RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h
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NOTES AND QUERIES

the businessman's enterprise disguised as a rustic farmstead. The emergence of vegetable cultivation is a spill-over from the urban areas. What we deal with is the city's adjustment to the countryside rather than the adaptation of the rural husbandry to meet urban demands.

This is not to say that rice peasants have not switched over to vegetable cultivation at all. Obviously this kind of person is not common in Sha Tin, but he occurs and there are a few native vegetable farmers in nearly every village. Still, it is a noteworthy fact that the present village gardeners did not give up their rice cultivation until they had precedent models for action in the form of immigrant garden enterprises. The example of the successful immigrant truck garden was something to be envied and reproduced, and thus a primary incentive for a new agricultural order.

Paradoxically, the indigenous villagers have been able to remain in their traditional rice world by giving up rice cultivation. The main sources of change lie in the urban areas, in Hong Kong and overseas. New ideas flowing into the villages will not disrupt traditional notions concerning land, although land use may have changed in that land is rented to outsiders, abandoned or converted into building lots. The few native villagers who have engaged in horticulture did not venture the shift in land use until they had access to models in the form of outsider gardeners. I feel that the general lack of response to city needs for food in the Sha Tin valley is due to the proximity of the valley to the city, a feature which involved people directly in city life. On the other hand, we have found that city people have become involved in rural production.

Thus, the change in land use in the New Territories is no simple process generated by the maximization of profits. Only our awareness of the social characteristics of the actors in the drama will allow us to gain some understanding of the complexity of the situation.

University of Gothenburg, 1972.

GORAN AijMER

Footnote: This is an abstract from a report intended to form a chapter in a monograph on social life in the Sha Tin valley. Field work was conducted from June 1967 to February 1968, and in Summer 1969 for three months. The field work was supported by the Humanistic Foundation of Sweden. The writing of the report was carried out at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Mass., with the support of Carl-Bertel Nathhorst Foundation and Stockholm University. I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of these institutions.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
ANCESTORS IN THE SPRING

THE QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA

Göran AIMER*

İ. Guessing at China

The study of traditional Chinese society is a multidisciplinary task of many facets. The enterprise is of a general historical nature as it aims at a reconstruction and understanding of a civilization which is part of the past. The study of China has seen an exciting cross-fertilization of styles and methods of investigation. Recent decades have brought about a tremendous development of the knowledge of Chinese traditional social life, although the formidable size of the undertaking explains why our knowledge is still fragmentary and in many respects unsystematic. What then is the place of anthropology in this broad field of enquiry? There can, of course, be no simple answer to that question and anthropologically minded students of Chinese society will offer, and have offered, widely different opinions. One possible contribution, which I will advocate here, is that the anthropologist could provide 'anthropological' readings of the source material, which is shared property of all disciplines involved in the study of China.

From the point of view of the anthropologist our knowledge of the traditional rural society is very scanty indeed. And yet there is no immediate remedy for this state of affairs. The reason for this is partly to be found in the nature of the Chinese documents and sources on which the anthropologist will have to rely. Sometimes we obtain very full and detailed descriptions of aspects of social life, often we find rich prescriptions for various social undertakings, but generally speaking we will have to content ourselves with glimpses rather than full records of rustic life. Quite often, notes on life in the Chinese countryside are of an anecdotal character. There is, however, a vast amount of interesting data contained in such documents as local gazetteers, kin group chronicles, and ethnographic essays. Local 'gentry', despite their Confucian education, were often keen ethnographers eager to describe and sometimes boast about

* Professor Aijmer, a previous contributor to this Journal, teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
Göran Aijmer, is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and is currently associated with the Gothenburg Research Institute of the University. His research focuses on symbolic expression and articulation in fields such as politics, economy and religion. His regional projects have concerned southern China, Southeast Asia and Melanesia. He has worked in many universities, more recently in the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich. His recent monographs are Ritual Dramas in the Duke of York Islands: Cantonese Society in a Time of Change (with Virgil K.Y. Ho) and New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times. Together with Jon Abbink, he has also edited Meanings of Violence (goran.aijmer@newyork.com).

Sir David Akers-Jones, K.B.E., C.M.G., J.P., was a founding member of the reconstituted HKBRAS in 1960 and a former Chief Secretary of the Hong Kong Government. He is a noted sinophile (akersjon@pacific.net.hk).

A.C. Bromfield, is an active member of HKBRAS.

Chiu Hang Shi, is an active member of HKBRAS.

Richard Garrett, M.A.(Cantab), C.Eng., F.I.C.E., F.I.Struct.E., F.H.K.I.E., is a director of an international firm of consulting engineers and has lived in Hong Kong since 1973. He has been a collector of antique arms and a member of the Arms and Armour Society of the U.K. for over 30 years. He has published a number of articles on the subject of early firearms.

Valery Garrett, B.A., Post Grad. Dip. Des., is a Hon. Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, and the author of six books on traditional Chinese clothing. She is a Council Member of the Royal Asiatic Society (vgarrett@hkucc.hku.hk).

César Guillén-Nuñez, M.Phil., is a specialist in colonial Spanish and Portuguese art. He has degrees in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Pennsylvania and University College, London. He is presently a research fellow at the Macau Ricci Institute (cgnunes@yahoo.com).

Fr. Dr. Louis Ha, Ph.D., is the Archivist of the Catholic Diocesan archives and Chairman of the Hong Kong Archives Society. His Ph.D. was entitled The Foundation of the Catholic Mission in HK 1841-1894.

Peter Halliday, M.A., Ph.D., is a former assistant commissioner of the Hong Kong

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