RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 S. G. DAVIS 1897). Laufer also pointed out that the only reference that he could find in Chinese literature to pottery of the Han Dynasty is by Chow Mi in the Kuei Hsin Tsa Shih, Chow Mi lived under the Southern Sung Dynasty in the thirteenth century. Such an observation by Laufer is of importance because he was an established authority on Chinese archaeology. As Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago he was in China from 1901 to 1904 collecting specimens and making investigations with the Jacob H. Schiff Chinese expedition. He returned again to China in 1910 with the Mrs. T. B. Blackstone expedition. While he collected most of his Chou and Han pottery mainly in Shensi Province he also travelled widely in China and visited Canton and Hong Kong. Thus he would certainly have reported Han pottery if it had been known in the area. This relatively recent discovery of neolithic archaeology in China is certainly paralleled here in Hong Kong. The first reference to it that I can find is by Dr. C. M. Heanley in 1928 when he described Hong Kong celts (8). Dr. Heanley, who fortunately is still active and keenly interested in Hong Kong (I received a letter from him recently), lives in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. He was head of the Government Vaccine and Bacteriological Department and in his spare time was a devoted amateur geologist. He knew of Laufer's work and in his article on celts referred to Laufer's statement that prehistory stone implements were scarce in China. Heanley suggested that they were only scarce because prospectors did not know how to look for them. He said, "To find celts in South China select the crests and spurs of granite hills bared of vegetation by rain erosion. Do not look for celts but look for isolated fragments of pottery and water-worn stones. The eyes should be kept ranging well ahead and on either side and little attention given to the ground near the feet." Heanley estimated that on granite outcrops in Hong Kong there was an average of about 30 to 40 celts to the square mile within 600 yards of the sea and land reclaimed from the sea. Dr. Heanley's shrewd advice to prospectors has helped considerably in later searches. It is on raised beaches, terraces and hill-spurs that most of our archaeological remains have been Page 15 Page 16 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 42 EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY GÖRAN AIJMER* Introduction The following pages are devoted to a broad outline of economic and social change in a remote valley in a mountainous part of the New Territories, Hong Kong.1 The valley has its mouth on the east side of Tide Cove, and stretches about two miles in a southeasterly direction between the Ma On Shan and Turret Hill areas. The valley is fairly well-watered and there is a main stream at the bottom, which has plenty of water even during the dry autumn and winter months. Several small streams run down the steep surrounding mountain sides. This valley was once well-forested but little of this remains. Some groves of old trees can still be seen around the villages, and in the uppermost area, there are still patches of dense forest. The hillsides are now mainly covered with shrubs, and where not, on the upper slopes, there is poor grassland. The former woodlands of the valley were dwelling places for small barking deer and wild boars, but the animals have disappeared with the trees. Three settlements of Hakka-speaking people are to be found here. Together they consist of some 320 persons. There are no recent immigrants from China. Each settlement is inhabited by a patrilineal kin group with one common surname. One of these localities is a composite village situated at the mouth of the valley, where formerly two big streams jointly had their outlet into Tide Cove. The name of this place, Big Stream Village (Tai Shui Hang), is derived from one of these that comes down the northeastern hillside above the village and separates it into two parts. It is nowadays emptied of its water, which is led away for the use of the mining sites at Ma On Shan. There is a comparatively large area of flat land here, well suited for agriculture. However, during high tide, salt water soaks the lower areas and also runs up the mid-valley stream. * Dr. Aijmer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology at the University of Stockholm. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 60 R. G. GROVES * Skinner, G. W. "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China Part I: The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXIV, no. 1, November 1964, p. 32. 9 Ibid., p. 5ff. 10 Ibid., p. 32. 11 Ibid., pp. 32ff, C. K. Yang brings out clearly the significance of the market town as the centre of a system of communication. “In times of peace and tranquility, the subjects for chatting range from the births and deaths, weddings and quarrels, conditions of crops, some strange signs in the stars, some mishaps in certain villages, to all the big things and little things that make up the interest and chores in the daily life of the village peasants. But in time of war and political upheavals, in periods when banditry runs rampant or natural calamities plague upon the countryside, from the markets wild rumours fly; seeds of fear and suspicion are sown; signs of omens are interpreted and widely scattered." Yang, C. K., A North China Local Market Economy. Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1944, p. 13. 12 See, for example, Freedman, op. cit., pp. 82ff., Hsiao, op. cit., p. 423. 13 Skinner, op. cit., pp. 21ff. 14 Skinner, op. cit., p. 27. 15 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 18ff. 16 Ibid., p. 20. 17 Ibid., pp. 20-21. 18 Amyot, J. The Chinese Community of Manila; A Study of Adaptation of Chinese Familism to the Philippines Environment, Research Series no. 2. Philippines Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (mimeo), 1960. As will become clear, Amyot's analysis is important to the arguments of both Skinner and Freedman. 19 Hsiang is commonly translated as 'township', a practice followed by Amyot. Freedman points out that both 'Hsiang' and 'township' have been used as administrative terms and proposes the more neutral 'vicinage' as an alternative translation, Freedman, op. cit., p. 23. 20 Amyot, op. cit., p. 40. Quoted by Freedman, op. cit., p. 22. 21 Ibid., pp. 52ff. Quoted by Freedman, op. cit., p. 23. 22 Freedman, op. cit., p. 23. 23 Ibid., p. 25. 24 Ibid. It will be argued below that, even in the case of the Hsin-an higher-order lineages, the standard marketing area was organizationally significant. 25 The New Territories formerly constituted roughly three-fifths of Hsin-an county. By the Convention of Peking, 6th June 1898, they were leased to Britain for 99 years. 26 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 36. The term "local corps" is used by Chiang Siang-tseh in his work The Nien Rebellion, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1954. 27 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 38. 28 Ibid., p. 39. 29 Ibid., pp. 39-40. 30 Ibid., p. 63. 31 Ibid., pp. 64-5. 32 Ibid., p. 112. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 170 BOOK REVIEWS Japanese villages, Mexican villages and, indeed, European villages. It is precisely through looking for parallels and differences in social structure (despite what might be great differences in culture) that generalizations about the village as a form of social organization and human association may in fact be forthcoming. What would seem to be required now is a two-fold effort in which the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society might fruitfully participate. The first effort should be the accumulation of data in archival form which would be available to scholars in Hong Kong to use for comparative purposes. This archival effort would have to be well enough subsidized to be able to reproduce and store data, the original copies of which no author would willingly leave behind. The second effort usefully could be a conference of people actively involved or likely to be involved in research about Hong Kong villages (or indeed any villages) in which discussions could be held concerning what current researchers in the field think are the major issues and research problems. Perhaps through this conference a programmatic series of research efforts, which would have greater final scientific value than any single research effort could have, would be forthcoming. Open-ended books like Mr. Baker's can help to stimulate thinking of this kind and as a consequence must be rated as both useful and important. STRANGERS AT THE GATE, SOCIAL DISORDER IN SOUTH CHINA, 1839-1861. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., University of California Press, 1966, pp. 276, US$6. This fairly short book provides a narrative of the main events of twenty-three years of British dealings with Canton and Kwang- 11 The Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, has recently begun such a project. A conference has been held in which problems of research have been discussed: this is a hopeful beginning. It may be further aided by the forthcoming publication of a new bibliography of materials about Hong Kong, to be published shortly by the Department of Extramural Studies, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Editor's note: the proceedings of the conference mentioned in Dr. Berkowitz's note 11 have now been published. See Marjorie Topley (compiler) Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong. Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars. Hong Kong, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LIST OF MEMBERS 251 LIFE OVERSEAS MEMBERS: JORDAN, Dr. David K. - Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, U.S.A. KNOWLES, Mrs. W. C. G. Wakes Colne Place, Nr. Colchester, Essex, England. LINDSAY, T. J., M.B.E. 3, Bareena Avenue, Wahroonga, N.S.W., Australia. LOTHROP, Francis B. 176, Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. MANSFIELD, Miss M. B. The Royal Naval School, Haslemere, Surrey, England. McBAIN, George c/o Imperial Chemical Industries (Japan) Ltd., C.P.O. Box 411, Tokyo, Japan. McDOUALL, J. C. - The Old School, Souldern, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England. MEFFAN, Mrs. I. E. - c/o Swire, MacKinnon, C.P.O. Box 703, Tokyo 100-91, Japan. MICHAELIONES, Miss E. O. The British Council, Halls Croft, Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. MIDDLEBROOK, R. W. 165, East 66th Street, New York 21, N.Y., U.S.A. MILL, Capt. C. S., Jr. - Indian Hill, Pittsboro, N.C. 27312, U.S.A. MILLER, Carl Ferris O. c/o Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, G.P.O. Box 255, Seoul, Korea. PLAG, Rev. A. 7000 Stuttgart 1, Roemerstr. 41, Germany (F.R.) ROBINSON, Prof. K. E. The Old Rectory, Church Westcoat, Kingham, Oxford, OX7 6SF, England. ROTHE, Ulrich 'Wohnstift Augustinum' Apt. 778, 5483 Bad Neuenahr, Germany. SINFIELD, G. H. C. Hong Kong Tourist Assoc., 159 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. SPERRY, H. M. 64, Hillbrook Drive, Portola Valley, California 94025, U.S.A. STEVENS, Major K. G. - 9 Cherry Glebe, Mersham, Ashford, Kent, England. SWIRE, A. C. c/o John Swire & Sons Ltd., 66, Cannon Street, London, E.C.4, England. TARARIN, P. A. 623, Harper Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90048, U.S.A. TILL, The Very Rev. Barry c/o Morley College, 61, Westminster Bridge Road, London, S.E.1, England. TURNER, Sir Michael c/o The Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., 9, Gracechurch Street, London, E.C.3, England. WARD, Miss Janet A. c/o National Provincial Bank Ltd., Bideford, North Devon, England. WELCH, Holmes H. 4 Holden Lane, Concord, Mass., USA ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 264 LIST OF MEMBERS ORDINARY OVERSEAS MEMBERS: ANDERSON, Dr. Eugene N., Jr. Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, Cal. 92502, U.S.A. BERKOWITZ, Prof. M. I. Professor of Sociology, Dept. of Sociology, Brock University, St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada. BEVERIDGE, R. J. 13, Hartwell Hill Road, Hartwell, Victoria, 3124, Australia. BINGHAM, Mrs. Annette Welby Croft, Chapel-en-le-Frith, SK12 6CY, Cheshire, England. BLACKMORE, Michael "Highfield", 37, The Hollow, Bath, Somerset, BA2 1NB, England. BOXER, Prof. Baruch 167, Laurel Circle, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, USA. BRAGA, J. M. c/o National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia. BUNGER, Dr. Karl 53, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Lukas-Cranach-Strasse 14, Germany. CHAR, Tin Yuke 3898, Diamond Head Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96816, U.S.A. CLARK, Mrs. A. T. c/o Government House, Honiara, British Solomon Islands, Protectorate. EITZEN, Mrs. J. 155, Mt. Pleasant Road, Singapore 11. FITZGIBBON, Desmond J. c/o British Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon. FREEDMAN, Dr. Maurice 187, Gloucester Place, St. Marylebone, London, N.W.2 HAMILTON, Bill G. 13768 Howen Drive, Saratoga, Calif. 95070, U.S.A. HARNISCH, Mr. & Mrs. D. 204, South Ellen St., Homer, Illinois, U.S.A. HARRISON, Prof. Brian 26, The White House, St. Paul's Bay, Malta. HARTWELL, Lady c/o Barclays Bank, Piccadilly Circus Branch, 52, Regent Street, London, W.1., England. HARTWELL, Sir Charles c/o Barclays Bank, Piccadilly Circus Branch, 52, Regent Street, London, W.1., England. HAYDON, E. S. Old Castle Farm, Buckland St. Mary, Somerset, England. HAYWARD, G. W. White Mill End, 5, Granville Road, Sevenoaks, Kent, England. HENSMAN, Prof. Bertha c/o St. Anne's College, Oxford, England. HILSDALE, Mrs. K. H. 1105, Armada Drive, Pasadena, Calif. 91103, U.S.A. HORMANN, Prof. B. L. 2520, Malama Pl., Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A. HOWARTH, Richard H. c/o American Embassy, Merchant Street, Rangoon, Burma. JOHNSON, Dr. Graham E. Department of Anthropology & Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, B.C., Canada. Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 2 which followed his talk. In May, Mrs Carole Morgan talked on Dogs and Horses in Ancient China, a subject for which she is preparing a doctoral dissertation for the Sorbonne in Paris, and also in May we were invited by the Hong Kong History Society for a cultural evening. It was an Indian occasion, with a talk by Mrs Raj Ghose on Buddhist Art, followed by curry at the Gaylord Restaurant in Kowloon and a film on Rock Carvings. In October we invited Mrs. Raj Ghose back to talk to the Society and her subject was Tibetan Iconography. In September we had a talk by Miss Helen Perrell on Mandarin Squares, and in October our members were invited to the Fung Ping Shan Museum of the Hong Kong University to hear a talk on the museum given by the curator, Dr. Michael Lau, to University staff. In January Mr. John Myers, another doctoral candidate, for the University of Pittsburgh, talked on his field research into Chinese spirit-medium cults in Hong Kong's urban area. Mr. Myers is currently with the anthropology section of the Sociology Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Three other talks have been organised so far this year, all on China. One, also in January by Professor Cheng Te-k'un, scholar of international renown in the field of Chinese archaeology and art, was on Chinese export ceramics, and was illustrated with beautiful slides. In February Professor Hsieh Chiao-min talked on contemporary problems in modern Chinese geography. Professor Hsieh is on sabbatical leave from the University of Pittsburgh and honorary visiting professor in the Geography and Geology Department, University of Hong Kong. Finally in March Professor Noah Fehl, Chairman of the Department of World History of the Chinese University and a long time resident of Hong Kong, talked about the work and thought of the philosopher/scholar Tsou Yin, who matches Aristotle in period of time and some of his ideas. All our talks drew good size audiences and from the variation in their constitution from lecture to lecture it would appear that our policy of variety to suit different interests is a correct one. During the period, then, we were fortunate in being able to borrow the talents of many visiting and resident scholars. EXCURSIONS Mr. James Hayes, one of our Vice-presidents was as usual active in organising many of our excursions during the period. In ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE JOHN T. MYERS* Hong Kong possesses scores of temples where traditional deities of the Chinese pantheon are worshipped and petitioned by devotees from the local population. Although the temples differ in structural elaboration and popularity, the majority are host to a common set of individual and group rituals. It is in the very area of ritual, however, that the temple we will discuss in this paper differs from most others. This particular temple exists primarily to provide a setting where worshippers can communicate directly with selected deities through the services of religious practitioners who act as spirit mediums. Unlike their Western counterparts who specialize in contact with the spirits of deceased mortals, the Chinese mediums with whom we are concerned claim possession solely by immortals of the traditional Taoist and Buddhist pantheons. Our procedure shall be initially to discuss the meaning of spirit-mediumship in general and its more common manifestations within the Chinese cultural sphere. We shall then consider at greater length a particular spirit-medium temple in Hong Kong with special attention to its setting, history, personnel, and ritual. Even though this paper is by design a descriptive account of the temple and its cult, we shall in a final section discuss briefly the basis of the apparent success currently enjoyed by each. Does that success indicate a surge of interest in spirits and their mediums among the general population, or is the explanation to be found elsewhere? Spirit-mediumship Once man posits the existence of a supernatural realm with precisely or vaguely defined inhabitants, he is seldom content with allowing that perception to rest on the cognitive level alone. Almost inevitably there is the further judgement that the supernaturals are *Mr. Myers was on the faculty of the Sociology Department, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, during the period of his field work. His research on Chinese spirit-mediumship was supported by a grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute and administered through the Social Research Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently with the department of Anthropology, Indiana University. Plates 1-4 at rear of the Journal illustrate this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q The Teochiu: Ethnicity in Urban Hong Kong DOUGLAS W. SPARKS* The Teochiu1 are a highly visible ethnic group2 in Hong Kong. They are aggressive, belligerent, likely to be involved in triads or narcotics, highly organized and shrewd businessmen. This is the stereotype of Teochiu that is widely held by non-Teochiu in Hong Kong. Emotional reactions to Teochiu at times seem to approach the vehemence of racist beliefs, although the diacritics signalling identity are not phenotypic but linguistic, cultural (food, emphasis placed on certain rituals rather than others) and most importantly for this article an individual's self-identification as Teochiu and concomitant involvement in largely Teochiu social networks and possibly in Teochiu organizations. It is difficult, however, to explicate the meaning of this identity in that there is tremendous diversity in the Teochiu population of Hong Kong. Some estimates of this population suggest that it is as high as one-fifth of the total population (see below). There is no clear-cut relationship between ethnicity and occupation in urban Hong Kong, much less between ethnicity and class. Teochiu are found in all sectors of the economy and at all socio-economic levels. * The author is a postgraduate research student from The Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, who recently carried out 18 months field work in Hong Kong. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, for which he expresses his indebtedness and appreciation. 1 The most widely recognized romanization for this ethnic group in Hong Kong is "Chiu Chow" which is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters 潮州. Newspapers, government publications and even Teochiu associations in Hong Kong use this romanization. “Teochiu" and other variants (Taechew, Tiochew) represent the romanization corresponding to the pronunciation of the characters in the Teochiu language and are widely used by Western scholars in South East Asia. 2 The Teochiu as well as other Chinese ethnic groups in South East Asia and Hong Kong have until recently been labelled "dialect groups" and their languages considered to be dialects of "the" Chinese language. This terminology is inappropriate in that these so-called dialects are quite clearly languages, being for the most part mutually unintelligible. The use of the term "dialect group" not only reflects the lack of interest and possibly the unawareness of the importance of ethnicity as a variable in studies of overseas Chinese, but has also served to obscure and minimize that importance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q INTERETHNIC INTERACTION – A MATTER OF DEFINITION: ETHNICITY IN A HOUSING ESTATE IN HONG KONG DOUGLAS W. SPARKS* This article examines interethnic interaction and ethnic boundary maintenance in a public housing estate whose residents include many former refugees from mainland China. Attention is focused on relationships between two ethnic groups who are similar in language and culture and between whom there is some intergroup passing but which are, paradoxically, separated by rigid cognitive boundaries. The historical origins and relationships between these two ethnic groups in China are related to interaction and communication patterns in the housing estate. Variation and confusion in categorization of people from villages in the border area between the two ethnic groups in China is shown to be a function of participation in social networks which include people from the border villages. The fieldwork for this research was undertaken in a resettlement estate in Tsuen Wan, an industrial new town in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and was primarily concerned with the Teochiu ethnic group which is generally described in the companion article in this issue of the Journal. The housing estate in which I worked is located in North Kwai Chung, in the eastern part of the new town, an area of heavy industrial concentration and the location of several large housing estates. This particular housing estate was chosen as the primary fieldwork site largely because I had very good contacts with Teochiu leaders in local religious associations. My major concerns in the research were with the analysis of group dynamics and leadership within these associations and within the dense Teochiu networks within the housing estate. * The author is a postgraduate research student from The Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, who recently carried out 18 months field work in Hong Kong. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, for which he expresses his indebtedness and appreciation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n "LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)": SUB-NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY IN NORTH POINT, HONG KONG GREGORY E. GULDIN⭑ "Ethnic neighborhoods" are found not only in city guidebooks but squat smugly astride the intersection of Urban Anthropology with Ethnicity Studies. Mention of such a neighborhood conjures up visions in both folk and anthropological minds of a distinctive and discrete portion of a city marked off by spatial as well as social boundaries from the rest of the urban area. Cultural peculiarities and perhaps even physical oddities predominate on the streets, in the homes, in the shops. So much for popular and anthropological expectations. Field research in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong has disclosed to me how misleading such a priori notions of ethnic neighborhood can be. In Hong Kong, certain neighborhoods are known as districts inhabited by certain groups of ethnically distinct Han Chinese,1 yet in every district in urban Hong Kong the majority Guangdongese (Cantonese) is indeed the majority group and not the purportedly dominant minority group. Since all these districts are peopled by a majority of Guangdongese, I submit it is rather imprecise to speak of a neighborhood such as North Point as "Little Fujian" when only 1/5 of the population there is Fujianese (Fukienese). To avoid the clumsiness of a terminology of "universal," "substantial," or "bare" majority predominance in a neighborhood, we should instead simply sharpen our tools and terms of urban analysis. We should realize that in the case of North Point and Hong Kong (and, I suspect, in many other cases) the concepts of "neighborhood" and "community" do not overlap, that the geographical/spatial boundaries of a neighborhood may not be coterminous with the sociocultural ones of a community. A city-wide ethnic community may encompass a number of neighborhoods or sections of neighborhoods. Conversely, a neighborhood may be composed of a number of spatially distinct sub-neighborhoods and/or a number of socio-culturally distinct communities. * Professor Guldin is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 128 GREGORY E. GULDIN REFERENCES CITED Amyot, Jacques 1973 The Manila Chinese, Quezon City, R.P.: Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila Univ. Charsley, S. R. 1974 "The Formation of Ethnic Groups." In Urban Anthropology. A. Cohen, (ed.). Pp. 337-68. London: Tavistock Publications. Department of Census and Statistics, Hong Kong Government 1966 By-Census. Hong Kong. 1971 Census Report. Hong Kong. 1975 Census Update. Hong Kong. Drieger, Leo and Glenn Church 1974 "Residential Segregation and Institutional Completeness: A Comparison of Ethnic Minorities." The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 11:1. Pp. 30-52. Fox, Richard G. 1977 Urban Anthropology: Cities in their Cultural Settings. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Freedman, Maurice 1958 Lineage Organization in Southeast China. LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology. London: The Athlone Press. Gordon, Milton 1964 Assimilation in American Life. New York. Guldin, Gregory E. 1977 Overseas at Home: The Fujianese of Hong Kong. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin Department of Anthropology. Madison, Wisconsin. Joy, Richard 1972 Languages in Conflict. Kuo Shou Hwa 1964 History of Hakka Chinese. Taipei, Taiwan. [in Chinese] Lam, Mickey 1967 Postwar Development of North Point. Unpublished Hong Kong University B.A. thesis. Univ. of Hong Kong Architecture Department. Li Yih-Yuan 1970 An Immigrant Town: Life in an Overseas Chinese Community in Southern Malaysia. Monograph Series B No. 1. Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of Ethnology Academia Sinica. [in Chinese] Lieberson, Stanley 1970 Languages and Ethnic Relations in Canada, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n McBeath, Gerald A. “LITTLE FUJIAN (FUKIEN)” 129 1973 Political Integration of the Philippine Chinese. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. Research Monograph No. 8. Berkeley, Calif. Neville, W. H. 1962 Treacherous River. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Skinner, William G. 1958 Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, New York: Cornell University Press. Southall, Aidan W. 1973 "Density of Role-Relationships as a Universal Index of Urbanization.” In A. Southall, (ed.), Urban Anthropology. Pp. 71-106. New York: Oxford University Press. Wai Bik-Ho 1957 The North Point District. Unpublished B.A. Thesis, Department of Geography, Hong Kong University: Hong Kong. Zheng Yi Qing 1974 Celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Association. Fujian Province Association Special 35th Anniversary Journal. Hong Kong. (in Chinese) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 ANCESTORS IN THE SPRING THE QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA Göran AIMER* İ. Guessing at China The study of traditional Chinese society is a multidisciplinary task of many facets. The enterprise is of a general historical nature as it aims at a reconstruction and understanding of a civilization which is part of the past. The study of China has seen an exciting cross-fertilization of styles and methods of investigation. Recent decades have brought about a tremendous development of the knowledge of Chinese traditional social life, although the formidable size of the undertaking explains why our knowledge is still fragmentary and in many respects unsystematic. What then is the place of anthropology in this broad field of enquiry? There can, of course, be no simple answer to that question and anthropologically minded students of Chinese society will offer, and have offered, widely different opinions. One possible contribution, which I will advocate here, is that the anthropologist could provide 'anthropological' readings of the source material, which is shared property of all disciplines involved in the study of China. From the point of view of the anthropologist our knowledge of the traditional rural society is very scanty indeed. And yet there is no immediate remedy for this state of affairs. The reason for this is partly to be found in the nature of the Chinese documents and sources on which the anthropologist will have to rely. Sometimes we obtain very full and detailed descriptions of aspects of social life, often we find rich prescriptions for various social undertakings, but generally speaking we will have to content ourselves with glimpses rather than full records of rustic life. Quite often, notes on life in the Chinese countryside are of an anecdotal character. There is, however, a vast amount of interesting data contained in such documents as local gazetteers, kin group chronicles, and ethnographic essays. Local 'gentry', despite their Confucian education, were often keen ethnographers eager to describe and sometimes boast about * Professor Aijmer, a previous contributor to this Journal, teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 178 JULIAN F. PAS in Western languages but also in Chinese and Japanese. Many of the writings are hardly known in the West: they include an enormous output of 'morality books' published by temples where there is a divination writing cult. There is, moreover, an abundance of books and articles in related areas, such as anthropology, ethnology and folk-lore, but also a staggering number of works on magico-religious ideas and practices: divination, geomancy, palmistry, astrology, fate-calculation and magic. Add to these the great number of journals and monthlies of various calibre published by scholars, priests, devotees, and temple-committees and one can see that the word complexity is justified. The economic prosperity of Taiwan has evidently influenced the booming of religious literature: the ancient custom of printing edifying texts for the benefit of others in order to increase one's own merits is nowadays no longer beyond the means of many people. (e) There is, finally, an ever-growing visibility of religious life in Taiwan: new temples and monasteries of various affiliations are built, old ones are repaired, restored, and/or refurnished at great expense. Large festivals, such as the ritual of community or cosmic renewal, are organized with more pomp and greater frequency than ever before. Not only humans are enjoying more prosperity: the gods share the economic progress with better housing, richer food and money offerings and better quality incense. Besides the officially recognized temples, i.e. those registered at the city hall, department of religion, (approximately 5,000 on the island), there is a growing number of private temples, usually housing a medium-cult: their importance in the community seems to be on the increase. The above mentioned five complexities are not exhaustive although they should not deter the researcher from doing more careful field work. They serve here as an excuse for the incompleteness and many inadequacies of my report. Although the validity of the old-fashioned division of Chinese religion into three has recently been the object of doubts and criticism,3 I am still going to use this traditional framework with an important addition: the folk-religion. Very often the distinctions between these four are blurred but there is at least a minimum degree of identity in each of the four, which makes a distinction along these old lines not only useful but very appropriate, if not necessary. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 PERSISTENCE AND PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE IN URBAN SITUATIONS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS OF THE WAICHOW HAKKA IN HONG KONG JIANN HSIEH* I. INTRODUCTION In modern anthropological literature, the study of voluntary associations or common-interest associations has received much attention. A main focus of such studies is on how rural migrants to cities organize voluntary associations that facilitate adaptation to the urban situation. In a context of rapid socio-cultural change, voluntary associations constitute one means of organizing rural settlement in cities; they create new roles and relationships that serve as substitutes for the traditional institutions with which the migrants have lost touch (Banton, 1968; Kerri, 1976; Fallers, 1967; Anderson, 1971; Freedman, 1960). For example, an excellent statement of the case, provided by Kenneth Little (1974:89-90) in his study of West African urbanization, is worthy of quotation: Voluntary associations are important in this situation because they provide a link between the traditional and urban way of life... In other words, these regional associations, as "adaptive mechanisms," provide for the rural migrant a cultural bridge, conveying him from one kind of social universe to another. Although the African ethnic or regional associations emphasize tribal duties and obligations, they are more directly concerned with adapting to a Western outlook and social practices, such as dress and table manners (Little, 1965, 1974: passim). In contrast to those of the West Africans, the voluntary associations of the overseas Chinese, as I pointed out in a previous article (Hsieh: 248), are mainly based on traditional principles. The overseas Chinese modify these principles to perpetuate their particular cultures. This seems to be particularly so in the case of the Hakka. * Dr. Hsieh, whose doctorate is from Pittsburgh, is a member of the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 REDISCOVERING OUR SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES BARBARA E. WARD* An audience composed mainly of Chinese residents of Hong Kong may well ask by what right a non-Chinese such as myself dares to speak on the subject of this symposium? My justifications are very simple: I am human, I am a scholar, I am a social anthropologist, and I passionately love Hong Kong, which is, after all, a place with which people from my country have been closely identified for more than one and a half centuries and which for more than thirty years I have regarded as my second home. There is, moreover, the further point that, as my husband is never tired of reminding me, I am a village woman by origin and rural society is familiar to me. I have just said that I am a social anthropologist, but some of you may wonder about this as you know me here as a member of the Department of Sociology. There is not really a problem here. In England, which is where I come from, and in many parts of what we here usually call "the West", the distinction between social anthropology and sociology is made primarily in terms of methods and approaches and general topics of interest, rather than in terms of who studies what societies. Perhaps you will understand this better when I tell you that although many of the courses I went to when I was a graduate student at the London School of Economics many years ago were indeed about so-called "primitive" peoples in parts of Africa and the South West Pacific, yet many others were about the complex civilizations of India and South East Asia, and the most memorable of all were the ones about China that were given by Professor Fei Hsiao-t'ung in 1947. Moreover, the first anthropological fieldwork I ever did was in London, and our subjects were English Londoners. * A paper read at a symposium held at New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 10th June 1981. The author, who is well known to readers of this Journal, was then Visiting Reader in Anthropology at the Chinese University, on leave of absence from Newnham College, Cambridge. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SOCIAL & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN N.T. 123 of whom (for example) one wants to make a complete linguistic survey (which would coordinate well with the kind of ethnographic mapping that Dr. Wang Sung-hsing was describing), and another of whom has already been invited to initiate comparative studies of Taoist and Buddhist ritual here and in Taiwan. Only last week I was discussing the possibility that two other established scholars, whose international reputation was gained from their work in Taiwan, may perhaps consider coming to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge about Hakka and Hoklo communities. At least three very promising younger anthropologists are planning to come here too—two of them Chinese and one French. Last, but far from least, there is the potential of our new Department of Anthropology and our established Department of Sociology and its counterpart at Hong Kong University, and the often excellent and extremely enthusiastic fieldwork of our students which Tam Yue-him mentioned and which David Faure is already using to such advantage. And there are a number of other local resources. Now, although it is so immensely rich in social and cultural traditions the New Territories is a small area. Given hard work, money, good coordination and planning now, it should be possible to obtain an almost complete record during, say, the next five or six years. If we can do this historians, social anthropologists, and, I hope, sociologists together — we shall then have something that does not exist for any other comparable area of China, and which now never can exist anywhere else. But that is only the first aim. The second is just as important. There is little point in merely collecting information. It has to be interpreted, written, and published. So far, the great mass of the published work on the New Territories has been written by academic writers for academic readers. Thus, not only is it scattered in different places and in need of being brought together, but also it is simply unavailable to the people who ought to read it. What is the use of discovering our cultural heritage without also making it available to its true heirs—the present and future generations of the people of Hong Kong and (dare I say it?) China and the world? (But especially our own young people.) This means that the stuff that is already known and the material that we are still collecting must not only be written but re-written for the general reader. That is the second aim of the work I want to do. J ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN AN URBAN ORGANIZATION: THE MUTUAL AID COMMITTEES JANET LEE SCOTT* The Mutual Aid Committees (MACs), or as they are more commonly known in Hong Kong, were first established in June of 1973. They are organizations composed of residents of a building, or more rarely, a group of buildings, and have the dual aims of promoting a sense of friendship and mutual reliance among all authorized tenants and of cooperating to promote better security, a better environment and more effective management generally (City and New Territories Administration 1982:1). Why are Mutual Aid Committees established? Investigations and interviews with government officials carried out during 1976-1978 suggested the following reasons. The first was the desire of the Hong Kong Government to improve communication with the people of Hong Kong. The MACs were originally created under directives from the Home Affairs Department, and came under the jurisdiction of the City District Offices, themselves set up under the City District Officers Scheme of 1968. As one writer described this Scheme: The CDO Scheme was announced at the beginning of 1968, but the first CDOs were appointed in the middle of that year. The Scheme divides the urban areas into ten districts: four on Hong Kong Island and six in Kowloon. A City District Commissioner on each side of the harbor coordinates the work of the CDOs, each of whom has liaison and other duties. * Dr. Janet Lee Scott is a member of the Department of Anthropology, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research on the Mutual Aid Committees was supported by a grant from the Institute of Social Studies of the Chinese University. Doctoral dissertation research carried out during 1976-1978 was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, an N.D.F.L. fellowship awarded through Cornell University, and a grant from the Cornell Center for International Studies. The author wishes to express her appreciation for such generous financial support. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 IMMIGRANTS AND SOCIAL ETHOS: HONG KONG IN THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES HELEN F. SIU* Introduction Since the early 1980s, terms such as “mainland boy” (大陸仔), “green stamp alien” (綠印客), “Canton Boy” (廣東仔), “Ah Chan” (阿燦), have entered the daily vocabulary of the Hong Kong media.' These terms specifically address Chinese immigrants who came to Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Around 1949, 700,000 refugees fled to Hong Kong from China. Another wave came in the wake of the famine years in the late 1950s. A third group consisted of “sent-down” city youths who escaped the chaos of the Cultural Revolution from 1969 to 1974. The recent wave of immigrants was triggered by liberalization policies in China. In 1977, 31,000 arrived in Hong Kong legally and illegally. In 1978, another 95,000 came. Immigration reached its peak in 1979 when 178,000 crossed the border. Another 91,000 made their way into Hong Kong in 1980, not to count numerous others who would never be found in the crowd. By the time the Hong Kong Government passed emergency bills in 1980 to restrict the inflow of immigrants, one out of twelve Hong Kong residents had settled for fewer than three years. Considering that different waves of immigrants have made up the population of Hong Kong since the 1940s, and that their energies and resources are well recognized, it is intriguing to see recent immigrants being singled out as a distinct social category and heaped upon with negative images. According to a survey conducted by students in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public sentiments towards recent immigrants were not couched in the most friendly terms. Eighty-five percent * Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University. Author's note: I wrote this paper under very sad circumstances. Judy Strauch, a fellow student, colleague, friend, had organized a panel for the Regional China Seminar at UC Berkeley in 1985 on refugees in Hong Kong. Due to her untimely death, I was asked to present a paper in her place. I kept the topic Judy had chosen with the hope that this was what she would have liked written. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 102 THE MINORITIES OF SOUTHERN CHINA: A GENERAL OVERVIEW NICHOLAS TAPP Introduction In the minority areas of Yunnan, as in much of the rest of the country, there are still small boys spreadeagled on the backs of oxen, little girls perched in apple trees munching apples, old women trudging home across the mountains bearing giant piles of firewood on their backs, and men riding slowly to market in dilapidated pony traps. Since Liberation, however, remarkable changes have taken place both in the relationships between different ethnic groups and in their own internal composition. Due to the kindness of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Kunming, Yunnan, which I attended as a Visiting Scholar in 1986, and through the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who invited me to participate in fieldwork in the Liannan Yao Autonomous County in Northwestern Guangdong during June 1986, and together with an earlier field trip in the summer of 1985, I have been able to visit various ethnic minority areas, interview villagers and collect data on different aspects of their social and economic conditions and religious beliefs. In addition to this I have met and held discussions with many specialists and experts on the minorities in the fields of ethnography, linguistics and history. The following is, therefore, a brief record of these investigations, with some attempt to arrive at a general overall perspective on the changing conditions of these areas since 1949. Most of the minority villages visited lack proper roads and the water-supply is poor, although they have electricity, if only for a few variable hours per day. Housing structure, while exhibiting strong regional and cultural variations, has been particularly influenced by Han village architecture, and demonstrates wide disparities of wealth. Generally outer walls are of adobe. In poorer areas timber and bamboo are still used, and in better-off areas granite or Dr. Nicholas Tapp is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 28 membership of an alliance." III. Studies on Jiao Festivals in Hong Kong: the 1980s a. Trend 18 There are not as many studies of Jiao festivals in Hong Kong as in Taiwan. The earliest study in Hong Kong is probably Taylor's 1953 ethnographical essay on the Cheung Chau Jiao festival. The article was re-printed in every issue of the special annual bulletin for the Bun festival in Cheung Chau until the beginning of the 80s. The late Prof. B.E. Ward noticed very early the importance of the Jiao festival to the understanding of rural society. Her account of the festival itself, however, appeared only briefly in her introductory guide book on festivals in Hong Kong. Dr. James Hayes has also noticed the importance of the celebration during his studies on rural communities in the outlying islands and new towns in Kowloon. However, only some of the celebrations were given brief mention in his 1983 book. Mathias' study on the 1975 Kam Tin Jiao festival is probably the earliest comprehensive study of the festival. It is a pity, however, that it has not been published. Kani, Obuchi and Yoshihara are probably the earliest Japanese scholars to realize the significance of Jiao festivals in Hong Kong. Kani, in his study of boat people in Hong Kong regards the Jiao on Cheung Chau island as an event, like the Hungry Ghost Festival, to feed wandering ghosts. Obuchi, working with a Taoist priest, Mr. Chan Wah, studied the symbolic meanings of different Taoist rituals performed in the 1975 Shatin Jiao festival. Yoshihara in a section of his paper on religion in Hong Kong briefly described the 1977 Tai Wai, Sha Tin, event. Beginning in 1979, Tanaka and Segawa commenced active data collection on the festival. Tanaka began his extensive research in Hong Kong in 1979. At least 14 different Jiao festivals were recorded in his three books. Segawa joined the research later, from 1983 to 1985, and several articles have since been published in Japanese. 20 22 The nineteen eighties saw a growth in interest in Jiao festivals among local institutions and scholars. In 1980, students and lecturers of the History Department (Dr. D. Faure), the Sociology Department (the late Prof. B.E. Ward), the Anthropology Department (Dr. S.H. Wang) and the Music Department (the late Dr. B.C. Lu) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong [CUHK] began concurrent studies on Jiao ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 41 Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 156-160 & 163-164, on the Jiao festivals celebrated between 1964 and 1972 in Ma Tau Wai, Nga Tsin Wai, Tung Chung and Tai O. N Mathias, John R.G., Study of the Jiao: a Taoist Ritual in Kam Tin in the Hong Kong New Territories (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1977-78). #I Kani, Hiroaki, "Hồn Kôn Chugokujin no shukyo shiso no ichidan nitsuite" Shigaku 40, no. 2 & 3 (1967). 22 Obuchi, Ninji, “Hon Kon no tokyo girei" |Daoist ritual in Hong Kong] in Ikeda Sueri Hakase Koki Kinen Toyo Gaku Ronshu (Tokyo, 1980), 753-769. 27 Yoshihara, Katsuo. "Shukyo" [Religion] in Kani Hiroaki (ed.) Motto Shiritai Hon Kon (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1984), 184-191. 11 See note 37. 14 I have been told that Dr. Faure had a manuscript on the Jiao festival sent to a publisher in Hong Kong. However, due to whatever reasons, it has not yet been published. See also Hayes, 164, about Faure's book on Jiao festivals. 36 I was probably the only researcher who participated in the 1980 Kau Lau Wan Jiao festival when I was first introduced by the late Prof. B.E. Ward and Dr. S.H. Wang to the Jiao festival celebrated by the fishing village. In October the same year, Dr. Faure and I attended the Jiao festival at Pak Kong, Sai Kung. In November, the late Dr. Lu Bin-chuan of the Music Department of CUHK, Dr. Lu's student Mr. Chan Wing-Hoi and I attended the Jiao festival in Fanling. Dr. Faure, Prof. Ward and Prof. Tanaka also came. The Jiao festival of Fanling and that of other areas are mentioned here and there in Faure's 1986 book. In December 1980 students of CUHK under the guidance of Dr. Faure, Dr. Wang and Prof. Ward started an ethnographical research on the Jiao festival in Ho Chung, Sai Kung. A detailed report of daily rituals was written by Lee Lai-mui and Cheng Shui Kwan, two CUHK students majoring in History and minoring in Anthropology. The report was sent to interested scholars. Unfortunately it has never been published. Two students of the CUHK at that time should perhaps be mentioned here: Chan Wing-hoi, who specializes in music and computer, was employed by the History Museum of Hong Kong to study the Kam Tin Jiao festival in 1985, a report of which was published in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29 (1989). Chan's master's thesis on folk music in Hong Kong also includes a chapter on the ritual music played by the Taoists at the Jiao festival. Chan also has an ethnography on the 1986 Shek O Jiao festival published in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 26 (1986), 78-101. The master's thesis of Leung Chor-on, now Ph.D. candidate of Cambridge University, submitted to the Anthropology Department of the CUHK gives a good account of the ritual symbols of the festival. Chan, Leung and I held a seminar on Jiao festivals on Dec. 11, 1988 for the "Research Circle of the Regional Society of Southern China" focusing on musical, ritual and social aspects of the festival. 27 Locally published works besides those by Faure and my own are: - (a) Chamberlain, Jonathan, "Introduction” in Chamberlain J. and Iam Lambot The Bun Festival of Cheung Chau (Hong Kong: Studio Publication, 1990). This is largely a collection of photos. Chamberlain's introduction is very descriptive but no sources are quoted. (b) Chan Wing-hoi, “Observations at the Jiu [Jiao] festival of Shek O and Tai Long Wan, 1986" Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 26 (1986), 78-101. Chan recorded meticulously what he was told and observed about the 'settlement', the 'participants', the "ritual site", the "local gods" and the "events". (c) Xiao, Kuo-jian (Anthony K.K. Siu), Xianggang Xiandai Shehui [Pre-modern society of Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Chung Wah, 1990), 86-97. Xiao attempts to illustrate three reasons why the communities in Hong Kong celebrate the Jiao. The first reason is to plead for fortune, to pay sacrifices to the gods, to drive away evils and to prevent 4 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 209 What more can a reviewer add? Perhaps to emphasize that an attempt has been made throughout to be and stay historical, and to let the pictures speak in a true harmony with the Introduction and captions, so that the readers can gain as much from the presentation as possible. The result is a work of lasting value. But what we sorely need, of course, is a book of photographs by Chinese photographers of the period, ones which are free from the pressures and purposes of the state. I am not qualified to say what might be available of this kind, though I suspect this is probably asking for the impossible, and unattainable given the many constraints of the time. In lieu, substitutes from other segments of the visual arts from and about this epic period in the history of China and its people must be found. But one lives in hope. JAMES HAYES Xianggang lishi wenhua kaocha [Field Studies on History and Culture of Hong Kong]. The Hong Kong Institute for Promotion of Chinese Culture, ed. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing. 1993. SIUMI MARIA TAM DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG This book is a collection of ten project reports that entered the "Award for Field Study Reports on History and Culture" competition between 1989 and 1991, organized by the HKIPCC. The book is divided into six sections in the following order: religion, archeological sites, historical events, occupations, festivals and civic life. The editor sets out to provide a comprehensive view of local history and culture research in terms of topic, field methods and presentation. All of the projects were undertaken by local secondary school students who chose the topic, designed the research and carried out the field investigations themselves. Although these are reports by teenagers, the standard of work produced is strikingly high. Much as the adjudicators have experienced (as indicated in Elizabeth Sinn's introduction and in the comments at the end of each report), I was pleasantly surprised by the insights coming from our teenage students, their ability in organizing and carrying out field research, and producing well-referenced reports. Many of the reports also include an ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 126 47 form 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. Op 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". ibid p. 224 » 10 174 ibid p 160 Discussion 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. Compare 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”. Vol under Donga jie ("Winter festival") TON Op cit. pp 147-148 Op cit. p 12 Op cit. p 176 100 It 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 A. Trevor Clark, C.B.E., L.V.O., M.A., F.S.A.Scot., served in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service in Nigeria, and then in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1977, being seconded to the Western Pacific for constitutional duties from 1972. Since retirement to Britain he has been an elected local government councillor, and a member of non-departmental public bodies and trusts, especially museums, and has contributed book reviews on Hong Kong affairs to various publications. Dan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time Member of Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (HKSARBRAS) and became President in 1997, having acted since the year before. He has written prolifically on the history and culture of the HKSAR. Keith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history generally, and has written prolifically on these subjects. Jennifer W. Welch, M.A. now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests are varied and include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history. Kwok-shing CHAN is a post-graduate student at the Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Thomas Kvan, M.A., M.Arch., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong. Justyna Karakiewicz, A.A. Dipl., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong and an urban designer who has designed towns and landscapes in Malta, France and England, amongst others. ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 References Andrews, Carol A.R. (1998, November 30), letter to the Author of this paper, the British Museum, Department of Egyptian Antiquities. Ball, J. Dyer (1989), Things Chinese, Graham Brash, Singapore, first published 1903. Bennett, Cortlan (1996, June 26), 'War-time Enmity Kicked into Touch,' South China Morning Post. Bergson, Henri (1956), 'Laughter,' Comedy, John Hopkins University Press. Bloom, Alfred H. (1981), The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, New Jersey, USA. Bolton, Kingsley and Christopher Hutton (1997), 'Bad Boys and Bad Language Chou Hau and the Sociolinguistics of Swearwords in Hong Kong Cantonese,' Hong Kong, The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, eds. Grant Evans and Maria Tam Siu-mi, Curzon. Bonavia, David (1980), The Chinese, Lippincott & Crowell. Cairnes, Alice (1998), 'Bean as Boss,' South China Morning Post. exact date not known. 'Cantonese Taste Gets the Chop' (1998, November 28), Hong Kong Standard, first published in People's Daily. Chen Wangheng and Shu Jianhua (1993), ‘Lun Lin Yutang de xiaopinwen' (On the Personal Essays of Lin Yutang), In Lin Yutang Juemiao Xiaopinwen (The Best of Lin Yutang's Personal Essays) 1-23, Changchun: Shidai Wenyi Chubanshi. Cheng, Margaret (1998, November 18), ‘Hospital Wants to Make it to the Top,' South China Morning Post. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x CONTRIBUTORS Philip J. Aston, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Surrey, UK. His research interests are in bifurcation theory and chaos. Code-breaking has been only an interesting sideline. (p.aston@mcs.surrey.ac.uk). Patrick H Hase, BA, Ph.D., is a long-standing Member of Council of RASHKB and currently the Hon. Editor (Books). He is a noted scholar and Hong Kong historian and has written prolifically on the subject (phhase@hkusua.hku.hk). James Hayes, Ph.D., D.Litt. (Hon.), is a Past-president of RASHKB. He is a noted scholar and Hong Kong historian, and has written several books, the most recent being Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87. He has contributed prolifically to the Journal (mouseh@one.net.au). Lawrence Lai, is an Associate Professor with the Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong (wclai@hkusua.hku.hk). Crystal Tang, is an active member of RASHKB (crystal.tang@dfait-maeci.gc.ca). Nicholas Tapp, has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (1988). He lectured in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1989 to 1992 and then at Edinburgh University for five years. He is currently Senior Fellow, Acting Head, Department of Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra. His main publications are; Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand; (co-ed. with Chien Chiao) Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups in China; and (forthcoming) Context and the Imaginary: the Hmong of China. He has researched extensively on Hmong society in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China (ntapp@coombs.anu.edu.au). Dan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D., is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time council member of HKBRAS and has been President since 1997. He has written ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 146 "I'm really the end, the last generation of people who can reach through because the elders are still there, but they are getting very rare now. They are getting fewer." Dealing with the elders is difficult in many ways. There are areas that cannot be addressed, such as women's issues, and often the older generation will fall into their own native dialects, such as Wai Do, Yuen Long Wah or Hakka. Hase started telling me a joke about the differences in the dialects and how a sentence in Cantonese can be made to sound completely different, and not very pleasant, in another dialect. I didn't get it, but I enjoyed listening to the historian tell it. Hase worked for many years in Shatin as district officer, which made getting interviews with the elders a lot easier. When Hase retired from the civil service, he was deputy director of the Urban Services Department. He is currently running his own consultancy firm and most recently testified in the capacity of Fung Shui specialist in the Spur Line case, the controversy over the building of a railway through Long Valley, a bird haven that supports more than 200 species. Hase took over the RAS presidency in March and has agreed to serve for three to four years. "We are a middle-aged gweilo society, but I'd like to see us a little bit less," said Hase. "We're always going to be a middle-aged gweilo society but I'd like to have a lot, a much higher percentage of young Chinese members even if it was always to remain a minority. But how to do this? We've been thinking for 20 years and not been able to come up with any solution." Membership as of March 12, 2001 stood at 477, which includes 391 local and 86 overseas members. A hundred new members had been recruited between the end of January 2000 to March 13, 2001. Instead of trying to recruit from the public, the society hopes to get new members with the potential to best serve the society. These include graduate students in anthropology, archaeology, history and sociology. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Gillian Bickley, Ph.D., is an English writer, teacher, and speaker, who has lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years, teaching at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Baptist University. She taught previously at Universities in Nigeria and New Zealand, and has lectured throughout Britain, the USA and Asia (gbickley@hkbu.edu.hk). Sidney C. H. Cheung, is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include visual anthropology, heritage and tourism, indigenous people, food and identity. His published books include On the South China Track: Perspectives on Anthropological Research and Teaching (Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 1998), Tourism, Anthropology, and China (White Lotus, 2001), and The Globalization of Chinese Food (Curzon Press and University of Hawaii Press, 2002) (sidneycheung@cuhk.edu.hk). Eric N. Danielson, studied modern Chinese history under the guidance of Professor Kent Guy at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he earned his History B.A. in 1988. Later, in 1994 he earned his History M.A. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He has previously published works on Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, and China. He was the co-author of The Yangzi River and the Three Gorges, sixth edition published by Odyssey Guidebooks of Hong Kong in August 2001. For the past six years he has lived in Shanghai, where he has worked as an education consultant and academic manager in China's rapidly growing private education industry (ShangConsultant@netscape.net). Michael Gillam, joined Dartmouth Naval College in 1945 at the age of 13 and continued his service in the Royal Navy specialising in Minewarfare and Diving. The first of his many visits to Hong Kong was in 1952 as a midshipman en route for the Korean War. Among his subsequent appointments was a year in Iran setting up a diving school in the Caspian Sea for the Imperial Iranian Navy and two and a half years in Singapore with responsibility for diving throughout the Far East Fleet. He returned to Singapore at the end of the 60's as Staff Operations Officer to the Inshore Flotilla that included responsibility for providing Coastal Minesweepers to act as the Hong Kong guard ship. xvi ================================================================================