RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d CONTENTS EDITORIAL NOTE PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1967 HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1967 ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED: ✓ Chinese Religion and Rural Cohesion in the Nineteenth Century MARJORIE TOPLEY The Hankow Steamer Tea Races - T. J. LINDSAY Notes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century - H. A. RYDINGS Further Notes on the Sung Wong T'oi Being Caught by a Fishnet; On Fêngshui in Southeastern China Fan Lau and its Fort: an Historical Perspective - ARMANDO DA SILVA Plover Cove to Taipo Market: A Study in Forced Migration - MORRIS I. BERKOWITZ Sun Yat-sen and Chinese History - STEPHEN UHALLEY, JR. Review ARTICLE: Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant; Social and Economic Change in a Chinese Village (Jack M. Potter) H. G. H. NELSON ARTICLE REPRINTED: Chinese Street-Cries in Hong Kong J. NACKEN NOTES AND QUERIES: Notes on Some Vegetarian Halls in Hong Kong belonging to the Sect of Hsien-T'ien Tao: (The Way of Former Heaven) MARJORIE TOPLEY and JAMES HAYES Jardine, Matheson & Company's First Site in Hong Kong - DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS Research on Family Values and Culture Change in Hong Kong's Modern Chinese Novels - KLAUS MADING Hong Kong's First Government House - DAFYDD EMRYS EVANS A Reaping Knife from Lantau Island, Hong Kong - JAMES HAYES Itinerant Hakka Weavers JAMES HAYES The Tung Chung Fort (Lantau Island, Hong Kong) - JAMES HAYES BOOK REVIEWS THE LIBRARY LIST OF MEMBERS Page 1 2 6 9 44 56 67 74 82 96 109 119 128 135 149 154 156 161 162 165 168 178 200 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 119 CAPITALISM AND THE CHINESE PEASANT; SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE IN A CHINESE VILLAGE* Reviewed by H. G. H. NELSON† Jack Potter lived in Hang Mei, one of the eight villages making up the Tang stronghold of Ping Shan, from the autumn of 1961 to the beginning of 1963. His findings were first reported in his Ph.D. Thesis for the University of California, and apart from one or two minor, though not unimportant, textual changes, the bulk of the thesis is here presented verbatim. It has been changed in only one major respect: a short section on the effects of the Western Treaty Ports on the surrounding rural hinterland has been expanded into the essay which forms the book's concluding chapter; the title has also been changed from Ping Shan: the Changing Economy of a Chinese Village, The book's stated purposes are, first, to explore the reasons why the villagers of Ping Shan have prospered by their participation in the general commercial and industrial expansion of Hong Kong; second, to study the process of "depeasantization” and the penetration of the external market into the hitherto largely self-contained economy of the peasant; and third, to make a contribution to the understanding of the effects on China's rural economy of the Treaty Ports. A further tacit purpose of the book is the validation of some of the theories put forward by Freedman (1958) in Lineage Organization in Southeastern China—and it is one that is particularly well-served. Potter divides his field-data into three main sections: 1) the occupational structure of Ping Shan in the early 1960s, and the process by which some of the villagers have made the transition "from peasants to farmers". Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant; Social and Economic Change in a Chinese Village: Jack M. Potter, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968; pp. ix, 215, illustrated, US$5.75. † Mr. Howard Nelson is a graduate student of the University of London at present engaged on social research in the New Territories. Ping Shan is in the north-west New Territories of Hong Kong. For Ping Shan with Ha Tsuen see pp. 162-165 of A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, n.d. but 1960). Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g BOOK REVIEWS 221 Professor Jack M. Potter's essay on land and lineage in traditional China draws heavily on the data collected for his Hong Kong study, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant (1968). He sets himself the problem of trying to account for differences in the distribution of strong lineage organization in various parts of China, of lineage structure Type Z, as described and formulated by Professor Freedman. The hypothesised factors favourable to the development of a strong lineage are given by Professor Potter as a rich agricultural environment, frontier conditions, the absence of strong governmental control, and commercial development; all present, he concludes, in the New Territories of Hong Kong, where the Ping Shan Tang lineage flourished. He also argues that in all areas lineage organization would tend to be weaker under strong dynasties and stronger in inter-regnal periods or under weak dynasties. Professor Potter affirms that the four variables 'can form a set of inter-related hypotheses that, if validated by further research, would allow us to predict when and where strong lineage organization tended to appear in Traditional China'. But I should also think that strong lineages must depend very much on the quality of the personnel contained within them; for some human groups do seem to produce a more adroit leadership for a longer period of time than others. An institutionalization of virtue, as it were, may take place in some groups (lineages) more readily than in others.* And the task of plotting the frequency of powerful lineages in China has scarcely begun, so far as I know. The study of Chinese society by Western scholars has been mainly androcentric in its selection of problems, thus reflecting Chinese views of their own social universe; but both Professor Freedman and Professor Arthur P. Wolf in their respective papers pay attention to the ambivalent and ambiguous status held by women in Chinese society. Professor Freedman's essay on ritual aspects of Chinese kinship and marriage discusses, among other matters, the problem of 'how is a woman to reconcile her duties as wife and daughter-in-law with those she has as sister and daughter?' The rites of marriage, he argues, "are not to be taken as simple statements capable of being given clear and unambiguous meanings by those who participate in them. Rites, as symbolic * Dialect groupings may constitute another variable that has not yet been examined. ================================================================================ 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 133 Hayes, J. W., 'Old Ways of Life in Kowloon: the Cheung Sha Wan Villages" in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 1, January 1970: 154-188. Ho, Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1959. Hsieh, Kuo Ching, 'Removal of Coastal Population in Early Tsing Period', The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, XIII, 1929: 559-596. Hummel, Arthur W. (Editor), Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912), Taipei, Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, 1967. Reprint of the first edition, Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 2 vols., 1943. Krone, Rev. Mr., A Notice of the Sanon District. C.B.R.A.S. Transactions VI, 1859: 71-105. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 7, 1967: 104-137. Lo, Hsiang-lin, 'The Sung Wang T'ai and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung' in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. III, No. 2, July 1956. -, (and others), Hong Kong and Its External Communications before 1842. Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963. An English version, abbreviated, of the Chinese edition of 1959. Mayers, W. F., Dennys, N. B. and King, C., The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A Complete Guide to the Open Ports of these countries, together with Peking, Yedo, Hong Kong and Macao. London, Trübner & Co., Hong Kong, A. Shortrede & Co., 1867. Murphey, Rhoads, The Treaty Ports and China's Modernization: what went wrong? Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 7, Ann Arbor, 1970. Montalto de Jesus, C. A., Historic Macao, International Traits in China Old and New. Macao, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1926. Neumann, C. F., Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with Notes: 1 History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, John Murray, 1831. Ng, Peter Y. L., The 1819 Edition of the Hsin-an Hsien-chih, A Critical Examination with Translation and Notes. Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (1644-1842). Unpublished M. A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1961. Ng, Ronald C. Y., 'The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri. On the Centenary of the Copy in the R.G.S. Collection', London, Geographical Journal, Vol. 135, Part 2, June, 1969: 231-235. Reprinted in JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 141-148. Orme, G. N., Report on the New Territories for the Years 1899 to 1912. in Sessional Papers 1912. Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural Development in China 1368-1968. Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company, 1969. Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968. Schofield, Walter, Personal Communications, 1958-1968. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 134 40 Leung Chor-on, loc cit 47 Frena Bloomfield, 'Automatic Writing (Fu Kay)', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 27-33 45 49 Frena Bloomfield, The Book of Chinese Beliefs, op. cit. p 12 Marjorie Topley, 'Chinese Occasional Rites in Hong Kong', 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, pp. 99-117 (p. 116) 30 Jack M. Potter 'Wind Water Bones and Souls. the Religious World of the Cantonese Peasant', Journal of Oriental Studies, 8 (1970), pp 139-153 SI 'Bacon Receives Simple Farewell', South China Morning Post, 2 May, 1992 ================================================================================ 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 ================================================================================