[
    {
        "id": 204357,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1961",
        "page_number": 125,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n121\n\non the male relatives, can be got round by omitting pregnant wives from the ceremony. There is also a belief that exhumation should not take place during the years on which fall the 51st, 61st, 71st and other such birthdays of the male head of the family.\n\nIn Chinese public cemeteries, the same principle of exhumation is practised. At the end of each year, the particular coffin section where burials have been taking place is closed and left untouched for five years. At the end of that time, an official notice of intention to clear graves is published, giving relatives six months in which to exhume remains privately and re-inter them in the urn section. Any remains not exhumed privately on the expiry of the period of notice are then exhumed by Government and the remains re-interred in an urn section. The cleared coffin section is then eventually used again for coffin burials.\n\nApplying equally to urban and New Territories burials are the two important grave worshipping festivals of Ching Ming (105 days after the winter solstice, i.e. either 5th or 6th of April) and Chung Yeung (9th day of the 9th moon, i.e. in October). The first is the more important. The second was originally not a grave-worshipping festival at all, but an occasion for climbing to the top of a mountain to avoid evil spirits. Since so many graves are situated on hills, the practice of combining the hill climb with an opportunity of worshipping at graves has been developed.\n\nStrict Cantonese belief also requires that, at ch'un she (#1), which falls annually about two weeks before the Ching Ming festival, relatives should pay their respects to persons who have died within the past year. This ceremony usually takes place at home and its participants are restricted to older persons.\n\nAt the Ching Ming and Chung Yeung festivals, it is customary for whole families to make an outing to their relatives' graves. There, offerings of pork, fruit and flowers are presented; incense and candles burnt; prayers offered; crackers let off. Minor repairs to the graves may be carried out and undergrowth cut back. Coffin graves in the New Territories may be marked with lime at the end and all types of graves usually have a piece of red paper and another piece of white paper underneath the red, tucked under a stone beside them. Exhumations will often be carried out at the Ching Ming festival. At the Tung Wah coffin repository, caskets of remains are opened and the bones spread out to air on sheets of paper.\n\nChinese believe that the spirit of a person leaves the body on death. In Hong Kong the general belief is that it descends into hell where the judge decides on the basis of the earthly merits of the deceased whether it may be allowed to return to earth by reincarnation as a child or, if very evil, as an animal. The main fear of the dead consists rather of the belief that to",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208357,
        "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": 81,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n65\n\nthe first day or days. But before we continue to discuss such social messages as may have been conveyed by way of the grave ritual, I wish to draw some further attention to the distribution in time of grave worship. Consider the following cases:\n\n+\n\nIn Baling, it is recorded, all families cut paper, 'climb the mounds' £*, and repair the graves on the third day of the third moon.23 Grave offerings were considered at Gold Food or Hanshi in Wuling.24 From Zhongxiang #the chronicler reports that on the same date sons and daughters pay respect with cattle meat as ji offerings on the graves of the deceased. Paper streamers were hung up and the graves were worshiped #. Loud lamenting was to be heard.25 In Jiangxia the graves were swept at Cold Food.26 Cold Food is an occasion of one to three days, celebrated 105 days after the winter solstice. This means that it coincides with the opening days of the Qingming solar period. There is good reason to return to this calendar event in the following discussion. In Baling the grave worship had crossed from the solar calendar to the lunar almanac; the third day of the third moon will be a varying solar date in the spring.\n\nSome other data are more interesting--and puzzling. We find, widely dispersed in time, grave worship of a form which strongly resembles the accounts presented above. Consider the following notes: The chronicler of Baling tells us:\n\nthe people during the leisure of the first moon pay respect # to and sweep the graves. It is named 'to pay respect to the year on the grave' Moreover, matters of death resemble the way of life 車死如生之道也.27\n\nThe last phrase may be taken to mean that the paying of respect at or on the graves in the festive season of the first moon followed an order which resembled the conventions of paying respect between living relatives at the lunar New Year.\n\nWe have noted already that grave worship occurred in Yuanjiang on Earth God Day in the second moon,28 before the spring equinox. A further record from Wuchang states that in that ‘county\", in the second moon, on Earth God Day people si je offered fresh things on the graves.29 On the same day the graves in Chongyang were decorated with 'top branches' and were given ji offerings. In the same locality it was customary to make ji offerings on the graves on the sixth day of the sixth moon to the shen † spirit(s?) of the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210467,
        "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": 74,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "55 \n\nremoved in 1952 was coincidental). The 14th day of the 7th month was the day for remembering all those who at death had received no proper burial. Any seafaring community would be likely to know of many such, and like most Hong Kong Boat People, Kau Sai's fishermen marked the month of the 'Hungry Ghosts' with ceremonies of exorcism, both privately on the junks and publicly in the temple. The day of the Moon Festival (the 15th day of the 8th month) was the next occasion for making family offerings in the temple, and on the Double Ninth came the second of the annual dates for visiting the family graves.\n\nOn the 10th day of the 10th month a public offering of pork (and/or fish) was made to Shui Shing Ye, whose image stood next to that of Hung Shing Kung in the temple, and after that came the celebration of the winter solstice (fixed, of course, by the solar calendar, like Ch'ing Ming, but falling usually in the eleventh month). Finally, on the 15th day of the 12th month a pig was slaughtered and offered in the temple on behalf of the community as a whole in public thanksgiving for the successful completion of another year before the preparations for the New Year ceremonies once again got under way.\n\nOnly four of these ritual occasions were publicly observed in the sense that the offerings made and ceremonies performed were provided at joint expense and on behalf of the village as a whole. The rest were private, that is family celebrations, taking place on or about the same dates but quite independently. The four public occasions were the festivals of two gods of the local temple, Hung Shing Kung (13th of 2nd month) and Shui Shing Ye (10th of 10th month), the exorcism of the Hungry Ghosts (14th of 7th month) and the general thanksgiving at the end of the year (15th of 12th month). By far the most spectacular of these was the festival for Hung Shing Kung, for which a group of priests was always engaged to carry out the religious ceremonies and an opera troupe performed plays on five consecutive nights and four days. The organisation of this festival, which involved the collection and disbursement of well over 10,000 Hong Kong dollars each year, was much the most important single joint activity in Kau Sai.\n\ni",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211015,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1987",
        "page_number": 77,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "T \n\n52 \n\ntent with the motive of maximizing the market, ranging, as it does from the local Chinese literati to domestic servants of European residents, and even to \"country youths\", presumably from the recently acquired \"New Territories\". \n\nThe principal contents of English Made Easy comprise Mok Man Cheung's “unique system” for enabling non-English speakers to pronounce the English alphabet, numbers, words, phrases, and sentences, plus an anthology of \"model letters\". Fascinating insights into the quality of the social life of upwardly mobile Chinese at the turn of the century are provided by the selection of materials for these sections of the book. \n\nSeveral of the categories of objects and phenomena, invented by Mok Man Cheung to organize his work, offer evidence about the ambivalence of this sort of person at this time in the face of influences from both East and West. In his list of words referring to \"Objects of Nature\", for example, the earliest words on the list (“Sky”, “Earth”, “Sun”, “Moon”, “Wind”, “Clouds”, “Rain”, etc.) may have been chosen for their compatibility with such traditional Chinese concepts as \"Feng Shui”1 and with other widespread beliefs. \"Spirits”, “Gods”, “Ghost”, and “Devil” are all included. The later entries seem to concentrate more on practical and modern realities, such as “reclamation ground”, “rough sea”, “typhoon”, “drizzle” [sic], “low-tide”, “flood”, and, to conclude happily, \"calm-sea\". In his suggested vocabulary for \"Time and Seasons\", he includes \"Intercalary moon”, “Full moon Festival”, \"Dragon Boat Festival\" and \"Winter Solstice\" as well as “Christmas day\", the days of the week and months of the year by Western reckoning, and a battery of non-culture-specific temporal terms. Mok Man Cheung's list of \"Persons and their Occupations\" begins, perhaps because it was politic to do so in 1905, with \"Emperor\", \"Empress\", \"Crown Prince\", and proceeds to deal with “Mandarin” and “General”, leading on to such occupations as “Maidservant” and “Captain”, before referring to \"Governor\", \"Policemen\" (juxtaposed with “Thief”) and \"Student\". It would not be uncharacteristic of Chinese style if the precise order in which these “Persons and Occupations” are presented is meant to be significant. Even if this is not the case,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214672,
        "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": 87,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "51\n\nLife was not, however, all hard work, sickness, and brawls. The farming year was full of slack periods when there was time for entertainment and pleasure. The ritual year gave the villagers a framework for their leisure activities: each major festival was marked with a feast - even the poorest of families would have fat pork and rich eels on feast days. Nga Tsin Wai was, according to the Sha Tin village elders, famous for making \"Cha Kwo\", the traditional sticky village cakes, and these would usually be in evidence at festivals. The New Year, Tin Hau's Birthday, and the Winter Solstice Festival were the main festivals celebrated in Nga Tsin Wai, together with the Spring (Ching Ming) and Autumn (Chun Yeung) Grave Festivals, where fat pork would be distributed by the Ancestral Trusts to those who attended the worship at the graves.\n\nDuring the summer, and particularly at the Dragon Boat Festival, the village had the habit of inviting strolling singers to come and stay in the village for a few days or a week, to sing through their repertoire of \"Dragon Boat Songs\". These were long sung novels, and the villagers would sit outside the village gate in the evening listening to the singer for hours.\n\nThe villagers of Nga Tsin Wai were famous for singing themselves (the Tai Wai villagers in Sha Tin were jealous of the Nga Tsin Wai skills). The villagers sang Shan Ko, “Mountain Songs\". These were sung man to woman, verse by verse, and often included innuendo and suggestive comment: they were often called \"Teasing Songs\" as a result. Nga Tsin Wai villagers would often hold impromptu contests with youngsters from Tai Wai when they met at the pass which separated the lands of the two villages (the villagers say that is why the songs are called \"Mountain Songs\"). The Sha Tin elders also remember that more formal contests were also held - an annual one at Ma Tau Wai drew contestants from all of East Kowloon and Sha Tin: it was held at the Mid Autumn Festival. Contestants would be drawn, man and woman, and they would sing to each other; the one that ran out of things to say being declared the loser. The audience was mostly youngsters, and a few interested elders - they would sit around the contest area on the ground, vocal in their comments. The village elders say these contests could last for a couple of weeks if enough contestants appeared. The last contest was held just after the War. This was a Punti practice. The elders of the Hakka village of Ngau Chi Wan rather...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215074,
        "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-2000",
        "page_number": 170,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "127\n\nthe sacred and the secular.\n\nSacred time can be separated into liturgical and non-liturgical. Liturgical dates are those linked to the lunar calendar such as Yu Lan Hui, the Chinese All-Soul's Day, celebrated on the 15th of the seventh lunar month [best known as the Hungry Ghosts Festival] and the anniversaries of the gods and immortals; whilst the non-liturgical are fixed dates marking the seasonal changes. Only two such non-liturgical dates are still observed - the grave sweeping at Qing Ming, usually on the 5th of April, 106 days after the Winter Solstice, and the Winter Solstice itself. Secular dates are national state holidays.\n\nHumans accept the depth and space of time as a natural aspect of our daily lives. To people the world over a day, depending upon the culture, consists of the period between noon and noon, midnight and midnight, or from dawn to dawn. The lunar month has been a common time-marker since time immemorial, with the Chinese lunar calendar being based on the full moon on the 15th day of the month and the new moon, on the first. To many Chinese, as indeed to a number of other agricultural civilisations, time did not stretch back into eternity but came round again and again, it was cyclical, and again like other civilisations a zodiac evolved.\n\nBefore the days of the cheap watch or clock, time to the average Chinese man-in-the-street was simply the year, which is the interval between each spring equinox, the month and the forenoon, afternoon and evening of the day. Chinese peasants were able to avoid the bourgeois vice of clock-watching. However, certain times were rigid; for example, the times of the opening and closing of the city gates; these were usually regulated by dawn and dusk, and for watchmen who walked the dark streets who knew from experience reasonably accurately when to call out the hour. For the majority of Chinese another important aspect of time is the lunar date of birth and death, as no marriage could be arranged without the exchange of time and date of birth of the potential bride and bridegroom.\n\nHowever, to the Daoist time never stops and no state can be retained. Change is the only constant. Everything is continually changing but for each action there is a reaction so that the cosmic balance remains the same.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]