RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966
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FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM

77

them and in Kyoto they were welcomed by a crowd of ten thousand persons. Their host both at the working sessions and on the tour was Mizuno Baigyo, the same monk who had helped Chinese monasteries resist confiscation in 1904. "It was chiefly through his good offices that the great conference in Tokyo was brought into being." Among those present was E. Kimura, Director of the Asiatic Bureau in the Foreign Ministry, which had apparently been at work in the background. Of course many of the Japanese who attended may have felt that they were using government help for their good purposes and would have denied that government was using them. Similarly the Chinese participants, although they were aware of the threat of Japanese militarism, probably felt that by taking part in the conference they had more to gain for their religion than to lose for their country. They saw the hope not only of a central role in the world Buddhist movement, but also of higher status for Buddhism at home, where a Japanese connection would impress their adversaries. Thus three years later, when the Japanese Buddhologist, Tokiwa Daijo, toured the monasteries of southeast China, he met Yüan-ying, who was soon to set up the Chinese Buddhist Association (Shanghai 1929) in an effort to protect monastery property. Yüan-ying told Tokiwa that his visit had given him courage and that from then on one of the arguments he would use to win over public opinion for the protection of Buddhism was the existence of a Department of Buddhist Studies at Japanese Imperial University. Japan was a country that had successfully modernized, yet it paid attention to Buddhism.10

This did not mean that the Japanese form of Buddhism was uncritically regarded in China. When T'ai-hsü was addressing the East Asian Buddhist Conference in 1925, he said quite frankly that Japanese monks were too sectarian and nationalistic; too much tainted by modernism and, compared to monks in China, less devout in their religious life and unable to undergo austerities. So strongly did T'ai-hsü feel about this that when he returned from the conference he decided that the Chinese sangha could not model itself upon its counterpart in Japan, since monks there married and ate meat.11 For their part, the Japanese thought that Chinese Buddhists were ignorant of modern critical methods and were content to take a traditional approach to Buddhist texts.12
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
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The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong

Carl T. Smith*

(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 15 March 1971)

INTRODUCTION

The opening of Tung Wah Hospital (1872)† marks the terminal date for this study of the emergence of a Chinese élite in Hong Kong. We are concerned, therefore, with the first thirty years of the colony's history, 1841-72.

The first decade was characterized by economic and social problems partially created by a shifting and generally irresponsible population. During this period, there was, however, a small number of settlers who were establishing themselves and their families with the purpose of making Hong Kong their permanent home, of acquiring capital, and of investing in real estate. As the Colony entered into the 1850s, this group increasingly assumed a position of leadership. It was recruited from a few successful contractors and builders, several government servants, compradores of foreign firms, and Chinese Christians attached to missionary groups.

The second decade of Hong Kong's history was marked by an influx of population and capital caused by disturbed conditions in South China created by the Taiping Rebellion. This influx turned into an exodus when hostilities began between the British and Chinese in 1857. But war brought more compradores to Hong Kong as foreign firms moved down from Canton.

In the third decade, there was a revival of trade, and a growing merchant class provided its share of élite. By the end of the

* Rev. Carl Smith is Lecturer in the Theology Division in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and has been associated with the College since 1962.

† It is difficult to know what date to give to the origin of Tung Wah Hospital. In 1869, a committee of concerned Chinese was organized. In 1870 (the usual date given for the foundation of the Hospital), the Tung Wah Hospital Ordinance was passed and the foundation stone was laid by the Governor. The Hospital was formally opened by the Governor on 14 February 1872.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
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# WOODBLOCK PRINTING

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than eight thousand volumes together with the world's oldest wood-block printed book are now kept by the British Museum in London. In 1908 a Frenchman, Professor Paul Pelliot, took away two thousand five hundred more volumes. What remained in the library, around eight thousand volumes, were sent to Peking in 1911 and are now kept in the Peking Library.

Buddhism came to China along the Old Silk Road first from Central Asia at the end of the last millennium BC and again in 67 AD when a mission sent to India by the Han Emperor Ming Ti (***) returned with two learned Indian scholars. Chinese pilgrims, notably Fa-hsien (3); §) 399-424 AD and Hsuan-tsang (✯✯) 625-645 AD, used the Old Silk Road. All went through Tun-huang,

By the time of the Tang Dynasty, 618-905 AD, woodblock printing had already developed to a high state of artistry. Buddhists made full use of the printing technique to popularize their religion. Buddhism was very prosperous at that time. There were more than five thousand temples in existence, and around three million people became monks or nuns. The temple authorities and their followers engaged in publishing Buddhist texts or sutras with great enthusiasm, as they believed that the more texts or sutras that could be published and circulated the more merit would be rewarded. Most of the sutras were printed with images and illustrations so that they could be better understood by those followers with only little education.

In the year 931 AD the government of Late Tang (k) set up a special printing section under the Education Department (§76) to engage scholars, carvers, and printers to make woodblocks to print all classical texts copied from the stone texts, the first official textbook printing in Chinese history. It took twenty-two years to accomplish the whole series, consisting of nine classical texts totalling one hundred and thirty volumes and finished in the year 953 AD, Late Chou (£§).

The great advance in wood engraving skill should be credited to Northern Sung Dynasty (a). In the period of the tenth or twelfth centuries, the production of both classical texts and illustrated novels, including imprints of stone and woodblock folk prints, increased in quantity and quality. Books of fiction printed in the Sung Dynasty 960-1179 AD were amply illustrated, with illustrations

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NOTES AND QUERIES

203

He won his knighthood in 1902. His activities also extended to religion (he built St. Andrew's church in Kowloon), sport (he presided over the Jockey Club for many years) and the arts (the "Chater Collection" of porcelain, pottery and paintings was highly valued).

The house

Marble Hall was built towards the end of the nineteenth century. About five hundred feet above sea level, it was said to command excellent views of the harbour and stood amidst two acres of shrubs and tropical plants. A Public Works Department memorandum noted that its external walls were of "stuccoed brickwork finished in the Classic Style through which runs a strong Jacobean tendency"; the main staircase was "of monumental design executed in polished Italian marble." The house was flanked on three sides by wide verandahs and contained a spacious hall, drawing room, card room, dining and billiard rooms, four bedrooms (each with its own bathroom and easy access to a drying room), a large kitchen, pantry, scullery, silver and wine closet, and ample servants' quarters. Internal materials included mahogany from England and stained and polished teak.

Admiralty House

Sir Paul Chater died on 26 May 1926 and, in his will, bequeathed Marble Hall and its furniture, fixtures and household effects (including pottery, paintings and all his racing cups but excluding some china and curios) to the government of Hong Kong. The gift was to take effect when his widow, Lady Maria Christine Chater, ceased to live in the house. She apparently left the colony in 1927 with no intention of returning, but the house did not become the property of the government until her death on 11 March 1935. Governor Sir Cecil Clementi had suggested in 1926 that Marble Hall be offered to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for use by the Naval Commander-in-Chief of the China Squadron, and in 1935 the gracious residence became the colony's "Admiralty House."

The Admiral found other accommodation after Christmas Day, 1941, but following expulsion of the Japanese from Hong Kong in 1945 he once again took residence in Marble Hall. Soon afterwards, however, the house was damaged by fire. It apparently stood dere-
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938
CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED

JULIAN F. Pas*

This is a review article partially intended as a book review of Philip Baity's Religion in a Chinese Town1 but also as a reopening of the discussion on Chinese religion, with emphasis on the popular religion. The setting is Taiwan, but the subject can hardly be contained to this small island and somehow reflects the problems of religion in China as a whole.

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the study of Chinese religion. This monograph by P. C. Baity is a most welcome addition to the number of more serious works on the topic and shall have to be taken into account by all future researchers. Based on field work carried out in Northern Taiwan (Tamsui and Peit'ou) between 1968 and 1970, the present work is a reproduction of the author's doctoral dissertation. His viewpoint is primarily anthropological: besides summarizing his field work results, he also offers a new way of interpreting the paradoxical relationship between the three traditional religions of China and "the array of folk religious beliefs and practices which are characteristic of the great majority of people in both villages and towns.” (p. vii).

Although the author has done his research carefully and provides us with a mass of new information and new insights, I still have serious reservations about his overall thesis: a new interpretation of the relationship between the three classical religions and the folk religion. In this review I shall summarize and evaluate each chapter in turn, offering a more synthetic presentation of my views on the author's new interpretation.

Chapter 1, "The Development of Temples in the Field Area" (pp. 15-53), sketches the development of temples in the area under study. From the time of immigration to Taiwan on a more significant scale...

* Julian Pas is Associate Professor, Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

1 Baity, Philip Chesley. Religion in a Chinese Town, (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, vol. 64, edited by Lou Tsu-K'uang). Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1975. (ix-307 pp.) U.S. $7.00.
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RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN: A PRELIMINARY REPORT'

JULIAN F. PAS*

This report is a preliminary attempt to describe and interpret the present-day religious situation in Taiwan. It is based on my personal field work observations and data collected in Taiwan during 1977-78 (ca. 12 months); but is supplemented by a great variety of recent publications both in Chinese and in Western languages. The reason why Taiwan was chosen as the observation field is practical and has nothing to do with political viewpoints or preferences. Besides, it is my belief that the religious practices observed in Taiwan reflect, if not the whole of China, at least a large area of South China, where many of the modern Taiwan practices actually originated. We may here apply the saying that many people in Taiwan quoted to me when discussing their religions: Ta-t'ung hsiao-yi ★ identity in the main lines, with variations in detail. However, oversimplification would not do justice to the complex situation. The picture, indeed, is complex but significant: its complexity will be shortly discussed; its significance is manifest from the fact that Taiwan, although the smallest province of China, has maintained and developed religious practices which once were observed on the mainland but have probably become extinct there. Who knows, whether these practices flourishing today in Taiwan are perhaps also an “endangered species”?

For the time being, however, religious life in Taiwan is flourishing as perhaps never before. The situation is hard to describe and interpret to its full extent. This report mainly reflects my own experiences and is therefore by its very nature limited and perhaps, occasionally biased.

My report consists of three parts: first I shall point out and analyse various reasons of complexity; secondly, discuss one by one the participants on the religious scene; and in the third place attempt to pinpoint, by process of induction and by intuition, some of the major characteristics of modern Chinese religion as practised in Taiwan.

* Dr. Pas is Associate Professor, Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
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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.
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32

KEITH G. STEVENS

include the burning of incense every day. This amongst other things saves the individual having to perform the rite before his ancestral tablets daily.

4 There are no Confucian temples in either Hong Kong or Macau.

5 Although there are obvious and major differences between Daoism, Buddhism and Folk religion, their beliefs and practices are so interwoven and syncretized beyond description, that in practice there is almost a single religious scheme of things. A handful of folk religion temples, mostly in Chaozhou and Min An community resettlement areas, are also centres for spirit medium activity. Chaozhou and Min An people customarily communicate with the major gods through minor gods and spirit mediums, Folk religion is very occasionally referred to as "Spirit worship” (Shen jiao), albeit more by foreigners than by Chinese.

Chaozhou and Min An spirit mediums are usually males who speak with the more junior gods, whilst Cantonese spirit mediums are normally female and speak with the spirits of the dead.

* The natives in both Hong Kong and Macau are Cantonese. Immigrants over the centuries who brought their own cultural heritage with them are the Hakka, Min An, Hoklo, and Chaozhou. The Chaozhou are speakers of the Chaozhou (sometimes called Swatow) whose native area is eastern Guangdong province. In folk religion the Chaozhou have more in common with their immediate neighbours to the north, the Min An and other Fukienese rather than with their Cantonese neighbours.

The total of 450 temples reflects the number found and visited by the author. The total given by the Hong Kong Government Temples Committee of the Home Affairs Department of over 500 private temples registered in Hong Kong is misleading in that their total includes to the author's knowledge quite a number of small temples which have been destroyed, removed or closed down. The author's number of 450 is also inaccurate as there are bound to be a number of very small temples hidden away in residential blocks of flats which would defy discovery without a visit to every floor of every apartment building.

* County towns were the centres for official, commercial and religious activities. Villages within present day Hong Kong before the arrival of the British came under the jurisdiction of the mandarin at the county town of Hsin An (present day Pao An), north of the Sino-Hong Kong border.

* However, an engraved title can easily be superseded when a more popular deity has been promoted to the main altar, without the title over the entrance being changed.

10 Images on, beside, before and under altars can be categorised into the deities themselves, and their disciples, guardians and attendants. There are also two other categories of figures, seen only on separate altars in some Buddhist temples. These are the likenesses of the founding Abbot and of major donors and their wives.

11 Urban and rural are terms used for the areas where the temples were established, and many a rural temple is now lost in the centre of a vast modern housing estate. Urban temples do not include village temples, they do however include the temples of the market towns such as Taipo and Yuen Long.

12 These "pensioners" are normally the most needy and worthy elderly males or females of the community, voted or appointed into the post and supported there by subscription.

13 See Hong Kong 100 Years Ago (Hong Kong City Hall, 1970) on the sixth page of photographs, though under another titling.

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CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS

33

14 Because of the exorbitant rents for such accommodation, temples in shop houses and flats in Hong Kong are few and far between. In Singapore and Malaysia, temples in shop houses are very common indeed, though they are becoming less so as the years pass and rents in urban areas rapidly rise.

15 Occasionally such a temple may be a converted private house, as in the many examples in Lo Wai village, Tsuen Wan, but more often it is a purpose-built but inexpensive hut.

18 Temples containing images of the Buddhist deities Di Zang Wang, Milofu, and Guan Yin are not necessarily specifically Buddhist, as all three of these deities nowadays are also extremely popular deities in folk religion temples.

17 Mahayana is Northern Buddhism and Theravada or Hinayana is Southern Buddhism.

18 "Illegal" is a Hong Kong term for buildings which have been built on Crown Land often by squatters without Government land control or planning permission, but which have been permitted to remain standing under sufferance. In practice, they are temporary structures put up without permission, occasionally ramshackle though more often they are well-built timber, weather-board, and corrugated iron buildings, clean and well-proportioned. (Illustration 17). Some have stood for such a length of time as to have been gradually converted to concrete and brick. All are labelled on the side in rough daubs of paint with the bureaucratic abbreviations and digits prefixed by "TEM" (= temporary) affixed by squatter control staff of the Housing Department.

19 Demons are well known to Chinese to be unable to go around corners and must travel in straight lines, hence these inner doors to prevent the demons from entering the temple. The inner doors originally were opened exclusively for influential people.

20 See also James Hayes' information at JHKBRAS 6 (1966): 129-130.

21 In overseas Chinese areas, this kind of large street shrine is still very common and, in Singapore alone, some four to five hundred exist in all kinds of nooks and crannies. For a Hong Kong example, see JHKBRAS 14 (1974): 203.

22 Chu is one of the 28 Constellations (= xiu).

** See pp. 111-113 of the Hong Kong Government's publication Rural Architecture in Hong Kong (1979) for this pagoda.

24 In Imperial times, such masts were always to be seen outside the local magistrate's yamen.

25 Chinese bells have no internal tongue clapper, being tolled by an external blow with a wooden mallet.

26 For the Evacuation of the Coast, see Lo Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, 1963) Chapter VI.

27 For background, see Jen Yu-wen's article "The Southern Sung stone-engraving at North Fu-t'ang" in JHKBRAS 5 (1965): 65-68.

28 Government action is through the Chinese Temples Committee, serviced by the Trust Funds Section of the Home Affairs Department.

29 Temples according to this Ordinance include Miao (廟), Si (寺), Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, Guan (觀) and Dao Yuan (道院), and nunneries An (庵).
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SYMBOLISM OF THE NEW LIGHT

Further researches into Taoist Liturgy: suggested by a comparison between the Taoist Fen-Teng Ritual and the Christian Consecration of the Easter Candle

JULIAN F. PAS*

Light symbolism in its various dimensions is like an archetype; together with water symbolism it is one of the most frequently recurring themes in religious and anthropological literature. In dualistic systems there is sometimes a sharp distinction between light and darkness. Light is seen as the emanation of the divine; it is the symbol of goodness, purity and life. Darkness is the symbol of evil, the diabolical, the impure and death. In Chinese dualism, which is not so radically polarized, light is of yang quality, while darkness is yin. Divine spirits live in the yang world, whereas the "souls" of the deceased go to the nether world of yin before they are eventually returned to the world of the living through transmigration.

Although in Taoist philosophy, yin and yang are not strictly identified with evil and good respectively, the popular belief system has made this identification: why, how and when is not easy to discover. But in the popular conception, yin represents the world of the dead, and since death is feared by people, yin has become a symbol of evil powers which threaten man's life and vitality. Yang, on the contrary, has become a symbol of goodness: yang is life and should be nourished and increased, so that both individual and society may reach fullness of life, that is a full span of life, and in the case of Taoist adepts unusual longevity or even immortality.

Although light symbolism can be discussed from many different viewpoints, I wish to isolate one particular theme, found in two apparently unrelated liturgical traditions which not only present us with an example of some broad parallelism but actually are very similar to each other, both in meaning and in their concrete ritual expression. The first example is the Fen-teng ritual of the Taoist religion; the second example consists of the consecration of the Easter Candle.

* Dr. Pas is a member of the Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982
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PRESIDENT'S REPORT: 1982-83

Tonight I have pleasure in reporting on the Society's activities during the year. I will also comment on some other events of the period which will be of interest to you as members.

Lectures, Film Shows, and Tours

During the year our lectures as usual covered a wide range of topics relating to our area, and were delivered by specialists based in Hong Kong and visiting from overseas. There were two film shows, and one local and one overseas tour.

Our programme opened in March with a slide presentation of early photographs of Hong Kong with commentary given by Mr. Ian Diamond, Government Archivist, and entitled "Hong Kong in Victoria's time." In April Mrs. Rajeshwari Ghose, a specialist in the history and sociology of religion in India, spoke on the functions of the Hindu temple. We also showed two films made by Mr. Hugh Gibb, the well-known local film maker. The films, both made in collaboration with social anthropologists, were "Dragons on the Sea" which depicted the life of the traditional floating population of Hong Kong; and “Dajiu” which showed the Taoist rites of renewal of this name, that take place every ten years in the New Territories village of Ha Tsuen and its dependent group of hamlets. The first film was made with Miss Barbara Ward, and the second with Dr. Hugh Baker. We were pleased to welcome many members of the public to these films which were very well received and gained us some new members.

In May Dr. Peter Wesley-Smith of Hong Kong University's Law Department spoke on Francis Taylor Pigot, Chief Justice in the early part of this century; Mrs. Peggy Craig, a well-known organizer of highly original tours of India showed films she had taken on two tours in which members participated: the Pushkar Camel safari and "Meet the Maharajas"; and Frank Iklé Professor of History at the University of New Mexico spoke on the role of women in Japan.

In June Mr. Melvin Thatcher of the Genealogical Society of Utah spoke on the Chinese genealogies his society had acquired from public collections, and in July Dr. David Faure of the

Vill
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982
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It is with much regret that I record that among the deaths of members this year are some of our oldest friends. One, Mr. Holmes Welch, was a founding member of the Society and Member of Council during our first four years. He came to Hong Kong with the American Consulate General after academic studies in Sinology and publication of a highly original work on Taoism: The Parting of the Way. In Hong Kong his interest in Chinese religion and philosophy, and the organization of religious institutions, continued, and he gave one of the very first lectures to the Society, published in our first Journal, “Buddhist organization in Hong Kong”. Later he left the Consulate but remained in Hong Kong to continue field research into Chinese Buddhism, working with refugee monks. In the late sixties he published several volumes on contemporary Buddhism in China. After returning to the United States he continued his sinological studies and whenever I met him at conferences on religion he always asked after the progress of the Society.

Another of our recently deceased friends was Mr. John Romer, Curator of Mammals at Hong Kong's Zoological and Botanic Gardens, Hon. Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, and Senior Pest Control Officer of the Hong Kong Government until he retired. He has contributed on several occasions to the Notes and Queries section of our Journal.

It was also with great shock that we learnt of the death, in January this year, of Barbara Ward, whose last talk to the Society was given only just over a year ago. Barbara was the first anthropologist to conduct field-work in Hong Kong. Coming out in 1950 she picked as her field a very challenging group about which very little was known from direct contact: the Cantonese Tanka, or sui seung yan “people upon the water” as they preferred to be known, that is, the floating population of fisherfolk. She showed how the traditional Chinese institutions and culture in which they participated were modified by their very way of life: ancestor worship is different when you do not live on the land, the role of father in a family is different too when he is also captain of a boat. Barbara's later studies in Hong Kong, to where she frequently returned, included Cantonese opera and its role in

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come. From a religious viewpoint, Taichung is a rather average and conservative town; there are no very old and large temples of provincial reputation, attracting large crowds of tourists or pilgrims. In that respect, Tainan and Taipei are more famous, and of course so are other old places like Peikang and Lukang, once very flourishing fishermen's settlements but unable to keep up with modernization. Still, their temples keep attracting steady flows of pilgrims from afar.

In recent years the provincial and municipal governments have taken a more active interest in the religious life of the people. This can be seen as a continuation of the old imperial system, when religion was strongly supervised and even controlled by the officials, but the present day practice includes quite a few innovations. One innovation is the requirement that all temples should be legally registered. In municipalities this can be done at the city hall. The administration of the cities includes a department of population (min-tsu pu), which in turn has a sub-department of religious affairs. In 1976 the Taichung city hall printed a list of all the temples duly registered; upon request I obtained a copy. Later on I was allowed to borrow and photocopy a similar list in Tainan, whereas in Kaohsiung no such list had been printed yet: I was permitted to look through the register containing all the filled out registration papers sent in to the city hall by the temples.

I expect that all the major cities in Taiwan (Taipei, Keelung, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Yangmingshan) will have such a list by now, and each county or hsien government has started to register all the temples within their own jurisdiction. Copies of all these registers have to be sent to the provincial government. This will hopefully make future temple research much easier: to me and others it has often been a time-consuming and frustrating experience not to find up-to-date temple lists providing the most basic information, especially in a rapidly changing urban environment, where temples are continuously being broken down and rebuilt elsewhere.

The city of Taichung was one of the first to complete a list of the city temples. (Tainan was earlier: my copy dates from 1974.) When I visited the "religious officials" again in the autumn of
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Council. Mr. Gilkes' service and contribution to the work of the Society over so many years is being suitably recognised by a presentation following this report. Meantime, we are delighted that he can continue as Vice-President.

Publications

The annual Journal is our major contribution to knowledge of the Hong Kong region and further afield. Academic standards must be maintained, and each issue requires much time and effort. As I said last year, its production is dependent upon the spare time and energy of our editors. The 1984 Journal, which has been lagging behind, is with the printer, and the 1986 Journal is in an advanced stage of preparation. Both will appear shortly. We have also a book-length publication with the printer. This is an important study of religion in China today, edited by Dr. Julian Pas, one of our members and a past contributor to the Journal, who is with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. The book is an expensive publication by reason of its size and photographic content, and I am happy to report that, following an application by me as President, the Chinese Temples Committee has approved a grant of $50,000 which will meet half the cost. A publication on historic buildings in Hong Kong is still under consideration, together with a possible further volume of photographs of old buildings.

The Library

As members will see from the Hon. Librarian's report, our library collection has continued to increase in size through donations and purchases. We are grateful to all donors, and encourage other members to follow suit. Its value is now considerable, both in scholarly content and in monetary terms. Old books on China are in short supply and are ever increasing in cost, judging by the spiralling prices shown in specialist booksellers' catalogues.

As reported previously, it is held in the Kowloon Central Library at Homantin, Kowloon. The chief librarian reports 44 enquiries in the past year, with consultations on 100 books and 17 borrowings by members. Though an improvement on last year's figures, the collection is still under-utilised. In an attempt to...

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Our principal concern has been to document and explain the rapid growth in popularity in Hong Kong since the 1940's of the cult of Huang Daxian (on which, see Lang and Ragvald, "Upward mobility of a refugee god"). However, we have also been trying to trace the origins of the cult in Guangdong province, hence the research trip to the village. A report on this visit, and on the first author's initial visit to the village in 1985, has also been prepared. We are now working on a book on the history of the cult in Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Probable cases of the mergings of deities include, from ancient Greece, the merging of two incarnations of Zeus (Gilbert, Murray, Five stages of Greek Religion, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1951, p. 48; H.J. Rose, Religion in Greece and Rome, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 48-49), and of various female deities in Aphrodite (Paul Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1978, ch. 2); from Rome, the blending of Roman with Greek deities, and the subsequent apparent merging of some Roman deities with Celtic deities (John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 211-220); from the early Christian era, the probable absorption of elements of the cult of Diana into the cult of Mary (Herbert Muller, The Loom of History, N.Y. New American Library, 1958 p. 173; Durant, 1939: 183); from Mexico, the absorption of elements of the Indian goddess Tonantsi into the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Ena Campbell, “The Virgin of Guadalupe and the female self-image: a Mexican case history", in Mother Worship: Themes and Variations, ed. by Richard Preston, University of North Carolina Press, 1982).

9 This translation strangely enough contains one serious (the failure to recognize Dongtian Fudi [Cavern-heavens and blessed spots] as a general Taoist concept) and a few smaller mistakes. These, however, do not affect the arguments made in this paper.

10 This probable origin of the autobiography was pointed out to us by Dr. S.H. Wong of the Department of Chinese, Hong Kong University (see Wong, "A study of Huang Ta-hsien").

There are several slightly different versions of Shenxian Zhuan. For this translation we have used the relatively early (Song dynasty) version in Biji Xiaoshuo Daguan (A Parade of Note-form Fiction), Taibei, Xinxing Shuju, volume 4. 12 Essentially the same story is related in Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan, compiled in the 16th century by Wang Shizhen (reprinted by Zhongwen Chubanshe in 1971 on Taiwan). This is one of the major reference works on Taoist saints, with capsule biographies on some 500 of them, and covers the entire period from the beginning of Taoism until the last year of the reign of Hongzhi (1506 A.D.). This source adds only the information that during the Song and Yuan dynasties, both Huang Chuping and his brother were awarded honorary titles by the state. The story of Huang Chuping also appears in Jinhua Fuzhi (the prefectural gazetteer of Jinhua), volume no. 22 in the subsection "xian shi" (on fairies).

13

Ge Hong was a native of Jurong in Danyang (present day Jiangsu province). His career included service as assistant to prime minister Sima Rui, and as counsellor and military staff officer. He was honoured by the state for his services in the suppression of the peasant revolt led by Shi Bing. However, he was also very interested in Taoist alchemy. He was a grandson, on the fraternal line, of the famous necromancer and alchemist Ge Xuan (164-244), and from a disciple of Ge Xuan's, he learned the art of refining cinnabar. When word spread that cinnabar sand had been found in Jiaozhi (the ancient name for part of Guangdong and
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REFERENCES

Allen, Barbara, and William L. Montell

1981 From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research. Nashville: The American Association For State and Local History.

Chin, Margaret, et al.

1977 Religion and Organization: A Study of the Temple of Wong Tai Sin. Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University.

Day, Clarence Burton

1969 Chinese Peasant Cults. (2nd edition) Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Co.

Hayes, James

1966 "Chinese Temples in the Local Setting". In Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, pp. 86-95. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Lang, Graeme, and Lars Ragvald

1988 "Upward Mobility of a Refugee God: Hong Kong's Huang Daxian”. Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies. vol. 1, 54-87.

Loomis, C. Grant

1948 White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend. Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America.

Ogura, Manabu

1980 Drifted Deities in the Noto Peninsula. In Studies in Japanese Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson, pp. 133-44. New York: Arno Press.
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I shall not venture to say much about the cooking, etc. for I am obliged to keep my eyes shut on all occasions where I am near it, for fear I might see something not quite to my fancy in that department. I enjoy the biscuits very much, only I shall soon have to shut my eyes when eating them. Our fresh provisions are beginning to go, so we must soon fall back upon the preserved provisions. We have plenty of good milk to last the voyage, plenty of sardines, salmon, etc. and plenty of bottled fruit, so that we have a fruit pie or pudding every day. In fact we have everything that could be procured on land, and for what I can see, quite as good.

The captain and I agree very well on all points but religion. Yesterday we had a regular set-to about it, and I was obliged to talk to him rather plainly, only it will not do to say too much to such a man when he is warm. Captain Moult is about such another, or else he would not be a bad companion. He has been well educated, and has a good share of common sense. We are thrown a great deal into each other's society, and so it is to our interest to keep on pretty good terms. Since he has resided at Hong Kong for some time he knows all about the place, and I get a good deal of information out of him, on different subjects.

We have spent several hours in walking the deck together. It is the only exercise to be got on board ship. I have however invented two or three species of exercise in my cabin, which I find very beneficial. I believe I should be soon laid up if I did not take a fair amount of exercise. Often I have envied the sailors at their work, and should have liked to have a pull at the ropes with them.

Saturday, April 6th

Today has been a cheerful pleasant day. Soon after daylight the chief mate came down with the intelligence that land was in sight on the "lee bow". After so many days rambling over the water it was joyful news to me, so I got up, and had the usual wash all over, and went upon deck to take my constitutional, i.e. early walk. It was a lovely morning. The sun already "well up" was rather warm, and all round was lovely and delightful. Sure enough there was the land, but it was above thirty miles off, yet on account of its great elevation (in some parts 6000 ft) I judged it to be about four. The clear atmosphere quite deceived me. It proved to be Madeira, and we were on the eastern side. All day I have been on deck enjoying the beautiful soft balmy breezes, which are now quite
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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
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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
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THE OFFERING TO THE WHITE TIGER

IN CANTONESE OPERA

SAU Y. CHAN*

169

Introduction

Symbolically, the White Tiger is a mystic figure in Cantonese folk religion. Though it can also bring merits to people, it is often referred to as a fierce devil. Thus the ritual known as zae bak fu (Offering to the White Tiger) should be held from time to time so that the harm caused by the White Tiger could be minimized. It is performed in a variety of Cantonese folk religious practices and a comparatively more elaborate form of the ritual has been preserved in the tradition of Cantonese opera, where it is also called zuk bak fu (capturing the White Tiger), zae toi (offering to the performing stage), po toi (breaking or initiating the performing stage), da mau (beating the cat) and occasionally as tiu coi sen (dance of the Deity of Fortune) and tiu jyn tan (dance of the Jyn Tan deity). As it has often been criticized as a superstitious act in mainland China, troupes there have, according to some informants, ceased to perform this ritual in recent decades. Nowadays this operatic form of White Tiger ritual is mainly preserved by troupes performing in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

I

The Exorcistic Function of the Offering

According to interviews with many Cantonese operatic employees, whenever a theatre, whether temporary or permanent, is built on a piece of land that has never been used for such a purpose, the performing stage is called a sen toi (new stage) and the White Tiger ritual has to be performed for the protection of members of the troupe and the community which hires the troupe. It is believed that a tiger turns white when it reaches the age of 500. It would then make use of people's mouths to harm other people. Before the ritual is done, if one calls the name of another person, or simply talks, the words will be made use of by the White Tiger and the one who responds will be harmed. In the past, disasters such as the flooding, collapse and

* Music Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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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
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an extra $4 million because of an extension of time granted to a contractor when residents complained the district's fung shui was being disturbed. During the 1980s, amounts paid out annually by the Government varied between $500,000 and $950,000. From 1989 to 1991, ex-gratia payouts of nearly $2 million were made. The dilemma is always that if the Administration pays out on unproven claims, it will be accused of wasting taxpayers' money, and, if it does not pay, others will say the Government does not respect Chinese culture,

But as one retired Scottish civil servant explained, there are two kinds of fung shui. There is the one that villagers will accept money for to have it overridden. But nothing will compensate for actually severing the main "dragon's vein".

'Money cannot buy good fung shui,' Tang clansmen told the Government when they turned down an offer of $1.7 million for agreeing to a 200-year-old ancestral grave being removed at Nim Wan, in the Deep Bay area, so that a landfill project could proceed. The Clan did, however, say that it would consider allowing the grave to be moved for a fung shui 'swap' scheme, and if Government demolished a police station at Ping Shan. They claim the station has for years 'crushed' good fung shui. In retaliation, the Tang Clan closed an ancient study hall and an ancestral hall along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail. At the time of writing, the dispute had still not been settled.

The Hong Kong Government has also tacitly accepted certain aspects of Chinese folk religion. Some Government offices have had Earth God shrines (82) erected outside them. An example was Murray House (near where the new Bank of China now stands), which was demolished in 1982. It had a reputation among Rating and Valuation Department staff, who worked there, of being haunted. Other Government offices which have had shrines outside them include the office of the project manager at Empire House, while it was being built in 1991, in Tsim Sha Tsui East. Also, various government project managers' offices in the New Territories have had small shrines erected outside them. Who actually paid to have these shrines set up is not clear. Again, on countless occasions, the ceremonial carving of a suckling pig, on an appropriate day, has appeared to civil servants to be well worth the expense in that it allayed concerns of staff and, afterwards, members worked better.
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CONTRIBUTORS

Patrick Hase is a Council Member of the HKBRAS, a former Hon. Editor (Journals) and currently Editor of Books. He is a retired Administrative Officer of the Hong Kong Government. He is a noted authority on the New Territories.

Chan Wing Hoi is a member of the HKBRAS with a deep interest in Chinese history.

Fred Dagenais is a Research Associate with the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley. His primary interests are in the history of the transmission of modern science and technology to China during the century 1850-1950. His on-going project is to identify items associated with the life of John Fryer during the Kiangnan Arsenal years (1867-96) and his subsequent career as Agassiz Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of California (1896-1914). He is developing an annotated calendar of Fryer's letters and papers, the bulk of which are located in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley and welcomes any and all information associated with John Fryer's life and work. His interest in Republican China centres around the formation and development of scientific societies, particularly the work of Jeng Hung-chun and the Science Society of China.

Yip Hon Ming and Ho Wai Yee are with the Department of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Peter Ng Tze Ming is with the Department of Religion at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Stephanie Chung Po Yin is with the Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University.

Carole Morgan received her doctorate in Chinese studies from the University of Paris (ex Sorbonne). She was a member of the team that catalogued the Dunhuang manuscripts in the Bibliothèque National and is now editing the divinatory material therein. She has written a book on the Chinese almanac and published a number of articles in sinological journals.

Keith Stevens is a retired member of the British Army and subsequently

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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
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NOTES

Abbreviation JHKBRAS = Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

The present study is part of the research product of the Historical Fieldwork Project on Old Settlements in Tung Chung, Lantau Island, conducted by the History Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, in summer 1991, under the auspices of the Antiquities and Monument Office, Government Secretariat, Hong Kong. In the section on Tung Chung's socio-religious activities, Wai-yee Ho was one of the field interviewers and the major processor of interview transcriptions on the subject. The authors of this article would like to thank Mr Wing-kai To and Dr Cathy Potter for reading and commenting on the draft. Official geographical names are used in this paper although their romanization may deviate from the Wade-Giles system adopted by this journal.

J.L. Cranner-Byng & A. Shepherd "A Reconnaissance of Ma Wan and Lantao Islands in 1794,” JHKBRAS, Vol. 4 (1964), p. 115

Administrative Report (1912), p. 110. VII-Crops

* Stewart H. Lockhart, "Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong," 1898

* "Table of Population Figures in the New Territories," Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1958)

6 Interviews Cheng P'o (age 77), upper Ling Pei, Jun 15, 1991, Hsieh Ch'i (age 72), San Tau, Jul 7, 1991, Mr Wang (Age 30+), San Tau, Jul 7, 1991. Wang's father was known as the "king of folk song." He used to keep some song books which are now lost.

Interview of Mr & Mrs Lo # (age Mr Lo 69), Shek Mun Kap, Jun 18, 1991. Mrs Lo, who was a child bride, as were her sisters, mentioned that quite a number of child brides came from San Tau, Sha Lo Wan and the western border of Tung Chung. Interviews "Uncle Cheng", the Tung Chung Public School, Jun 24, 1991, Chang Yen, Ma Wan Chung, Jul 7, 1991. "Uncle Cheng" indicated that the price for a child bride was HK$20 or more fifty years ago, whereas Cheng Yen pointed out that the price was HK$50-60 sixty years ago.

On the Hakka mores of women labouring as farmers/housewives while their husbands and grown-up sons worked outside or overseas (mostly in southeast Asia), see Wu Tsung-chuo & Wen Chung-ho, Chia-ying-chou chih (reprint of the 1898 edition) (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen ch'u-pan-she, 1968), chuan 8, pp. 53-55. For this tradition, and the custom of child brides, see also Yang Hung-hai, "Yueh-tung k'e-chia ti min-su t'e-se," in KROANKAHė K'e-chia wen-chin, ZRERE, Vol. 1 (1989), pp. 277, 281.

* Interview of Cheng Man-hung W (age 63), Aug 8, 1991

"John Brim, "Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong," in Arthur P. Wolf, ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 95

179
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James Hayes, is a Past-President of HKBRAS and a former long standing member of Council (mouse1@bigpond.com).

Robert Horsnell, is a former civil servant and a Volunteer (of research into and cataloguing of old Hong Kong buildings and monuments) of HKBRAS (argyho@netvigator.com)

Lawrence Lai, Daniel Ho and Leung Hing Fung, are, respectively, Reader, Associate Professor and Department Head of the Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong (wclai@hkusua.hku.hk).

Eve Lam, has been working in journalism in various capacities for the last nine years. Her current position is news sub-editor/anchor for TVB Pearl in Hong Kong. She holds a master's degree in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong and a bachelor's in Physical and Health Education from the University of Toronto.

David Mahoney, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS in Great Britain.

Martin Merz B.A.(Hons.), studied Chinese at Melbourne University. He continued studies in Taiwan, including a stint at the National Taiwan University Graduate School of History. He worked as a translator and interpreter in Taiwan for several years, acquiring a taste for Oolong tea along the way. He moved to Hong Kong in 1987 to set up a trading company.

Robert Nield, is the Hon Treasurer and a Vice-President of HKBRAS (hiflyer@netvigator.com).

Anne Ozorio, is an active member of the friends of HKBRAS in Great Britain.

Lauren Pfister, is an Associate Professor in the Religion and Philosophy Department

as well as jointly appointed to teaching in the Humanities course at Hong Kong Baptist University. He has lived in Hong Kong with his family since 1987. Serving as Associate Editor for the Journal of Chinese Philosophy since 1997, he has continued to pursue research in 19th and 20th century Ruist philosophy, the history of sinology, as well as comparative philosophical and comparative religious studies. He serves also as an Associate Research Fellow of the Centre for Sino-Christian Research at Hong Kong Baptist University (feileren@net1.hkbu.edu.hk).

Stephen Selby, is the Director of Intellectual Property, Hong Kong Government (srselby@ipd.gov.hk).

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390
ship. His final seagoing appointment was in command of the experimental deep diving ship HMS Reclaim. After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972, he joined the secretariat staff of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland administering the 1,800 or so Rotary Clubs in GB&I from which he retired as Secretary to the Association in 1996 (michaelgillam@compuserve.com)

James Hayes, Ph.D., (London), Hon. D.Litt. (Hong Kong), spent his working life as an Administrative Officer in Hong Kong. He is a noted scholar and local historian and has contributed prolifically to the Journal. Among his books are The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Country (Hamden, Archon Books, 1977) and the memoir of his Hong Kong service, Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996). His most recent book, a volume in OUP's Images of Asia series entitled South China Village Culture, was published in 2001. Dr Hayes is a Past-President and former Hon Editor of HKBRAS (mouseh1@bigpond.com).

David Mahoney, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS. He joined the Crown Lands Office of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong Government, 1964, and moved to Swire Properties in 1973 where he spent the next 20 years looking after Taikoo Shing and Taikoo Place. A keen collector of medals, he has just celebrated 50 years of membership of the Orders & Medals Research Society. Specialising in awards to Britons who served in China, Mr Mahoney addressed HKBRAS on the subject in 2000. Having previously served on the committees of various societies, his only remaining commitment is to the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, an organisation which locates, identifies, records and restores European cemeteries in India, Pakistan and South East Asia (davidwmahoney@aol.com).

Lan Li, Ph.D., is an anthropologist working at Queen's University Belfast as a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Anthropological Studies. She also lectures in Chinese Culture and Society at the Institute of LifelongLearning was corrected to Institute of Lifelong Learning. Her research interests are Chinese popular religion, history, politics, and ethnic minorities. She was a co-organiser of the international conference on 'The Career and Legacy of Sir Robert Hart,' which took place in Belfast between 26 and 27 September 2003 (lan.li@gub.ac.uk).

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