RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d
126

H. G. H. NELSON

case put by Fei Hsiao-tung and others who were influenced by the "orthodox" Marxist-Leninist interpretation is now convincingly shown to be oversimplified and misleading; and if not wholly unsatisfactory, at least open to serious question. Nevertheless, by his change of title, Potter exposes himself to the criticism that his original choice of field and the data he drew from it may not have been an adequate testing ground for so large an hypothesis. He asserts that in all relevant respects, the situation of Ping Shan resembled that of villages in the hinterland of other Western Treaty Ports; and although he acknowledges the fact of the security of land-tenure given by the British registration of all holdings in the Colony, he is inclined to minimise its importance. Villages in the Chinese mainland, however, had no such security, and, more importantly, lacked the benefits of the Pax Britannica. Hong Kong's peaceful development was interrupted only by the Japanese Occupation, and Potter recognises that as a watershed of change: how much greater changes must have been caused in China by the long series of upheavals that took place there?

Potter's objections to the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of rural China's economy are otherwise well-founded. He shows that while in some areas rural handicrafts were destroyed, the extent to which peasants depended for their livelihood on rural handicraft industries was in general very slight: relatively few areas were as dependent as was Fei's Kaihsienkung on the silk industry. There is, in fact, evidence for the stimulation of China's rural industries by the presence of the Treaty Ports. Similarly, absentee landlordism was not so major a problem as has been supposed. Potter adduces data from a wide variety of sources on other villages in comparable situations, and concludes that the "orthodox" interpretation is invalidated by its failure to take into account the tremendous complexity and diversity of the data. He could indeed have brought his point home by citing the wide variety of reactions to modernisation apparent within the limited compass of the New Territories themselves.

Potter has tackled a problem which is of major significance not only to the history of modern China but to the worldwide impact of the developed upon the undeveloped nations. It is not only the student of China who will welcome his eclectic approach and thorough re-examination of accepted views. He has made us aware of the diversity of China's rural scene before 1949, the com-
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207
118

BARBARA E. WARD

universe in general and their own place in it. (3) One is always looking for the underlying principles or structures beneath these various aspects of social life, and attempting to compare them systematically with the underlying principles and structures of other societies.

The enumeration of these three points will allow you to see at once that a good social anthropological study is likely to put on record a very great deal more than almost any other kind of study, and although, of course, no single ethnographer ever really succeeds in writing about everything, as ideally he should, nevertheless he often does try, and in so far as he limits himself to one aspect or another of a society (as he always must when dealing with a complex situation) he remains aware that the rest is there and that it is important.

The result is that good ethnographies contain an enormous amount of information recorded in a systematic way. One thinks of Francis Hsü's Under the Ancestors' Shadow, for example, or Fei's study of Kaishienkung, or C. K. Yang's Chinese Village in Communist Transition. In short, the second point I am trying to make clear to you is that it is extremely lucky that the New Territories have been studied by social anthropologists because good social anthropologists usually include a great many more kinds of information in their studies than most other social scientists do. Thus, because quite a large number of social anthropologists have in fact worked here since 1950 the result is that it is probably true to say that we already know a great deal more about the New Territories than we ourselves actually realise.

For example, (taking the published books alone) we have a detailed anthropological study of clan and village organisation in Sheung Shui; we have an even more detailed study of clan and economic structure in Ping Shan, and the effects upon it of the nearness to the big port cities of Kowloon and Hong Kong; we have an interesting account of one part of the great and constant stream of overseas emigration from and return to the New Territories; we have important descriptive studies of the fishing communities in Castle Peak; a book on Sai Kung is about to be published in Hawaii, and part of a long-term study pre-New Town Shatin has recently appeared in Sweden and so on. In addition a number of other books are in the press or soon will be: one on the Ch'iu-

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