RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 10 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 39 and defeated government troops again and again. They were eventually persuaded to capitulate to the government, and took part in the victorious campaign against another rebel Fang La.1 However, some modern historians believe that after they had helped the government forces, Sung Chiang and his followers were themselves liquidated in their turn. Be that as it may, the exploits of Sung Chiang and his followers soon became the subject of popular legends told orally. These grew in number and came to be written down. At first only short accounts were written, but later, towards the end of the Yuan period, about 1300, the different stories were joined together to form one long romance, possibly by Shih Nai-an, who has been identified with the dramatist Shih Hui, styled Chun-mei.2 By then, the number of heroes involved had grown from the original thirty-six to a hundred and eight. The romance continued to be enlarged and revised by various hands during the Ming period, until it became a work of 120 chapters, published about 1620. Then, at the beginning of the Ch'ing period, in 1644, the critic Chin Sheng-t'an took the first seventy chapters, added a new chapter at the end as well as commentaries, and published it as the "Fifth Work of Genius" in Chinese literature. This edition achieved immense popularity, and it is this truncated version which most Chinese readers have read and which has been rendered into English. 21 Meanwhile, some stories about knights errant found their way into the drama of the Yuan period. The plays of this period were classified by subject under twelve categories, one of which was "long swords and clubs". This obviously corresponded to the two categories of stories "long swords" and "clubs" mentioned earlier. In particular, some stories about Sung Chiang and his followers not included in the Shui-hu chuan were given dramatic treatment in Yuan times. For instance, there were at least a dozen Yuan plays about Li K'uei, one of the followers of Sung Chiang and one of the most colourful characters in popular literature.22 Two of these plays are still extant.23 They present with great gusto this rough-mannered, quick-tempered outlaw with a heart of gold. In plays of later periods, Li K'uei and other 4a. 18 Sung-shih* (SPPY), chüan 22, 3a; chüan 351, 11b; chüan 353, 1 Mou Jun-sun, "On the tombstone inscription of Chê K'ê-ts'un and Sung Chiang's end" 牟潤孫,折可存墓誌銘考証兼論宋江之結局, Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 2. 20 Sun K'ai-ti, Chung-kuo t'ung-su hsiao-shuo shu-mu 孫楷第,中國通俗小說書目 (Peking, 1957), p. 181. + 21 Chu Ch'üan, T'ai-ho cheng-yin p'u 朱權,太和正音譜 (reprinted together with the Lu kuei pu 錄鬼簿, Shanghai, 1957), p. 135. 22 For the titles of these plays, see Fu Hsi-hua, Yuan-tai tsa-chü ch'üan-mu 傅惜華,元代雜劇全目 (Peking, 1957), pp. 406-7. 23 There is another Yuan play in which Li K'uei appears, but only as a subsidiary character. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 95 B (c) The T'ao T'ien-chün ( or Celestial Master T'ao), one of the four attendant-generals forming the retinue of the Premier Wên T'ai-shih in the Fêng-shên Yen-i is an invention of the author of the Fêng-shên for a particular reason.3 In any one of the earlier works before the Fêng-shen, whether Taoist canonical texts or popular literature, we can find the other three T'ien-chün but not this one. This fact strengthens the hypothesis that this particular character was created with a purpose. But he appears also in Wu Ch'êng-ên's Hsi-yu-chi. (Ch.4 etc.) (d) Yin Chiao () in his transformed figure is an ugly and evil god. "His face was as blue as indigo, and he had long projecting teeth" (Ch.63, Fêng-shên Yen-i). He was canonized as the T'ai-sui (✯ the God of the Cycle) in Ch.99 of the Feng-shên. Now in Wu's Hsi-yu-chi there is a line of verse, "The other had a blue face and protruding teeth as ugly as the T'ai-sui.” (56) (e) In Wu's Hsi-yu-chi, when Sun Wu-k'ung ( the Monkey) was repelled by Hsüan-tsang (), he thought of “going to the islands (hai-tao ) but he was rather ashamed to meet those immortals in the three fairy-lands (san-tao chu-hsien l)". (Ch.57) This is probably influenced by the islands and the immortals there (hai-tao tao-yu fă‡) in Chs.38, 47 and 59 of the Fêng-shễn. In Ch.59 of the Feng-shên when Lü Yüeh (BG) was defeated by the troops of Chiang Tzu-ya, he fled to the islands as his last resort. (f) In Wu's Hsi-yu-chi (Ch.60), the Demon-king of Oxen (Niu Mo-wang 4E) rode on a "water-proof golden-pupiled monster" (Pi-shui Chin-ching Shou HR). I think this name was invented after the "fire-spitting golden-pupiled monsters" (Huo-yen Chin-ching Shou ) ridden by Chêng Lun, Chiên Ch'i and Ch'ung Hei-hu in the Fêng-shên Yen-i. (g) In Ch.61 of the Wu's Hsi-yu-chi there are the "four great Vajras" (MAI) which are no doubt an adaptation of the “four great heavenly kings". One of their dwelling-places is in the Chin-hsia Tung ( Golden Clouds Cave) of Mt. K'un-lun. In fact this Chin-hsia Tung is exactly the name of the grotto where the Yü-ting Chên-jên (EMRA Immortal of the Jade Urn) lives in the Fêng-shên Yen-i, and Mt. K'un-lun is the sacred mountain of the Promulgating Sect. 37 Ibid., pp. 251-55. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE TABLE 1 73 CHINA'S MINORITY POPULATIONS IN ORDER OF SIZE, 1. Chuang 2. Wei-wu-erh (Uighur) 3. Hui (Dungan) 4. Yi (Lolo, etc.) 1953 5. Tsang (Tibetan) 6. Miao 7. Man (Manchu) 8. Meng-ku (Mongol) 9. Pu-yi 10. Ch'ao-hsien (Korean) 11. Tung 12. Yao 13. Pai (Pai-man) 14. Ha-sa-k'e (Kazakh) 15. Ha-ni 16. T'ai 17. Li 18. Li-su 19. Tu-chia 20. She 21. K'a-wa (Wa) 22. Kao-shan (Malay-Polynesian) 23. Tung-hsiang 24. Na-hsi (Na-khi) 25. La-hu 26. Shui 27. Ching-p'o (Singpho, Kachin) 28. Ko-erh-k'e-tzu (Kirghiz) 29. T'u (Mongor) 30. Ta-kuan-erh (Daghor) 31. Mo-lao 32. Ch'iang 33. Pu-lang (Palaung) 34. Sa-la (Salar) 35. Ngo-lo-ssu (Russian) 36. K'e-lao 37. Hsi-po (Sipo) 38. Mao-nan 39. A-chang 40. T'a-chi-k'e (Tadjik) 41. Wu-tzu-pieh-k'e (Uzbek) 42. Nu 43. T'a-t'a-erh (Tatar) 44. O-wen-k'e (Evenki) 45. Pao-an 46. Yü-ku (Sara Uighur) 47. Peng-lung 48. Tu-lung ... 7,000,000 3,640,000 3,559,000 3,250,000 2,775,000 2,511,000 2,418,000 1,463,000 1,247,000 1,120,000 712,000 665,000 567,000 509,000 481,000 478,000 360,000 317,000 300,000 * 286,000 210,000 200,000 155,000 143,000 139,000 133,000 101,000 70,000 53,200 44,100 43,100 35,600 35,000 30,600 22,600 20,800 19,000 18,400 17,700 14,400 13,600 12,700 6,900 6,200 4,900 3,800 2,900 2,400 2,200 450 O-lun-ch'un (Orochun) 50. Ho-che (Nanai) * Found by Fang Jen in 1955 to be 300,000, but Bruk listed 49,000. † From April 19, 1957 issue of Kuang-ming Daily News. † An estimate. § Collectively including the So-lun (4,900), T'ung-ku-ssu (Tungus: 1,205), and Ya-k'u-te (Yakut; 137). Here is the revised response in HTML format using Markdown table syntax for the table: Order Minority Population Population (1953) 1 Chuang 7,000,000 2 Wei-wu-erh (Uighur) 3,640,000 3 Hui (Dungan) 3,559,000 4 Yi (Lolo, etc.) 3,250,000 5 Tsang (Tibetan) 2,775,000 6 Miao 2,511,000 7 Man (Manchu) 2,418,000 8 Meng-ku (Mongol) 1,463,000 9 Pu-yi 1,247,000 10 Ch'ao-hsien (Korean) 1,120,000 11 Tung 712,000 12 Yao 665,000 13 Pai (Pai-man) 567,000 14 Ha-sa-k'e (Kazakh) 509,000 15 Ha-ni 481,000 16 T'ai 478,000 17 Li 360,000 18 Li-su 317,000 19 Tu-chia 300,000 * 20 She 286,000 21 K'a-wa (Wa) 210,000 22 Kao-shan (Malay-Polynesian) 200,000 23 Tung-hsiang 155,000 24 Na-hsi (Na-khi) 143,000 25 La-hu 139,000 26 Shui 133,000 27 Ching-p'o (Singpho, Kachin) 101,000 28 Ko-erh-k'e-tzu (Kirghiz) 70,000 29 T'u (Mongor) 53,200 30 Ta-kuan-erh (Daghor) 44,100 31 Mo-lao 43,100 32 Ch'iang 35,600 33 Pu-lang (Palaung) 35,000 34 Sa-la (Salar) 30,600 35 Ngo-lo-ssu (Russian) 22,600 36 K'e-lao 20,800 37 Hsi-po (Sipo) 19,000 38 Mao-nan 18,400 39 A-chang 17,700 40 T'a-chi-k'e (Tadjik) 14,400 41 Wu-tzu-pieh-k'e (Uzbek) 13,600 42 Nu 12,700 43 T'a-t'a-erh (Tatar) 6,900 44 O-wen-k'e (Evenki) 6,200 45 Pao-an 4,900 46 Yü-ku (Sara Uighur) 3,800 47 Peng-lung 2,900 48 Tu-lung 2,400 49 O-lun-ch'un (Orochun) 2,200 50 Ho-che (Nanai) 450 * Found by Fang Jen in 1955 to be 300,000, but Bruk listed 49,000. † From April 19, 1957 issue of Kuang-ming Daily News. † An estimate. § Collectively including the So-lun (4,900), T'ung-ku-ssu (Tungus: 1,205), and Ya-k'u-te (Yakut; 137). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 83 contributed a joss-stand table to the temple in the first year of the Tao Kwang period (1821) and a ferry from Shek Lung was one of the donors in 1878. Three local ferries are also listed on the tablet. According to local information36 two of them, each capable of taking a load of 40-50,000 catties (approximately 24-30 tons), sailed between Peng Chau and Chan Tsuen #in LANTAU Yee Pak. Tai Tei Wan Nim Shue Wan Cheung Sha Lan PENG CHÂU Hung Shui Kau Shat Wan SILVER MINE BAY (Man Kok MILAL 'NEI KWU CHAU Peng Chau and Surrounding Area the Delta, whilst the third, which was smaller with a load capacity of 10,000 catties (about 6 tons), plied at need between Peng Chau and the local ports of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Cheung Chau and Tsuen Wan. The goods carried from the Delta towns were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 93 26 Dated the thirteenth day of the sixth Moon of the 8th year of Kuang Hsü (27th July 1882). 27 Other examples of local tax-lords are quoted in note 12 of my Cheung Chau article. For an interesting instance from another part of the New Territories see Appendix II to the Report on the New Territory for the year 1900, Hong Kong Government Gazette, vol. XLVII (1901), pp. 1403-4, where a claim by members of a branch of the TANG family of Kam Tin to ownership of the whole island of Ts'ing I was investigated by a member of the Land Court. He wrote "I have taken special pains to go thoroughly into this case because it seems a very typical example of the curious and unwarrantable pretensions to the ownership of very large tracts of country which are perhaps the most striking feature in the economy of what we call the New Territory." Like the TANGS, the CHANS may have owned part but claimed, or aimed to control, the whole. 28 It is interesting that the earliest grave known on the island has a tablet dated Chien Lung fifteenth year (1749) and that the person buried there is a CHAN Yiu Hong & and the person responsible for erecting the tablet (no relationship is given) CHAN Hing Sin. These men may conceivably have had something to do with the CHAN Yan Hop and Yee Ka Tongs. The grave is unlikely to be that of a fisherman and most likely to be that of someone who was living on Peng Chau at the time of his death. Not everyone is provided with a formal grave, and therefore he was probably a person of some consequence. Also, at the time of the land settlement, various persons named CHAN who were not local villagers but belonged to Peng Chau and Nam Tau (BCL) owned land on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau. One of them was the CHAN Yan Hop Tong of Nam Tau. This land may represent the remains of larger holdings left over from an earlier period but mostly sold or mortgaged by 1899, or else not recognised by the Land Court during the re-registration of titles, as being "not compatible with the principles of British administration" as happened with some other tax-lord land in the New Territories—see note 12 to my Cheung Chau article. 29 Peng Chau M.S. 30 BCL. 31 BCL, Lantau coast. 32 A lucky day of the first winter month of the year of Tao Kuang (1834), 33 BCL. 34 BCL. 35 BCL. 36 Peng Chau M.S. 37 At the 1911 census (see note 7 above) the population of these villages was Nei Kwu Chau 78, Tai Pak 52, and Yee Pak 59. There were also families living in hamlets at Nim Shue Wan, Cheung Sha Lan, Hai Tei Wan, Hung Shui, Kau Shat Wan and Man Kok, but they are not listed in the Census. 38 There is conflicting evidence about the prosperity of the area in the second half of the century. The decline of population on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau has been noted. This is more noticeable elsewhere on Lantau, where some of the more important villages can be shown to have Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 118 CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD 14 They had every reason to be alarmed on account of the continual attacks from pirates on coastal villages in Kwangtung and other places during the period from about 1787 until 1810. See A. W. Hummel: Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 446-8. Also C. F. Neuman, History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810. 15 Macartney took with him on the embassy a "gardener and botanist”, David Stronach. For the botanical side of the embassy see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit., 317-19. 16 These nets are known locally as "stake nets" or tsang pang are lowered and raised by means of a tackle. They are frequently used along the coasts of Kwangtung today. The fishing season is from February to mid-September, 17 The island is now reasonably well covered with pine trees and there are a few small feng-shui woods of deciduous trees. A large number of kites have been observed using pine trees on a ridge in the centre of the island as a roost during the winter months. 18 Parish knew the island, which he had been sent to reconnoitre, under the name of Cowhee. Now he learned that the inhabitants called it Toong Shing-ow-a. However, this name does not appear to have survived and the island is now always known as Ma Wan4 and was so called as far back as 1859. See Rev. Krone, op. cit. (note 8) p. 73. The word Cowhee was probably a phonetic rendering of the name of an island between Ping Chau island and Hong Kong island known as Kau I Chau 交椅洲. 19 By the small island to the south-east Parish presumably meant Tang Lung Chau## which now has a small light-house on it. There is now a small harbour with a jetty at Ma Wan village, and this is the normal place for landing on the island today. 20 This is a doubtful statement. 21 The word as written in the manuscript report is clearly "profil". I can only suggest that Parish meant "profile", and was using it in a technical, military engineering sense, meaning "outline". A reading of Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth century books about sieges and defence works might give a clue to its technical meaning at that time, 22 From the anchorage position marked on the chart this must refer to the bay of Tsing Lung Tau. Today Ma Wan is connected to the mainland by a regular ferry service running from the bay of Sham Tseng, where the Hong Kong Brewery is situated. 23 By the word "bay" in this context Parish appears to refer to the wide bay formed by the northern coast of Lantao from its headland opposite Tsing Lung Tau to Chek Lap Kok opposite Tung Chung bay, but the wording is somewhat ambiguous at this point. 24 Probably the western arm of Luk Kang - · + + on Lantao. 25 Tung Ku #island opposite Tap Siak Kok on the Castle Peak peninsula. It forms part of the Urmston Road. 26 See Charles Tulse, Local Master's Handbook. Seamanship Illustrated (Hong Kong University Press, 1960). 27 See photograph of the "race" between Ma Wan and Lantao on page It is interesting to know that Professor Deryck Chesterman of the Department of Physics in the University of Hong Kong is carrying out research into the currents off Ma Wan and their effects on the sea bed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 122 NOTES AND QUERIES 2. With the high rates of interest on loans and/or the continuing need over several years to have money ready to pay the instalments in a money-loan association, it is not surprising that people got into difficulties and there are good instances of this in the papers. One man borrowed thirty-four silver dollars from the Tong at the end of 1886, and three years and two months later owed eighty-eight dollars, representing principal plus interest. Of this sum ten dollars had already been paid off by selling land to offset the debt. The remainder was extinguished by the debtor waiving his turn for payment in a money-loan association in favour of his creditor. Yet this experience was not a case of 'once bitten, twice shy' for either side, for in the month following the settlement of his affairs with the Tong he asked it for, and secured, another loan of sixteen dollars "due to dire need of money." This loan was made on the mortgage of more of his inherited farmland. We do not know the sequel. Another villager who had failed to pay his share or instalment in a money-loan association mortgaged a house in pledge and was to lose if he had not paid the money by the end of that lunar year. 3. The Tong was not the only source of money loans available to the Shek Pik villagers. Shops in the neighbouring market centres of Tai O and Cheung Chau would advance credit, or give loans as would two other local Tongs. They were not organizations belonging to Shek Pik, one being composed of merchants from Tai O and the other a family organization belonging to a clan in another village. 4. These papers came from only one of the clans living at Shek Pik and there is reason to think that similar activities were taking place in other clans and amongst other groups of persons in the village. J. W. HAYES A CEREMONY TO PROPITIATE THE GODS AT TONG FUK, LANTAU, 1958 In the course of opening new roads and other works the developers usually run up against feng shui (geomantic influences). This ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 NOTES AND QUERIES 123 happened recently at Tong Fuk on Lantau Island, a multi-clan Cantonese village with a population of 198 at the Hong Kong Census of 1911. Its present population is about the same number. In 1958 the scheme to build a new reservoir at Shek Pik was confirmed and work went ahead on the dam and associated works. Behind Tong Fuk there were to be catchwaters for which an access road had to be constructed to the west of the village. This led to difficulties with the villagers, because in feng shui ideology the place was held to be the seat of the White Tiger. They therefore requested a ceremony known locally as a tun fu (符) — to propitiate the gods and spirits who would, as they thought, be aroused by digging earth and blasting stones in this particular place. Precedents were cited by the village elders. They said they had carried out such a ceremony thirty-five years before, following several unexpected deaths in the village. The inhabitants had worshipped at the Hung Shing (廟) temple on the beach nearby, praying for the removal of the malignant influence. It transpired that a villager had cut stone from this particular spot to build a house. The elders then invited a Taoist priest — a Hakka — to come from one of the neighbouring villages to carry out the propitiatory observances usually made under such circumstances. They also said that a similar ceremony had also been conducted twenty years before in the adjoining Cantonese village of Shui Hau, this time by a priest engaged from the urban area. Deaths had also occurred there and had been traced to one of the villagers having constructed a cowshed in front of his house on ground with feng shui properties. Returning to the 1958 case, the elders proposed to call in the services of the nephew of the priest who had supervised the ceremony thirty-five years before. He was a man of forty years of age who had followed in his uncle's footsteps. Such persons are known locally as feng shui hsien sheng (風水先生). This ceremony was supposed to cause considerable inconvenience for the villagers, in theory if not in practice. One week of vegetable diet was obligatory for all and there was also a three-day prohibition on entering and leaving the village: that is, if the ceremony was to realize its full value. This meant that no cows could be grazed or grass or firewood cut on the hills; nor, presumably, could men go out to work in the fields. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 The Five Great Clans 29 area by a group at least as strong as they, a point which will be taken up later. The Pangs of Fanling were also on the fringes of the Sheung Shui area, and also were unable to settle on this better land, though they apparently arrived shortly after the Hau's. Their land is of moderate quality, though a little of it is in the 250-300 catty range,54 and the Pangs were poor, as remarked earlier. Recently the 'vegetable-growing revolution' began on this lineage's land,55 communications being excellent, so that, being on the direct line of exit from the Mainland, the area was soon picked out by the immigrants for settlement and farming. One result of this revolution has been a sudden rise in the income and standard of living of the Pangs, an indication of their growing influence being their entering of a candidate in 1964 for the high-prestige position of Chairman of the Heung Yee Kuk.56 At the same time the Pangs display an ultra-conservative attitude in respect of feng shui57 and religion. I am not in a position to say whether this conservatism is of long standing, or whether it has been strengthened since the change in their economic conditions. It is interesting, however, that their response to rising standards of living contrasts markedly with that of the Lius, whose rejection of feng shui tenets appears to be as whole-hearted as is the Fanling tenaciousness. The Lius were the fourth of the clans to arrive. Their history is fairly well documented and throws an interesting light on the process by which they acquired probably the largest area of first-quality land outside the Tangs' holdings.59 The first ancestor was an itinerant tinker who disappeared from the area after founding a family there. Within four generations the family was scattered all round the Sheung Shui area in small settlements, the best land being occupied by the Kan60 lineage. By the seventh generation the Lius had greatly increased in numbers. A geomancer61 was amongst them, and he suggested that they should all come together to found a village, for "he knew that it was not good policy to live in so many places, and feared that being scattered they would be unable to retain their close contacts and unable to maintain their mutual protection and aid".62 Then, says the genealogy, "the whole lineage lived together completely in accordance with the wishes of the geomancers".63 This bland explanation of history does not explain how the Kans were persuaded to vacate their ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 44 HUGH D. R. BAKER 42 Grant, op. cit., figs, VI(k), (l), (m), (n). 43 ###. Notes on the third generation. + 44 Grant, op. cit., figs. VI(m) and (n). 45 **#. Notes on the sixth generation, where the move is said to have been made "at the end of the Yuan Dynasty". 46 Ibid., Notes on the third generation. 47 Grant, op. cit., figs. VI(o) and (p) show a perhaps exaggerated picture of the paucity of land around Lung Kwat Tau, since part of the Tangs' area of influence is not shown. Figs. VI(e) and (f) show a no less meagre amount of agricultural land around Tai Po Tau. It must be stressed that geographical and political accident have combined to change the situation greatly in both these areas in recent years, so that Grant's findings do not demonstrate the true historical picture. + 48 ******, Notes on the founding ancestor. He was born in A.D. 1023 and died in 1085, but the date when he moved to Ho Sheung Heung is not recorded. 49 Ibid., Notes on the fourth generation, shows that the expansion occurred in the fifth generation, which we can infer from the data to have been in the mid-12th century. I cannot locate the places mentioned, and, unless they have since disappeared entirely, we must assume that they are not situated in the New Territories, or that they are names for internal divisions in Ho Sheung Heung itself. Without having been able to check on these assumptions, I would incline to the last. 50 Ibid., Notes on the thirteenth generation. This village was founded in the seventeenth generation (possibly mid-16th century, but it is difficult to arrive at even an approximate date) by a man who moved from one of the original expansion villages discussed in note 49 above. 51 Ibid., This village has the same first ancestor as Ping Kong, whence he moved on after some years. 52 Ibid., Notes on the twelfth generation. The village was founded in the last years of the Chien-lung reign period (A.D. 1736-1795). 53 Grant, op. cit., figs. VI(o) and (p) show the land surrounding only Ping Kong of these four villages. It is of no better than average productivity (200 catties), and is not a very large acreage. 54 Ibid., figs. VI(o) and (p). 55 Ibid., The same figures show the extent to which vegetable-farming has taken over the land in this area. See also "Changes in Agricultural Land Use in Hong Kong", by C. T. Wong, in S. G. Davis, Land Use Problems in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1964. 56. The 'Rural Consultative Council', which represents New Territories interests to Government. An explanation of its structure and objectives may be found in S. S. Hsueh, Government and Administration of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1962, pp. 84ff. 57 Bk. 'Wind and Water'. For a short but unsympathetic explanation of this belief see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, London, 1904, pp. 312f. 58 廖氏族譜, section headed 韩考座代进移節略, 59 Grant, op. cit., figs. VI(o) and (p). 60 M. + 61 feng shui hsien sheng (Mandarin pronunciation). 62 ****, section as in note 58. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 THE FIVE GREAT CLANS 47 112 Rth. Sec J. H. S. Lockhart, "Report on the New Territory", Sessional Papers, 1899. 113 Hayes, op. cit., p. 83, quotes Lockhart, but does not give any new evidence, though he mentions other similar informal bodies. 114 八鄉 [115] I am not sure that this was the original purpose of the alliance. 116 Ancestral halls are generally sited outside walled villages for reasons of feng shui. 117 Ho Sheung Heung, Ping Kong, and Kam Tsin. The cannon of this last village was not handed in when British administration began in 1899, and still lies hidden in the corner of one of their ancestral halls. 118 南鄉. 119 That is, in Canton. 120 See J. W. Hayes, "Cheung Chau”, in JHKBRAS, Vol. 3, 1963, note 12; and the same author's "Peng Chau", in JHKBRAS, Vol. 4, 1964, p. 79 and note 27. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 184 EITEL, Ernest J. THE LIBRARY Feng-shui: or, The rudiments of natural science in China. London, Trübner, 1873. bound with EITEL, Ernest J. Three lectures on Buddhism. Hong Kong, China Mail, 1871. ELLIOTT, Alan J. A. Chinese spirit-medium cults in Singapore. London, London School of Economics, Dept. of Anthropology, 1955. (Monographs on social anthropology, n.s., no.14) ELLIOTT-BATEMAN, Michael. Defeat in the East: the mark of Mao Tse-tung on war. London, Oxford U.P., 1967. EMBREE, John F. A Japanese village: Suye Mura. London, Kegan Paul, 1946. ENDACOTT, G. B. A biographical sketch-book of early Hong Kong. Singapore, Eastern Univs. P., 1962. ENDACOTT, G. B. A history of Hong Kong. London, Oxford U.P., 1958. Fables de la Chine antique. Pekin, Éditions en Langues Étrangères, 1958. FAIRBANK, John King. Trade and diplomacy on the China coast; the opening of the treaty ports, 1842-1854. Cambridge [Mass.] Harvard U. P., 1964. (Harvard historical studies, v. 62 - 63). FEDDERSEN, Martin. Chinese decorative art: a handbook for collectors and connoisseurs. Tr. by Arthur Lane. London, Faber, 1961. FINN, Daniel J. Archaeological finds on Lamma Island (##), near Hong Kong. Ed. by T. F. Ryan. Hong Kong, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958. Republication of articles originally appearing in the Hong Kong Naturalist, 1933-1936. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 43 bad informal connections with Hong Kong's officialdom and that its activities were a foretaste of the future. By March of 1899, British officials began to appear in the territory. A party was busy near the Sham Chun river, marking out the frontier with China. Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the Hong Kong police was touring the territory, considering alternative locations for police stations. This official—Captain Superintendent F. H. May arrived at Ping Shan on 27th March. His first action was to post a proclamation saying that the Hong Kong government would not interfere with the land, buildings, or customs of the people. He then designated a hill behind Ping Shan as the site for a police station. A crowd gathered and the argument began. “It says that land, buildings, and customs will not be interfered with but will remain the same as before. Why should they, therefore, when they first come into the leased area, wish to erect a police station on the hill behind our village? When has China ever erected a police station just where people live? The proclamation says that things will be as before. Are not these words untrue?” 54 The Resistance Movement -- 28th March to 18th April, 1899. The day after May's visit to Ping Shan, discussions were held in the ancestral halls of Ping Shan and Kam Tin. In both instances, agreement was reached that resistance should be offered to the British. Following the two meetings, a third took place in an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Representatives of all three Tang lineages were present and previous decisions to offer resistance were ratified. Messages were sent to leaders throughout the marketing area, asking them to attend a meeting at Yuen Long market the next day. Steward Lockhart later argued that the resistance leaders feared for their positions of power and privilege. At the Ha Tsuen meeting, a wider range of anxieties were expressed: “... that under English law a poll tax would be collected; that houses would be numbered and a charge made therefor; that fishing and wood-cutting would be prohibited; that women and girls would be outraged; that births and deaths would be registered; that cattle and pigs would be destroyed; that police stations would be erected, which would ruin the Fung Shui [Mandarin: Feng Shui] of the place. In short, that the evils that would arise would be so great ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 46 R. G. GROVES Yee Yuen and donated sums to its resistance fund. The two lineages also comprised two yeuk within the Ts'at Yeuk and, as such, were represented in the fighting at Tai Po. At some point after 1st April, leaders from the Yuen Long and Sheung U Divisions went together to the Tung P'ing Kuk at Sham Chun and attempted with little success to enlist wider support for their activities. An agent was sent to Tung-kuan Hsien, where a number of 'bare-sticks' were recruited. In addition, the help of the Tang lineage of Pan T'in, in the northern part of Hsin-an Hsien, was solicited. This lineage appears to have stood in a clan relationship with the Tang higher order lineage within the New Territory. Members of the Pan T'in lineage participated in the fighting within the territory and subsequently felt themselves threatened by the British occupation of Sham Chun. The first confrontation between the Ts'at Yeuk and the vanguard of the occupying force occurred at Tai Po. Since late March, contractors had been erecting matsheds for the Hong Kong authorities on a hill near the market. Work had been obstructed by local villagers who claimed that the hill was private land and that the matsheds would disturb the feng shui of the area. On 3rd April Captain-Superintendent May set off for Tai Po, with a mixed party of Sikh policemen from Hong Kong and a detachment of Chinese soldiers, which had been temporarily assigned to him by the Commander of the Chinese military garrison stationed at Kowloon City. He hoped to get work on the matsheds started again and intended to leave the soldiers as a guard for the construction materials, pending assumption of British authority in the Territory. May arrived at Tai Po early in the afternoon and went to a nearby temple, almost certainly the Man Mo Miu, where he knew he would meet local leaders. A large crowd gathered, both within the temple and in the narrow street outside. His efforts at persuasion failed and the bystanders "became very offensive in their language and demeanour."59 May thought it wise to leave, but hope of a dignified withdrawal ended as soon as the British party reached the street. They were set upon by an angry crowd, wielding brooms, buckets, and other improvised weapons. An escape was made after the soldiers had threatened the crowd with their rifles and the Sikhs had made a bayonet charge to clear a path. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 50 CHIU LING-YEONG and the Chinese authorities. However the State Secretary, Thomas F. Bayard, was very pleased with Tseng's friendly attitude to the United States in his article. Cf. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1887, No. 168, Bayard to Denby, May 7, 1887. * Ho Kai (Ho Ch'i) was born on 12 March, 1859, the fifth son of the Rev. Ho Jun-yang. Ho Kai obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degrees from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, 1879, and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 29 April, 1879. He was called to the Bar on 25 January 1882. Ho Kai was admitted to practice as a barrister in the Supreme Court on 29 March, 1882 after he returned to Hong Kong. From 1882 onward, Ho Kai appeared to be an educationalist, reformist, revolutionary etc. Ho died in September 1914. At the time of his death he was a Member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and had been knighted for his public services in 1912. See the account given at pp. 12-16 of T. C. Cheng's "Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Council in Hong Kong up to 1941” in JHKBRAS Vol. 9 (1969). After Ho's article was published in the China Mail on 16 February, 1887, it was translated into Chinese entitled "Shu Tseng Hsi-hou Chung-kuo sheng-shui hou-hsing lun-hou" by his friend Hu Li-yüan (1848-1916) and was published in the Hua Tsu Jih Pao on 11 May, 1887. Most of Ho Kai's writings like Hsin-cheng chen chian was written in English and was translated into Chinese by Hu. For Ho Kai, see Chiu Ling-yeong, The Life and Thought of Sir Ho Kai, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, March, 1968; Onogawa Hidemi, op. cit.; Watanabe Tetsuhiro, op. cit.; Fang Hao, "Ch'ing-mo wei-hsin cheng-lun-chia Ho Ch'i yü Hu Li-yüan”清末維新政論家何啟與胡禮垣, Hsin Shih-tai 新時代, Taipei III, 12 (1963) 20-25; Hsiang-Kang yali-shih Ho Miao-ling Na-ta-su i yüân ch'i-shih chou-nien ki nien, 1887-1967, Lo Hsiang-lin, Kuo-fu ti kao-ming kuang-ta, Taiwan, 1965, pp. 115-132, Kuo-fu chih 1a-hsüeh shih-tai, Taiwan, 1954, pp. 5-13; B. Harrison, (Ed): The First 50 Years, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1962 pp. 5-23; Llyod E. Eastman, "Political Reformism in China before the Sino-Japanese War", Journal of Asian Studies, Volume XXVII, No. 4, August 1968, pp. 695-710. André Chih: L'occident Chretien vu par les Chinois vers la fin du XIX siécle (1870-1900), presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1962, pp. 42 and 47. Hu Pin, Chung-kuo chin-tai kai-liang chu-i ssu-hsiang, Peking, 1964. pp. 82-84, pp. 173-182. Jen Chi-yü, “Ho Chi Hu Li-huan ti kai-liang chu-i ssu-hsiang” in Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang shih lun-wen, Shanghai, 1958, pp. 75-91. 中國近代思想史論文集 Liu Yü-sheng, Shih-tsai tang tsa-i, Peking, 1960, pp. 163-164. Immanuel C. Y. Hsü: The Rise of Modern China, New York, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 425 and 543. Harold Z. Schiffrin, in his book entitled Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of Chinese Revolution, University of California Press. Berkeley, 1968, also has a lengthy chapter dealing with Ho Kai's relations with Sun Yat-sen, 9 Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang shih ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao chien-pien, Peking, San-lien Shu-tien, 1957, pp. 174-175. 10 Cf. Chung-Fa Chan-cheng, Chung-kuo shih-hsüeh hui Comp., Shanghai 1955, Vol. I; Ah Ying (Ed); Chung-Fa chan-cheng wen hsieh chi, Chung hua Shu tien, Shanghai, 1957, pp. 3-6. Li Ting-yi, Chung-Kuo chin-tai shih, Taiwan, 1959, pp. 153-162; Liu Feihua, Chung keo Chin-tại Chiến-shih, Peking, 1954, pp. 117-125. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 133 Imperial City. A man's home and family formed a microcosm in the macrocosm of the State. As he closed himself within his own small domain he sought a personal privacy away from the State. Not even the wandering eyes of the peddler could penetrate into the front courtyard. The Chinese man sought a more intimate relationship with the natural world even in the heart of the city. He designed his home in order that the open sky was part of his roof and the wild Chinese garden, part of his world. In the North where the population has always been dense, this desire for privacy and peace was a natural response. The philosophy of feng shui (風水)1, in the West known as geomancy, was of foremost importance to the Chinese in the siting and building of their homes. Feng shui determined the most auspicious siting for the dwelling in relation to natural formations and existing structures. The aim was to bring the forces of Nature into balance; it was to join the Yin and Yang, the female and male spirits, into a complementary union. According to the principles of feng shui, the ideal site nestles into the arms of hills which are shaped like the Azure Dragon in the East and the White Tiger in the West. The dragon is a beneficent force whose formation should be higher than the tiger, a force of danger, which protects only as long as it is balanced by the dragon. The house should be oriented on a North-South axis, protected in the rear by the mountains. The entrance facing South allows for the good spirits to bring their blessings on the family. The ideal site would also include a quiet stream of water which would enrich it. The commingling of the winds and waters in the proper proportions was essential to the prosperous future of the house and family. In the courtyard complex the ideal site was adapted to ordinary places. The wall was substituted for the natural formations of the hills. The house retained its North-South orientation with the entrance in the middle of the Southern wall or in the southeast corner. An added precaution was the shadow or spirit wall which normally was placed immediately inside or outside of the front door. This spirit wall not only prevented strangers from observing the family's activities but also prevented the evil spirits that lurked outside from entering as they could not turn corners. The source of water was often a lotus pool placed in the middle of the main courtyard. Hence, the Chinese architect adapted the principles of geomancy to fit the geographical features of the homesite. In other regions of China has been revised to meet the exacting requirements by converting to HTML format using `` for paragraphs. Minor corrections were made to ensure adherence to the guidelines: 1. **Correction of "auspi- cious"** to "auspicious" to fix a line-break artifact. 2. **Correction of "beneficient"** to "beneficent" to fix a spelling error. 3. **Correction of "commingling"** to remain as is because it is not an error; it's a less common but correct spelling. 4. **Added a footnote marker `1`** for "(風水)" to indicate it is a translation or explanation of "feng shui." The response now meets the requirements by being in HTML format and adhering to the specified proofreading rules. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 134 LINDA F. SULLIVAN this adaptation of feng shui was much more severe but in most cases the principles were followed. The Chinese sought ways in which to build their houses according to their economic and social conditions but never forgot the principles of feng shui. This paper will now describe the numerous, different examples of regional domestic architecture in an attempt to illustrate the ways in which each family in its own way tried to deal with the problems of privacy, protection, and personal needs in building its living and working space. EXAMPLES OF REGIONAL DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE: North: The first homes to be described are the caves of North China. They are not the same as the subterranean pit dwellings of the Late Neolithic Ages but rather are dug at a ninety-degree angle into the sides of mountains. These caves are found in the loess region stretching across Honan, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu provinces where through vertical cleavage the soil mixed with water has hardened to form steep cliffs. Here the winters are long and bitter with a strong Northwest wind sweeping the region. The extremely limited rainfall is highly variable and often comes as a cloudburst. The land is barren of trees and because of the lack of timber, these cave dwellings have formed the typical dwelling of the region. This cave in Honan is based on a plan for a free-standing house but has been built into the side of the cliff. The superstructure is basically a courtyard system with the main gate positioned at the southeast corner (North-South axis). The building on the left within the courtyard is for receiving guests, and thus the privacy of the man's cave is maintained. In other words, as the townhouse courtyard plan had provided for a system of "graduated privacy", the cave dweller has adapted this system to his specific location and circumstances. This particular cave complex has two storeys. The first level has three caves of which the left and middle ones each have two rooms which are used for living space, while the right side cave has an additional third room for storage. As one comes out of the left-hand side cave, there is a stairway leading to the second-level platform at the back of which there are two more caves. It should be noted that the Chinese have developed a system of interlocking support in the construction of these caves. The second-level platform is reinforced in front and on its surface and is supported... * See also Fig. 1 at the rear of this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h TRADITIONAL CHINESE REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE 137 world, yet by entering the backdoor of his shop, never leaving this world, he can work and provide for the needs of his family. South: In South China, the topography and climate of the land varies considerably from the Northern plains. The Chinese had to learn to adapt their architectural plans to different conditions. Certain groups of Chinese eventually devised new ways of expressing their character in their building in order to separate their communities from other groups. The former home of Mao Tse-tung11 in the province of Hunan is representative of many peasant houses in the South. It is a typical three-sided courtyard house (Fig.✯✯) with a U-shaped plan. In this case, the main door faces north and hence must be a more auspicious local orientation. There is evidence from a drawing that the house is nestled into the embrace of a sloping hill which, according to feng shui, is the ideal site and provides strength and protection for the home. The front door leads into a living room with an ancestral shrine, off which are the kitchens and bedrooms. Since Mao's house has become a national tourist attraction, a new addition has been added for the caretaker and slight renovations have been made. The left wing of the original house has bedrooms and a library now. The kitchen and animal sheds, which were originally in the left wing, have been moved to a new shelter farther to the left. The new addition runs parallel to the left wing and forms a new and totally enclosed courtyard. There is also to be found in the region a variation of the U-shaped plan which is L-shaped. Both types of houses are usually constructed of earth walls with thatched roofs—shelter provided by the material at hand. This house in Kiangsu province✯ is actually one room which has been partitioned. One enters heading north. It is an elaboration of a square plan also found in Kiangsu province.12 The living area is an all-purpose room and kitchen. At the far side, there is perhaps a screen which provides privacy for the bedroom. Within the bedroom, there are two k'angs: the whole family sleeps in this one part of the room. The owner of the house has built an addition in the form of a cobbler shop, placing it only a few paces from his front door. This poor craftsman's dwelling contains the basic needs for the family's well-being. No doubt there are fields or rice paddies around the house, though not necessarily those of the resident, as this region of China is under intensive cultivation. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Manchu dynasty was at its strongest and most prosperous from the middle years of the K'ang Hsi reign on until late in the Ch'ien Lung period. This enabled the country to recover and consolidate after the disasters of the late Ming and the troubled period of transition to the Ch'ing; but it is necessary to remember that throughout these years Hsin-an remained a border region receiving new settlers. In the present New Territories this period saw many newcomers settle in old villages or found new ones. Besides the rehabilitation of old fields, there was apparently much new land to be opened for the taking. When the first ancestor of the So clan of So Uk, Kowloon, arrived in 1739 he called his new home Mau Tin Tsuen or Village of the Rough Grass Fields; and his descendants long used this name before 'So Uk' came into common usage.1 Life for all these persons was hard, and although the empire was in good hands, it seems likely that inhabitants of these coastal areas of the southeast were often subject to attack from marauders. The Ho family of San Tsuen, Pui O, Lantau say that a founding ancestor was killed by pirates; by calculation from the clan record,2 about the year 1710. This obliged villagers to site their settlements with care. In this period of resettlement and consolidation several of the Lantau villages, though getting a living from the sea, were by design located at some distance from it. It is only in more recent times, say the present elders, that they moved to lower sites nearer the shore.3 From time to time, pirates became a particular menace, and it was not possible for the authorities to ignore their activities. A period of especial distress began for the people of Hsin-an, Tung-kuan and other coastal counties in the later years of the Ch'ien Lung reign. The genealogy of the Cheung clan of Pui O records: In the 53rd and 54th year of Ch’ien Lung, a Tung Kuan man, Tam Ah-che became a sea robber. He robbed and killed, burned houses, in great measure, took away the men as slaves and women also. The local officials and soldiers would not dare to face these robbers.4 The Cheungs and other villagers later took steps in their own defence. The village council held a meeting and decided to turn 1 Hayes, 1970, p. 158. 2 Ho-shi Ts'u-pu; in manuscript. 3 Removals on feng-shui grounds are excluded from this statement. 4 Chang-shi Ts'u-pu; in manuscript. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Hong Kong Region 129 the Kam Tin and Ping Shan branches of the Tang lineage, mediated by the Tai Po and Yuen Long branches of the same clan.1 The chronic warfare inside Hsin-an and other districts of Kwangtung was perhaps not too well known to the Hong Kong authorities, but was all too plain to the mandarins. The Viceroy of Liang-kuang, commenting on representations from the British about the alleged help given by the provincial military forces to the village bands that were opposing the occupation of the New Territories, wrote: The Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety.2 The less populated parts of the district do not seem to have experienced trouble on this scale, probably because pressure on the land was less great and there were no large lineages competing for power and struggling to retain or improve their position. However, disputes did occur and are remembered by older villagers. On Lantau, fighting between Shek Pik people and villagers from Sha Lo Wan over a grave has been mentioned to me; relations between Tong Fuk and its neighbour Shui Hau were never very good; and a fight between Pui O villagers from San Tsuen and adjoining Lo Wai took place pre-war over the mining of kaolin in a spot behind the two villages that the Lo Wai people held was disturbing the local feng shui3 It appears that in days when communications were poor and the officials at a distance, such disputes would not always come to the attention of the authorities, even if deaths occurred. This must often have been the case in the 19th century. It was thus not without good reason that the Hsin-an magistrate of 1847, quoted at the beginning of this article, considered that his difficulties were many and real, and that they were not always appreciated as such by his colleagues and superiors. 1 ARDONT, 1921, J2; with some background at J2 of his 1920 Report. 2 Quoted by Groves, p. 63, note 65. Balfour shows 23 Punti villages with outer walls at Plate 16 in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970. Many other villages, including Hakka ones, had lesser defences, as at Pui O (Lo Wai), Lantau, pp. 14-15 above. * Information secured from local elders. Page 130 is missing, directly followed by Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 130 JAMES HAYES However, despite the foregoing recital of disturbances over the years, many old persons in the Hong Kong region who were born between 1875 and 1900 have told me that their early years were very peaceful. This serves as a reminder not to telescope time and place too readily; and not to confuse occasional excitements with the regular rhythm of rural life. Nor too readily to deduce from them that there was a deterioration in institutions at the local level, as at the centre, in the later 19th century—a point made by Rhoads Murphey in his study of China's modernization.1 POSTSCRIPT There are two other happenings that must be mentioned in this survey of events. One, the establishment and rise of Hong Kong from 1841 on, and its effect on the surrounding and adjacent territory, I do not intend to treat with here.2 The second, rural depopulation, though it might appear to have some connection with the first, is in fact a separate phenomenon. Linked to over-population, malnutrition and disease, it is important enough to warrant a concluding notice.* The problem of depopulation early intruded itself into my village studies through the preoccupation with feng-shui noted in many places, so much of it linked to a reported decline in the numbers of local populations. I have encountered this in many villages on Lantau Island3 and in other parts of the old Southern District, in places as far distant from Lantau as Pak Lap on High Island in the Sai Kung District, and Ho Pui with Muk Min Ha in Tsuen Wan. These have also claimed depopulation in the 19th century and after. In the northern New Territories the well-known Tang clan of Kam Tin records a similar loss of population;4 whilst at Lin Ma Hang, a large village on the present Sino-British frontier,5 a stone tablet dated in 1893 was erected to detail the geomantic 1 Murphey: 27-30. 2 The first is well-documented, the second scarcely at all, though discussed in Potter 1968. 3 See JHKBRAS 3, 1963: 143-144; JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 156-158 and Hayes 1967:22-30. 4 Sung in HKN, VII, Dec. 1936:256. 5 See Gazetteer: 214. Especially as, in Hsin-an, it is not to be linked with devastating Taiping campaigns and official retribution, nor with Hakka-Punti wars on the scale that occurred in some parts of the province, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n PRESIDENT'S Report TREASURER's Report THE LIBRARY CONTENTS Page 1 6 10 TRANSACTIONS : Brunei: A Historical Relic - LEIGH WRIGHT Behind Japanese Barbed Wire: Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong 1942-1945 - G. C. EMERSON A Journey to Yenan 1946 - W. A. REYNOLDS ARTICLES: Two Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-An, Kwangtung - J. T. KAMM Under Altars - K. G. STEVENS Social Organization and Ceremonial Life of Two Multi-Surname Villages in Hoi-p'ing County, South China, 1911-1949 - YUEN-FONG WOON "Little Fujian (Fukien)” Sub-Neighbourhood and Community in North Point, Hong Kong - GREGORY E. GULDIN Reprinted ARTICLES: Cheung Chow - Long Island - W. J. HINTON Memories of the District Office South, Hong Kong - W. SCHOFIELD NOTES AND QUERIES: Notes for the Royal Asiatic Society Visit to Tai Mo Shan, 3rd April 1976 — (I) L. B. and S. L. THROWER (II) JAMES HAYES Notes for the Visit to the Tang Family Graves, 11 December 1976 - DAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES Royal Asiatic Society Visit to Tsuen Wan, 10th December, 1977 - A Village War'. JAMES HAYES The Rural History Project in Yuen Long and Field Notes on the Social History and Fung Shui of Kam Tin - J. T. KAMM Bean Skim, A Product of Blood and Sweat Four Chinese Banks Fail, Partners Blame Head Two Letters From Wartime China A Further Note on Feng Yun-Shan and Gützlaff - Jen Yu-wen Reptiles New to Hong Kong - J. D. ROMER The Public Botanic Garden of Hong Kong Birds of Tai Mo Shan - MICHAEL Webster Occurrence of the Birds - J. D. ROMER 12 30 (55) 85 101 112 130 144 179 (185) 199 216 218 220 228 232 234 236 237 Page 15 Page 16 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 54 Tien-Shui Hui-Hsien W. A. REYNOLDS NINGSIA KANSU Yung-Ping YEN-AN Kan-Cho -Chu Slo-Pa Kien Rateni (?) -Cheng Cheng-Ku Han-Chang Digi-Hsiang (?) ? SHENSI Nan-Hsing turng (?) WEI HO Hsing-Ping PAO-CIT Hung-Hua-Pu HSIA Fang Kuang-Shih-Pu HONAN Lo-Chuan Hiao-Ho-Kou Huang-Ling I-Chun SHANSI River Kuang-Tiao Chien-La (?) Tru-Tung (?) Hien-Yang Te-Yang Sun-Tai Wan-Yuan Lo-Heh-Pa Shuang-Po-Chang SZECHWAN Ta-Haien Rs In-Tu (?) CHENG-TU Sui Ning den-Yang (?) La- Tung-an Izu-Yang (?) Peng-Ch Chu-Hsien CHANG CETAM (?) -Nan-Char (?) Ta-Chu -Ch: eng/An 1in-Shui (?) Chung ́ung- Lo Jung-Shi Hei-Chiark P1-Shi (?) hg-Chuan (?) "Lung-Chiang KWEI CHOW HUPEH HIUNAN (?) Szechuan & Shensi Main Road System 1946. Scale: 1:3,000,000. Figure Map of Szechuan & Shensi showing routes. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 161 d) Just beyond the concrete ford on the right-hand side, note the profile of the krasnozem. e) Beyond the Gun Club, note the picnic places set out by the Agriculture and Fisheries Department on both sides of the road. 2. Stop A—car park at road junction (altitude ca 480 m.) The countryside around the car park is essentially a grassland—probably maintained by repeated fires—which is now being changed in various ways, e.g. (i) pine trees (Pinus massoniana, a native species) have been planted extensively, and the process of succession is taking place beneath them. (ii) the adjacent hillside has been planted with Acacia confusa, also native. (iii) the grassland is being invaded by shrubs, as a stage of natural succession to scrubland. At Stop A, note the following: a) Between car park and road, there is a large grave. One may surmise that before the car park was made, the fung shui (feng shui) of this site was probably better than it is now. b) To the west, below the car park, there is a large patch of even-aged Pinus massoniana. The broad-leafed shrubs beneath the pines are mainly Eurya japonica; this species is typical of scrubland in Hong Kong, and here is flourishing beneath the canopy of the pines. c) Beside the car park are scrubland species such as Rhodomyrtus tomentosa, Rubus reflexus (cf “blackberry”) and Eurya as well as the fern Dicranopteris linearis; there is also some "European bracken" (Pteridium aquilinum). Although the vegetation is moving toward scrubland, the insects are probably mainly grassland forms. d) The number of insects to be seen is highly dependent on the weather conditions. Many flying insects (butterflies etc.) are temperature-dependent and fly only when the temperature is above a certain minimum value. In grassland, as in other vegetation, the distribution and species of animals will depend on the availability of food. One may distinguish three arbitrary groups—plant eaters, eaters of debris, and predatory animals. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 199 THE RURAL HISTORY PROJECT IN YUEN LONG DISTRICT, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG, 1973. In 1973 Mr. John Kamm, a candidate for the A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies--East Asia Program, conducted field research in the N.T. The letter which follows explains how he cooperated with the District Office Yuen Long in a rural history project, and gives interesting details of how it was accomplished. The "Field Notes on the Social History and Feng-shui of Kam Tin” which follow the letter were one result of the project. The two “Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-an, Kwangtung,” printed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, are another. Hon Ed. Mr. Patrick Williamson, J.P., District Officer, Yuen Long District Office, New Territories Administration. Dear Mr. Williamson, I would like to take this opportunity to provide your office with a preliminary report on the Rural History Project. I also intend to include general thoughts on the advisability of expanding the current pilot project into a more-structured, government-sponsored operation of longer duration. At our first meeting, on 31 May, we discussed the concern in Yuen Long District, shared by both Government and village leadership, over the deterioration of Chinese tradition and custom. One substantial portion of traditional culture, i.e. oral history, seemed threatened with especially rapid extinction. We decided to explore the possibility of setting up a summer project aimed at collecting and preserving the folk tradition of a specific area of Yuen Long District. Since I had been trained in social anthropology (having won University Scholar distinction in the structural analysis of Chinese myth and folk-tale), and since I was eager to begin field work in the New Territories, I readily accepted the offer of an unpaid attachment to your office. Throughout the early weeks of June, the project gradually took shape and became a reality. Government showed interest in the idea, and approved the project. Scholars at both universities pro- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 NOTES AND QUERIES 195 Guo's cult centre was at Phoenix Mountain Monastery (4 +) near Nan An, a county capital some 15 miles inland from Chuan Zhou, the prefectural capital on the coast of Fujian province opposite Taiwan. Though Chuan Zhou lies only forty miles up the coast as the crow flies from Amoy, before the advent of buses travel between those two cities took several days. Immigrants to South-east Asia took the Saintly Guo with them, and wherever his temple is to be found you can be certain that the local populace includes a fair percentage of Nan An, Chuan Zhou and Amoy settlers. He is usually seen on altars, as he is on the Hong Kong altar, sitting beside his consort and with his parents behind him and two unnamed male servants before him. His festivals are celebrated on his birthday the 22nd of the second lunar month, and on the 22nd of the eighth lunar month, the day he was whisked away to Heaven and achieved Tao. Guo has two or three legends describing his origins and life. Some readers will have heard all or parts of these differing legends connected with various deities. The main one relates how Guo was born in Nan An district during the Sung Dynasty where he grew up with his poverty-stricken widowed mother. She worked as a maid for a rich but unpopular man who, as did all very rich heads of families, also employed his own feng shui specialist (a form of fortune adviser) who provided advice and plans for each day. The feng shui specialist foretold that the child Guo who worked as a goatherd, would have a great future, and would inherit everything from the rich man, as Guo's family had been pious, honest and good for three generations. The question posed by the rich man after he had heard this prognostication from the feng shui specialist was "would Guo prefer to be a great man for one generation", or "ashes and incense forever?" (In another version it was Emperor for one generation and Duke or King for many generations). The feng shui specialist secretly explained to Guo which was the best plot in the rich man's acres, the plot with the most auspicious characteristics. Here he was to bury the remains of his dead father. To obtain the plot Guo indentured himself to the rich man for a fixed period without the rich man realizing the auspicious nature of the site. After years of hard work Guo was able to bury his father in the plot, earning the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 196 NOTES AND QUERIES undying admiration of all around for his filial piety. In one version Guo was told by the feng shui expert to mix his father's ashes into a mulch and pour it into a crack which would appear in the dry earth in the plot. If the rich man should ask him what he was doing, he had to be told that Guo was taking washing water to the feng shui specialist. Exactly as foretold, a crack in the ground appeared and straightaway Guo poured the mulch into it. The feng shui specialist, after warning Guo that his life would be comparatively short, then instructed Guo and his mother to keep walking out of the district until they saw a man with a brass head, a cow standing on a man and a fish living on top of a tree. At that spot he would eventually die, said the feng shui expert. As they walked, a rainstorm flooded their path and they were confronted by a priest with a bronze incense burner on his head to protect him from the rain, a cowherd crouching under one of his cows for the same reason and a fisherman who in his excitement had landed a fish over his head whereupon it was caught, alive still, in a tree. Guo realized that this was the place where he would die and where he must build his temple as advised by the feng shui specialist. Guo and his mother built a home. She worked for a family nearby whilst Guo went daily to collect firewood. In one version it was claimed that as he was still but a boy, amongst the games he played with the other boys was one in which one of their number acted as Emperor and ordered the others about. They took turns daily to be Emperor, and the Emperor of the day stood or sat on a stump and ordered the others to collect his firewood. On one occasion whilst Guo was "Emperor" he felt himself stiffen and realized he was about to be taken off to Heaven. The boy playing before him at that moment fell over in a trance and Guo called out for the others to fetch his mother quickly. Tardily she appeared, not having realized what was happening and having finished watering the cows. By the time she arrived Guo too had fallen into a trance but was still seated cross-legged on the tree stump. His bewildered and excited mother pulled down his left leg to wake him up but she was just too late, his spirit was leaving his body. Her last words to him were, "If you really are a saint then you must look far away as saints are always ignored by their own people". Thus it is that he is always depicted with his left ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 4 NOTES AND QUERIES Work of the Association in its early years 217 Soon after the port of Hong Kong was opened [again] in the last year of the reign of Hsien Feng in the Ch'ing dynasty (1860-61), there used to be a Nam Pak Hong Street (later renamed Bonham Strand West). At this favourable location our predecessors set up firms dealing in native products from south and north China. The following firms were among those then established one after another: the Kwong Mau Tai Hong and the Woo Kee Hong of Mr. Chiu Yue-tin, a celebrity of Kwangtung origin, the Hau Fung Hong of Mr. Lo Chor-san, the Hop Hing Hong of Mr. Lau Lo-tak, the Siu Fung Hong of Messrs. Fung Ping-shan and Kwong Tsz-ming, the Kwan Mau Hong (in Wing Lok Street West) of Mr. Li Sau-hin, the Wah On Hong of Mr. Chan Yue-fan, the Yue Wo Loong of Mr. Chan Sik-nin, the Yuen Fat Hong of Messrs. Ko Mun-wah and Chan Chun-chuen, celebrities of Chiu Chau origin, the Yuen Sing Fat Hong, the Kam Yue Fung Hong and the Kam Sing Lee Hong of Mr. Choi Si-kit, the Yue Tak Sing Hong and the Kwong Tak Fat Hong of Mr. Chan Tin-san, the Kin Tye Lung of Messrs. Chan Wun-wing and Chan Tsz-tan, the Ng Yuen Hing Hong of Mr. Ng Lei-hing, a celebrity of Fukien origin, the Chui Tak Loong Hong of Messrs. Wu Ting-sam and Wong Ting-ming, the Hau Tak Hong of Mr. Kwok Yim-sing and his brother(s), the Yi Tai Hong and the Lee Yuen Cheung Hong of a business group of Shantung origin. With the exception of Messrs. Chan Yue-fan, Chan Sik-nin and Kwok Yin-sing, all the aforesaid gentlemen have now deceased. In 1868, with the concerted initiative and efforts of the said Messrs. Chiu Yue-tin, Chan Chun-chuen, Fung Ping-shan, Choi Kit-si, Chan Tin-sau and Wu Ting-sam, the Nam Pak Hong Association was founded in Bonham Strand West near its junctions with Wing Lok Street and Queen's Road. Then the objectives of the Association were to promote members' welfare and market prosperity, to assist the police in the maintenance of law and order in the neighbourhood and to formulate plans for the prevention of fires and alleviation of disasters. On the first floor of the Association building was the office, where regulations and business rules of the Association were decided, Directors and Managers of the Association mutually elected, and monthly meetings held. For the first term, the Chairman of the Board of Directors was Mr. Chiu Yue-tin and the Manager was Mr. Lau Lo-tak. The latter mana- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 7 A shrine and two Chaozhou squatter temples on a hillside at Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island were removed during 1979 to permit road widening and the building of new housing estates. Temples, seemingly built to last forever, also disappear. A long destroyed and unidentified Cantonese traditional temple depicted in an old photograph in a published collection of photographs of old Hong Kong, may well be the temple which used to stand in Wong Nei Chong village approximately in the area of the present day King Kwong Street.13 The population explosion in Hong Kong has surrounded on all sides some of the originally relatively isolated temples by high-rise blocks of flats. Some recently opened temples have even been established in shop houses, in ordinary flats in the high-rise blocks, and in flats and huts in resettlement areas.14 Geomantically such accommodation may be adequate for their purpose, but for ideal conditions the exact orientation of all temple buildings should be determined by geomancy and the feng shui expert's calculations. Traditional temples are often on the best feng shui sites in the vicinity. According to Chinese laymen, temples should, as far as possible, face south. This south-facing orientation would mean that the main god or gods on the altar would also face the "geomantic South" which approximates to due south, and thus places the auspicious Yang on the east, and Yin on the west. However, even a casual examination of the temples in both Hong Kong and Macau shows that they can and do face in all directions. The two immediately obvious criteria in the siting of traditional temples, as can be seen from any large-scale map, are that either they back onto a hill (presumably having a powerful and beneficial geomantic influence), or face the sea. Many, of course, do both. Temples and monasteries are open from around 8 am to 8 pm, the exception being for those individuals whose need is great, and they may call at a monastery at any hour. Buddhist temples There are some one hundred and thirty-five Buddhist temples or monasteries in Hong Kong built or funded by individual monks or nuns, or by individual devotees or groups. In addition to Buddhist temples, there are organizations and services in Hong Kong which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 211 Elsewhere, "smuggling" between Nationalist-held areas and Japanese-held areas was just as prevalent as that conducted across Mirs Bay, and it was not necessarily carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Japanese. See the political context of this particular form of trade discussed in Lloyd E. Eastman, "Facets of an ambivalent relationship: smuggling, puppets, and atrocities during the War, 1937-1945", in Akira Iriye ed., The Chinese and the Japanese, Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions (Princeton, 1980). Mr. Shing 10.7.81. 100 Mr. Chan T'in Po 12.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 101 Mr. Ip Wan 2.7.81. 102 Mr. Lei Yun Shau 14.11.80. 103 Mr. Tse Koon K'au 9.6.81. 104 Other members of the East River Guerrillas included Wong Koon Fong, Kong Shui, and Lo Fung; see ints. Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80, Mr. Chiu Lin Shing 11.5.81, Mr. Sham Kin K'eung 23.6.81, 1.7.81. For the background history of the East River Guerrillas see Feng Pai-chu, Tseng Sheng, et. al. Kuang-tung jen-min k'ang-Jih chan-cheng hui-i (Canton, 1951), and "The general conditions of the liberated areas behind enemy lines in South China (East River and Hainan Island)”, in K’ang-Jih chan-cheng shih-chi chieh-fang-ch'ü kai-k'uang (Peking, 1st ed. 1953, rep. 1981) pp. 123-132. Dr. (later Sir) Lindsay Ride contacted Ts'oi Kwok Leung immediately upon his escape from Hong Kong and after the British Army Aid Group was formed, Ts'oi co-operated with the B.A.A.G. to assist prisoners-of-war escaping from Hong Kong. See Edwin Ride, BAAG, Hong Kong Resistance, 1942-1945 (Hong Kong, 1981). 105 Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80. 100 Mr. Hoh Shang 24.6.81, Mr. Wong Ts'ing 23.6.81. 107 Mr. Lau 17.7.81, Mr. Chan Shing 21.11.80. 108 Mr. Lau Wan Hei 25.6.81, Mr. Sham Kin K'eung 23.6.81, Madam Chiu I Mooi 7.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 100 Mr. Cheung Hing 28.11.80, Mr. Wong Ts'ing 23.6.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81. 110 Mr. Chan Shing 21.11.80. 111 Mr. Chiu Lin Shing 11.5.81, Mr. Lau Lui Faat 23.6.81, Mr. Lei Yun Shau 14.11.80. 119 Mr. Lok Kau Kei 26.6.81, Mr. Yau Koon K'au 27.7.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80. 113 Mr. K.M.A. Barnett 13.2.82, Mr. Wan Yau 14.7.81. 114 Father Lau Wing Yiu 18.5.81. 115 Mr. Chung Poon 13.11.80, Mr. Sham Kin K’eung 23.6.81, 1.7.81. 116 Mr. Lei Shiu Yam 8.5.81, Mr. Lei Yau 13.11.80, Mr. Tse Kw'an 16.11.80. See also "The story of the American pilot Kerr's escape", in the Wen-hui pao 7.1.80, and Edwin Ride, op. cit. pp. 219-220. 117 Mr. Wan Ts'eung 31.11.80. 118 Mr. Yau T'aam Shang 8.5.81. 110 Mr. Chung P'oon 13.11.80, Mr. Lau Wan Hei and Mr. Kong Sai P'ing 25.6.81. 120 J. Barrow, "Annual Report of the D.C.N.T. 1947-48”, p. 2. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 133 strangled by three pieces of string or cord. Travers Humphreys asserts: 'The method is peculiarly Oriental, and indicated that she had been sitting on the ground when someone, with the string held in both hands, had suddenly drawn it tightly round her throat and knotted it behind'.42 Strangulation by this method — a ligature — is not, surely, 'peculiarly Oriental'? It was adopted, for example, by the murderer in the celebrated Yarmouth case of 1900, where the victim was strangled by a mohair bootlace.4 Another source of perplexity, to repeat, was language: people who do not speak your language are apt to be regarded as dense or odd. Miao often declared he had been misunderstood. Thus at first he believed his wife's body had been found by Miss Crossley, and he is alleged to have asked 'Did she go to the place where they bathe?' (indicating that he knew where she had been murdered). Later, Miao's counsel urged that what he really said was, 'Had she gone to look for his wife at the place where people take the bus'. The three pieces of paper, with the cabbalistic or arcane questions on them, also worried Travers Humphreys. One of the statements made by Miao, he relates, 'to the Appeal Court was that he was in the habit of asking God which of two or more courses he should take, when he would put the alternatives on separate pieces of paper, would then pray for guidance and decide by drawing a lot. Does not that statement indicate a confusion of mind sufficient to account for almost any action?'44 But the art of divination — the drawing of lots — has a long history in China; so, too, has fortune-telling, once a normal custom when a marriage was projected between families. The mysterious I Ching has also been widely used by Chinese for centuries as a means of grasping the future. One should also refer to a widely-held belief in the efficacy of feng-shui, certainly in the 1920s. The rational Travers Humphreys, in the quotation given above, was suggesting, of course, that Miao was suffering from religious mania or acute superstition; but, if so, why should this provide a motive for the crime unless he believed his wife was the Antichrist? On balance, it seems obvious that Miao's crime was a murder for profit. He had little money in his possession when he married; the planned two-months vacation appears to have been financed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 85 Loan Word Chinese Characters *Choy sum 蔡心 Confucius 孔夫子 Congou 工夫 Cumshaw 感謝 *Chung Young 重陽 *Dimsum 點心 *Ding how 真好 *Fanqui, 番鬼 fankwei 番鬼 Fan-tan 番攤 Fen 分 Feng shui, fung shui 風水 Fo 佛 *Foki 伙計 Foo yong, fu yung 芙蓉 Galingale 高良薑 Ginseng 人蔘 Meaning A species of leafy Chinese vegetable, with yellow flowers. K'ung Fu-tse n. the Chinese name of Confucius. A kind of black tea imported from China. In the Chinese ports: A gratuity. A Chinese festival falling on the ninth day of the ninth moon on which according to traditional belief people have to go up to high places to avoid calamity. Also a day for sweeping ancestral graves. Tidbits eaten at a Cantonese repast taken either in the early morning or at lunch time known as yum cha or 'drinking tea'. Literally meaning 'the most excellent best'. Literally 'barbarian ghost', used to refer to westerners in the early days of contact between China and the west. A Chinese gambling game in which a random number of counters are placed under a bowl and wagers laid on how many will remain after they have been divided by four. A monetary unit of the People's Republic of China worth one hundredth of a yuan. In Chinese mythology, a system of spirit influences, good and evil, which inhabit the natural features of landscapes; hence, a kind of geomancy for dealing with these influences in determining sites for houses and graves. Chinese Buddha. A term used to refer to waiters in restaurants, but sometimes also used in the wider sense of people who work in the same organization, i.e., 'colleagues'. Fu yung, lit. hibiscus: a Chinese omelet made with bean sprouts, green pepper, and onion and fried in deep fat. Lit. 'mild ginger from Ko'. Either of two arallaceous plants, Panax Ginseng (Schinseng), of China, Korea, etc., or P. quinquefolium, of North America, having an aromatic root used in medicine by the Chinese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 42 JULIAN PAS Webster's Dictionary (1979), p. 1733. 10 Webster's Dictionary (1979), p. 170. Lenormant (1875), p. 18. 12 Lenormant (1875), p. 19. 13 Lenormant (1875), p. 30. 14 Needham (1956), p. 349. Banck (1976). 16 CHENG, Chen-tuo, Editor, T'ien-chu ling-ch'ien (Reproduction of the Earliest Preserved Set of Temple Oracles) Folklore & Folk Literature Series of National Peking University. (reprint), Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1958. 17 19 I have used the cheng-t'ong or Ming edition, as reprinted in Taipei. Eberhard (1970), p. 193. Huang-ti shen-kung Ħ☎1⁄2, Banck (1976), #17. 20 Eberhard (1970), p. 191-192. 21 Jordan (1982). 11 W. Eberhard (1970), p. 195. The Chinese text: 1+X8 23 24 The Chinese text: 高達五十得名 St. Augustine's Confessions, translated by William Benham (New York: Collies & Son, 1909), pp. 141-142. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Sources (i) Taiwan (& Hong Kong) Oracles, published in booklets B-I B-I B-I B-2 B-2 B-2 Sheng-ch'ien chu-chieh E, Kuan Yin Fo-tsu, T'ien-shang Sheng-mu &Ħ, X_L, Taichung, Jui-ch'eng Bookstore AĦĦ , 1972, (1st ed. date, unknown). K'ai-t'ai Ma-tsu chien-chieh, published by the Feng-t'ien Temple in Hsin-kang, Chia-yi *, ****8. (n.d. circa 1978). The oracle texts are on pp. 1-30. + Ling-ch'ien chich-shuo, with commentaries by Yeh Shan #ll, Taichung: Ch'uang-shih Publishing House, & FURN 1979. + Pai-shou ch'ien-chieh, Published by the Hsing-sheng Temple in Taichung 台中市行聖宮,1977. Ling-ch'ien chieh-shuo *, with commentaries by Yeh Shan #. Taichung: Ch'uang-shih Publishing House, ÷ÞOKRE 1975 (1st ed.: 1966) Kuan-sheng Ti-chún ch'ien-shih chich MESE the Shui-hsien Temple in Nan-kang, Chia-yi, 1 Published by *, 1964, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 17 NOTES FOR A VISIT TO THE GOVERNMENT CEMETERY AT HAPPY VALLEY CARL T. SMITH The writer of an article entitled “Lest We Forget” published in the South China Morning Post 6 June 1913 describes the Colonial Cemetery as "an extremely beautiful spot, for all around is to be seen the rugged grandeur of nature's own handiwork; the free elemental play of stream and sky and mountain a truly wonderful background, and a magnificent object lesson of the infinitude and vastness of things". The description might be viewed as a western counterpart of Chinese feng shui. Whether the site of the cemetery and its graves really conform to proper feng shui principles must be left to a qualified geomancer. A Chinese view of the proper aspect of a cemetery was expressed by Mr. Lau Chu-pak, a leader of the Chinese community, in a discussion concerning cemeteries at a meeting of the Sanitary Board in 1909. He quoted Confucius as saying that burial places should not resemble pleasure gardens, rather they should be in harmony with those who weep and mourn. (Weekly Press 17 April 1909) The first Protestant burial ground The Colonial Cemetery, now called the Government Cemetery in Happy Valley, was opened in 1845. Previously Europeans were buried at a Protestant and a Roman Catholic Cemetery which adjoined each other in Wanchai. They were located on the slope of the hill above Queen's Road East extending upward to the vicinity of the present Kennedy Road, in the general area of the present Sun, Moon, Star and St. Francis Streets. The earliest date of burial on the forty-eight monuments removed from the old Protestant Cemetery to the Colonial * 15th March, 1984 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 T 52 tent with the motive of maximizing the market, ranging, as it does from the local Chinese literati to domestic servants of European residents, and even to "country youths", presumably from the recently acquired "New Territories". The principal contents of English Made Easy comprise Mok Man Cheung's “unique system” for enabling non-English speakers to pronounce the English alphabet, numbers, words, phrases, and sentences, plus an anthology of "model letters". Fascinating insights into the quality of the social life of upwardly mobile Chinese at the turn of the century are provided by the selection of materials for these sections of the book. Several of the categories of objects and phenomena, invented by Mok Man Cheung to organize his work, offer evidence about the ambivalence of this sort of person at this time in the face of influences from both East and West. In his list of words referring to "Objects of Nature", for example, the earliest words on the list (“Sky”, “Earth”, “Sun”, “Moon”, “Wind”, “Clouds”, “Rain”, etc.) may have been chosen for their compatibility with such traditional Chinese concepts as "Feng Shui”1 and with other widespread beliefs. "Spirits”, “Gods”, “Ghost”, and “Devil” are all included. The later entries seem to concentrate more on practical and modern realities, such as “reclamation ground”, “rough sea”, “typhoon”, “drizzle” [sic], “low-tide”, “flood”, and, to conclude happily, "calm-sea". In his suggested vocabulary for "Time and Seasons", he includes "Intercalary moon”, “Full moon Festival”, "Dragon Boat Festival" and "Winter Solstice" as well as “Christmas day", the days of the week and months of the year by Western reckoning, and a battery of non-culture-specific temporal terms. Mok Man Cheung's list of "Persons and their Occupations" begins, perhaps because it was politic to do so in 1905, with "Emperor", "Empress", "Crown Prince", and proceeds to deal with “Mandarin” and “General”, leading on to such occupations as “Maidservant” and “Captain”, before referring to "Governor", "Policemen" (juxtaposed with “Thief”) and "Student". It would not be uncharacteristic of Chinese style if the precise order in which these “Persons and Occupations” are presented is meant to be significant. Even if this is not the case, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 68 Office Records, Series 129 (“Hong Kong: Original Correspondence"), File 404, pp. 359-397. Such references will hereafter appear in the style, CO129/404, pp. 395-397. 12 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1944), p. xlviii, 20-42. 13 The expression "country youths" is broad enough to include the Chinese further up-country in Guangdong Province. It is likely, however, that Mok Man Cheung had his eye on the chance of catering to the population of the area then known as "the New Territory", leased from China in 1898. 14 "Feng Shui" is the traditional Chinese concern for geomancy, or the most favourable conjunction of winds and waters which would be taken into consideration when, for example, a tomb or a residence was being sited. See Maurice Freedman, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', in The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, selected and introduced by G. William Skinner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 189-211. 15 In the Cantonese vernacular, "horse-boy" also means “minion”. 14 The various page numbers included in parentheses refer, of course, to the original 1904 edition of English Made Easy. 17 Other examples of simple errors, which have little to do with local knowledge, include "grosery", "Bigonia", "Spinage", "Carret", "Pumpkin", "Thrimp fritters", “Calway seeds”, “Pate foi gras", "Sarsaparilla", “Cut dough or spargetty", etc. 18 A common expression, especially in business circles, for present, treat, "sweetener", close to the conceptual borders of bribe. 19 Anthony Sweeting, 'Hong Kong', in R. Murray Thomas & T. Neville Postlethwaite (eds.) Schooling in East Asia: Forces of Change (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 275. 20 Smith (1985) p. 103f. 21 An expression used by Carl Smith to mean educated through the medium of the English language in one of the leading “Anglo-Chinese" schools in Hong Kong at the time, e.g., the Morrison Education Society School, St. Paul's College, Ying Wah College, the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, the Central School (renamed Victoria College in 1887 and Queen's College in 1894), and St. Saviour's College (renamed St. Joseph's College in 1875). 22 Smith (1985) pp. 143-171. 24 Who's Who in the Far East, (Hong Kong, China Mail, 1906), p. 233. The first Prefects were appointed on Empire Day, 1911, received gilt badges to denote the importance of their office, and were known ironically as "Mr. Ralph's peerage", presumably to signify that this new pupil aristocracy was the brainchild of Mr. Edwin Ralphs, the popular Second Master. See Gwenneth Stokes, Queen's College 1862-1962 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1962), p. 282. 25 These included the Morrison Scholarship, donated by the Morrison Education Society in 1873; the Government Scholarship, instituted for pupils at the Central School in 1874; several Belilios Scholarships established by E.R. Belilios in 1882 when his offer to erect a statue in honour of Viscount Beaconsfield, recently Prime Minister of Great Britain, was politely declined; the Stewart Scholarship, estab- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 32 29 The term 'comprador' in Chinese history is quite argumentative. In late Qing times it referred to a commercial broker, an agent and employee of a foreign firm. With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the Republican period, the meaning was gradually expanded beyond its original sense to include politics in a negative meaning or collaboration with foreigners of serving interest of imperialists. In Chinese Marxist scholarship, comprador has taken on a political meaning. See Jung-fang Tsai (1981), The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists, pp. 191-7. However, economic historians such as Wang Jingyu, realizing the role of Chinese merchants in the economic development of the nineteenth century, said they included compradors who had large investment in modern enterprises, been active in huashang fugu huodong as well as buying capital in from foreign aggressive enterprises. See Wang (1965), Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The Activities of Chinese Merchants to Buy Capital-Shares from the Foreign Aggressive Enterprises in China During the Late Nineteenth Century) and (1983b) Shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The Economic Invasion of Western Capitalism on China in Nineteenth Century), pp. 483-526. 10 Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, pp. 4-5. 31 As Xu himself stated, the estimate value of this amount after discount should be 3,219,470 taels. See ibid, p. 68. 17 Other investments, though the amounts are uncertain, can also be ascertained from his autobiography. They are: a pier company at Guangdong, a grocery at Shanghai; also silk cloth shop, tea shop, partnership in Huya'an Insurance Co., Huaxing Insurance Co., Difeng Co., Shanghai Land Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Tramway Co., Xunhuan Newspaper in Hong Kong, a water works, and Tongyi cultivation company in Guangdong. See Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, preface. 33 See Liu Kwang-ching (1962), Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, p. 155. 14 See Hao (1970a), p. 100. As Xia Dongyuan found that in the Zheng's zhushu (will) written in 1914, Zheng regarded 4,088 taels the interest from share-stocks as one of his main sources of income. See Xia (1985b), p. 268. 35 See Zheng Guanying, Zhi Li Zhaomin Fangbo lun zhuang Lundun Hongyuan Gongsi (Letter addressed to Li Zhaomin in discussing the founding of Hongyuan Company in London), in Xia Dongyuan (1988a), pp. 507-3; Wu Chang-chuan (1974), pp. 86-8. 36 As Wang Shui has concluded from various sources, during 1840 to 1894 Chinese compradors had accumulated a total income of about half a billion taels, see Wang (1983), Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An Assessment of Compradors' Income and Its Spending Ways in Qing Dynasty), pp. 298-307. 37 See Thomas G. Rawski (1970), Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875, pp. 451-73. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 118 This obelisk, now in the Government Cemetery, stood then at the junction of Queen's Road East and Leighton Road. It commemorates officers and men of HMS Vestal who, in 1847, were killed, drowned or died in Hong Kong. Cremation In this study cremation took place two days after the funeral service because the previous day was inauspicious. Only close family members sat in the hearse accompanying the body to Cape Collinson Crematorium. The ceremony was simple. All relations made three bows, each of the three sisters poured one cup of rice wine which was placed together with food on the altar. The dead person's 'spirit shrine', made of rattan and paper, was burned. The family then crossed back over the Harbour to the Buddhist Hall to pay respects. There a group of lay nuns, who addressed one another as 'brother' (兄弟), chanted mantras. Although until AD 1370 bodies of Buddhist laity were frequently cremated3, the Han Chinese have a long tradition of burial with human remains returning to nature and affecting feng shui. The body should remain in contact with earth, it is traditionally believed. The final resting place should have good soil, luxuriant trees and grass. This belief is still strong in some quarters. To beat an April 1st, 1993, deadline, after which all corpses in Jiangsu Province have been cremated, 40 old people committed mass suicide in March so that they could receive a traditional burial. Burial has been considered more desirable by Han Chinese than the custom of many Muslim Chinese minority groups with bodies being eaten by vultures.32 The Book of Changes (I Ching) records that in primitive society Han Chinese left their dead in the wilderness, covered with leaves. Later, when they came to believe souls went on to another world, they began to protect bodies by placing them in graves. 34 33 Hong Kong, like China, has for several years campaigned in favour of cremation. Feudal superstitions have had to be overcome. In 1958/59, only 1.65 per cent of corpses were cremated. In 1989/90, the figure stood at 70 per cent. Because of chronic land shortage there are few cemeteries in Hong Kong where the body can rest in perpetuity. When buried they are usually exhumed after six years (times have varied from five to 10 years). The bones (designated yang, but flesh is yin) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 119 are then ritually washed and cremated, or, in the case of New Territories' villagers, re-interred either in horseshoe-shaped masonry graves or in two-foot high, ceramic, funerary urns, called kam taap (金塔). The bones are positioned in these pots, foetus-shaped, ready for reincarnation. 'There is a time to live, a time to die, and a time to be born again.' 37 38 Like Spots selected on hillsides should have 'neutral' feng shui; high voltage electricity, too powerful a 'charge' can render living relatives vulnerable. Hong Kong citizens can now occupy grave spaces at Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Mausoleum, just over the Hong Kong border in China, where they can be interred in perpetuity. Incidentally, bodies were sometimes buried 12-feet under in cemeteries in Happy Valley (a lovely name), in early British Hong Kong, to protect them from grave robbers. Graves should be sited on hillsides. At the base of a mountain ridge, where the dragon spirit of the mountain stops its run, between spurs to give an 'armchair' effect, is a good position. There should be a commanding view, preferably of water (representing money). The surroundings may take the form of a dragon, a snake, a crab or a prawn, and 'dragon's vapour' (feng shui) needs to be captured or restrained in the correct proportions. The siting of a grave metaphysically influences the lives of descendants. A body decomposes and the 'five Elements', minerals from bones and flesh, remain in the soil. Nothing dies. Everything is transformed. Universal impulses and high vibrational and spiritual frequencies are transferred from graves along electromagnetic ley lines, and resonances and energy are received and inherited from father to son and by other living relatives. Such activities are most effective when one is buried in one's native soil, some believe.38 Today, however, in public cemeteries in Hong Kong, a person is allocated the next vacant grave space. He has little control over feng shui, although some people do try to change their position in a queue in order to obtain a 'good' grave number. Return Visit In this study, on the 12th night after death (duration depends upon deceased's date of birth3), all close family members waited in the dead ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 125 End of Mourning Although many consider mourning lasts for five (or previously seven) tsats, namely 35 (or 49) days, a normally accepted figure is 100 days. Until this century laws laid down how long the five grades of relatives should mourn. If these rules were breached punishment was administered by the state. It is unlucky for mourning to end on the exact day. 43 A simple ceremony to mark the end of mourning, after 101 days in this study, was held by relatives in the home of the second daughter where a permanent shrine had been erected to the deceased. This faces the main entrance door but as the flat in question had not been ‘feng shui oriented’ its effects are likely to be negated. There were the customary three bows and burning of joss sticks. Everyone was in good spirits occasionally talking to the dead person's picture as if she was actually there. Of course there was food. This plays a major part in a culture of a country where famines were common. Dishes included chicken properly 'assembled', complete with head and tail (everything must have a beginning and an end), fish, and Chinese sweetmeats such as yam rolls. Oranges were placed on the shrine. On that day a box of home-cooked walnut cake was on the table. It was later found untied and everyone denied undoing it. Those present questioned whether the deceased had opened it. There was also roast pork, believed by some to replace, ritualistically, the flesh lost in death. Pork is 'food fit for the gods'. Once placed on the altar before ancestors it takes on a sacred, magical quality which, some believe, can be likened to the host consecrated at the Eucharist. The Roman Catholic Church declares that, by transubstantiation (a custom continued since medieval times), bread and wine become the substance and form of the body and blood of Christ. Protestants believe the bread and wine do not take on physical affinity but convey a spiritual reality. By eating pork that has been offered up and 'ritually shared', ancestors and living descendants, so some Chinese claim, are not only able to fortify their chi ('cosmic breath' providing inner strength) but also capture special 'magical' powers. Even non-lineage members are sometimes offered some pork as a special gift. Babies barely able to masticate have pieces pressed into their tiny mouths. Afterwards, mothers swear they are better behaved and illnesses cured. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 128 Also, many who did not believe in reincarnation did believe in supernatural powers and in retribution. Namely, that one would be punished later for sins committed on earth. In the funeral in this case study, the three daughters and the two granddaughters all believed in reincarnation. Conclusions In his long, complicated, Italian poem, I Sepolcri (Graves), Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) looks at death, the after life and how the dead are represented on earth. We see ourselves in the tombs we erect, he maintains. What is the cult of death? It began when civilisation began. When homo sapiens ceased to be animal and 'honoured its urns'. There is conflict between erecting tombs and the law of nature which recycles bodies back into the earth's system, Foscolo continues: "The stink of the corpse mixes with the smell of incense. In Italy, importance is attached to cypress and cedar trees which stay green with fragrances to record to eternity those who have gone. In England, these are replaced by aged yews and in the Far East sometimes by frangipani. Funerals, along with food, festivals and weddings tell us much about a nation's culture. Former British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-98) said: Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws and their loyalties to high ideals. Certainly the 'cult of death' is complex and fairly clearly defined for the Chinese who, with their ancient civilisation, rich in folklore, have been 'honouring urns' in a similar manner back as long ago as the Chou Dynasty (1122-255 BC), although there are slight regional variations. The Chinese, more than any other people, are obsessed with the dead.48 There is a fear of the dead. There is a continuing relationship between the dead and the living. Rituals demonstrate, resolve and change situations. Money, goods and food are 'dispatched' to the deceased. In return, from ancestors, the living expect luck, wealth, moral order, fertility and health. If punishment is meted out this is accepted. Feng shui plays its part. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j Topley asks whether the poor trace hardships, basically, to lack of money. Cash can solicit and secure worldly and spiritual favours, advantages as well as goods.” At a funeral there is abundant, cheap, 'mock' money which mourners 'remit' to the deceased. The dead can be 'looked after' in a style not often possible on earth. Other ritual ingredients are belief in supernatural powers making up driving forces of the universe, whether these be magic, the complementary powers of yin and yang, ‘dragon vapours' (lung hei) of feng shui, fuk hei (divine blessings) or other superstitions. They must be handled correctly so no one is alienated. There are, nevertheless, inconsistencies. If even the average Chinese does appear to believe that everything depends upon impersonal whims and pulsation of feng shui through the universe he does not resign himself entirely to fate. The contradiction is that most Chinese display a strong motivation to achieve wealth, power and prestige. Ability and education are valued. To complicate the issue further there is the Buddhist karmic belief that one's afterlife depends upon morality and performing good deeds on earth. So with a broad streak of pragmatism, if, with ancestor worship, forefathers do not provide adequately for present generation - even though forebears' bones have turned white instead of black - the living will still try to achieve objectives in other ways, such as by following the Confucian work ethic. But the need to perform the will of the gods, if one wishes to be saved, is also stressed, although ascetic practices and abstaining from worldly comforts appeal to a limited number of Chinese. But effort on its own is not enough. Something else, something special, is required. With Chinese civilisation going back to the Shang Dynasty (circa 1600 to 1100 B.C.) beliefs do not usually change overnight. Yet, as explained in this paper, a number of Hong Kong funeral customs have altered significantly since World War II, such as acceptance of cremation and streamlining of funerary formalities. In many ways, Hong Kong Chinese think differently to westerners and even to their mainland cousins. Yet, if a European reflects after attending a Chinese funeral, many aspects are very meaningful. These can help a westerner strengthen Christian beliefs. Even those Hong Kong Chinese who do not profess a faith still usually engage Taoist or Buddhist monks to perform last rites. The author recalls Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 133 21 Hugh Baker, 'Hell Bank Notes', Ancestral Images, A Hong Kong Album (1979), pp 105-108 ✰ 21 Hugh Baker, 'Nuns', More Ancestral Images, op. cit (1980), pp 13-16 Tin Sau Ho Coffin Shop, Hollywood Road, visited by author 20th July 1992 The Art of Death 1500 to 1800, exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum early 1992 24 09 Hugh Baker, 'Marsh', Ancestral Images Again, A Third Hong Kong Album (1981), pp 109-112; Frena Bloomfield, 'The Chinese Almanac', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 100-2, and 'The Chinese Almanac', The Peninsula Group Magazine 13 (Hong Kong, April 1978), pp 66-71. 26 Hugh Baker, 'Mourning', Hong Kong Images. People and Animals (1990), pp. 121-3 21 T.C. Lai, op. cit. pp 152-3 28 Ingrams, loc. cit 29 Carl T. Smith, 'The Emergence of a Chinese Elite', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 11 (1971), pp 74-115 (p 98). 30 S.M. Bard, Study of Military Graves and Monuments Hong Kong Cemetery (1991), pp. 16 (B), 26 and 27 32 33 J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (first published 1903), p 166 Discussion between author and David Shu Tat-koon, feng shui master, 7 August 1992 Hugh Baker, 'Burial', Ancestral Images, op. cit. (1979), pp 17-20 34 Hong Kong Government Urban Services Department / Urban Council Annual Reports 3 Hugh Baker, 'Exhumation', Ancestral Images, op. cit (1979), pp 110-104 JJ Hugh Baker, 'Exhumation', Ancestral Images, op. cit (1979), pp 110-104 37 Frena Bloomfield, 'Fung Shui: Chinese Earth Magic', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 103-114; and Ernest J. Eitel, Feng Shui (Singapore, 1984). 38 Discussion between author and David Shu Tat-koon concerning his own theories, 7 August 1992 39 In other cases the author has been told of dead people's spirits returning home three, seven, ten or other periods after death 40 All dead persons except infants and wandering strangers are entitled to a spirit tablet 41 Visit by Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, to Sang Woo Loong Art Advertising Model Work Company, 28 Western Street, 10 December 1988, second visit by author to same establishment 20 July 1992. 42 43 Hugh Baker, 'Earth God', Ancestral Images, op. cit. (1979), pp 1-4 Hugh Baker, 'Mourning', Ancestral Images Again, op. cit (1981), pp 101-104. Laurence G. Thompson, op. cit. pp 54 and 55. 44 Leung Chor-on, 'Blessings Are Not For All', The Hong Kong Anthropologist, no 5 (April 1992), pp. 26-28 (p. 27) 45 Rubie S. Watson, 'Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China', eds James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., pp. 203-227 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x sons. The second son of Hin-sing, named Ying-yiu, was a kwok-hok-sang, and the third, named Ying-[...] held the kung-sang degree. Today, the two brothers [Wing-sing and Hin-sing] are being buried together in the one grave located at the local place name Shing Mun Au, whose fung-shui direction is as follows [details]. The geomantic name of this grave site is *the lion looking at... [...].* The burial has been arranged for an auspicious day in autumn, and the memory of the deceased will endure for ever. 167 *All descendants live at Kam Tin,* states the tablet. The date of burial was in Hsien Feng 3rd or kwai-chau year (1853), and the time of burial was the third day in a period listed in the almanac as kuk tan, There is much damage on the tablet where the two names of the deceased appear, but the title of kwok-hok-sang appears above Hin-sing's name, and of a conferred military degree above the other's. Among the names of the living descendants appearing on the tablet are sons and nephews Ying-yiu and another, Ying-kwai. There are also grandsons and great-grandsons. It will be noted that this was really a reburial, since one man had been dead for 39 years and the other for 42. Their achievements were felt to require this filial action on the part of surviving sons, nephews and after generations of the two deceased. It should be remarked that, as in the next case, the text of this inscription is in line with the Confucian admonition 'to glorify the ancestors and preserve the posterity.' The two ancestors' achievements are recorded, as an act of pride of family, as are their sons' in their turn. The record of their lives can be read by all descendants thenceforward, and can serve to spur them to further achievement in their turn. The second of these old graves is located in the Shing Mun area on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. The grave was repaired on a lucky day in the middle month of the autumn season in the 10th year of Kuang Hsu, that is in 1884. The person buried there had been born about 1710 (by inference from the tablet's wording), and the reburial was carried out by all three branches of the family, in the great and great grandsons' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 117 Ch'uanchou immigrants overseas, and in particular those from Yangchun. There are more than seventy-three temples in Taiwan dedicated to the deity, mostly in the Yunlin area, and as would be expected, he is very popular in Southeast Asian Fukienese communities where his images are to be seen in a great number of temples. However, his image has not been noted in either Hong Kong or Macau, nor had the local carvers in the two colonies heard of the deity. In Taiwan and Fukienese communities in Southeast Asia, many small images are grouped in comparatively large numbers on the main altar tables of Ch'ing-shui temples. These are borrowed by the sick or by close relatives who beat them home, where they are venerated, often to diagnose sickness before prescribing a remedy. This is done through a medium, though occasionally a villager who has never been in a trance before may suddenly voice the advice of Ch'ing-shui. Some families purchase their own image of Ch'ing-shui for their family shrine, usually after the deity has approached a member of the family in a dream and suggested the idea to him or her. Very rarely do laymen approach the god directly; he is consulted through a medium who recites incantations and receives instructions at a séance during which the deity determines the cause of the problem and prescribes the remedy. In Penang, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih is the main deity in the famous snake temple, where a great number of vipers hang from beams and branches and are known as the lieutenants of Ch'ing-shui or 'blue dragons', being referred to by devotees simply as 'dragons'. In another Penang temple, four images of soldiers in armour flank the image of the main deity, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, with all four having surnames and together being known as the Four Great Marshals (of Ch'ing-shui) [Ssu Ta Yuan-shuai]. Legends about Ch'ing-shui are numerous and varied. One or two temple custodians have tried to place him amongst the mythological heroes of the Feng-shen Yen-i, including Purcell, but nowhere in the legends of the early dynastic era is there any reference to Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. In general, he appears to have been a Buddhist monk, born in Yangchun during the Sung dynasty, in AD 1044, and to have died in ca. 1124. Amongst the various claims, one custodian suggested that he was a Sung military adviser, Ch'en Ming-chao, who fought a losing battle against foreign invaders and then fled south with the defeated dynasty and settled. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g FOREIGNERS AND FUNG SHUI DAN WATERS The system of fung shui, therefore, based as it is on human speculation and superstition and not on careful study of nature, is marked for decay and dissolution. Feng-Shui Ernest J. Eitel 1882 57 By contrast to the above, the following (again the opinion of a single person) was published 89 years later. I believe that the human mind has reached a point in evolution where it is about to develop new powers — powers that once would have been considered magical. In the animal kingdom, 'magical powers' are common place. Civilised man has forgotten about them because they are no longer necessary to his survival. + Synopsis The Occult Colin Wilson 1971 This paper looks at fung shui largely as it affects Westerners, although, to do this, its role within Chinese society must also be examined. What is fung shui? How do Caucasians, western hongs (business houses) and the British Hong Kong Government view, and react to, it? This paper, in which comparisons are made between Chinese fung shui and geomancy in other cultures, also examines two case studies. Firstly, the fung shui in an urban flat at Mid-Levels, and, secondly, the fung shui in business premises. This paper also looks at the growing role played by fung shui in the West. Conclusions are drawn on the study overall. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 58 As most of the research was undertaken in Hong Kong, romanisation of the Chinese is mainly in Cantonese. Therefore, the spelling fung shui is used rather than the more common feng shui. All currency, unless otherwise stated, is in Hong Kong dollars. Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Mr Ko Cheuk-luen for undertaking research in Canada, and to Mr Benny Chung Chi-bun who, similarly, undertook research in Holland. Without their assistance, together with the help of many other friends and acquaintances who answered countless questions and gave their own views of fung shui, this paper would have lacked important details. The author also acknowledges the assistance of many of the authors of the titles listed in the bibliography from which information has been drawn. Introduction What exactly is fung shui? John Mitchell (Eitel, Feng-Shui: 1984) wrote in the 'Afterword' of the republished book: (It is) the art of perceiving the subtle energies that animate nature and the landscape, and the science of reconciling the best interests of the living earth with those of all its inhabitants. The term 'fung shui (风水)' is sometimes inadequately called 'Chinese geomancy'. It constitutes one of the numerous ways of trying to account, and plan, for the future. Translated it means, simply, the two powerful forces 'wind' (including air and ventilation) and 'water' (including rain, damp, drainage and sanitation). This title 'fung shui', itself, tells one little; although it was true that an ancient Chinese farming village had to be as well protected as possible from the elements. No habitation could be auspicious without fresh water. It was necessary to 'tap the goodness of nature' to benefit man, although harmony is a dynamic process. Fung shui has also been described as the science of good placement and alignment within the confines of nature. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 105 Appendix A Ernest J. Eitel, Hong Kong civil servant and historian, in his book, Feng-Shui, first published in 1882, wrote the following: Feng shui may contain a bushel of wisdom, but it scarcely contains a handful of commonsense. It is simply the blind gropings of the Chinese mind after a system of natural sciences. How does this view compare with the opinions of some Westerners today, to whom the author posed the question, 'Do you believe in fung shui?' Although some answers have been written into the text of this response, some are listed below. In some cases, answers have been condensed: 'No, I don't believe.' 'There must be something in it.' 'I don't know much about it.' 'Not really. A lot is superstition. I lived in a house with a very low rent in Tokyo purely because it was close to a crematorium. You could see the smoke coming out of the chimney.' 'Yes, everyone likes to have furniture arranged properly. All know the soothing effect of running water. It makes you feel good. If someone tells me to put my chair in a certain position, I'll put it in that position.' Fung shui is one of the few Chinese terms that many people living in Europe understand.' 'I believe in the practical aspects, not the mumbo jumbo.' 'Depends what you mean by fung shui.' '...conducive to relaxation.' 'Too much trouble, I can't be bothered.' 'I believe certain things are...' 'In the old days it was sensible and based on practical application before it...'. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 1=1 Extel, Ernest I, Feng-Shui, Graham Brash, 1984 (Just published 1882) Fan Wei, 'Village Feng Shui Principles', Chinese Landscapes: the Village as a Place, ed. Ronald G. Knapp, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1992, pp. 35-45 Feuchtwang, Stephen, An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy, Vantage, Southern Materials Centre Inc., Taipei, 1974 Fong, Gordon, An Introduction to Chinese Geomancy, privately published, Australia, 1980 Freedman, Maurice, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, Stanford University Press, 1979 — 'A Report on Social Research in the New Territories at Hong Kong, 1963', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 16, 1976 Groot, J.J. de, The Religion of the Chinese, Macmillan, 1912 Groves, Derham, Feng Shui and Western Building Ceremonies, Graham Brash, Singapore, 1991 2 Gwee, Peter Kim Woon, Fengshui: The Geomancy and Economy of Singapore, 1991 Hase, Patrick H., and Lee Man-yip, 'Sheung Wo Hang Village, Hong Kong: a Village Shaped by Feng Shui', Chinese Landscapes: the Village as a Place, ed. Ronald G. Knapp, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1992, pp. 79-94 Hayes, James, 'A Ceremony to Propitiate the Gods at Tong Fuk, Lantau, 1958', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 5, 1965 — 'Geomancy and the Village', Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, week-end symposium, October 1966, Brochure of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society — 'Local Reaction to the Disturbances of "Fung Shui" on Tsing Yi Island, Hong Kong, September 1977-March 1978', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 19, 1979 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 'Local Reactions to the Disturbance of "Fung Shui" on Tsingyi Island, Hong Kong, March 1978-December 1980', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 20, 1980 'Movement of Villages on Lantau Island for Fung Shui Reasons', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 3, 1963. 'Removal of Village for Fung Shui Reasons, Another Example from Lantau Island, Hong Kong', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 9, 1969 Ip Hing Fong, Emily, Feng Shui and the Walled Villages of Hong Kong, A Geographical Consideration, Hong Kong University M.Phil thesis, 1995 Kamm, John Thomas, 'The Fung-Shui of Kam Tin', The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 17, 1977 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, Heinemann Ltd, 1936 Lip, Evelyn, Chinese Geomancy, A Layman's Guide to Feng Shui, Times Books International, Singapore, 1983 'Feng Shui for Business', ditto, 1989 'Feng Shui for the Home', ditto, 1985 Lo, Raymond, Feng Shui and Destiny, Tynton Press, England, 1992 Lung, David, Chinese Traditional Vernacular Architecture, Regional Council Hong Kong, 1991 'Fung Shui, an Intrinsic Way to Environmental Design with Illustrations of Kat Hing Wai in the New Territories of Hong Kong', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 20, 1980 Markert, Christopher, I Ching the No. 1 Success Formula, Aquarian Press, 1986 Mattock, Katherine and Jill Cheshire, The Story of Government House, Studio Publications, 1994 Miller, Hamish and Paul Broadhurst, The Sun and the Serpent, Pendragon Press, 1989 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 113 Morgan, Carole, ‘A Short Glossary of Geomantic Terms', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 20, 1980 Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China, vol II. Cambridge University Press, 1956 · ditto, vol IV, 3, 1971 Noble, Sara, Feng Shui in Singapore, Graham Brash, Singapore 1994 O'Brien, Joanne with Kwok Man Ho, The Elements of Feng Shui, Element Books. 1991 Pennick, Nigel, The Ancient Science of Geomancy: Man in Harmony with the Earth, Thames and Hudson, 1979 Peplow, S H and M Barker, Hong Kong Around and About, Ye Olde Printerie Ltd, 1911 Pike, S N, Water Divining, A Book of Practical Instructions, Research Publications, England, 1945 Potter, Jack M. 'Wind, Water, Bones and Souls: the Religious World of the Cantonese Peasant', Journal of Oriental Studies, Hong Kong University, vol. 8, 1970 Rossbach, Sarah, Feng Shui: Ancient Wisdom for the Most Beneficial Way to Place and Arrange Furniture, Rooms and Buildings, Hutchinson, 1983 Feng Shui: The Chinese Art of Placement, Dutton, New York, 1983 ------ Interior Decoration with Feng Shui, 1981 Interior Design with Feng Shui. How to Apply the Ancient Chinese Art of Placement, Century, 1987. -Interior Design with Feng Shui, Rider, London, 1987 1 Shen, D C, '"Feng Shui" Woodlands' Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 14, 1974 Skinner, Stephen, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui, Chinese Geomancy. Graham Brash. Singapore, 1983 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 114 Smith, Michael G. Crystal Power, Llewellyn Publications, 1993 Sung, Z.D., The Symbols of 'Yi King' or the Symbols of the Chinese Logic of Changes, The China Modern Education Co., Shanghai, 1934 The Text of Yi King', The China Modern Education Co, Shanghai, 1935 Walters, Derek, The Fung Shui Handbook: A Practical Guide to Chinese Geomancy, Aquarian Press, London, 1991. Feng Shui, Pagoda Books, 1988. Webb, Richard, "The Village Landscape'. Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong, eds, P.H. Hase and E. Sinn, Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, 1995. Williams, C.A.S. Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs, Charles E. Tuttle, USA, 1974 - Outlines of Chinese Symbolism, Hong Kong's Living Environment, Customs College, Peiping, 1931 Williams, Martin and Richard Webb, 'Rural Landscapes', The Green Dragon, Hong Kong's Living Environment, Green Dragon Publishing, Hong Kong, 1994. Wilson, B.D., 'Notes on Some Chinese Customs in the New Territories', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, 1983 Wilson, Colin, The Occult, Grafton Books, 1971 Yau, Hong-key, Geomantic Relationships, Beliefs, Culture and Nature in Korea, University of California, Berkeley, Chinese Association for Folklore, Corporate Unit Cultural Service, Taipei, 1976. Academic Papers, Newspaper and Magazine Articles Au Yeung, Mabel and Arthur Kan, 'Let the Good Times Roll', Magazine, undated, Chung, Challina, "Two Lions Wait for their Tryst with Destiny", Hong Kong Standard, 28 January, 1985 'Countering Fung Shui', Building, Development, Real Estate and Construction Review, South China Morning Post, August 1982 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g David, Sarah, "True Meaning of Life is Made Crystal Clear". Hong Kong Standard, 20 September, 1994 Forsyth, Tim, 'London's Feng Shui Guru', Asia Inc, January, 1994 'Guarding the Bank Across Two Generations 115 the Long, Loyal Vigil of "Stephen" and "Sutt"', Hong Kong Bank News, December 1985 Huang, Cary, 'Benefactor Highlights a Unique Heritage', Hong Kong Standard, 27 September 1994 Iggulden, Tom, “Blue-Chip Firms are Lining Up for Fung Shui', Eastern Express, 27-28 May 1995 Jasper, Chris, "Bound by Birth. Does a Faith in Fortune-telling condemn you to fulfil its deadly predictions? Window, Hong Kong, June 1995 'Feng Shui, Winds of Change Ancient Chinese Practice Catches on in the UK', Window, Hong Kong, February 10, 1995. Kahn, Greenstreet, 'Fungshui', Extra Finlay, Hong Kong Standard, 11 October, 1985 Konelus, Tura, 'Feng Shui Gets a Grip in the West', Sunday Standard, 21 April 1991 Leung, Yummy, 'Village to Showcase Lifestyle of Hakkas', South China Morning Post, 1 April, 1986 'The Lions Return Home', Hong Kong Bank News, June 1985 Maitland, Derek, 'Fung Shui', The Asia Magazine, 1 May 1977 Malone, Andrew, 'Top Firms Prosper with Ancient Chinese Force', The Sunday Times, England, 21 May 1995 'A Million to Bury Village Ghosts', Hong Kong Standard, 23 March, 1990 Phillips, David P, Todd L. Ruth and Lisa M. Wagner, 'Psychology and Survival', The Lancet, England, vol 342, November 6, 1993 'Plants that Cure "Sick Building Syndrome"', Hong Kong Standard, 13 December, 1992 Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 116 Poon, Clement and May Fung, 'Plenty More Fish to Fill the Tanks of Mong Kok', Hong Kong Standard, 26 November 1994, 'Race-Day Rites to Exorcise Sha Tin Jinx', South China Morning Post, 3 May 1987 Ram, Jane, 'Asia Conjures Wind and Water to Boost Business', International Management, July/August 1987 Saw Puay Lim, "The Force is With Them', Sunday Morning Post Magazine, August 1990 Stewart, Rob, 'Can Your Business do Without the Feng Shui Edge?', Executive, November 1995 'Superstitions Rife. Survey Reveals', South China Morning Post, 11 December 1989 Tatlow, Dermot, 'Safe and Sound in Domain of the Yellow Emperor', Sunday Morning Post, 7 March 1993 Tse, Patricia, 'Banking on a Grand Design and Good Luck', South China Morning Post, 28 May 1990 Wan, Melanie, 'Fungshui Experts not what They Used to Be', Hong Kong Standard, 19 August 1985 Wesley-Smith, Peter, Identity, Land, Feng Shui and the Law in Traditional Hong Kong, Law working paper series no 5, University of Hong Kong, 1992 'What Pyramids and the River Thames have in Common', International Property Review, undated Woo, Anthony, 'The Tao of Technology', Asia Magazine, c. 1995 Letters to the Editor of the South China Morning Post Chan, C.W., 'Safety Concern', 24 June 1990 Ho, Eugene, 'Fung Shui and a Lesson from Science', 25 May 1987 Webb, Richard, 'In Defence of Fung Shui', 10 July 1991 'Unlucky Bank', 21 September 1991 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 117 Letters to the Author (with Enclosures) Cundy, Barry, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Studies, 17 October, 1994 Ko Cheuk-luen, Canada, 7 April 1995 Newsletters and Circulars Feng Shut Network International, various information sheets, PO Box 2133. London WIA 1RL, England Feng Shui Society of Australia Newsletter, various, PO Box 597, Epping, NSW 2121 The New Age Shop News, various, Hong Kong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 183 EARTH GOD AND VILLAGE SHRINES IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG RICHARD WEBB The investigation of spiritual landscapes and sacred places is traditionally the task of the geography of religions, itself a branch of cultural geography (Fickelei, 1962). Geographers who have examined sacred space as an expression of landscape include, and are summarized by, Mansberger (1991). Within the set of traditional beliefs known as fung shui, in the New Territories of Hong Kong, the material prosperity of the community and its individual members depends upon that community being located in particular harmony with the landscape and in maintaining that harmony. It is a landscape, moreover, which encompasses not only the physical and aesthetic landform, but also, it is believed, the spiritual, less tangible landscape manifestations of powerful Earth forces, seen as natural hazards, which if not controlled, may adversely affect that community. However, the control of these forces and a reduction of these hazards often has a sound practical basis in a region beset by typhoons and landslips and practising wet-rice farming (Lovelace, 1983). In many ways, therefore, the landscape of the New Territories valleys and the reasons why earth god shrines, the fung shui woods behind traditional villages, and even individually venerated trees are located where they are, and why they have survived periods of adversity and cultural change, has much to do with a spiritual interpretation of that landscape. At its most basic, fung shui is the study of the environmental and intangible forces which influence human destiny and well-being (Lo, 1992). "The art of living in harmony with the land and deriving the greatest benefit, peace and prosperity from being in the right place at the right time is called feng shui" (Skinner, 1982). Lovelace (1983) looks at the very close parallels between fung shui and the practice of wet rice agriculture and reveals the practical basis of much fung shui lore. A detailed analysis of the relationship between fung shui and the development of a typical yet specific New Territories village is provided by Hase (1992). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 191 Have, P. (1992) Sheung Wo Hang In Knapp, R. (ed) Chinese Landscapes, the Village as Place University of Hawaii Press, Hong Kong Baptist College Lo, Raymond (1992) Feng Shui and Destiny Tynron Press, Leis, UK Lovelace, G.W. (1983) Man, Land and Mind in Historic South Coastal China, an ecological and diachronic consideration of Chinese wet-rice agricultural settlements in the North West New Territories of Hong Kong. Unpubl. PhD thesis University of Hawaii Mansberger, J.R. (1991) Ban Yatra. A Bio-Cultural Survey of Sacred Forests in Kathmandu Valley PhD thesis University of Hawaii University Microfilms International Ann Arbor Michigan Ng, P.Y.L. & Baker, H. (1983) New Peace County A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region Hong Kong Hong Kong University Press Skinner, S. (1982). The Living Earth Manual of Feng Shui. Routledge and Kegan Paul London Ward, B.E. & Law, J. Chinese Festivals in Hong Kong The Guidebook Company, Hong Kong Webb, R. (1995b). The Fung Shui Woods of Hong Kong A Study of Culturally Protected Woodlands in the New Territories of Hong Kong Unpublished PhD Thesis School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 149 mentioned that incense trees in fung shui woods were ever harvested. Iu (1983) claims that the misunderstanding may have been caused by the reference to another incense producing species Aquilaria agallocha which was commonly grown in north Vietnam. Another resource, long since exhausted, were the forest trees used for charcoal burning, once a flourishing local industry all over the New Territories. The memory of this occupation remains in one of the place names at Shing Mun, known as Tan Chong or "charcoal factory”, in which some houses were already abandoned by the early years of this century (Hayes, 1983). An account of the charcoal industry, which was carried out by outsiders for trade, is given by Shen (1971). The village hill areas were the main suppliers of fuel, usually in the form of grass cut in autumn, but also as pine and brushwood gathered to augment a villager's income. Firewood was taken to market as it was one of the three basic staples, including rice and vegetables, that was required by the rapidly growing urban population. Firewood from Shatin was brought on foot to Kowloon (Sessional Papers 1903, p209) which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each of 90lbs. The Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in Kowloon City market, for charitable works. The annual output of one acre (0.4ha) was 11 piculs (640kg), (Hong Kong Annual Report 1938 p59). Gathering firewood was the main occupation of the village women. A typical headload would be in region of 90-100lbs (45kg) and would be collected twice a week, (Hayes, 1983). Firewood was used in earthenware stoves, known as "feng-lu", for cooking family meals and special food at festival times. Grass gathered from the hill side in autumn and the stalks from the first crop of rice were the universal fuel used for heating water and pigswill. Firewood was still being used up until 1964 in the urban encroached village of So Uk in west Kowloon for cooking at Chinese New Year, as it was better for baking (Hayes, 1983). When a bride came to live in her husband's village, the older women would show her those areas from which fuel could be gathered and those areas, usually the fung shui woods, where it could not be gathered. This information was often learned by means of a 12 line poem or song to name those areas where the young wife should not gather fuel. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 171 had become sailors, and those who had emigrated overseas. Some men also moved away to work in the city or foreign countries during the depression in the 1950s, which hit farmers particularly hard as the price of produce, especially rice, fell. As a result, female villagers gradually came to outnumber their male counterparts during the period from the early 20th century to the 1950s. In the meantime, emigrants from Hai-lu-feng and Ch'ing-yuan in south China flocked to Tung Chung's Sha Tsui Tau and Ma Wan Chung. Some of them became managerial farmers, specializing in vegetable growing and animal husbandry, keeping chicken runs and piggeries, etc., thus changing the area's traditional farming pattern. Later, when Ma Wan Chung rose to be Tung Chung's business centre, after the construction of the pier there, these new immigrants started to diversify their investments, going into the grocery business and becoming shopowners in the vicinity of the pier. The owner of the Shun-ch'ang Store, for example, is a San-shui native. In need of financial and human resources, Tung Chung seems to be especially tolerant of “outsiders” who invest in the community and eventually settle in one of the villages. Normal practice requires that a newcomer first makes application for permanent residency to the village head, who will then solicit opinions from the villagers. Should there be no objection, permission signed by the village head is issued. Finally, the new settler will host a banquet to entertain villagers, who come to show their goodwill and welcome the newcomer. Since the 1950s, most of the latecoming settlers in Tung Chung have resided and made a living in Ma Wan Chung. Thus, this area has the highest male-to-female ratio among all villages in the entire district. According to a statistical source, the gender structure of Ma Wan Chung's population as compared to that of Shek Mun Kap, for example, in the early 1960s was as follows: | Village | Male | Female | Children | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Ma Wan Chung | 27.1% | 27.1% | 45.8% | | Shek Mun Kap | 11.5% | 42.4% | 46.1% | Like Shek Mun Kap, other villages also had far fewer male residents than did Ma Wan Chung. In terms of manpower resources, therefore, Ma Wan Chung undoubtedly enjoys favourable conditions for sponsoring the Houwang's Birthday Festival. For these more recent settlers in Tung Chung, supporting the festivities becomes an important ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 253 BOOK REVIEW NICOLE CONSTABLE (1994), Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: a Hakka Community in Hong Kong, Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press. This book studies the complex identities of the Hakka Christians in Shung Him Tong of the New Territories of Hong Kong. It discusses how the Hakka identity is constructed through the eyes of their fellow Hakkas, by Hakka historians, European missionaries as well as local institutions like the church and family. According to Constable, the Hakkas were always regarded as poor and stingy in Chinese popular belief. They never enjoyed equal status with other ethnic Chinese. However, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the writings of Hakka historians and European missionaries, the Hakkas reconstructed their ethnic identity and claimed to be "orthodox Chinese" (Chapter 2). In the process of identity reconstruction, they transformed negative Hakka characteristics into positive ones, and then belief in Christianity reassured them that they were on the right track. In order to be good Christians, the Hakkas in Shung Him Tong secularised and rationalised Chinese customs and religious practices (Chapters 5 and 6). For instance, feng shui (geomancy) is re-interpreted as "common sense or as a purely aesthetic consideration" (p.126). The dual Chinese and Christian identity of the Hakka Christians was not at all stable. It had to be negotiated from time to time because of continuing social and cultural changes. Constable argues that to understand the Shung Him Tong Hakka Christian's ethnic identity, one has to adopt three anthropological approaches. The first is to identify the cultural markers of the Hakkas, for instance their architecture, language, skin colour, etc., and to know how these characteristics were adapted to new social and cultural environments. The second is to understand how their social and economic boundaries are drawn to define social groupings, but also how church and other cultural symbols are used to redefine ethnic identity. And the third is to see how the shared history and ancestry consolidate the ethnic identity. These three approaches to the study of ethnicity complement one another. Constable skilfully incorporated interviews and observations with the Basel Mission Archives to illustrate the ethnic identities constructed by the early founders of the Christian community and how the identity varied in different times and places. Through her discussions, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 254 of death rituals, rites of passage, gender role, festivals and customs, ancestor worship and feng shui, Constable illustrates that the Shung Him Tong Hakkas' attempt to reconcile Hakka-Chinese and Hakka-Christian identities is an ongoing process. This ongoing process is also demonstrated in the continuous transforming images of Hakka characters. The older generation emphasises Chineseness despite being Christians; the younger generation tends to allow Christianity a far more obvious role in their lives (Chapter 6). Chapter 2 is devoted to a discussion on Hakka migration and the Taiping Rebellion, both events thought to have been important in the construction of Hakka identity. According to the book, the former provides the Hakkas with a historical mechanism to identify themselves as "Orthodox Chinese," and the latter provided, other than lineage, an "organisational structure that helped bring together those who became influential in inventing and articulating Hakka identity” (p. 38). If these two historical events were so crucial to the construction of early Hakka identity, one would expect to know more about how they were told and utilised by the Shung Him Tong Hakka Christians to reconstruct their own Hakka identity, not through records by historians of European missionaries. Without this, it is difficult to relate the construction of early Hakka identity and the reconstruction of the Hakka-Christian identity in Shung Him Tong. Shung Him Tong is located near Lung Yeuk Tau, a village compound dominated by the powerful Tang lineage. It is also situated close to two other influential localised lineages in the New Territories of Hong Kong: the Pangs of Fanling and the Lius of Sheung Shui. Though the political influence of the early founders of Shung Him Tong is mentioned, Constable does not explain how the marginal situation of the village contributed to the survival of the community, which is Christian and Hakka (as against Chinese and indigenous Punti villages like Lung Yeuk Tau, Fanling, and Sheung Shui). It is also unclear how, unlike the Lius of Sheung Shui, who had to change their ethnic identity from Hakka to Punti, this marginal nature of the community is manipulated by the Shung Him Tong Hakkas to reconstruct their own unique Hakka-Christian identity. There are also some minor imprecisions. One of which is Qing Ming, which does not fall in “Spring during the third month of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 65 hand holding a precious object including a rosary, cudgel, jar, spear, pagoda, golden arrow, halberd, or bell, etc. and it is therefore not surprising that the images of Chun-t'i on the altars of both Buddhist and folk religion temples portray her with eight or eighteen arms and hands, the main two hands being held palms pressed together before the chest in prayer. The uppermost hands hold discs of the Sun and Moon respectively and the remainder, individually, hold various attributes including a seal of office, a sword, shield and fly switch. She is variously represented with three heads though predominantly she is depicted with one head with three faces one of which is that of a sow. Chun-t'i again often has a third eye in the centre of her forehead, usually a Taoist form but attributed to her Indian origin as a metamorphosed caste mark. She is generally portrayed sitting on a lotus throne in the same posture adopted by the Buddha and, in one of her poses, also by Kuan Yin P’u-sa. According to Werner the legend explaining the third face being that of a sow and the creatures supporting the lotus also being pigs relates how one of the abbesses of the Semding monastery in Tibet in whom the goddess Chun-t'i was believed to be successively incarnated, had an excrescence resembling a sow's ear at the back of her head. In northern and central China in Tantric Buddhist temples, the Lamaist goddess Maritci, portrayed in a chariot drawn by seven pigs is identified as Chun-t'i; in the south however, where Tantric Buddhism hardly penetrated, images identified as Chun-t'i are said by priests, should devotees enquire, to be the Brahmanic cult of Maritci. However, in Tibetan and Mongol [Tantric] Buddhism Tou-mu is a common deity with her three eyes and many arms; she is considered to be an incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva known throughout China as Kuan Yin and this doubtless explains the confusion with Kuan Yin in central and southern China. She has been identified as Tou-mu Yuan-chün, the main deity in the T'ai Sui Hall in the Jade Emperor temple in Tainan, where she is flanked by two Tantric aides, Ch'ieh-ch'ih and Yao Ya. In her Taoist form she is portrayed seated on a lotus, again of Indian origin, which in a number of temples rests on the back of a tortoise which in turn rests on three or seven pigs. Most likely this is no more than a reflection of the tale in the Feng-shen Yen-i in which one of the disciples of Tou-mu, Shui-huo Tung-tzu, who changed into a tortoise, bore off Tou-mu to the Western Heavens. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x SPECIAL FEATURE Papers on the Conference Held on 9 December, 2000 to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Reconstitution of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (HKBRAS) - Hong Kong: Forty Years of a Growing City NOTES AND QUERIES 235 James Hayes - Feng Shui and Roadworks at Tong Fuk Village, 1958 255 James Hayes - A Torn Scrap of Paper: Relating to a Money Loan Association, Small Loans, or What? 261 P.H. Hase - Further Tales of the Man the Emperor Decapitated 269 Photograph Taken on the Occasion of the HKBRAS Visit to the Public Records Office in January, 2000 ... 273 D.D. Waters - One of Hong Kong's Many Hillside Temples 275 Crystal Tang - The HKBRAS trip to Vietnam between 30 September and 6 October, 2000 283 James Hayes - Translations from the Russian, HKBRAS Journal. No 38 291 BOOK REVIEW Gillian Bickley - Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare 293 viii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x Appendix One Activities - Talks Date 1999 23 April: Writing a History of Hong Kong, Challenges and Rewards, by Frank Welsh. 7 May: In Search of the Gods: An Anecdotal Miscellany of Memories, by Keith Stevens. 28 May: Korean Palaces, by Dr James Hayes 25 June: The Social History of the Jewish Community in Hong Kong 1842-1949, by Dr Caroline Pluss. 27 August: A Bird's Eye View of Hong Kong, by Dr David Melville. 10 September: Should Geographers Take Feng Shui Seriously? by Dr Elizabeth Teather and Eddie Chow, followed by dinner at the Mariners' Club. 22 October: Voices of Macau Stones, by Jason Wordie. 26 November: Speak English, Will Travel, by Drs Gillian and Verner Bickley. 29 November: August Borget in China and Macau, by Barbara Giordana. 10 December: The Yaumatei Book Project, by Drs Patrick Hase and James Hayes, followed by dinner at the Foreign Correspondents' Club. 2000 21 January: My Century, by Anthony Lawrence. 3 March: Hong Kong's Countryside-Conservation for the New Territories Lowlands, by Edward Stokes, XX ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x Live A Drawing of the Nga Tsin Wai Area From Sha Tin Pass, 1846 Lt W. Collinson : Ma Tau Kok The Po Kong Feng Shui HIA " (The Village is out of sight on the steward side) Fort of 1811 Kowloon Market Sha Po The Sacred Hill!!! (Sung Wong To) Kowloon City (The Wall were – built in 1847) Kak Hang Village Fung Shai Trees Nga Tsin Wai and its Mont Tsim Sha Tsui Ma Tau Wai Village Ta Kwa Leng Village Fung Shui Trees The Kwun Yam Temple, Tin Wan Shan Footpath to Sha Tin 79 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x SAFEGUARDING ONE'S FORTUNES: THE IMPORTANCE OF TUN FU DAN WATERS 83 Introduction What do Hong Kong's New Territories' residents do when civil engineering work is to be carried out which will spoil the feng shui of their village? How do they alleviate misfortunes and protect themselves from shaat hei (evil influences) and the wrath of spirits? The short answer is they hold a tun fu ceremony.1 With the Chinese character, fu, meaning amulet or charm, the term tun fu (sometimes romanised as tan fu) denotes a group of talismans.2 This paper sets out to examine a particular, large, tun fu ceremony at Pat Heung and what purpose it served. Comparisons are made with other tun fu ceremonies. How do rites differ? How do women feel about being excluded from participating roles? Do villagers really believe in tun fu? Will such practices continue in the future? The Chinese characters in this paper have been romanised generally using the Cantonese pronunciation, which is the dialect understood by 95 per cent of Hong Kong's population and the dialect used when performing tun fu ceremonies in the Territory. When dollars are quoted, unless otherwise specified, they are Hong Kong dollars. There is a general dearth of information about tun fu including details of observations of actual ceremonies. In addition, it is surprising how little Chinese urban folk know about New Territories' customs. The Author has asked many, including some persons who are considered authorities on local, Chinese customs and culture. Most, including some urban feng shui masters even, had never heard of tun fu. To make sure they understood the question they were shown the two relevant Chinese characters (see 'Transliteration'). Bearing in mind that the Territory is a compact place, and even though there is little mention of such activities by the media, this still struck the Author as surprising. In fact the feng shui masters' loss of face, on being unable to answer such question, resulted in some hesitation and their replying generally about unrelated aspects of feng shui. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 84 Nevertheless tun fu may be seen as an extension of feng shui, although the latter is riteless whereas the rites of tun fu are complicated as can be seen from this paper. Feng shui is sometimes inadequately called 'Chinese geomancy', and the home, the workplace and the grave are designed so that they 'reconcile' with environmental currents and cosmic principles. And when the Author has told Chinese friends that there are aspects of feng shui that he believes in they have frequently retorted that you cannot be selective and just pick what you like as in a supermarket. You either believe in it in its entirety or not at all. But with much of the doctrine being considered by some Westerners as little more than superstition, total acceptance is not always easy for the average Caucasian. One person's superstition can indeed sometimes be another person's religion. The Pat Heung ceremony This paper concentrates on the large tun fu ceremony that was held in the district known as Pat Heung, which is situated at the eastern end of the Kam Tin--Pat Heung Valley.3 This lies nearly in the middle of the New Territories and is enclosed by steep hills on its northern, southern and eastern sides (Hong Kong Government; 1960, 170). To give an idea how rural it was until comparatively recently, in 1965 it was reported that a tiger had been sighted in the Pat Heung district (South China Morning Post, 1965). The police conducted a search but failed to find it. Approximately 90 per cent of the population in Pat Heung are of Hakka stock and the remainder are Punti, although today, only the elderly speak Hakka. The people have mixed surnames unlike many old, single family-name villages in the New Territories although nowadays, with greater social mobility, people with other surnames have not infrequently moved into them in varying numbers. Freedman writes that possibly tun fu rites were originally Hakka but they were adopted by the Cantonese (1979, 207). I have not seen any evidence to support this view nor does he appear to provide any sources supporting this statement. The reason this large tun fu ceremony was held in the Pat Heung district, in 1999, was because a tunnel (at the time of writing) is being cut through the mountain for a new railway line. This necessitated moving family graves. It is understood the Government paid Pat Heung District village committees HK$600,000 to meet expenses for the holding Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 86 step (Baker; 1981,15). The matshed consisted of a light bamboo frame clad with thin metal sheets, which are more fire resistant than the old rattan mats that were used years ago (see Figure 1). A compartment at one end housed four henchmen and their god, called by the villagers Tai Wong Ye, sometimes translated as 'Great Ancient King' (Myers; 1975,19)(see Plate 3). The same god in urban Hong Kong is usually called Daai Si Wong (Baker; 1979,121). Different names for the same god can cause confusion. The matshed faced southeast (feng shui south), in the direction of the Kwan Yin Ancient Temple. The number of Taoist priests taking part in the ceremony inside the matshed, with some arriving late, fluctuated from five to seven. Even priests get caught in traffic jams. There was a small group of musicians in the matshed playing, between them, a trumpet, gongs, cymbals and a small drum. Percussion instruments took pride of place. The matshed also contained dishes of fruit, to be offered up to the gods, and paper offerings. Joss sticks were burned. There was a great deal of incantation, much read from a book taken off the altar, and some kneeling. Rice wine was deliberately spilled on the floor in the process of purification and offering it up to the gods. The gods of east (the Green King), south (the Red King), west (the White King), north (the Black King) and centre (the Yellow Emperor) were beseeched, in rising and falling tones, to come down to protect the district in words that were not easy to link together and to understand. The Chinese animal sign of the year is said to represent a direction. There the planet Jupiter is located (Lo; 1992,162). This has important feng shui implications. One should not disturb the earth in this direction. The Taoist priests who perform such ceremonies are often called, in slang, naam moh lo.$ Looking at Figure 2, in the bottom right-hand corner one can see a metal container in which are situated the five bamboo talismans on which, during the ceremony, are written the respective entreaties to the appropriate gods. Also on the crudely framed timber altar (see Figure 2), draped with a red cloth, are bowls of fruit, three cups of tea, three cups of wine and various items used during the ceremony." They include a book of chants, a crown worn by the head priest, musical instruments and sticks for the musicians to strike the percussion ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 90 temples. Nevertheless, in the case of the Pat Heung tun fu ceremony, the party did go into the temple as the reader saw, but only briefly to pay respects to the gods. As another example, again in a predominantly Hakka community at Tai Wo Village, also in Pat Heung district, another tun fu ceremony took place on Wednesday 14 April, 1999, near an earth god shrine again close to a banyan tree. The Author attended. This time it was conducted by a single, part-time, feng shui master (not by a Taoist priest) who did not really look the part in his black, Chinese jacket, jeans and the ubiquitous sports shoes. He lives in a village on Tai Mo Shan. However, in this case, a native Cantonese speaker remarked he could understand most of what the officiating person was chanting. The Author, too, could understand a certain amount. A short walk followed this one-hour long ceremony, with the feng shui master leading the party over to the well to offer up prayers to its god. The village has had mains water for twenty years or so. Obviously, in the past, it was important to pay respects to the well god. Yet the practice continues. Precautions need to be taken to safeguard this valuable commodity, understandably, whether the supply is from a well or from the mains. Everyone present at this Tai Wo ceremony was given a red lai shi, lucky envelope containing $20, which apparently came from the coffers of the village. This appeared not to be too affluent. One wondered at the time, how many onlookers felt great and mysterious things were happening during this ceremony? It was, nevertheless, all followed by a pleasant picnic-style lunch under the banyan. Again, all present ate roast pork, which had previously been offered up to the gods. A government officer informed the Author that the villagers were pleased he was present, taking an interest in their tun fu ceremony. This pleasure appeared genuine. Certainly, everyone was very friendly, including the feng shui master who, in this case, willingly answered the Author's questions without any hint that he wanted to keep the profession a closed shop. Not only with tun fu but with Christianity, too, different denominations' beliefs and practices vary, sometimes markedly. Even within the Church of England with its high church and low church, and from one clergyman to another - with their different leanings, political or otherwise, variations can be considerable, not to mention far greater ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 92 Do villagers really believe in tun fu? How many of the New Territories' villagers really believe in tun fu? Earlier, it was mentioned that the Pat Heung villagers were paid $600,000 to stage their collective tun fu ceremonies. Brian Jenny, Government Director of Audit, in November 1994 wrote in his report that, during the 1980s, amounts paid annually by the Government (on account of feng shui disturbances) varied between $500,000 and $950,000. In 1990, the Government paid $1.1 million, in feng shui compensation, to the villagers at Ha Tsuen so that ceremonies could be held (Hong Kong Standard; 1990). The fall in the purchasing power of the dollar over the years must be taken into account when interpreting these figures. When the British took over Hong Kong they promised the Chinese that Qing laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott; 1958, 38, 40, 41). Certainly a large number of festivals, customs and much culture have been retained. To some degree, because of lack of restrictions during the colonial period, there was limited hostility towards the British (Cheung; 1999, 573). Other ex-colonial powers could perhaps argue that this easygoing affinity, which developed between the Hong Kong Chinese and their rulers, was not always in the interests of the Colony. For example, the compensation paid to villagers to hold tun fu ceremonies, could have been put to better use. But returning to how many villagers really believe? A small group of elderly women that the Author spoke to, sitting in the sun near a tun fu pot at Shui Tau Village, in the Kam Tin District, said that when work first started on improvements to the Kam Tin River the villagers did not intend doing anything. But people started falling sick and several died. It was decided then to hold a tun fu ceremony.12 'Did the elderly ladies believe in tun fu?' 'Well, people stopped falling ill and dying,' they replied, 'so of course we had to believe.' That is as good an argument for believing in tun fu as any. Nevertheless several retired civil servants, both British and Chinese who have worked in the New Territories, some as District Officers, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 93 told the Editor: 'Villagers are out to "screw" Government.' One Scottish, retired, senior civil servant and his Chinese wife who was herself at one time a government servant, both level-headed people, agreed between them it was 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui. Some other Chinese government servants take a similar view. 'Perhaps some of the older Tang Clan members really believe in tun fu', a Chinese, past District Officer who is outwardly quite westernised but inwardly still very Chinese, told the Author. 'But not the younger ones. Some young people do believe, nevertheless. And for those that do not it does not mean to say that, as they grow older, their views will not change. Such people, in middle age or when they are elderly, sometimes become the most enthusiastic proponents of traditional values. 'A woman who did not believe in feng shui nearly died', the Author was once informed. 'After recovering she became convinced', the informer continued (Waters; 1997, 63). It has been argued by Wong Siu-lun that most Hong Kong Chinese are westernised only in a superficial sense (Evans; 1997, 3, 7). Inwardly, they are very Chinese. To a large number traditions and festivals are important. There were, however, few young people at the Pat Heung tun fu ceremony as it was a weekday and pupils had to go to school. The ceremony was, nevertheless, well attended by adults. There are, of course, other reasons for attending. In some cases villagers were expected to be there by others. In any case people could meet old friends and chat. They might even get invited to a lunch at government expense. Not everyone agrees believing is all a question of money. James Hayes, a past District Officer in the New Territories, wrote (Hayes; 1998): some European civil engineers and contractors' staff stated their belief (to me) that it was all hooey ...' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 94 'I don't go along with that for one moment. Village people have a long tradition of believing that cosmic harmony is required for the well-being of the living and the dead...' The Author agrees with Hayes that many Chinese do take feng shui and tun fu very seriously. This includes some of the western-educated. The fact that with some ceremonies villagers are prepared to put up with inconveniences, such as not being allowed to leave their village, demonstrates this. People spend large sums of their own money on some festivals, not just money that is given to them by the Government. Feng shui can even be a source of terror: if a grave of an ancestor is flooded, for example (Waters; 1997, 106). Taking remedial action and conducting ceremonies can have a therapeutic effect on the persons involved. The fervency with which these ceremonies are carried out, as described in this paper, are also indicators of 'serious intent'. Organisers and participants frequently put themselves to a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. On a lighter note a retired, English, Hong Kong senior police officer told the Author that, in the early 1960s when he was stationed in the Ping Shan district in the north-west of the New Territories, tun fu ceremonies were more common. The belief then among the police was that as long as there was money in Government's coffers to pay for them and to let off a few firecrackers, with a bit of cash left over for villagers including paying for a lunch, then everybody was happy. 13 West Rail representatives complained, at a government meeting that the Author attended in 1998, that New Territories' villagers were not always co-operative. In the case of the tunnel at Pat Heung, work has not been held up. Compensation, it seems, can sometimes help buy co-operation. This has not always been so. For instance, as previously mentioned, in the case of the Tang clan, they closed some of their buildings along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail in retaliation because the Government needed to move an ancestral grave (Cheung; 1999, 582). Nevertheless, even if many villagers do genuinely believe in tun fu, there are, it is agreed, inconsistencies in their beliefs even if, at times, the average Chinese does not act as though everything depends on such things as the pulsation of feng shui. Chinese not infrequently say that, when a baby is born, ‘it lands on the ground, cries three times ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 97 in tun fu and other religious ceremonies. 'It is not really worth making a fuss about and upsetting the system', seemed to sum it all up. But by comparison, even if western women would probably not accept a 'second-class citizen' situation in a similar way, nevertheless it should be remembered that only men are allowed, still, to become Catholic priests. Women have however been accepted, in a number of cases not so long ago, as clerics into the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church. Again showing leanings towards men, even in the West, the Author recalls his 90-year old English mother saying, in the 1980s, "It's a pity Mrs Thatcher (the then Prime Minister of Britain) isn't a man. People would respect her more.” Will tun fu die out? With the population of Hong Kong expected to reach somewhere in the region of eight-and-a-half million by the year 2010, this can only mean additional new towns and greater urbanisation in the New Territories. Such growth must bring drastic changes in lifestyles as has happened in the past. Western style bars, karaoke and other hostess services are now not uncommon in the Yuen Long and Kam Tin area, signifying the move towards globalisation (Chu; 1999)(Yu; 1999). In addition, what sociological changes will Route Three Highway, the West Rail Link and a possible new town close by bring to the district (Shum; 1996, 41)? But in spite of inevitable changes, Sheung Tsuen, where the main Pat Heung tun fu ceremony that the Author attended was held, is still a pleasant, peaceful village. In spite of paddy fields having long disappeared and derelict cars being dumped together with other eyesores, there is still a country atmosphere. The Koel and other birds call from atop camphor and banyan trees. To an observant person, the number of tun fu ceremonies held in the New Territories still does not appear to be exceedingly small. But with the continuing rapid increase in population and concomitant developments, they are likely to become endangered, although the custom is likely to be around, in smaller numbers, for some time to come. Conclusions Tun fu ceremonies are held because a previously quiet area of the countryside and its feng shui are threatened. Perhaps a hill in which the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 98 'dragon' resides is to be the site of civil engineering work. As a perceived result a number of people in a village die. The main tun fu ceremony, which this paper examines, was performed in a basically Hakka district. It was claimed to have been (including a number of related, smaller ceremonies), the largest tun fu ceremony ever held in Hong Kong. Comparisons in this paper are made with another Hakka ceremony and also with Cantonese ceremonies. The latter tend to be more rigorous. For instance, in some cases villagers are not allowed to leave their village or to eat meat for a fixed number of days. Although not for the squeamish, blood is sometimes obtained from a cockerel to anoint tun fu pots and talismans. It can be seen that, while there are similarities in basic principles, there can be not inconsiderable differences in the way they are performed, some of which depend on the personal practices of the person or persons conducting the ceremony. Like most rituals, such as living generations of a clan kowtowing to the soul tablets of their ancestors in an ancestral hall, tun fu is performed by men. For example by Taoist priests accompanied by village elders. Again, those who line up to pay their respects at tun fu ceremonies are males (see Plate 4 and 5). Women who were interviewed in this study seemed to accept this. Priests and feng shui masters were deemed to perform the ceremony on the collective behalf of villagers of all ages, including men as well as women. Most villagers, male or female, nevertheless, seem to take tun fu seriously. The British pledged, when Hong Kong became a crown colony, that local customs, including popular religion, would be allowed to continue, unlike on the Chinese Mainland where several attempts, at different times, have been made to stamp them out. In Hong Kong, sizeable sums of money have been paid by the Government to finance the holding of tun fu ceremonies. These can be both expensive and time consuming. Such compensation has often 'bought' co-operation from villagers. In spite of what some past District Officers say, about it being 90 per cent money and 10 per cent belief in feng shui, the latter's disturbance can be viewed with considerable alarm. Affected villagers often go to great lengths to make amends and to ‘adjust' their lives accordingly. While a great deal appears to be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 'double happiness', to sprigs of foo paak (hibiscus), a homonym also meaning 'wealth' or 'riches'. By comparison in the West, in rural England, a horseshoe is sometimes displayed at the entrance of a cottage to bring luck. 3 The Pat Heung Valley covers an area of just over 50 square kilometres. * The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation later reimbursed the Hong Kong Government. 5 Because of the rising and falling naam moh sound of their chanting. Lo means 'fellow'. f These are normally in threes. One is offered up for heaven, one for earth and one for mankind. 7 The number of urban Chinese who have never partaken of a basin meal frequently surprises the Author. *To make them more attractive and presentable for the gods. The Author has been informed that tun fu ceremonies do take place outside Hong Kong although he has never observed them or seen anything about them in writing. Although there has been a religious revival in China in recent years, he has never observed any tun fu pots on the Mainland although that does not mean they do not exist. A fellow researcher has told him that they may be seen in Xiamen. 10 By comparison, at Pat Heung there were five pots with one talisman in each. At the Sha Tin ceremony there was one pot with five talismans and the same at Kam Tin and Tai Wo. At Ma Wan there were two pots with three talismans in each. The same applies to feng shui where different schools exist. Again, masters have their own ideas. One who the Author accompanied on assignments in urban Hong Kong believes in placing crystal in homes to absorb impure influences. A similar custom is also found in the West. 12 For which the Hong Kong Government is said to have paid $40,000. 13 It was made illegal to let off firecrackers in 1967 (the year of prolonged riots). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 103 1997, Introduction, the Anthropology of Contemporary Hong Kong.' Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, eds. Grant Evans and Maria Tam, Curzon Freedman, Maurice 1979, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', The Study of Chinese Society, Stamford University Press Grout, GCW and James Hayes 1971, 'Ceremonies of Propitiation Carried Out in Connection with Road Works in the New Territories, in 1960', JHKBRAS, vol. 11 Hayes, James 1965, 'A Ceremony to Propitiate the Gods at Tong Fuk, Lantau, 1958', JHKBRAS, Vol. 5, Notes and Queries 1983, The Rural Committees of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes, Oxford University Press 1998, February 26, letter to the Author Hong Kong Government 1960, A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories Hong Kong Standard 1990, March 23, ‘A Million to Bury Village Ghosts' Leung, Chor-on 1992, 'Blessings Are Not For All', The Hong Kong Anthropologist Lo, Raymond 1992, Feng Shui and Destiny, Tynron Press, England Myers, John T 1975, 'A Hong Kong Spirit-Medium Temple', JHKBRAS, vol. 15 Phillips, David P, Todd E., Ruth and Lisa M Wagner 1993, November 6, 'Psychology and Survival', The Lancet, vol. 342, Britain ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 104 Shum Tin Ho C. 1996, 'Kam Tin: the "Treasure" in the Cradle', Heritage Hong Kong. Treasure our Heritage Benefit Our Future. Vol. 1, Government Antiquities and Monuments Office South China Morning Post 2000, August 4, 8 'Diversions.' Stevens, Keith 1997, Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons, Collins and Brown Strauch, Judith 1983, ‘A Tun Fu Ceremony in Tai Po District, 1981: Ritual as a Demarcator of Community' JHKBRAS, vol. 20 (1980) Walters, Derek 1988, Feng Shui, Perfect Placing for your Happiness and Prosperity, Asiapac. Ward, Barbara E. and Joan Law 1993, Chinese Festivals in Hong Kong, The Guidebook Company Ltd, Hong Kong Waters, Dan 1996, 'Chinese Funerals: a Case Study', JHKBRAS, vol. 31 (1991) 1997, ‘Foreigners and Fung Shui”, JHKBRAS, vol. 34 (1994) Watson, James L 1987, 'From the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society,' Anthropos 82 Yu, Kai Peter 1999, May 28, ‘484 Teenagers Caught in Hostess-club Vice Raids', South China Morning Post Key JHKBRAS = Journal, Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 200 The Effect on the People The net result of all these "teachings" was to foster a particular outlook among the people, educated and illiterate alike. Along with other equally long-lived influences such as geomancy, and fortune-telling by various means, it created men like the father of Monlin Chiang, the well-known Republican scholar official, concerning whom the son wrote: "He believed in feng shui, the spirits of wind and water, and in fortune-telling and therefore - with a sort of fatalism - that a man's life was predetermined by super-natural forces. However, he also believed that by virtuous conduct and clean thinking one could make these forces respond by bestowing blessings upon oneself and one's family; thus the predetermined course of life would gradually shift its ground to a better course. 17 This outlook was probably quite uniform. Any variations to it were a matter of degree, dependent on to which end of the spectrum of belief and superstition men inclined rather than any more fundamental divide. Differences were determined largely by education, class, and status. In this particular instance, we are dealing with an educated man, a member of a gentry family, a regular Confucian. 18 PART TWO Polytheism and Demonism: the "Non-instructive" Side of Chinese Religion This second main division of Chinese religious thought and behaviour has to do with an immense preoccupation with gods and spirits, and the purposes and expectations lying behind it. Bombarded from every direction by Confucian exhortation and Buddhist admonition, the mass of the populace was aware that however filial or well-behaved people might be, there was much in this world that lay beyond human understanding or control. This realization explains the existence of what may here be styled the "non-instructive" side of Chinese religion. It was an enormous arena in which, in their never-ending confrontation with evil spirits and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 128 Chinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons. All Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon. Until 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 216 A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong Lion Rock. To give you an idea what it was like in the vicinity of the College: the Wan Chai streets and alleys seemed far more cluttered in those days with numerous bustling stalls and small shops. I could go to a barber's shop in the then narrow Tin Lok Lane, not far from Wood Road, and have a haircut, a shampoo, a shave, and a manicure for $2.70 (all dollars quoted in this paper are Hong Kong dollars). Being a generous chap, I gave a 30 cents tip. The College was quite hemmed in in those days, and the quadrangle, with teaching accommodation all around, only allowed for limited parking. Many teachers did not have cars then. Students, however, still played basketball but under restrained conditions. They also played the Chinese game of ‘kicking the shuttlecock’, which I also enjoyed playing. The Hong Kong Funeral Parlour was then just around the corner from the College. At various times during the day, brass bands leading funeral processions along the street would strike up tunes such as "Abide With Me", "Polly Wolly Doodle All The Day", and "Yes, We Have No Bananas". There was a small flower market close by. Even when the College moved to Hung Hom, in Kowloon, there was a funeral pavilion next door. This raised a certain amount of consternation regarding our feng shui, as relatives of staff fell sick. We had to rearrange our desks. At the old Technical College in Wood Road, there was both a senior and a junior staff room, with about 10 of us teachers in each. Student-teacher contact hours varied from about 21 to 25 (or even more) a week, and our Principal insisted, at one time, that all classes had a short weekly test first thing every Monday morning. When I first arrived by ship on a four-year tour in the mid-1950s, in what was a rather colonial atmosphere, I was impressed by the students' ability in mathematics, science, and draughtsmanship. English was not up to the same standard. Metaphorically, students still did not step on the teacher's shadow. There was sometimes talk by Chinese teachers of students being more receptive to Chinese methods of imparting knowledge, such as more dictating of... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 329 DEATHSPACE IN HONG KONG, GUANGZHOU AND SEOUL: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH, 1995-2001 ELIZABETH K. TEATHER Abstract This paper introduces and summarises nine published papers on deathspace (urban cemeteries and columbaria) in Hong Kong, in Guangzhou, and in Seoul. It includes a paper on fengshui co-written with C. S. Chow. One paper examines the non-material worlds of Hong Kong's cemeteries, and identifies these as the worlds of the spirits, of fengshui, and of ritual time. Another focuses on grave furnishings, taking several graves as examples, including a symbolic grave (i.e. not containing remains). Case studies of four very different Hong Kong cemeteries are the topic of another paper. The architectural response to the need for buildings to contain ashes (cremains) is featured in a paper on Hong Kong's columbaria. This paper also summarises the shift from coffin burial to cremation in Hong Kong from the 1960s. A further paper examines the heritage significance of Hong Kong's urban cemeteries, interpreting this in terms of their being places of tribute, as well as being material forms of the historical and contemporary social fabric. An historical perspective is provided through a paper that traces how deceased Chinese sojourners were brought back from overseas to their ancestral places around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Agendas shaping contemporary deathspace in Guangzhou are identified in another paper. Finally, in South Korea, the influence of traditional grave shapes on contemporary designs for graves to store ashes is noted, as well as the urgency of an official campaign to persuade citizens to consider cremation rather than coffin burial. Keywords: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Seoul, deathspace, cemeteries, columbaria, cremation, feng shui. ================================================================================