RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n CEREMONIAL LIFE OF 2 MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES 105 Goddess came, firecrackers would be lit. That was when the fa-paau event occurred. The Spring Rites ceremony and the hoi-tang ceremony took place at the same time. After the Goddess of Heaven was installed in the Lung-tsai Hall, the Kwaan, the Wong and the Tang performed the kowtow and the three prostrations in no special order whatsoever. Whoever had a son born that year would hang the lantern there on the same day. After the ceremony, there was a feast. As there was no temple property, each villager brought his own meat for the feast. Occasionally, the village opera would crown the event. The Goddess of Heaven then remained in the Hall until the end of the year when it would be sent back to the same heung temple just for a few days before the next New Year. Besides the fa-paau, the hoi-tang ceremonies, the Spring Rites, and the village opera, there was also the worship of the Earth God on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month. This again was participated jointly by the Kwaan, the Wong and the Tang together in the Lung-tsai Hall. Not only were the three lineages in Lung-tsai She co-operating in celebrating their festivals of the year, they were also very integrated in their economic life. Those who wanted to rent or sell land would offer it to the villagers first, be they members of the Kwaan, the Wong or the Tang, before they would offer it to people outside the village. This was in direct contrast to the practice in Na-loh. There, both private and corporate property were open to bidding every three years. Only the Kwaan could bid for Kwaan land and the Oo for Oo land. If no tenants were found among the Kwaan in Na-loh, Kwaan land would be offered to tenants in the rest of T'oh-fuk; if no tenants were found among the Oo in Na-loh, Oo land would be offered to the Oo outside the village. Burton Pasternak, in his work Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford 1972), has given a detailed description of two multi-surname villages in Taiwan-Tatich and Chungshe--which may throw some interesting lights on the differences between the two multi-surname villages in Hoi-p'ing described in this paper. Tatich was similar to Lung-tsai She in social organization. Firstly, none of the lineages there had an ancestral hall of its own or owned corporate property. All the members worshipped in a community temple. Secondly, like Lung-tsai She, members had the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 261 Baker, Hugh D.R. 1966 Bibliography of Sources Cited: "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 6. Brim, John A. 1974 “Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong", In Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, edited by Arthur P. Wolf. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dumont, Louis 1970 Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System, translated by Mark Sainsbury. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fei Hsiao-tung 1946 "Peasantry and Gentry: An Interpretation of Chinese Social Structure and Its Changes". American Journal of Sociology 52(1), Freedman, Maurice 1958 Lineage Organization in Southeastern China. London: Athlone Press. 1966 Chinese Lineage and Society. London: Athlone Press. Fried, Morton H. 1970 **Clans and Lineages: How to Tell Them Apart and Why with Special Reference to Chinese Society”. Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica 29 (Taipei). Geertz, Clifford 1963 Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Holy, Ladislav 1979 "The Segmentary Lineage Structure and Its Existential Status”. In Segmentary Lineage Systems Reconsidered, edited by L. Holy. Belfast: The Queen's University Papers in Social Anthropology. Kuhn, Philip A. 1970 Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pasternak, Burton 1969 "The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development'. Journal of Asian Studies 28(3), Polanyi, Karl 1944 The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Moore, Barrington 1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Discovery: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, New York: Penguin Press. Strathern, Marilyn 1984 "Localism Displaced: A "Vanishing Village" in Rural England", Ethnos 49(1-2) (Stockholm). Strauch, Judith 1983 "Community and Kinship in Southeastern China: The View from the Multilineage Villages of Hong Kong". Journal of Asian Studies 43(1), Wolf, Eric 1982 Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Page 285 Page 286 262 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 172 means of legitimizing their permanent residency in the district and increasing their local influence and power. When some seamen returned home, after foreign steamships had significantly reduced the recruitment of sailors from Hong Kong in the 1950s, they had become so unfamiliar with local affairs, as a result of their long leave from home, that even if they were elected village representatives on the Tung Chung's Rural Committee established in 1950 under government auspices, they served mainly as liaison men. Newer settlers at Ma Wan Chung, with their wealth and their leading role in organizing activities to commemorate the Houwang's feast day festival, have actually been among the leading local social élites, though not necessarily holding formal official positions. Adaptability and Tenacity: The Tradition of the Houwang Worship In effect, the Houwang worship transcends blood ties and bridges the gap between old and new settlers, and thus functions to maintain a strong village coalition in Tung Chung. As a multi-lineage community, Tung Chung can be used as a case to support Judith Strauch's argument that economic and ritual cooperation and overarching unity, implicit in shared "native place," instead of constant internal conflict and all-round uneasiness, can prevail in a mix-surname settlement.** It also fits Burton Pasternak's model of “villages in which families of different surnames joined forces and played down agnatic differences for the sake of survival."84 It is indeed in the villagers' interest to accept newcomers to the community, in order to make up for shortages of material and human resources. This receptive and inclusive feature of local culture also grew out of a universal cult centering around the village coalition temple. While ancestor worship is only an individual or family/lineage activity and the worship of the earth god and Hsuan-t'an is usually on an individual or village basis, religious and social rituals in honour of the Houwang involve mass participation by the territorial community and work to renew collective consciousness of local identity repeatedly and systematically. During the time when the chino was held in the area, the Houwang as the principal local deity also played a role in that large-scale communal festival. The Houwang worship continued to dominate local religious life, and was even promoted by concentrating | | ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 7 Interview of Li P'o, Cheng Man-lung, etc., op. cit. Ng Cheuk Yiu, op. cit. Ibid., p. 183 *2 Ronald Ng, op. cit., p. 58 ** Judith Stauch, “Community and Kinship in Southeastern China: The View from the Multilineage Villages of Hong Kong,” Journal of Asian Studies, XLIII:1 (Nov 1983), pp. 21-50 Burton Pasternak, Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 157 * Faure 1981, op. cit., p. 80 Interview of Master Kuo-hsi (RMBOA), a Buddhist nun at Tei Tong Tsai, Aug 18, 1991 * Interview of Hsich Ch'i, op. cit., Aug 13, 1991 Interview of Sister Chung (Biff* &) at Tung Chung Our Lady Kindergarten, Aug 13, 1991 444 Interview of Chang Po (age 75) lower Lang Pi, Jun 15, 1991 Interview of Chou Po (age 60) San Tau, Jul 1, 1991 Interview of Miss Cheng (age about 23) upper Ling Pi, Jun 15, 1991 12 Law, op. cit. 13 Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================