relates to the continuing strength of the multilineage alliance in the face of social change and emigration. Though four lineages are resident in the valley, and were brought under the protection of the tun fu ceremonies I observed, men of only two surnames participated (and of course, no women at all; this was \"men's business\"). The other two groups have few adult men currently living in the village, and of those few, some are elderly and too ill to spend the afternoon walking all over the valley, while their sons were working that day as usual in other parts of the colony; many others are living and working in Europe. Nonetheless, the same attention was given to the third hamlet and the third ancestral hall, and to the new house of a family currently in Europe, that the residential and ritual places of the actual participants received. This expression of con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209663, "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-1982", "page_number": 320, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "298\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsubstantial amount, outside the offended party's door or, in the case of a whole lineage, its ancestral hall, and at the expense of the other. Justice was not only to be done but was to be seen (and heard!) to be done. As one informant has said, \"The act was intended to give back face, and so was done at the home of the wronged party but paid for by the other\". It thereby entailed an acknowledgement of guilt by the offender, and since houses and ancestral halls were set in the midst of each village, and the dispute was of course common knowledge, the shame and vexation of the party having to make such an atonement was complete. I suspect that this made settlements much more difficult where the aggrieved party insisted on his rights to fire-crackers perhaps to such an extent that sensible people would not insist on it, and the mediating elders would do their best to persuade parties to forego the provision, wherever possible.\n\nThis practice first came to my attention in 1957, when I was District Officer South. Two lineages in the villages of Tseng Lan Shue and Ho Chung were in dispute over damage to or interference with a grave belonging to the former, and its village representative (who was also an elder of the lineage in question) was demanding that the Ho Chung people should make due payment and, in addition, pay for ten thousand strings of fire-crackers to be let off at his clan's ancestral hall to show atonement and satisfactorily (for him) conclude the case. He was a difficult and determined person, and I was inexperienced and thought his claim extravagant. As the case was somehow settled or at any rate did not come up to me again, I thought no more about it, not realizing that the demand for firecrackers as part of the settlement was in line with old custom in the area.\n\nSince that time, the old rural society and its economic base have been changed out of all recognition, but my discussions with elders in different parts of the old Southern District, comprising the present Islands, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan administrative districts, at various times over the past twenty-five years have confirmed the practice in their areas in former days, and its time-honoured place in the settlement of disputes.\n\nFinding this practice to be an interesting, not to say intriguing, part of local custom, but being unable to spend time in gathering", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209669, "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-1982", "page_number": 326, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "304\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nbe constructed to safeguard the tree which will become a roadside tree when the road widening is completed.\n\nIn order to maintain this rare species in Hong Kong, Agriculture & Fisheries Department has collected seed from these two veteran trees and this has been germinated and used to grow several hundred seedlings. These have been planted out in a variety of sites in the Country Parks where many of them are now well established. The most successful is a group of four trees growing near the head of Jubilee Reservoir which have reached a height of 6.7m and a girth of 0.37m in ten years.\n\nThe former Village Representative, Mr. Man Tse-leung, whose picture appeared with the original article, is now 86 years old. Though not able to walk, he enjoys good health and still has a good memory. He recalled that during his childhood, the trees had already attracted the attention of a lot of people, from dignitaries to thieves. A former Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Cecil Clementi, had once made a special visit to the village to see them while serving as District Officer in the New Territories early this century. The unique quality of their timber for making wooden bracelets had caused a greedy craftsman named Lau to come over 50 miles from Po On County. However, when he started cutting the branches, he fell onto the ground. With his back broken, he had to abandon his illicit attempt. Mr. Man added that it was because of their \"fung shui\" value, that these two trees and several other mature camphors (Cinnamomum camphora) and banyan (Ficus spp.) were spared from the widespread felling during the Japanese Occupation from 1941 to 1945. The present Village Representative, Mr. Man Tat-pui, welcomed our proposal to plant new young seedlings in the village environs to replace the old trees.\n\nThe name of the Tai Hang Village is of some historical and geographical interest. The official publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories gives the following description:-\n\n\"Tai Hang (†); KVO65877; 534212; also known as Cha Hang (i), sometimes (#); a large village in three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209879, "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-1983", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "116\n\nIn selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7\n\nAp Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival\n\nAp Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than \"two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters\" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11\n\nBy 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209973, "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-1983", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "210\n\nvillage representative recalled it very clearly when I spoke with him on the subject, because his second son died and his seventh son was born in the same year. The disease was, for him, Chue mō pêng characterized by a dry feeling, sore throat and, to quote his exact words \"pig bristles and fish scales were found growing on the body\". There was no vomiting or excretion of blood and it was not cholera or malaria which were known to, and otherwise described by the villagers.\n\nAccording to Peplow, the usual remedy was as described in his account:\n\n\"The patient has a high temperature and certain medicines are taken such as honeysuckle and honey. In addition a kind of paste is prepared from rice, boiled. With this the patient's chest is vigorously rubbed, and during this operation thick bristles about an inch long appear through the skin. After these have been plucked out, the fever subsides”.\n\nIn old Ngau Tau Kok village of East Kowloon, a settlement of Hakka quarry men, where I spoke with old villagers on the subject in the mid 1960s, the local treatment for this disease was quite different. It was to kill a chicken, take off its feathers, wrap them in a newly bought white cloth not previously washed, place it in hot water and then rub over the body excluding the chest. Two reasons for not rubbing the chest were given: that the heart was centred there, and that women should not be rubbed there anyway. If the complaint did turn out to be chu mỏ pêng, pig-like bristles would stick to the cloth. They believed that chu mō pêng was a kind of poison inside the body, resulting in too much heat (r'aaì ít hei) that could lead to death or to mental disorder.\n\nAt Ngau Tau Kok, several remedies were given for excess heat. The first was to buy a wông lo kat (E) for 50 cents, and boil it for two hours. The water had to be carefully measured at the start as no more should be added to it during the boiling, the intention being to reduce six bowls down to two. The remaining liquid was drunk.\n\nAnother method was to take a turnip (löh paûk)蘿蔔, and slice and dry it. It should then be soaked for two hours in water", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210314, "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": 285, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "264\n\nNotes and Queries\n\nTRADITIONAL TEA GROWING IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES, K.C. Iu*\n\nFollowing the establishment of the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware interest was expressed in the indigenous tea growing and preparation customs in the New Territories. A visit was paid to one of the villages where traditional tea growing is still practised to ensure that a photographic record of the process was taken. A written record was also taken, which appears below as section 1 of this Note. Section 2 is a selection of notes on traditional tea growing elsewhere in the southern part of the New Territories, and section 3 is a note on the Mountain Begonia, which was also used to make tea, at least on Lantau.\n\n(1) Traditional Tea Growing in Mau Tso Ngam (PHH)\n\nMau Tso Ngam Village is a Hakka village inhabited by members of the Cheng and Lau clans situated high up on the slopes of Kowloon Peak in the upper reaches of a stream that eventually reaches the sea at Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin. This village is one of the few left in the New Territories which still grows and prepares its own tea in the traditional way. This note briefly describes the tea preparation processes in use at Mau Tso Ngam as seen by the author on a visit to the village on 26th April 1986 and as described further to him by the Village Representative, Mr. Cheng Kau-hung.'\n\nTea trees2 are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village: most families own a few trees, while others are owned by the Ancestral Trusts of the village. Tea from the trees owned by the Ancestral Trusts is used for offerings to the gods and spirits. There are no tea plantations as such, since each family keeps its trees scattered at traditional sites on the hills near its\n\nSee Plates 33-41\n\nPage 265\n\nPage 285\n\nPage 286", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "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": 210358, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "308\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nthem, this title was given to persons who would later be called the headman (†) or village representative (††). Their main job was to stop or settle petty squabbles and secure the adjustment and payment of compensation for damage to crops caused by straying cows and pigs. These leaders consulted each other by mutual visiting, and by occasional meetings in the Hau Wong temple (i) when the occasion was serious enough to warrant this. Even persons of 30-40 years of age could serve, if they were capable and had the time.\n\nWritten proof for the Sha Kok Mei wai cheung comes from a sale of land recorded in 1942 during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong. The buyer and seller and wai cheung were all from the village (local testimony) and the fact that the post was, as stated above, held on a yearly term of office is confirmed by the expression ... . The deed reads as follows, in translation:\n\n2\n\nI, CHU Hei, executor of this sale of paddy field for want of money at home, hereby sell of my own free will thirteen pieces of paddy land that have come down to me from my ancestors. Of different sizes, they total two tau chung, and they are situated at Kang Lau Ha. Sold for the sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars, they pass into the perpetual ownership of TSANG HO Sze as of this day without possibility of redemption. This deed is final and binding between the two parties.\n\nThe hand of seller of land; CHU Hei\n\nWitnessed by: CHU Kat-hing\n\nLAU Kei-yau,\n\nWai cheung of current-year.\n\nDated the 8th day of the first lunar month in the 31st year of the Republic of China (1942)\n\nThe fact that the wai cheung who witnessed the transaction was not of the seller's clan is probably accounted for by the fact that the CHUs were among the smaller clans in this large, multi-clan village.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210525, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "113\n\n3 This is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters which in literal translation mean \"egg families\".\n\n4 Ref: my articles in A.S.A. Volume and in Man. [\"Varieties of the conscious model, the fishermen of South China,\" in M. Banton, ed. The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (London, Tavistock, 1965), pp. 113-37, and \"Sociological self-awareness; some uses of the conscious models,” Man (1966) vol. 1, pp. 200-15.]\n\n* Professor Chan Tze-king states that the Boat People speak whatever dialect is dominant in the area in which they live, and that some of them (notably around Kwangtung) therefore speak non-Cantonese dialects [Ch'en Hsü-ching, op. cit., pp.30-1.]. To the best of my knowledge all so-called Tanka in Hong Kong speak Cantonese.\n\n\"[The 1961 census reported a 'marine population' of 136,802 persons.]\n\n7 This is a translation of the local term (suen cheung), the official title was Village Representative.\n\n& Substituted by nylon in late 'fifties.\n\n9 The Chinese expression used was either a fisherman's name or a pronoun, followed by the possessive particle.\n\n10 Chinese is suen.\n\n11 Note about equipment from New Zealand C.A.R.E. etc.\n\n12 Note on land tenure situation: these were officially \"temporary structures\" and therefore limited in size.\n\n13 Eating sweet potatoes, except by children as a kind of sweetmeat, is regarded as a sure sign of poverty and much derided.\n\n14 Except at weekends. His wife refused to live at Kau Sai and he quite often failed to return until Tuesday or even later in the week. The present day teachers also go back to the Mainland at the weekends and during school holidays, but are punctilious about keeping school hours.\n\n15 Officially called Kau Sai New Village.\n\n16 Or rather his wife; but that was not stated, nor were his wages taken into account.\n\n17 The roles of these different organs of administration are discussed fully below. [Discussion not found in manuscript.]\n\n18 [Not included in manuscript.]\n\n19 It does not follow that because for practical purposes movements on land and water were equally simple no intellectual distinctions were made. The point is discussed at length in the final chapter below. [This final chapter is not found in the manuscript.]\n\n20 Note on dynamite.\n\n21 The effect of mechanisation in breaking down specialisation seems to have been quite general among inshore fishermen. It is discussed further in Chapter V [section 5 below].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "128\n\n'JOHN KARL EVANS\n\ndescends to the underworld, where a series of terrible punishments depicted on the scrolls that Taoist priests bring to funerals awaits the person adjudged guilty of such serious crimes as murder, theft, and unfilial behavior; a second takes up permanent residence in the ancestral tablet, and a third at the grave.35 In her recent field work in the Taiwanese village of Ch'i-nan, Emily Ahern discovered much the same thing, which reminds us that, at least in Taiwan and the New Territories, the ancient beliefs persist even in the face of rapid industrialization and contact with the outside world.\"\n\nUnlike the Romans, the Chinese rarely deify the spirits of their deceased; nevertheless, the latter demand and receive the same attention as their Roman counterparts. The details of the funerary ceremony vary, of course, from one locality to the next, but what occurs in Ch'i-nan may be taken as representative, particularly with regard to the vision of the afterlife that supports the entire ritual. Here, as elsewhere, the living initially intercede for the dead on the evening of the funeral itself, at an elaborate Taoist ceremony called the kung-te. In the course of this ritual, the earth god t'u-ti-kung is bribed to assist the deceased across the treacherous bridge leading to the underworld, and the drama closes with the burning of a great pile of mock paper money, which the soul needs to purchase food and protection. Seven days later, a prolonged transition period begins with the first in a series of seven offerings, spaced at weekly intervals. These consist in part of food, but also include paper replicas of an imposing array of luxuries and necessities, ranging from a house, car, and servants to televisions, an electric rice pot, and lawn furniture. Somewhere during these 49 days, at the moment which a professional geomancer deems most propitious, the new spirit is formally installed in this otherworldly domain. The transition period comes to a formal conclusion when the paper house and the other amenities are finally consigned to the flames and thereby transferred to the underworld.38\n\nThe sole purpose of this elaborate ceremonial is to ensure the comfort and well-being of the deceased, and it is obvious that this takes a purely materialistic form. It naturally follows, therefore, that additional offerings of paper money and food will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210754, "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-1986", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "88 \n\nCHAN WING HOI \n\nidiosyncrasies of the festival. But no, it was because the priest had become familiar with the local leaders. Chan himself later explained to me why he was given the job. The village representative had attended a jiu festival in 1965(?) and was impressed with the small banners put on display at the Taoist altar. Those were presented to Chan by various communities for his performances at their festivals. The Shek O leaders asked the puppeteer Leung Nung about him. Leung had worked with Chan when Chan worked as a puppeteer and spoke favourably of him. The Shek O leaders subsequently contacted Chan to negotiate for his service at the Shek O jiu festival. Before Chan was hired, the contract for the priestly service went to Lau Sing Jai, a priest who lived in Tai O.\n\nA Cantonese puppeteer group was hired to perform for all three days of the festival. For the principal day of the celebration two other kinds of entertainers were also hired. These included piu-sik, children in stage costume representing well-known historical or fictional characters. They were hired from Cheung Chau, for they performed at the annual jiu festival there (which was also dominated by Hoklo, Wai Chau and Chiu Chau people). The other team was a Chiu Chau ceremonial music group hired through their fellow townsmen in the committee.\n\nTwo lion dance groups participated in the procession on the main day of celebration. One was styled \"lion dance group of Shek O residents\" and the other \"Leung Yi Hoi\", a kungfu master. The members of the latter dance group were probably also local residents.\n\nIV. The ritual site\n\nAs in the other places, for their festival Shek O residents built temporary structures in which altars for gods were set up. In these structures, the Taoist rites and theatrical performances took place.\n\nTwo long temporary structures had been built facing one another, each divided into several partitions. One of the structures housed the priests' altar, a room for them to rest in, the puppet theatre, and a room for the puppeteers. Facing the altar and the theatre was the other structure, with partitions for paper images of\n\n! \n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211519, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "212\n\nagricultural calendar, this falls in September rather than July as in Yunnan. Needham was able to find no references from the north of China to hot air balloons, and this local custom in the New Territories may well be yet one more case of the New Territories villagers sharing with the South Chinese minority tribes a traditional practice not known to the Chinese north of the Kwangtung-Fukien mountains.\n\nP. H. Hase\n\n+\n\nNOTES\n\nJ. Needham Science and Civilization in China Vol. 4 Part 2, 1965, pp. 595-599\n\nI have not been able to spot any references to hot air balloons in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which contains most of what is told about Chuko Liang. The germ of the connection may be the night signal of seven lamps\" which Chuko Liang used at Ch'ishan (Chapter 103, Romance of the Three Kingdoms).\n\nDetail in this Note is taken from interviews with Mr. CHÔI Kam-chuen, retired village representative of Tai Wai, Sha Tin, and other Sha Tin and Tuen Mun villagers, and particularly with Mr. LEE, village representative of Wo Hang, Sha Tau Kok, and other Wo Hang villagers. My particular thanks are due to Mr. LEE Man-yip of Wo Hang.\n\n+ On the importance of those practices, which required the co-operation of village youths, see the author's \"Observations at a Village Funeral\" in From Village to City ed D. Faure, J. Hayes, A. Birch, Hong Kong 1984, pp. 129-163, espec. pp. 129-137, and also D. Faure The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, Hong Kong, p. 96.\n\nNeedham op. cit. The Yunnan hot air balloons are quoted by Needham from J. Goullart, The Forgotten Kingdom 1955, p. 178. The Yunnan balloons were fired by bundles of splintered pine twigs, and were able to fly for only a few minutes. The Yunnan balloons. like those in the New Territories, were made of paper pasted over hoops of split bamboo: presumably the hoop was a rim-hoop.\n\nA SILVER BRACELET WITH\n\nAN ANCIENT GREEK COIN FOUND IN WEWAK, EAST SEPIK PROVINCE,\n\nPAPUA NEW GUINEA\n\nA silver bracelet was found in the sand on a raised beach in Wewak, at a depth of approximately 0.5 m in disturbed ground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211533, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "226\n\nto this one, although the bamboo arm-rest was a bit of a luxury not always found! This latrine was probably built early this century. Sheung Wo Hang had 30 latrines to service its approximately 100 families at the time of the Block Crown Lease in 1905; the great majority of them were very close in style and construction to this one.\n\nNOTES\n\nP. H. Hase\n\n2 Journal Vol. 23, 1983, p. 241-246.\n\nMy thanks are due to Mr. M.Y. Lee, of Sheung Wo Hang village, for drawing the latrine to my attention, and for helping me to measure it.\n\nSee plan attached, and plate 11.\n\n4 See plate 12.\n\nA NOTE ON RICE HULLERS (RE)\n\nIn March 1972, I visited the New Territories' village of Ma Yau Tong, situated off the Po Lam road leading to Rennie's Mill in Junk Bay. I knew the village representative, Mr. Li Tak (...) from my days as\n\nDistrict Officer South, 1957-60. He was aged 79 in 1972.\n\nWith friends from Ngau Tau Kok old village in East Kowloon, who knew the Ma Yau Tong people, I looked carefully round the houses, paying special attention to old ones and their contents.\n\nLike most N.T. villages, Ma Yau Tong had been a rice-growing settlement, but in their case they had stopped planting some 10 to 15 years before my visit. I was interested in the farming tools and equipment, and made notes on a pair of rice hullers that we saw. However, we were only able to learn the details about one of them. The other was much older, and had been in the house longer than the old lady who lived there. As she had already lived in the village for 48 years, after marrying into one of the village families when she was 20 years old, it had obviously been made before about 1920. “About 100 years\", they guessed, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211914, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "304\n\ncouplet engraved on wood bearing the words \"presented by the descendants of ancestor Baak-Kau\". The exact details of Dang Baak-Kau's line of descent from Ching-Lok, however, remain obscure.\n\nIt was probably more common that farm land was owned by groups of people who traced their descent from a common ancestor in the form of ancestral trusts than by individual heads of families like Dang Baak-Kau. I overheard two men (one born about 1910, one about 1925) talking about the ownership of fields in the past. They said that among 100 people there were less than 9 who had their own rice fields. Most people farmed ancestral trust land. The rent was cheaper than that for other land. Once somebody had taken up a piece of ancestral land, he never had to return it, and it was quite common for people to sub-let to other people the ancestral land they rented. These ancestral trusts were each founded for the worship of an individual ancestor and for the education of his descendants. The terms \"jou\" and \"tong\" are used by the villagers to refer to an ancestor, his trust, and often the segment of the lineage which consists of his descendants.\n\nThe case of Dang Baak-Kau is representative of the small minority of personally wealthy Dang. Men like him formed the village elite, dominating local and lineage affairs, and monopolising village connections with the government. Most lineage segments and their ancestral trusts among the Dangs seem to stem from personally wealthy elite villagers like Dang Baak-Kau. It is no surprise that his descendants formed an ancestral trust in his name.\n\nThe power of village elites like Dang Baak-Kau may have been undermined by the abundance of outside employment and business opportunities within Hong Kong in recent years. Among our informants were two men born in the 1920s who had worked outside Kam Tin, one with the Agriculture and Fishery Department and another with a Chinese trading firm. We were told that they were exceptions. But such opportunities have abounded in the last couple of decades.\n\nI. THE DANG LINEAGE, ELITES AND LINEAGE SEGMENTS\n\nA. Early History\n\nThe first Dang ancestor to come to Guangdong province was Hon-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211950, "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": 365, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "340\n\nrespected person in a family. I found in Wing Lung Wai that the households take their turn to take care of the incense and lamps of their san-teng. It probably plays an important part in major celebrations: in Tai Hong Wai I noticed that wedding deui-lyuns couplets had been put on both the san-teng doors and the village gate.\n\nOf a similar status were the places for the Gods of Earth and Grain, where communal worship (jou-se) is held once or twice a year. In addition, there is the hoi-dang ceremony for the new born children of the village. In the case of Tai Hong Wai, Kat Hing Wai, and Wing Lung Wai village-level collective worship includes a jiu. It is held once in seven years at Tai Hong Wai, once in five years, at Kat Hing Wai, and once in ten years at Wing Lung Wai. The Tai Hong Wai case is probably representative. The rituals are simpler than the one for Kam Tin as a whole, and lasted only two days and one evening. The main feature is the offering of paper clothing to hungry ghosts.\n\n49\n\nIn some cases the social unit involved in the rites for the new born and other collective rites is a lineage segment in a village and in one case a main village and its associated smaller settlements. Some villages have more than one place for the God of Earth and Grain. Shui Tau has two. The one belongs to the whole village of Shui Tau while the other one belongs only to the descendants of Gam-Tin jou, who have their hoi-dang there. Similarly, there is more than one place for the God of Earth and Grain in Shui Mei. One of them is worshipped by the Git-Sau jou people alone, who make offerings of paper clothing there at the Yu-Laan Festival. In the case of Tai Hong Wai, its jiu, and the rite for the newly born include as participants the villagers of Tsi Tong Tsuen and Tai Hong Tsuen. The hoi-dang at the Ching-Lok ancestral hall is not precisely a lineage event: only his descendants living in Shui Tau and Shui Mei take part.\n\nBesides worship associated with membership in residential and sometimes partially lineage segment units, there is worship organized by ritual associations. There are quite a few ritual associations (san-wui) in Kam Tin. Each has its landed property, which ranges from one daam-jung (about 65 thousand square feet) to about 500 thousand square feet of farm land. A share was inherited by all the descendants of the original shareholders. In some cases, one share was actually shared by a few dozen people. Some of the shares were acquired by the present holder by purchase. Worship by these associations takes place once a year, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211956, "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": 371, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "346\n\nthe 71st birthday of Dang Nga-Chyun, a member of a rich family descended from the mou-geui-yan Dang Ying-Yun. Also on display in the same room were other scrolls of calligraphy and painting. Put on display for a couple of hours were relics of the wong-gu. As many of the Dangs were proud of telling, there were two of them (1) a set of twelve small paintings known as Gwai-Fei Tip, believed to be the work of Fu Qing, a lady-in-waiting in the Song court; and (2) a painting of an eagle, reputed to be the work of the Emperor Song Huizhong; both given to the wong-gu as souvenirs.54 Although they were put on display during a visit by about 200 members of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, to put those two antiques on display had always been part of the tradition.55\n\nEach of the villages was decked out with fa-paai banners too. In most cases there was a fa-paai presented by all the members of the village in celebration of the ten-yearly jiu. In the case of Tai Hong Wai there was one from all the descendants of Sung-Gok jou (father of Dang Man-Wai and his brothers) as well as one from the \"youngsters\" of Tai Hong Wai. The village gate had red slips of paper saying Fast (tsai-gai) and Clean (git-jing).\n\nC. Ritual Representatives\n\nIt was explained to me that the people in each gu divided into family groups (chu). In some cases, the nearest common ancestor such a \"family\" group could trace was more than ten generations distant. For example, under Mr. Dang Tim-Kau's entry were his blood brothers, the sons of his father's brothers, as well as others who were more remotely related to him. The nearest common ancestor of the chu as a whole was Git-Sau jou, who was, from the standpoint of Dang Tim-Kau's grandsons, 12 generations up the lineage tree. The selection of ritual representatives was done by divination with bui.56 The theory of an elder is that each chu chooses its own candidate for ritual representative. But, according to a younger ritual representative, if a man failed in the divination, then his son would try his luck in the same selection process. The candidate who got the longest series of sing-bui would be the no. 1 ritual representative. The others were chosen and ranked in the same manner. But there were additional rules. Each gu section must have one man among the no. 1 to no. 5 ritual representatives, and each had to have three men among the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives. The last three places (58-60) were, as a rule, alloted to the Ying Lung Wai people,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211961, "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": 376, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "351\n\nwould send a horse to carry the document to heaven so as to ask blessings for the people whose names appeared in the list. Other women villagers to whom I talked had the same kind of understanding.\n\n+1\n\nThe Memorial listed the participants under six categories, which were, in the original order, ritual representatives, “faithful elder”, \"faithful scholar”, “jiu representatives”, \"faithful farmers”, and \"faithful outsiders”. The first three titles were used for the Dangs of Kam Tin and their families. Which one among the three was used was determined by whether the person was a ritual representative or over 60 years old. The **jiu representatives** were the Ying Lung Wai villagers. The fact and the position of the category among the others was probably more important than the literal meaning of the term. At the end were the \"faithful farmers\" and \"faithful outsiders\". The former included the indigenous non-Dangs of the heung as well as immigrant farmers. The latter referred to immigrants who operated businesses in Kam Tin.\n\nThe importance and meaning of these entries was made clearer to me by a \"mistake\".\n\nAt one point a leader of a lineage segment was copying an entry in the posted memorial for use in the distribution of ancestral ritual pork. I took the opportunity to ask him about a strange entry. The person named in the entry (and his family) was a Dang, but he was classified as “faithful farmer”. I also noticed that there had been an alteration, and the original classification, \"faithful scholar\", was also visible. The elder could not explain this. Later I saw him and another elder talking near the posted memorial, and went to see if they had the answer. The other elder knew the case very well. The person concerned had been taken to Naam Tau by his widowed mother when he was small. It was quite recently that he had returned and found his kinsmen. There were several houses in the village under his father's name. But in his absence someone else had assumed ownership. The elders of Kam Tin had been helping him at the District Office to recover his rights. The case was not settled yet. The elder had no doubt that it was the other party who altered **faithful scholar** to “faithful farmer”. He took this act very seriously, “What if someone did that to you!” He suggested that this was more than an insult. It was part of the other fellow's trick: to deny that his recently returned kinsman was a Kam Tin Dang. But he also thought this alteration to the name list was not useful, because the document would be burnt at the end of the festival.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211965, "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": 380, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "355 \n\ntraditions were involved in the festival. The priests had some difficulty with the opening ritual. In this, according to their practice, they also send off the third Memorial. In this case the almanac specified that the third Memorial should be submitted at about 3 a.m., and the opening ritual take place at a later time. At first the priests thought that they would follow the almanac specialist's schedule. But later the ritual representatives decided that they had never had the two rituals separately performed in previous celebrations. So it was decided that they would have the third Memorial ritual together with the opening ritual, at the time specified for the latter.\n\nThe distribution of ritual knowledge was not even among the villagers. Two elders noticeably active in organizing the rites probably knew much more than the others. I was able to talk with one of them, who attributed his active involvement in the rites to the fact that he had become familiar with the ritual through serving as ritual representative in the last three celebrations, every time in the first five places. He had complaints about mistakes in the jiu ceremonies. He believed that paper clothing had not been burnt in the Small Offering to Ghosts, because, after the ceremony, there was still a box of them with hats and boots. A second mistake was remedied by his complaint. It was the villagers' practice to have 49 lanterns in the Dipper rite. The priests had set up only 28. The elder complained to the older priest, who explained to his colleagues how the number of 49 was arrived at. A third case was Ying-Sing, \"Escorting the Holy Ones\". The elder was aware of a mistake: this time there was no place for jung-sing (“All the Holy Ones\", represented by a san-teng tablet), ancestor Hung-Yi, or Jau and Wong. It had been the practice that four places were dedicated to them, and only one to the Three Pure Ones. The two mistakes were not corrected because he was not there. He had gone home to sleep.\"\n\nB. The Festival Committee\n\n66\n\nA Festival Committee was formed of the ritual representatives and the ordinary leaders of the community. Named as the president and vice-presidents were the head of the lineage, the member of the lineage who had been appointed by the Government as J.P., the chairman of the Rural Committee, a lawyer on the District Board, and elders from each village (who were not necessarily the Village Representatives). It was explained to me that this group of presidents was to represent the villagers in dealing with invited guests and other honourable outsiders. The chairman and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211967, "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": 382, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "357\n\ntaking care of that ceremony only, the others were making a mess of things. Now they would understand the importance of his work.\n\nA Shui Tau villager who talked to me about the organization of the festival had a different point of view. The jiu used to provide an opportunity for wealthy and influential people to show their power and prestige. They got the chairman titles. In previous celebrations, the participants had to pay the subscription out of their own pockets. What they paid for was less than the full cost, because the rich contributed more to the festival fund. Because of that the poor had to let the rich have their say. It was no longer the case this time. The subscriptions were paid from the income from ancestral funds, which was enough to cover all the expenses. The informant explained that the wealthy and influential people he was referring to were members of the Rural Committee. There were people who had tried in vain to get elected as Village Representative and enter the Rural Committee. They had their revenge now: they would not allow the Rural Committee people to dominate the festival. The Chairman of the Rural Committee was not even allowed to present the thanks-giving speech at the festival, and the First Vice-Chairman of the Rural Committee failed to get a post on the festival committee.\" As a result of the conflict many of the elder people did not come to the preparation work meetings.\n\nD. The role of woman\n\nOn the day before the opening rites, I stayed at the ritual site. I saw a large group of people decorating the room for Kat Hing Wai, and six doing the same for Wing Lung Wai. There were many people around. Some were decorating the platform for the secular opening ritual in the centre, some talking. All were men.\n\nThe first woman I saw in the area was burning paper offerings before the Jau and Wong altar in the temple while it was being decked out with the portraits of the two officials. Then I saw three women at the kitchen area (the right wing of the temple). They told me that they were washing the dishes only, the cooking would be done by cooks hired from a restaurant. The women were all old villagers of Kam Tin. They explained that as this was the \"ten-yearly happy occasion”, so they did the work without being paid. Later I saw the same group of women preparing the tables and chairs in the dining area. When I wrote down what they said, they jokingly protested, and told me that they knew nothing, I should", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211976, "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": 391, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "366\n\nThe procession soon turned back without entering the village. By now, I noticed, the team had grown to more than 100 young men. They moved towards Kat Hing Wai. On the way they turned the paper image to \"shine on\" an alley opposite the food stall at the market, and the paths leading from the main road to Tsi Tong Tsuen and Tai Hong Tsuen. Beside the alley was a shop, where a few women fled when they saw the King of Ghosts facing them. Then the same \"shining on\" procedure was repeated at the other spots they passed on the way to Wing Lung Wai: the path leading to Tai Hong Wai, the path leading to the Tung Tak School of Shing Mun San Tsuen and a place on the other side of the road. Partly for fun, the young men did the same to the two doors of the Jockey Club betting centre, \"to influence the outcome of bets\". The procedure was also applied to the village gate of Wing Lung Wai and a spot opposite the gate across the road. Then the procession turned back and proceeded to Tai Hong Wai, where some of the men in the team shouted, \"tell people to keep clear and shut their doors\". Some of the younger men added, \"thank you for your co-operation\". I had the impression that they were talking like that partly for the fun of being in command. The procession went back to the main ritual area after \"shining on\" the village gate of Tai Hong Wai.\n\nG. Renewal of the jiu\n\nThis took place in the morning after the final main rite of Grand Offering to the ghosts, after the Taoist priests had performed the brief purification rites at the individual households. It took place at the temple of Jau and Wong, the two main gods of the festival. To their altar was escorted the image of Gwun-Yam, the other patron god of Kam Tin.\n\nIn the preparation for the rite an elder explained to a younger ritual representative that this rite is to heui-ping-on, to beseech the gods for well-being, giving a promise that in ten years' time another celebration will be held. Only the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives (which was in accordance with the traditional rule) and the priest participated. The priest chanted a eulogy and the invocation for blessing.\n\nH. Sending off the gods\n\nThis took place after the end of the Opera performance period. I overheard previously the villagers telling one another that those who fetched a god should send them home afterwards in this rite.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212315, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "234\n\nWhen it opened, in 1868, it gave the Colony a new orientation. The first vessel the Docks built was the 46-foot launch, Duncan, for their own use, which affectionately became known as Old No.1.\n\nCertainly a considerable outlay of capital and expertise was involved, and the Docks were well supported by the P&O line, which ran a service from Hong Kong to Shanghai from 1849, and by Jardine's.\n\n**From Rangoon to Shanghai there is nothing equal to that great concern (the Docks); nor along the entire Pacific Coast of North and South America is there any undertaking equipped with better facilities...** (MacMillan, 1925).\n\nThe Cosmopolitan Docks (later purchased by Hong Kong and Whampoa Docks) began at Tai Kok Tsui in 1880, and by the 1890s the main docks at Hung Hom had built up rapidly. The local community (even by 1881 the population of old British Kowloon numbered only 9,021) was among the largest industrial settlements. It worked day and night for years with queues of ships waiting to be repaired. The Hong Kong Guide 1893 records:\n\n**The Docks**\n\nare the most extensive of any in Asia. Vessels of 550 feet in length and 30 feet draft of water can be docked at Kowloon.\n\nExtra dividends were awarded to shareholders twice a year, and sons of skilled craftsmen from Hung Hom followed their fathers into the Docks. The village was never asleep as journeymen worked on shifts around the clock. It was one of the most prosperous places in the Colony.\n\nWith a population of only 260,000, at the turn of the century Hong Kong was the second largest port in the world. By then her own ships sailed the Pacific Ocean and the seas of Asia. Easterners (the Chinese) and Westerners (the expatriates were mostly Scottish) had joined forces in the Dockyard, and the Board was representative of many nations of maritime importance. A strong sense of pride and community spirit existed. During World War I, ships of more than 5,000 tons were built.\n\nButterfield and Swire started to construct their dockyard at Quarry Bay, on Hong Kong Island, in August 1902, and work was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212880, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "174\n\nto indigenous status, though now living in multi-storey apartment blocks following an earlier removal from their village. The grave was in thick bushes and clearly had not been visited at the two grave-worshipping festivals for a very long time. The elder confirmed this, but added that the fung-shui had turned bad.2\n\nWhere adverse influences were detected by experts, stones were placed at the grave, so as to block off the tablet. An instance of blocking-off is given in one of the files. It comes from Northeast Lantau. The grave belonged to a family from Tai Lam Chung on the mainland. A branch had also been settled for a hundred years at Tai Pang Po, Lantau, where this particular grave was located, on account of the good stake-net fishing there. The land officer provided a photograph of the grave. He reported that it was some 60-70 years old, but added, \"The inscription cannot be seen as the tombstone is covered by small rocks, because of poor fung-shui.\" The claimant told him there were four burial urns inside the grave, and gave the names of the persons whose remains were interred there.\" In another case, also seen on Northeast Lantau, the names of the deceased had been deliberately chipped off the tablet.\n\nObligations Outside The Family\n\nWhen it came to securing the removal of old graves, we found that the obligations to take up and rebury could sometimes ramify beyond the clan concerned. I had several cases of this kind when serving in Tsuen Wan. In another instance, the link was not so direct or as clear, but it was just as well-established as an obligation in the minds of those involved. The case involved an old grave, required to be removed for further development at Sam Pak Tsin, Texaco Road, Tsuen Wan. Since it had been repaired in 1813, it assuredly dated from the 18th century. Moreover, the grave tablet referred to the earlier burial of the remains of the husband and wife at other places, one of them at Kwai Chung. A lineage of a different surname, belonging to Hoi Pa Village, had responded to our notices posted on site, and came forward to state its obligation to arrange for removal and reburial of the remains. This was not simply a matter of taking compensation (if we were satisfied with the claim) as the reburial would involve the family in much trouble and expense. Such cases were not encountered frequently. Elders of this lineage (and the village representative who also belonged to it) said that the link with the persons buried in the grave was through the female side of their family but was no longer known clearly to even its oldest living members. Whatever it was,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212884, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "178\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\nSaid by one of the Tangs of Ha Pa. The father had won a Jockey Club lottery ticket\n\nMrs Wong Chau Yuk-bing, 10 July 1991\n\nI once became concerned with a grave on a hill above Tsuen Wan. There had been a mistake and confusion when exhuming illegal graves and removing the remains to an authorized cemetery. My subsequent enquiry showed that this slope contained a number of graves of Chans of Sam Tung Uk, repaired in 1919, and another old grave belonging to their cousins from Kwan Mun Hau, a recent reburial of another of their graves whose old site had been required for development; the earth grave with stone tablet dated 1954 belonging to another local lineage recently taken up and remains placed in an urn (whose removal caused all the trouble); and a Tsang grave dated 1909 but removed at some time previously. The enquiry showed that the hill was a favoured burial site, that it was mostly monopolized by the Chans of Sam Tung Uk; that they had received objections from Kwan Mun Hau to a new grave and had not used it but found another site.\n\n4\n\nThe exercise was prompted by what I personally felt was the misguided notion that all the owners of old graves could, and should, one fine day be asked to exhume them.\n\n4 This was still felt to be the case, even though some leading members of the clan were Christians, with forebears who had also been members of the local protestant Chuen Yuen Church, established in Tsuen Wan about 1905.\n\n+\n\nAddressed to DOTW but sent to NTA HQ. See Secretary for the NT's NT L/M No.(172) in E/948/78 to TM&DO TW dated 11 December 1980, enclosing Chinese letter dated November 1980.\n\n+ Chinese letter from Mr. Wong Kit-hung, Village Representative of Shui Pin Village, Yuen Long, dated 14 January 1980.\n\n\"Wong Cho-yip and 22 other villagers of this place are the owners of the grave of Ancestor Shui-tai at Tsing Lung Tau. Ancestor Shui-tai was buried there in the tenth month of the first year of Tung Chih [1862], so that the grave has a history of 120 years. The villagers have recently learned that the government will resume the land there for development. They fear that great damage will be done to the fung-shui [of the clan] if the grave is destroyed. We entreat you to remedy the situation quickly [by cancelling the notice] or by compensating for this loss, so that they may choose a lucky day for the removal of their ancestral grave (and another auspicious burial ground for).\n\nM\n\nChopped DOTW Inward. Serial No. 1861 of 17 August 1963. The District Commissioner gave an account of a ceremonial visit following damage to a grave. See Annual Departmental Report, District Commissioner, New Territories, 1955-56.\n\n4\n\nADR, DCNT 1955-56, para. 87.\n\nMr Wong Kwai-chi, Land Inspector, Class 1. He and I had been colleagues and friends since we first served together in the District Office South, twenty years before.\n\n|| DOTW file TW6/WL/71, Chinese letter dated 4 May 1971.\n\n1:\n\nSee JHKBRAS, Vol. 17 (1977), p.189 for background.\n\nFile TW130/983/77, for China Light and Power Company's electricity supply sub-station on NE Lantau.\n\n14\n\nThis was partly their own fault, as owing to a particularly intense intra-lineage feud, all through the late 1970s and most of the 1980s they could not agree on removal terms,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212885, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "179\n\nor even on a village improvement scheme that would have materially improved their living conditions.\n\n15\n\nChinese letter from the Village Representative and 33 other villagers of Kau Wah Keng to the District Officer, Kwai Chung and Tsing Yi, dated 1 May 1984\n\n16 One of the graves is a large communal one, established in the 1930s, to receive the remains of many members of the lineage whose remains had been moved from scattered locations.\n\n17 Enclosure (12) in TW3/1983/77, Chinese letter from the then Chairman of the Tsing Yi Rural Committee, dated 15 February 1977\n\nI am reminded of my father's perplexity when seeing for the first time the inscription placed on his mother's grave by his step-sisters. He stood looking at it in silence, taking in the fulsome words of praise and love, and eventually turned to me, saying ‘Jim, she wasn't like that\"'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213168, "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": 236, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "218\n\nour visit was when Dr. Hayes met his old acquaintance Mr. Chu Siu Wah (*), the long serving Hok Tsui Village Representative.\n\nTwo recent developments concerning Hok Tsui Village are of especial note. The first concerns the decision to use Chu lineage funds to restore the Watchtower. The second concerns the Hayes/Morton proposals to Hong Kong University for a village ecology study to complement the work being done on and off shore. It would be nice to think that this renewed interest in the history of the Cape has to some degree been helped by the Society's visits. If so, Major General D'Aguilar, who was a founding office bearer of the Hong Kong Branch in 1847, would have been pleased with us.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213848, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "173\n\nfinancial resources in support of the god's feast day celebration, after the chiao ceremony had finally ceased to take place.\n\nOther religions such as Buddhism and Christianity did present themselves in Tung Chung in the post-War period and were not excluded by the local community, though they were not very popularly received. In the 1950s, a village called Tei Tong Tsai was established on the southern border of Tung Chung when a group of monasteries, nunneries, and Buddhist halls were built to provide monks and nuns with a self-sufficient retreat resort. Although monasteries are customarily institutions outside the village community, and the monks and nuns at Tei Tong Tsai seldom mingle with other villagers, the place is considered, officially and formally, part of the Tung Chung district. To fulfill the obligations of a community member, Tei Tong Tsai has to send its head monk to attend meetings of Tung Chung's Rural Committee. Monks and nuns also make voluntary donations to support the annual celebration of the Houwang's feast day. Before the festival begins, representative monks and nuns are sent from Tei Tong Tsai to chant Buddhist prayers and burn paper offerings at the Houwang Temple. In return for their service, they might receive courtesy recompense from the Preparatory Committee for the Houwang's Birthday Festival. Tei Tong Tsai's participation in the festival activities commemorating the principal local deity, however limited, manifests how essential the Houwang worship is for members of the Tung Chung community.\n\nAnother Buddhist monastery, the Lo-han Monastery (4), was built on the hillside at Shek Pik Au [!] in the 1970s. Outsiders, instead of local villagers, sponsored the construction and participated in worshipping activities there. The influence of the monastery on the religious belief of Tung Chung's residents is negligible. On the other hand, it is one of the regular donors supporting the annual celebration of the Houwang's feast day, as a means of demonstrating its membership in the Tung Chung community.\n\nAs for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries tried to establish bases in Tung Chung. For example, the Chous, of the San Tau village on the western border of the district, were converted to Catholicism under the influence of priests dispatched from Tai O. Nevertheless, missionary work has ceased since the beginning of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213978, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "12\n\nHealth were listed provision & operation of maternity homes, ante- & post-natal clinics and health visiting. Under Education came provision & operation of primary & secondary schools, adult education & evening institutes. Under Welfare were recreational facilities, youth clubs, community centres, sports facilities, public swimming pools, homes for the aged, infants' crêches, refuges for street sleepers, distribution of relief, entertainment (band concerts, Chinese drama & opera), pleasure grounds, playgrounds and bathing beaches. The Miscellaneous category added declaration of one-way streets, parking zones, closing of streets as playgrounds (after consultation with Police), traffic warden services, provision & management of car parks, amenity provision (eg public fountains & tree planting), museums & art galleries, and undertaking of functions (such as collection of water rates & various fees) as agents of the central government.\n\nThis list went much farther in involvement of representative bodies in the affairs which closely and legitimately concerned the ordinary man and woman in the street, as well as extending what was already delegated to the Urban Council into most of the colony's growth areas. Apart from suggesting that the list might be added to in the light of experience, the bold proposition was made that in future no central department should be permitted to establish new local machinery without proving that the activity could not be carried out by a Local Authority. The report stated that it was not envisaged that the new councils should be independent Education Authorities; but it was clearly hoped that in the fullness of time the Education Department would regard local authority schools as a main component of the grant-aided system, and indeed relinquish its own primary schools to the councils. Finally, as a carrot for those in the NT who might be willing to contemplate change, it was pointed out that rural district councils should take over agricultural extension schemes, forestry lots, fish-ponds, local public works (footpaths, bridges, piers etc), local ferries, village layouts & housing schemes, and local water supplies & irrigation.\n\nThis would all have to be paid for. Local authorities should have financial responsibility, including revenue-raising powers. Local accountability to tax-payers and freedom from stifling dependency on central grants (with their inevitable consequential frictions) were essential to success. New structures would increase the administrative costs of the colony overall, and it might well be that some areas would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214031, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "66\n\n13\n\nDespite this, the Pangs are free to rent it to outsiders for profit because this will not change their legal ownership. This social phenomenon manifests villagers' two underlying distinctive concepts, as David Faure suggests, that is, the right of settlement and the right of residence. He points out that not all residents in the village enjoy settlement rights, as the rights can only be inherited by the lineage founder's male descendants.1 One will be considered as a lineage member if one can trace common descent and hold the same settlement rights. Residents who do not hold settlement rights are defined as outsiders. They have no right to elect anybody or to serve in any posts (such as the village guard and Village Representative) in the lineage, nor can they participate in or benefit from lineage religious activities. Therefore, keeping village houses by lineage members is synonymous with maintaining their prescribed settlement rights to sustain their lineage community.\n\nAs a matter of fact, property dispute is not unknown in Fanling Wai. The following case study demonstrates the way in which the Pangs strategically manipulated the spatial differences between agricultural land and housing land to prevent a married-out daughter from inheriting the zu wu. In the dispute, patrilineal ideology is commonly articulated by different parties involved, namely, the Village Representatives (who are elected by male villagers to speak for their interests and whose power is legitimised by the government) and the female villagers, to safeguard their interests.\n\nPang Chiu Sun had only a daughter, Pang Mei Fan (see Diagram 1). In the late 1970s, after her parents' death, Mei Fan applied for the inheritance of her father's property, which included nine plots of agricultural land and two village houses. Her application, however, was objected to by Pang Man Si (Mei Fan's father's brother's wife). Man Si complained to the District Officer that Mei Fan should be precluded from inheriting her father's property. She argued that, according to the Pang lineage custom, married-out daughters enjoyed no rights to inherit the housing property in Fanling Wai.\n\nVillage Representatives arbitrated this case. In 1979, they arrived at the resolution that Mei Fan inherited her father's landed property and the village houses were managed by Man Si as a trustee. Their rationale is that, by custom, zu wu should only be inherited by male", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214032, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "67\n\nlineage members. Following this practice, Pang Sai Keung and Pang Tai Keung, the only male members in this segment, would be designated inheritors. However, since they died heirless and their property was managed by Man Sî (Tai Keung's wife), who was the only surviving member in this segment, the Village Representatives recommended Man Sî as a trustee of Chiu Sun's housing property. But they stipulated that she had no right to dispose of it, and it should be passed on to male descendants of the Pangs. In 1983 Man Sî therefore adopted an heir to carry on Tai Keung's family line and to inherit his property as well as Chiu Sun's property. In this case, adoption is viewed by Man Sî as an effective strategy to legitimately incorporate the Chiu Sun's property into her husband's household, and through which the hegemony of the patrilineal inheritance is reinforced and reproduced.\n\nFor land, however, the Village Representative said it could be inherited by the married-out daughter of Chiu Sun. His justification was that land and houses should be customarily passed on to male lineage members, but since the village houses were located inside the lineage settlement while the land was not, married-out Mei Fan was therefore entitled to claim her father's landed property and could even dispose of it at her discretion.\n\nIn sum, this case vividly demonstrates how the Pangs made use of the spatial difference to define and redefine their transfer practices of property in the early 1980s. They held the idea that only housing property inside the lineage settlement must strictly follow the patrilineal descent principle to maintain the Pangs' settlement rights, lineage community and its associated identity. The transfer of other property located outside the settlement was subject to the Pangs' negotiation. The Pangs drew or, perhaps, redefined this boundary in the 1980s when the government's resumption of their lands for development was in full swing and when the Pangs themselves also actively sold their lands to outsiders for a huge profit (since the land market in the New Territories sprang up at that time). Under these circumstances, land was no longer considered by the Pangs as an essential or indispensable property for maintaining patrilineal structure and preserving traditional identity. The retreat of the lineage's territory thus led them to become more conscious of the importance of the male inheritance of housing property. This is because only the village houses are the available estate property in Fanling Wai which can or have to be kept intact by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214733, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "This photograph was also taken near where the new railway tunnel portal will be situated. It shows the priests, the village representatives as well as the trumpeter. One village representative is burning joss sticks and paper offerings (Photograph courtesy of Antiquities and Monuments Office).\n\n112", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214873, "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "257\n\nAs I reported to Mr. (later Sir Ronald) Holmes, the villagers had changed their minds about letting the work proceed \"a further three times\" in the four days that had elapsed since my first visit to the village to deal with the difficulty. Enquiring into the reason for the renewed stoppage of work, I was told by the village representative and elders that the deities in the two local temples had had to be consulted, and that the propitious day for resuming work would be a day or two later.\n\nFrustration and annoyance are writ large in my report on these events:\n\nI replied that I certainly hoped that this would be the case since I was not possessed of second sight sufficient to enable me to know what they had not said to me on my first visit [about the need to consult the deities].\n\nNor could I be expected to understand their frequent changes of mind during the past two weeks when they would say one thing to Mr. Abbas [the land bailiff], quite another to the contractor and the Roads Engineers when they wished to resume work, and yet another to myself; not once but several times all round.\n\nMasters indeed in the art of creating confusion and uncertainty!\n\nOn this visit, it had soon appeared that the villagers had thought up extra reasons for causing us delays. On our way to Tong Fuk, passing by the South Lantau Rural Committee office at Pui O, we had been given letters from the Village Representatives of Tong Fuk and the adjoining village of Shui Hau, making some additional points in the ongoing dialogue with the District Office. These concerned what I described as \"an entirely new series of complaints\" about the crop compensation to be paid in connection with the engineering works, the villagers professing themselves worried about the compensation schedules and about rates of compensation:\n\n... \"All this, mark you,\" [as I told the Commissioner], “though in their large-scale airing of perplexities on the Monday not one word of these matters had been breathed, saving only their concern about [the date of] payment.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214874, "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "258\n\nViewed in retrospect, my report is rather ponderously expressed. My prose tended to be \"turgid,\" the boss once told me, and I resolved to do better! However, turgidity could not disguise my exasperation, which still shines through the contents of the report, loud and clear, 39 years on.\n\nLooking back on that period, my exasperation was increased by the fact that I had to put up with (and more to the point, get over) similar difficulties with village communities in other parts of a far-flung District, from Sai Kung in the east to Lantau in the west. With road works going on at each extremity, I was sometimes rushing here and there, backwards and forwards, dealing with problems of this kind.\n\nThere were special difficulties in getting the new extension to the Sai Kung road past Tso Wo Hang Village in regard to the road line, and also with cutting stone at a certain spot where, my notebook says, \"the Village Representative was to say when work could start”. It sticks in my memory that none of the other villages affected by construction work for the new road were as temperamental or difficult as this one, and certainly this seems to be borne out by my notes. See my chapter \"The Traditional Background: Hong Kong Villages in the 1950s” in Elizabeth Sinn and Patrick Hase (eds) Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Company Limited.\n\nAs I have written elsewhere, patience and resolution, leavened with an essential saving dash of humour, were qualities in demand on these occasions. The Tong Fuk episode was certainly one of those in which all of these had to be deployed by my land staff and myself during that period. Mercifully, an antidote was sometimes supplied by the villagers themselves, since their ill humour could be turned to laughter by themselves or even by one of us, and lead to an amicable compromise. When all is said and done, it was fun! What was equally important for me as a young D.O. was that in Ronnie Holmes I had an ideal boss, someone who was immensely able, perceptive and compassionate, and a good Chinese linguist, a man who could see both sides of any situation. Also, he would welcome me home for a drink, listen and laugh at my predicaments, and (usually) endorse my solutions to them.\n\nBy way of a postscript to the above, we were by no means", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216302, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "10\n\nPak Lap is a single (Lau) surname Hakka village in which 17 houses built in two rows. In the past, Pak Lap's villagers depended on both farming and fishing; however, beginning in the early 1980s, farmland was taken out of agricultural production and most villagers moved away either working overseas or in the city. In 1993, a total amount of 300,000 square feet farm land belonged to Pak Lap villagers was all sold to a local developer; however, house land was still kept by the villagers. In addition, I was told that a condition of the transaction required by the villagers was that the developer had to rebuild the two rows of village houses (which they called Hakka pai house), even though the developer could have the rights of using them on a long-term basis to rent out for outsiders/visitors.\n\nUntil 1999, Hong Kong's economy was still on the downside, the developer was no more able to fulfil the previous contract made in 1993. With the mutual understanding between Pak Lap villagers and developer, restoration instead of rebuilding was agreed; moreover, the rights of using were passed on to the constructor, Mr. Wong, because of the incomplete payment owed by the developer. Starting from that moment, the Wong family was in charge of managing the 17 houses in Pak Lap; two for their own use and 15 for renting out. When I visited them in early 2002, I found the rebuilding of the Lau Ancestral Hall was complete and some abandoned farmland was cultivated to grow different kinds of vegetables for the meals provided to visitors and customers staying overnight in the Hakka houses.\n\nChek Keng\n\nThe third village that I would like to introduce is Chek Keng. Unlike Tai Long Wan and Pak Lap, most buildings in Chek Keng can still be seen as they used to be, even though some of the houses had collapsed. Chek Keng is a traditional settlement consisting of five different lineage groups living together, and it was probably founded more than 200 years ago. Regarding the history of lineages in this Hakka village, I was told that there were five different lineages with surnames Fan, Chiu, Lee, Wong and Cheng living in the village. I got a chance to contact the village representative, Mr. Fan, who spent most of his time between UK and Hong Kong. The situation of Chek Keng was reported on by an English-language daily regarding lives of elderly New Territories villagers. Based on the only one Chek Keng resident", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]