[ { "id": 213803, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "126\n\n47\n\nform of incense ashes rather than tablets suggests that the ancestor halls did not use tablets to represent ancestors individually. It is also found in the Yingsheng (\"Reception of the Holy\") dedicated to the main honoured gods during the Jiao festivals, and the Yingshen Guiwei (\"Escorting gods to their places\") during the Hongchao festival of Fanling, both conducted by Cantonese Daoist priests in the New Territories. An elder of Kam Tin compared the Yingsheng ritual with the ancestral hall ritual found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, to which I shall refer below. I am not sure if a cloth “bridge” is used in this ancestral hall ceremony.\n\nOp cit pp 142-144. In a recent visit to Cheng Tau, a woman in her 60s referred to the ancestral hall as a-gong ha (\"the Place of Ancestors\"), which seems to have been the more usual expression for ancestral halls among the Hakka. Compare the expression with Bak-gong ha ('the Place of the Bak-gong earth god'). It is interesting that the title of this category of earth god, whose territory is more limited than the dawang, shares the expression for \"elder brother of grandfather\".\n\nibid p. 224 » 10\n\n174\n\nibid p 160\n\nDiscussion of this aspect of ancestral worship is summarized in C Fred Blake, Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town, The University Press of Hawaii, 1981, pp 92-93, 115 n 1, 116 n 2. A possible example is the case of Wo Hang, N. T. where an ancestral hall of the second fang houses the spirit tablets of the first and second generation. See Allen John Lueck, Lun Chun, Land is to live: A study of the concept of isu in a Hakka Chinese village, New Territories, Hong Kong, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1985, p 273.\n\nCompare H G H Nelson, \"Ancestor Worship and Burial Practices\", in Arthur P. Wolf ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 263-267, on the shen-ting which fulfilled the functions of domestic altars for the households in each area” in a Cantonese village in the New Territories. He observes that the shenting \"occupy a place half way between [tang ancestral halls] and domestic altars”.\n\nVol under Donga jie (\"Winter festival\")\n\nTON Op cit. pp 147-148\n\nOp cit. p 12\n\nOp cit. p 176\n\n100\n\nIt is interesting to note the distribution and context of Mountain Songs. It is interesting to note that Mountain Songs were sung only by the male villagers (in some festivals with women hired from other villages) in the Cantonese villages whose dialect is known to others as daaih ga wo (\"big family language\"), and which correspond to the area of the five big clans. In some of the other Cantonese villages, e.g. in Shatin and Saikung, Mountain Songs were sung by the women on the eve before a wedding at the bride's home. Mountain Songs, and related pre-marital courtship, was more popular among some female Cantonese villagers in the Kowloon area who cut grasses for sale as fuel. The livelihood of these women, like that of the Hakka immigrants, depended more on the city. I know much less", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215104, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "157\n\nBut First, the Story of the Rebellion.\n\nTang Ming Huang, or Xuan Zong, the sixth emperor of the Tang dynasty, who reigned between AD 713-756, became infatuated by Yang Yuhuan, the consort of his son, Prince Shou, and caused her notionally to enter a Daoist nunnery. She soon became the favourite concubine of the emperor who shared with him her love of music and dance and whose hold over him led to his neglect of state affairs. It is rarely explained that the Concubine Yang was comparatively plump, conforming to the social concept of beauty of the era. By about 740 the Emperor, tired of the daily routine of his high office, now addicted to luxury and women, also became indolent. As the eunuchs gained ever greater control over state affairs so the emperor surrendered power into the hands of two men, Li Linfu and Yang Guozhong, the latter being a relative of the concubine.\n\nOnly this one woman, the Concubine Yang [Yang Guifei], a famous beauty, was able to fascinate the ageing emperor. He took her into his own harem where she speedily dominated the aged emperor's consort after which he gradually slid into dissipation with his name forever linked with her and their ill-fated romance. Her hold over him led to his loss of interest in imperial duties transforming him from being a staid and good ruler to a playboy. This led to his downfall and her murder. In the late 740s she adopted An Lushan as her son and she, the emperor and An remained in a very friendly relationship until immediately prior to him rebelling. Despite An's gross and huge frame scandalous stories have circulated down the ages of his sexual excesses with the emperor's concubine, Yang, which may or may not have had any truth to them.\n\nGeneral An lost the emperor's favour when Yang Guozhong, a distant relative of Yang Guifei who had worked his way into power, became the most powerful man in Court. He hated An and with the ear of the emperor he was able to turn the emperor's fondness into one of hate and distrust. Eventually, believing the calumny spread by Yang Guozhong, the emperor lost faith in his favourite general, An Lushan found his position untenable and finally, at the end of 755, he rebelled, almost certainly to counter the threat to himself posed by the ever-growing power of Yang Guozhong and his realisation that he had lost the support of the emperor. An Lushan's army drove east and in a series", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215108, "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": 204, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "161\n\nand the Fulu particular of two opera companies, the Xipi Pai and Erhuang Pai [or Fi Pai], the latter, the northern school, being especially dedicated to woodwinds3. In legend he is said to have had an emotional reunion with the soul of his dead concubine, Yang Guifei, in the palace of Guanghan on the Moon.\n\n4\n\nA tablet on a minor altar at the rear of a secondary hall in the temple of the City God in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan refers to him as Tang Xuan Zong, whilst his usual title in Taiwanese temples of the Lord of the Western Qin, Xi Qin WangyeE is not usually understood beyond Taiwan. There is no image, whereas in the Ma Tsu temple in Taipei a side altar is dedicated to him and his image, portraying him as a standard scholar-official with a black beard, is flanked by two very elderly male aides.\n\nIn South-east Asia images of the emperor have been seen in temples in Seremban and Ipoh in Malaysia, and in Singapore, in some of which he is simply referred to as Zunzhu Mingwang, the Lord Prince Ming, 尊主明王,\n\nAn image seen on the only altar in a side hall of the temple on Miaofeng Shan in Beijing's Western Hills and identified as Tang Ming Huang, is better known in the temple as the God of Happiness, Xi Shen [Photograph 2]. He is referred to as Liyuan Shen, and is portrayed as a smiling figure with beard and moustache, standing with his hands in a theatrical pose. His modern image is dressed in imperial yellow robes decorated with a large dragon and the whole body of the image is swathed in a red robe placed there by devotees.\n\nDisappointingly, there appears to be no image of the Concubine Yang on any altars. However, a modern [1996] tableau in an old temple, now converted into a theme-park, depicts in a series of life-size plaster images scenes ranging from the Tang Ming Huang's first sight of the Concubine Yang bathing, progressing through stages of his infatuation though ending before her death and his overthrow. This can be seen on a low hill overlooking the bend in the Yellow River at the south-western tip of Shanxi province, at a place known as Yang Guifei's pool. The main altar has the Tang Ming Huang and the Concubine sitting with her pouring wine for him. Before the altar stand three incense pots, a container holding fortune spills and plastic fruit as an offering and before", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215124, "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": 220, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "177\n\nA large modern tableau in the old former Five Springs Temple at the extreme south western tip of Shanxi province, overlooking the bend in the Yellow River with a pool in the temple grounds. The tableau depicts the Tang emperor Ming Huang and his concubine, Yang Guifei, at the site of the pool where she is said to have bathed. She is portrayed here as a slim beauty, pouring wine for the emperor, and not as a typical Tang plump beauty. Incense, fortune sticks and offerings have been left on the altar table by visitors.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]