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 193 For the general background the reader is referred to pp. 419-433, 697-700 of Kung-chuan Hsiao's monumental study of late imperial China Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (University of Washington, Seattle, 1960). Also to Chapter X of Frederic Wakeman Jr.'s Strangers at the Gate, Social Disorder in South China 1839-1861 (University of California Press, 1966): 'Class and Clan' 109-116. It is of interest that as late as 1905 and 1908 villagers of Honam Island, Canton were fighting out their feuds on the campus of the Canton Christian College, the future Lingnan University: see Lingnan University by Charles Hodge Corbett (New York 1963) p. 40. The self-government of Chinese villages existing alongside what A. R. Colquhoun styles ‘a long common frontier' with 'centralised autocracy', i.e. the situation which allowed this kind of independent action to subsist, is interestingly handled in his China in Transformation (London, 1898): 238-288. Hong Kong, December 1977. C. MOVE OF THE SHING MUN VILLAGES* JAMES HAYES The Shing Mun villages of Shing Mun Lo Wai, Pak Shek Wo, Pei Tau To, Shek Tau Kin, Fu Yung Shan, Nam Fong To, Tai Pei Lek and Ho Pui contain about 855 Hakka Chinese, mostly named Cheng but having among them also Cheung's, Ko's, Lo's, Tang's and Tsang's. In a hollow in the hills about two miles broad by two and a half long, formed by Tai Mo Shan, Grassy Hill and Needle Hill, and sloping from Lead Mine Pass southwards to Pineapple Pass and Tsun Wan, the inhabitants of these villages own 180 acres of agricultural land, 1180 acres of forestry rights and 42 acres of pine-apples. The whole of this area will have to be evacuated, and after careful search in co-operation with the villagers, suitable sites have been found to accommodate them at Kam Tin, Wo Hop Shek, Nam Shui Po, Tsat Sing Kong, Ping Kong, Fung Yuen (Yue Kok), Shek Ku Lung, and Pan Chung, and to these it is proposed to move all the inhabitants of the Shing Mun valley above Pineapple Pass. Details of the transfer are as follows:--- * Taken from the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers 1928. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j the Buddhist hall. After this was finished close mourners changed into everyday, brightly coloured clothes. A meal was held in a restaurant. There were seven courses. About 50 people attended. Meat was served. The immediate family members then went home and took a second bath with pomelo and wampee (variant spelling wampi) leaves to purify the water. Lucky packages were opened. Besides money they contained pieces of hibiscus, foo paak (†), a homonym also meaning wealth or riches. Another packet contained, in addition to money, a needle and thread, and a lady's hairpin, described as kat lei ( ). This is interpreted as pierce or sharp, also as lucky or profit. Anything that could bring bad luck, such as black objects, had been burned. Things that were brought home, for good luck, included white mourning shoes and white attire. These were known as tsoi paak (ĦĦ ), for ‘good luck'. The large photograph used at services was later hung in the dead woman's home. Some maintain it should be packed away or it can bring bad luck. Ashes The day after the fifth tsat the immediate relatives went to the funeral parlour to collect the ashes. Everyone expressed pleasure that these were 'fairly white'. They are often blackish. There was a short ceremony. Joss sticks and ‘gold bars' were burned, together with a rosette made up with yellow papers with blessings printed on them. At Ching Chung Koon (Temple) permission to enter was requested from the two door (earth) gods. Everyone bowed three times. An orange was placed on each shrine. The niche selected two weeks earlier to hold the ashes of the dead woman, together with another alongside for her husband, was not too high so it was accessible. His remains were moved from another niche. The cost for each, in 1988, was $10,800, increased from $600 in 1966. (Business is thriving and extensions are continually being built to the columbarium.) The mother's niche number is '17' which can be interpreted, 'certainly you will get it.' The father's niche is '18', read as 'definitely will prosper'. The mourners bowed three times to 'spirit neighbours' of father and mother and burned single incense sticks in all vases in that room. An effort was made not to offend and not sit on ledges in front of other ================================================================================