RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 174 BOOK REVIEWS tive or sub-administrative area?" So far as the Kowloon school was concerned it served the rural areas immediately east, west, north of and round Kowloon, whose principal villages were linked in yeuk (yueh) (#5) or 'compacts” — though whether the latter were self-organised or instituted by Government is still unknown to me. These villages used Kowloon as a market centre though there were small local markets in some of the yeuk. Together these yeuk do not appear to have constituted either an administrative or sub-administrative area of the county (1) save in the sense that the Kowloon sub-magistrate utilised their existence as a medium of contact and, no doubt, control. Again, whether they had any tuan lien is unknown - though village tradition at Nga Tsin Wai just in front of the Kowloon Walled City has it that, assisted by the Tin Hau goddess from the village temple, whose image glistened with her supreme effort, the villagers 'saved' the City from the Red Turban rebels in the 1850s and their leading elder was given a kung ming (1) by Government in recognition of their part in the defence. In short, the detailed picture remains unfilled but we stand greatly in Mr. Wakeman's debt for having set the scene in such a stimulating and authoritative manner. Hong Kong, 1969, JAMES HAYES HONG KONG: A SOCIETY IN TRANSITION. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF HONG KONG SOCIETY, ed. I. C. Jarvie, in consultation with Joseph Agassi, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, pp xxix, 378, illustrated. A symposium such as this might be approached from one of two angles: its theme could be either an exploration of the conflicts within Hong Kong society, or a comparison between the problems of Hong Kong and those of other areas in a similar situation of rapid and profound change. None of the papers in this volume attempts the latter; and those which attempt the former are noticeably more stimulating and more valuable than those which attempt neither. Hong Kong is a place in which a number of almost totally disparate groups, their interests sometimes diametrically opposed (e.g. the indigenous people and the immigrants in the New Territories), coexist in an exceedingly small compass: an opportunity to survey the relationships, often Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r The Kam Tin Gates Peter Wesley-Smith* Behind the parked tourist buses at Kam Tin, behind the blue-rinsed American ladies and the orderly rows of Japanese camera-clickers and the outstretched palms of Hakka crones, the adventurous visitor will find a plaque on the Kat Hing Wai wall telling the story of the famous pair of gates which adorn the entrance. It is the purpose of this brief article to amplify the few facts engraved on the plaque.1 Kam Tin is the principal settlement of the New Territories Tangs and consists of several separate villages. Kat Hing Wai is the oldest: built in the 15th century it has been reasonably well preserved and is now a major tourist attraction.2 The road from Shek Wu Hui to Yuen Long separates it from Tai Hong Wai, a sister village whose walls have been partly demolished and which boasts no gates. The Hong Kong Government knew little about neighbouring San On in June 1898, when a large slice of the Chinese county was transferred on lease to Great Britain. J. H. Stewart Lockhart was therefore temporarily relieved of his duties as Colonial Secretary and Registrar General and sent on a fact-finding tour as Special Commissioner. During August 1898 he visited various parts of the area and in general was given an "excellent reception" by the inhabitants; but the villagers at Kam Tin were less polite. Unimpressed by the sight of the first steamer ever to navigate their river, they drove away the Commission's chairs and carriers and refused to provide replacements. The elders did not deign to present themselves. A journalist of the time reported that 1,000 villagers, "preceded by vigorously beaten gongs", gave a rousing welcome, "but in place of chin-chins and flowers they came with cries of 'ta' and 'foreign devils.'" Nothing is said here of the rotten eggs that emphasized these cries, but the gates of the village were closed and the Commission could not enter. According to a journal kept of the trip the gates were opened after "a clear explanation" by Stewart Mr. Wesley-Smith is LL.B., B.A., (Adelaide) and Lecturer in Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently Editor of the Hong Kong Law Journal. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 42 PETER WESLEY SMITH Lockhart, A contemporary newspaper, however, revealed the true nature of the explanation: 75 marines and two Maxim guns.7 The Special Commissioner was appalled by the discourtesy of the villagers. They were reported to the Viceroy at Canton, who was to "deal with the matter in a proper manner", and a deputation from Kam Tin was obliged to apologize in Hong Kong. Such punishment failed to impress the inhabitants with the error of being disrespectful to British officials, for when occupation of the New Territories commenced in April 1899 the Tangs of Kam Tin were foremost in organization of the resistance movement. Again, therefore, stern reprimands were required, this time by the use of gunpowder. On April 18 a party of sappers from the Hong Kong Regiment blew down the walls flanking the gates of both Kat Hing Wai and Tai Hong Wai, and a few days later the villagers themselves, as an act of submission, carried the two pairs of gates to Flag Staff Hill (Tai Po).10 There they were admired by Governor Sir Henry Blake who, wrote Stewart Lockhart, “instructed me to forward to him a pair of gates from Kam Tin". This was duly done in May, though the villagers had to be reminded to send in a socket.12 The two sets of handsome gates were both defective, one wing of each having suffered from the back-scratching of generations of itchy Kam Tin pigs.13 The remaining gates in good condition were combined to make a pair and were appropriated by Blake for "Myrtle Grove", his home in the Irish county of Youghal. In 1924 the residents of Kam Tin petitioned for the return of the gates. They were supported by the District Officer (North), who referred to the gates as objects "of pride to the inhabitants on account of their workmanship and antiquity”, and the Assistant Superintendent of Police (New Territories) recalled their whereabouts. His wife had formerly been maid and companion to Blake's daughters, and she remembered seeing the gates at Myrtle Grove in 1902. Stewart Lockhart, then retired after serving for many years at Wei Hai Wei, was asked to approach Lady Blake for their recovery.1 His mission was successful, but when the gates arrived back in Hong Kong the Tai Hong Wai villagers recognised their half and claimed possession. Long negotiations ensued between elders of the two villages, and eventually, reports O'Dwyer, "the amount of face that would be gained for the whole clan by their erection as a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 120 JAMES HAYES the order rescinded:1 and it was remembered centuries later by the manufacture and sale by pedlars of images of the two men, as recorded for the Yuen Long district of the New Territories at the end of the 19th century.2 Wherever it touched the lives of men the Evacuation is recorded in the histories of the districts, prefectures and provinces to which they belong. And as in the Hsin-an district, it appears that persons of other parts of the Kwangtung province erected temples to Governor Wong Lai-yam, and in some cases jointly to him and one or other of the viceroys of the time.4 I have already explained the effect of the Evacuation upon the pattern of settlement. Had there been none, it is conceivable that the number of Hakkas in the region would have been much less than the 44,375 recorded at the 1911 Hong Kong census, amounting to almost half the then rural population. However, it is also possible that the Hakka influx might have come in any case, leading to pressure on the land and to the 'wars' that occurred elsewhere in the province between the two groups. The useful summary of Hakka origins and history given by Lo Hsiang-lin in Thirty Years of Tsing Tsin Association encourages this view. Under the title K'o-chia Yuan-liu K'ao, it details Hakka migration to the south and their distribution in Kwangtung. Without the Evacuation, however, Hakka immigration into this area might not have been assisted by the government as it was after the order was rescinded.7 6 1 HNHC 7/17 lists three, styled "Wang Hsun-fu Tz'u", two of them in our region, at Sha Tau Hui and Shek Wu Hui; besides the "Chou Wang Erb-kung Shu-yuan" at Kam Tin (not listed but see Sung, HKN, VIII, Nos. 3-4:207, and Sung 1939). 2 Hayes, 1962, p. 91 and note 50. 3 See e.g. the statements included in the gazetteers for the Kuang-chou and Ch'ao-chou prefectures of Kwangtung: KCFC 80/20-29, and CCC, chüan 2 of the Ta Shih-chih/12-15. 4 Besides the Hsin-an temples already mentioned, see e.g. the eight in Shun-te county noted in the prefectural gazetteer, KCFC 67/23. 5 pp. 1-106. 6 See especially the maps opposite pp. 34 and 56. Also Lo 1965, with its records of the movements of forty lineages. 7 See HNHC 9/1, Lo, 1963 p. 104 and the reference to the rehabilitation work in Hummel, p. 777. ================================================================================ 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 TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH’ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN, KWANGTUNG JOHN THOMAS Kamm* INTRODUCTION The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was carved, in three successive steps, from the Chinese county of Hsin-An (新安). These essays represent attempts to reconstruct modes of economic activity which prevailed in this remote county during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction will eventually serve as the groundwork on which an analysis of mercantile capitalism, in terms of its impact on local Chinese social structure, will be built. In the first year of Wan-Li (1573), Hsin-An Hsien was formed from the division of Tung-Kuan Hsien (東莞縣) into two jurisdictions. Except for a brief period during the reign of the Kang-Hsi Emperor, the county remained one of the fourteen counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture throughout Ch'ing. As with most other magistracies in rural imperial China, Hsin-An was characterized by a high degree of self-government. The magistrate seldom intervened in local affairs, and relied heavily on the indigenous social order for the day-to-day administration of the countryside. The dominant stratum of the local hierarchical order consisted principally of landlord-gentry patrilineal descent groups, commonly referred to as great clans (大族). Of these clans, the Tangs (鄧) and especially that branch of the clan which resided in Kam Tin (錦田) -- were probably best representative. Much of the data presented was collected during field work into the social history and oral tradition of this Punti "power brokerage." * Mr. Kamm states, The essays were written in fulfillment of seminar requirements for an A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies-East Asia program. The work is based largely on research undertaken in the New Territories (including a brief stint as coordinator of an NTA-Yuen Long "oral history" project in Kam Tin) and in the archives of the Public Records Office, Hong Kong. Writing and editing was supervised by Professor Yang Lien-Sheng of Harvard during late 1974. NOTES The cession of Hong Kong Island was ratified by the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Kowloon peninsula was added in 1860. Britain obtained the New Territories (on a 99-year lease) in 1898. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 56 J. T. KAMM 2 Throughout these essays, mention will often be made of a truly "watershed" event in the history of Hsin-An: the evacuation of the South China coast, ordered by the Kang Hsi Emperor, from 1661 to 1668. The step was taken to hinder the activities of the Ming loyalist-pirate Cheng Ch'eng-Kung, best known to the West as Coxinga. 3 Field work in Kam Tin took place from May to September, 1973. Other research was undertaken into the Government Archives, Colonial Secretariat Library, and the Fung Ping Shan Library of the University of Hong Kong ESSAY 1: PERPETUAL TENANCY IN HSIN-AN A cursory examination of the available evidence on the Ch'ing economy of Hsin-An reveals a seeming paradox: a large tenant population farming a limited amount of cultivatable land, yet enjoying relative prosperity. We shall begin this essay by dissolving the paradox. The amount of cultivable land in the Tung Lu section of Hsin-An has probably never amounted to more than 15% of the total surface acreage. While the percentage of arable land was higher in the Hsi Lu, Chinese accounts of the area have always stressed the hilly, barren nature of the terrain. For the period we are studying, cultivated land probably accounted for no more than 20% of the land surface of the county. In general, ownership of productive resources (agricultural fields, fishing grounds, oyster beds, quarries, and salt pans) were concentrated in the hands of landlords who leased them to tenants. Land was seldom worked by the holder of the hung ch'i (lit: “red deed”). In short, Hsin-An during Ch'ing was essentially a tenant economy. Lockhart, in his Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, describes the population as follows: "The inhabitants, by no means wealthy, seem to be, as a rule, comfortably well off, and able to earn an honest livelihood without difficulty. Few signs of anything approaching destitution were seen, and only a few beggars were met." Lockhart's observations are borne out by an examination of three indices of relative prosperity: 1) low rent and tax burdens, 2) increase in market activity, and 3) population growth through immigration. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 60 J. T. KAMM exercise of ownership, and are contented to do nothing further than to receive a yearly rent. They can sell this right of receiving rent, but the land is otherwise under the absolute control of the cultivators, who often sell their perpetual leases. The landlord is called the owner of the "T'i Kwat" (note: Cantonese equivalent for t’i k’u), which may be termed the right of receiving rent. The tenant is said to possess the T'i P'i, or right of cultivation. Constant lawsuits result from this double ownership and the contending interests which it necessarily involves16 To summarize, perpetual lease in Hsin-An was characterized by the division of land into two values, surface-value, which corresponded to cultivation-value, and subsurface-value, which corresponded to rent-value. Landlords held rights over the rent-value, conceptualized locally as t'ien-ku-chuan (†), while tenants held title to the cultivation-value, or t'ien-p’i-ch’üan (✯✯). The process by which rent-value became separated from cultivation-value, i.e. the process of its primary accumulation, becomes manifest in an examination of the social and economic evolution of the county following the resettlement during the early 18th-century. Of the several kin groups displaced by the Kang-Hsi evacuation, the Tangs were among the least adversely affected. This was so for two reasons: 1) the proximity of the Hsin-An Tangs to several Tang settlements in Tung-Kuan,17 and 2) close relationships between Tang gentry and local officialdom.18 Not only were the Tangs able to keep abreast of developments while residing in a secure base not far from the evacuated county, moreover, the evacuation had the unintended result of increasing clan solidarity. In this regard, the establishment of the Tu-Ch'ing Tang (**)- the largest order ancestral trust uniting the clan, was most significant: Tang Pao-sheng (£), a chin-shih of the Ch'ing Dynasty, had the intention of constructing an ancestral temple, but his plans were not realized. An official, Tang Hsu-chou (✯✯✯), seeing that the five branches of his clan resided in different places far from one another, decided to fulfill Pao-sheng's wishes. After choosing a beautiful site at Chiu-Ch'iao (**), Tung-Kuan, the clan gathered together to construct a great temple. At each winter sacrifice (), the male descendents of the various branches would assemble and encourage each other to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND CEREMONIAL LIFE OF TWO MULTI-SURNAME VILLAGES IN HOI-PING COUNTY, SOUTH CHINA, 1911-1949 YUEN-FONG WOON* The two villages to be discussed in this paper are: Na-loh Ts'uen (###) of Lo-yeung Heung (✯✯) and Lung-tsai She (** #) of Tsung-long Heung () both in Hoi-p'ing County (BI *) of Kwangtung Province in South China.1† Na-loh Ts'uen was a richer village and had a longer history of settlement. It was founded about 1350. This village was on the outskirt of the general area known as T'oh-fuk (4) which included four Heung—Lo-yeung, Chung-miu († $), Ling-uen (✯) and Ng-wing (). These four Heung were dominated numerically as well as economically by the Kwaan (§§) lineage,2 with its ritual centre at Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall (***) in the intermediate market-town of Che-hom (). Na-loh Tsuen itself was multi-surname: there were one hundred Kwaan families and sixty Oo (*) families in the village. Lung-tsai She was separated from T’oh-fuk by six li (two miles) and was part of Ts'ung-long Heung. Between T’oh-fuk and this village were the Oo lineage of Ue-leung Heung (f), the Chau () lineage of Hin-kong Heung (L) and the Wong () lineage of Paak-hop Heung (). The village was founded about 1500. There were about 200 inhabitants: eighteen Kwaan families, twenty Wong families and four Tang (4) families. It was not known when the Tang and the Wong came, but the Kwaan founder was Yan-waang Kung (#) who came from Na-loh some 160-170 years ago when the latter village had become over-populated. Both villages had ritual ties with the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall at Che-hom. The Kwaan at Na-loh had an ancestral hall of its own, but the elder members went to Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall to take part in the annual rites there. The Kwaan in Lung-tsai She did not have an ancestral hall of its own, but the elders also attended rites * Dr. Woon is on the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. † The residents of both villages were Punti speakers. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 108 YUEN-FONG WOON lineage of T'oh-fuk, the Kwaan of Lung-tsai She, whose ancestors had migrated from T'oh-fuk, came under its protective umbrella. Some of them had even succeeded in evading their head taxes through connections with the official leaders there. Thus, it was not surprising that the Kwaan in Lung-tsai She were eager to keep their separate identity by maintaining residential segregation from the Wong and the Tang while attending the annual Spring and Autumn Rites at the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall in Che-hom. They only co-operated with the Wong and the Tang in projects of immediate concern such as irrigation and defence, since they were numerically a minority in Ts'ung-long Heung. The study of the centrifugal forces of the headquarters of higher-order and dispersed lineages on multi-surname villages in South China has been largely neglected by scholars in the field. G. W. Skinner, in his article "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-5 pp. 36-40) asserts that once segments of a lineage had moved away from the parent settlement and were attending different standard market towns, they would lose their connections with one another. The case of Lung-tsai She discussed in this paper tends to refute this argument. Despite geographical separation, the Kwaan in this village was economically, administratively and ritually still an integral part of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk until at least 1949. In Taiwan and other parts of China, where lineages were weaker, members of multi-surname villages not only had more intra-village ties, they also had more contact with and reliance on affinal and maternal kin outside the village. Intra-village quarrels were as likely to be along class lines as along lineage lines. Village temples had much more educational, economic, administrative as well as relief functions than were the case in multi-surname villages in South China. NOTES 1 Hoi-p'ing County is one hundred and four miles (290 li) southwest of Canton. Heung (Mandarin: Hsiang) was an administrative unit above the Ts'uen (: village) but below the District. There were one hundred and three Heung in Hoi-p'ing, each administered by a Heung Office since 1930. All names in this paper are in Cantonese, following the Meyer-Wempe system of transliteration. ================================================================================ 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 171 Higher up the mountain, there were those who were content with more modest quarters. Pre-war, Heywood found such a retreat beside some large rocks high on the mountain. Keeping always to the west of the stream, you will reach a secluded upper valley where there is a Buddhist settlement. Two of the charming and courteous people of this place once showed me round their home, which consisted of a cave under a huge overhanging boulder. A thatched porch shaded the wayfarer as he sat drank tea (and how very refreshing Chinese tea can be when you are out walking). Inside was the living room with beds and a table and a little shrine, all kept spotlessly clean, and down below was an underground kitchen, supplied with a clear trickle of water through a chink in the rocks." In contrast to these newer institutions there is at least one very old Buddhist nunnery, the Ling Wan Chi (†). This is stated to be a fifteen-century foundation, associated with the powerful family of Tang of Kam Tin in the New Territories (JHKBRAS 13 (1973): 128-9). 10. On all sides of the mountain, these earlier institutions have now been joined by a large number of smaller, more modest foundations, some in their own houses, others in rented accommodation. These, on the Tsuen Wan side, are largely Buddhist and most of them are intended for women, many of whom are retired domestic servants ending their lives in quiet. The outside and refugee origin of some of these persons is reflected in the names of their halls. A modest temporary structure in Lo Wai is named for the famous old Wing Ning hall (永寧堂) in Toi Shan city (台山城), in existence long before it became a county seat, as the owner told me proudly, whilst a larger pre-war hall is named Tung Po To, the 'Po To isle in the East' (=Kwangtung) after its founder's home monastery in Po To Island in the Yangtse, one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism.* Myths and Legends 11. An account of this region written nearly 120 years ago by Rudolf Krone, a German protestant missionary of the Rhenish Mission, states, * For a more famous sister, the 'Po To in the South' situated at Amoy in the Fukien province see Pitcher: 78 and illustration at 161. ================================================================================ 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 181 He must have come by boat as the record states that "he left his boat at Tuen Mun - the present-day Castle Peak Bay - and rambled through the woods of the New Territories and visited many mountains. He fell in love with the scenery, and found many excellent grave sites for he was an accomplished geomancer." After he finished his official tour of duty in Yeung Chun County, he returned to his native home at Kiangsi and brought down the exhumed remains of his great grandfather TANG Hon-fat (#) and his great grandmother and those of his grandfather TANG Kun () and his grandmother to this area for reburial, presently the New Territories of Hong Kong. He buried his great grandfather and great grandmother in a grave at a site called Yuk Nui Pai Tong (#), meaning "the newly married girl is presented to her in-laws", at a small hill near Wang Chau (#), Yuen Long. He also buried his grandfather TANG Kun and his grandmother in a grave the site of which is called Kam Chung Fook Fo (4ƒƒX), “the golden bell covers the flame”, on a small hill behind the present Pok Oi Hospital on the main road from Kam Tin to Yuen Long. Both sites were considered auspicious. We do not know whether TANG Fu-hip's father TANG Yuk (e) was brought here dead or alive. He and his two wives were buried in a grave on a small hill not far from the Tsuen Wan District Office. The name of the site is called Pun Yuet Chiu Tam (*AR), “a half moon is shining over the water pond”. Owing to the proximity to the urban area and its easy accessibility, the Tang clan led by their elders come here every year on the 19th day of the Tenth Moon (lunar calendar) to pay homage to this ancestor. The record does not tell us how TANG Fu-hip brought the bones of his ancestors from Kiangsi, whether by boat or by the overland route. When TANG Fu-hip died, he was buried in a grave he had chosen himself. The name of the site is called Sin Yan Tai Tso (^) “the grand seat of the fairy", and it is located not very far from where he buried his great grandfather and great grandmother. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 204 NOTES AND QUERIES as "land-holding corporations" and are treated as such, descent data being regarded essentially as secondary particulars. 6. Although the implications of this statement for the general theory of unilineal descent groups have largely been ignored, the observation is borne out by a study of the ethnographic and historical data concerning the Kam Tin Tangs. The elders classify no fewer than four ancestors as hoi chuk cho, and, according to them, honor all four with essentially the same ritual obligations. These ancestors [1) Tang Hon Fat (**), 2) Tang Foo (##), 3) Tang Yuen Leung (*), 4) Tang Hung Yee (###)] are central pivots around which much of the oral and written history revolve; yet, as an investigation of the genealogy (##) kept by the elders reveals, long spells of "historical time" and interrupted residence separate them one from another, a disturbing fact which has, in the past, generated considerable debate on their individual legitimacies. 7. Sung Hok Pang* mentions a debate, recorded in an early Kam Tin genealogy during the Shing Fa () years of the Ming dynasty, concerning whether Tang Hon Fat ever actually visited Kam Tin at all. Elders maintain that this debate is still very much alive. 8. The debate concerning the founding of Sham Tin, i.e., whether Tang Hon Fat or Tang Foo founded the Tang settlement, is perhaps understandable when we realize the striking similarities in the biographies of the two men. Tang Hon Fat settled, it is said, in the vicinity of Sham Tin at a place called Kwai Kok Shan (± A L), some time towards the end of the tenth century A.D. There is speculation that he constructed the Hung Shing Kung (†), a temple still intact in Pak Pin (at) Village. He was a government officer, shing mo long (#4), from Kiangsi (31), Kat Shui Yuen (##), Pak Sha Tsuen village (#). The Nam Yeung Tang genealogy (✯✯✯✯✯), held by the Ping Shan Tangs, credits him with being the first settler. The Kam Tin Tangs disagree, placing most of the credit on his great-grandson, Tang Foo. 9. Tang Foo was also a high official of the Sung Dynasty (holder of the chin shih (+) degree and county magistrate of Yeung Chun (**)). He, too, is supposed to have settled at Kwai... See Mr. Kamm's Essay I, f.n. 20 and Essay II, f.n. 21. ================================================================================ 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 205 Kok Shan. In general, the significance of Tang Foo is two-fold: 1) by establishing a famous school or study (Lik Ying Tsai #) near Kam Tin, he linked his name with scholarly achievement in San On and Canton, 2) by recognizing the qualities of the area's Fung-shui (風水) and locating his ancestors' graves accordingly, he assured future benefits for his descendents. 10. With reference to the former point, Tang expansion was undoubtedly assisted by the largely fictive "kinship" bonds established within the scholarly civil-service tradition. 11. It will be noted that in the two accounts of Fung-shui appended to these notes,* the landmarks recognized by Tang Foo correspond generally to the boundaries of territory claimed by the Kam Tin— Ping Shan- Ha Tsuen Tangs. Also notice the conflicting tales recorded by Sung and O'Dwyer,† particularly concerning whether Tang Foo was an official prior to examining the Fung-shui. An excellent example of how oral "tales” contradict orthodox doctrine. 12. There is considerable doubt that, after Tang Foo, the Tangs continued to be a force in Sham Tin; but, two generations later, ancestors reappear, and with them mention, for the first time, of the popular territorial division of Kam Tin. Two cousins (grandchildren of Tang Foo), Kwai (#) and Sui (*) settled respectively in Nam Pin (南邊) and Pak Pin (北邊) Villages. 13. The dispersal of their children, known as 'the Five Yuen (五遠)' is the first major migration or fission of the Tangs from Sham Tin. The descendents of the Five Yuen considered together form the highest order grouping of the Tang clan. Kwai (癸) gave birth to Yuen-hei (元喜) who settled in Tung Kwun City (東莞縣城) and Pak Wai (北圍), and Yuen-ying (元英) who settled in Fuk Lung (福隆) of Tung Kwun county. Sui (遂) gave birth to Yuen-ching (元貞) who remained in San On, establishing the branch of the clan at Ping Shan (坪山), Yuen-leung (元亮) who remained in Sham Tin, and Yuen-woh (元禾) who moved to Wai Tak (懷德) of Tung Kwun. These together made up the five great branches of the Tung Kwun San On Tangs. In the K'ang Hsi years of Ch'ing, their descendents established the To Hing Tong (蹈興堂), which built * pp. 214-216. Only one has been printed. † K. O'Dwyer, "Kam Tin, Memories and Legends" The Rock (a Hong Kong Catholic Journal) April 1940. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 212 NOTES AND QUERIES 24. a. Several tales contain information regarding land tenure. For instance, an elder of the 3rd Fong who related the Tang Hei-sui () tale (see Sung p. 253), mentioned that members of the Tso () established after his death each received 100 Tam Kuk each year till 1898, indicating extensive holdings. 24. b. As mentioned above, the Kam Tin Tangs virtually owned the Pat Heung Valley (even the suspect Cadastral Surveys confirm this).* They also possessed land around Yuen Long and further south, Shun Fung Wai (). Ancestral land on Hong Kong Island totalled approximately 1000 Chinese acres, and clan land (shared among the five fongs) in Kowloon was extensive (200 acres in Cheung Sha Wan alone). 25. Land was either communally or privately owned. The former ("communal ownership") is divided into a number of categories, the most important of which are Tso () and Tong (). Tong land is appropriated in the literary name of an ancestor (hence early confusion of Tongs as literary clubs). Unlike Tso, the joint holders need not be descendents of a common ancestor. Hence, while Tso land exhibits "vertical solidarity" within a fong across class boundaries, Tong land establishes horizontal ties across fong within class boundaries. 26. For the uses to which ancestral land is put, see the material from the Nam Yeung genealogy and the section on Land Tenure ("varieties of Tenure") reproduced from the Hong Kong Government Gazette, No. 26, 28 April 1900. I would here simply like to add two further uses of ancestral land: 1) defence funding and 2) financing ritual ceremonies. On the former, see Enclosure 7, no. 172 from Extension of the Boundaries. [I add here what might appear superfluous; ancestral land increases in direct proportion to the distance from Kam Tin. Private holdings predominate within the heung itself] 27. As we have seen, the Kam Tin Tangs acted as "unofficial" government of a large section of San On county. One of the essential elements to this system of control was their status as tax-lords. The former is thus explained in Cecil Clementi's report on his work in the New Territories in 1905-1906: "On the recommen- “Suspect" because they do not always reflect the pre-1898 situation: owing to decisions about ownership made by the New Territories Land Court. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 156 C. MARTIN WILBUR The plans of the Nationalist Government call for the organization of local self-government in rural districts along republican lines which will fit into the scheme of a thoroughly democratized state. The years between 1930 and 1935 have been designated as a period of political tutelage during which the new organization is to be effected. The smallest unit of organization is to be the Lin (鄰), composed of five families. This unit will be controlled by a president and vice president elected by the citizens. Five Lin constitute a Lü (閭), which will have similar officers. Villages, Hsiang (鄉), and market towns, Chên (鎮) are composed of at least 100 families or four Lü. From twenty to fifty of these villages, in turn, form a county, Ch'u (區), while an undetermined number of counties form a Hsien (縣) or district under a district magistrate or Hsien-chang (縣長). This whole system of organization, it will be seen, is based upon very ancient Chinese forms. What is different is the democratic and republican form which the government is supposed to assume. The machinery of rural self-government is supposed to operate from the smallest unit, the Lin, upwards to the district or Hsien. The rights of election, recall, initiative and referendum are conferred first upon the smallest units. Because of an untrained citizenry, however, the attack has been made first upon the largest unit. And District magistrates, during the period of tutelage, are not to be elected by the people but are first to be examined and then recommended by the provincial Government and appointed by the National government. In the meantime, the plan of the Central Government calls for training schools for county chairmen, and provinces and districts are supposed to form training schools for preparing the personnel of the smaller units of local government. The only available report as to how this process of organization works in practice is that given in the survey of Ching Ho, and unfortunately this village is not typical of rural districts. Ching Ho is a town composed of a number of villages, and has a population For the statement of the plan for rural government as given here, see: China Year Book 1932; p. 687, and Tyau, Min-ch'ien; Two Years of Nationalist China, p. 76-78. 2 Ching Ho: a Sociological Analysis. This study was made during 1928 and 1929, and therefore is by several years too early to give a picture of the situation at present under the slowly strengthening National Government. But it is valuable because it indicates the reaction of a town on which the new, external forces of change are operating. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 172 C. MARTIN WILBUR Niu Jen-yen (BMT); Local Self-government in Full ($*£T). Shanghai, Kung Min Book Store (ARTH), 1930. 4 vol. $5.00. Temporary Regulations in Force in Honan Municipal, District, Street, and Village Local Self-Government ( X$+@##6#*6*4). Honan Provincial Affairs Bureau (TäÂ). Various Rules and Privileges in Practice in Chekiang Village and Hamlet Local Government (#2#3#2# ). Chekiang Provincial Affairs Bureau (****). III. RURAL INVESTIGATIONS (2###) Chiang Wen-yü (3¤M*); “Hsu Kung Bridge" (##). Shanghai, Chinese Professional Educational Society (*****). Farmers and Landlords in Heilungchiang Region ( XAVAMAJR#X1). Nanking, Central Research Bureau (★★*£*). $0.60. Huang K'u-t'ung (*****); Rural and Village Investigation (*#**). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (*****). $2.25. Investigation of Rural and Village Conditions in Lin An County (Chekiang) (**&*£*)). Nanking, Committee of Reconstruction (✈✯員會設建委), 1931, Kiangsu in the Future (Haz×4). Kiangsu Provincial Affairs Bureau (江蘇民政廳) Li Ching-han (***); Rural Families in Peiping Suburbs (***** 4) Shanghai, The Commercial Press (*****). $0.75. Yang K'ai-tao (#ML); Rural and Village Investigations (****). Shanghai, The World Book Company (L***FA ), 1930. $0.60. IV. RURAL AND VILLAGE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS (農村經濟) Chu Hsin-fan (***); Special Characteristics and Economic Conditions of Chinese Rural and Village Life (†B⭑#MALLAT ). Shanghai, Hsin Sheng Ming Book Store ( 1**£*#4). $1.20. Ling Tao-yang (); Various Aspects of Economic Conditions in the Agriculture of China (I*<***). Shanghai, The Commercial Press (£#*#*#) $0.45. Liu Ta-chün (§**); Economic Conditions of Farmers in China (ADP *M*RA). Shanghai, Hsien Tai Book Store (ARTA). $0.45. Majayar(?) (HLEN · *) (Author), Ch'en Hua-ch'ing (RIC# · #) (Translator); Studies in Economic Life in Chinese Rural and Village Communities (†B£##*#*). Shanghai, Shen Chou Kuo Kuang Shê (#tđk ), $2.20. Taylor (Author), Li Hsi-chou (†49#*) (Translator); Actual Conditions of Economic Life in Rural Communities and Villages of China (†B£#***). Shanghai, Wen Hua Hsueh Shé ( *ČR 學社)、$0.80. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 208 NOTES AND QUERIES (b) Holy Mother Yiu Temple (*****) This temple was first established by persons from Pok Law district (###) of Kwangtung who came here immediately after the war in search of work and shelter. It was first established in a squatter area at Ma Sim Pai () but was later moved to its present location in Fu Yung Shan (*) overlooking the town. Here we have a Kwangtung worthy! The goddess after whom it is named was a famous woman inhabitant of Kwangtung who lived in the Han Dynasty nearly 2,000 years ago. This person received an entry in the Kwangtung provincial gazetteer (1822 edition) which reads as follows: "Lady Yiu's temple () is in Mok Tsuen (#) in the east of the Pok Law District. In the Ho Ping reign period of the Former Han, 28-24 BC, there lived a chaste and virtuous woman named Yiu who was praised by the local people. After her death they erected a temple to her memory at Pun To Wan (#), and the worship there is in the name of ‘Our Lady Yiu'.” Another old account has the following quaint story: “Lady Yiu Temple. During the Han dynasty, a lady named Yiu of Pok Law county was renowned for her virtues. After her death, a temple was erected to offer sacrifices to her. Chen Yao-tsao† accompanied by Hsu Shen,‡ a Chiu Chow scholar, departed for Pok Law to take up the post of Sub-Prefect of Chiu Chow. On their way, they moored the boat to the bank on a certain night. There they heard several horsemen addressing them in a dignified tone: "The Prime Minister and the Commissioner for Grain Transport are sojourning here tonight." On the next morning, Chen and Hsu visited the place and found there a Lady Yiu Temple. Later, they were in fact promoted to the two posts respectively. †I have mislaid my reference to this source, but my friend Mr. Anthony Siu Kwok-kin of Hong Kong has traced the story further back to a Sung book (與地紀勝卷九十九廣東南路惠州博罪官吏) which dates the incident to the 2nd year of Hsien Ping in the Sung Dynasty **** (999 A.D.). †陳堯佐 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 32 KEITH G. STEVENS include the burning of incense every day. This amongst other things saves the individual having to perform the rite before his ancestral tablets daily. 4 There are no Confucian temples in either Hong Kong or Macau. 5 Although there are obvious and major differences between Daoism, Buddhism and Folk religion, their beliefs and practices are so interwoven and syncretized beyond description, that in practice there is almost a single religious scheme of things. A handful of folk religion temples, mostly in Chaozhou and Min An community resettlement areas, are also centres for spirit medium activity. Chaozhou and Min An people customarily communicate with the major gods through minor gods and spirit mediums, Folk religion is very occasionally referred to as "Spirit worship” (Shen jiao), albeit more by foreigners than by Chinese. Chaozhou and Min An spirit mediums are usually males who speak with the more junior gods, whilst Cantonese spirit mediums are normally female and speak with the spirits of the dead. * The natives in both Hong Kong and Macau are Cantonese. Immigrants over the centuries who brought their own cultural heritage with them are the Hakka, Min An, Hoklo, and Chaozhou. The Chaozhou are speakers of the Chaozhou (sometimes called Swatow) whose native area is eastern Guangdong province. In folk religion the Chaozhou have more in common with their immediate neighbours to the north, the Min An and other Fukienese rather than with their Cantonese neighbours. The total of 450 temples reflects the number found and visited by the author. The total given by the Hong Kong Government Temples Committee of the Home Affairs Department of over 500 private temples registered in Hong Kong is misleading in that their total includes to the author's knowledge quite a number of small temples which have been destroyed, removed or closed down. The author's number of 450 is also inaccurate as there are bound to be a number of very small temples hidden away in residential blocks of flats which would defy discovery without a visit to every floor of every apartment building. * County towns were the centres for official, commercial and religious activities. Villages within present day Hong Kong before the arrival of the British came under the jurisdiction of the mandarin at the county town of Hsin An (present day Pao An), north of the Sino-Hong Kong border. * However, an engraved title can easily be superseded when a more popular deity has been promoted to the main altar, without the title over the entrance being changed. 10 Images on, beside, before and under altars can be categorised into the deities themselves, and their disciples, guardians and attendants. There are also two other categories of figures, seen only on separate altars in some Buddhist temples. These are the likenesses of the founding Abbot and of major donors and their wives. 11 Urban and rural are terms used for the areas where the temples were established, and many a rural temple is now lost in the centre of a vast modern housing estate. Urban temples do not include village temples, they do however include the temples of the market towns such as Taipo and Yuen Long. 12 These "pensioners" are normally the most needy and worthy elderly males or females of the community, voted or appointed into the post and supported there by subscription. 13 See Hong Kong 100 Years Ago (Hong Kong City Hall, 1970) on the sixth page of photographs, though under another titling. Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 134 NOTES AND QUERIES insurance against Indonesian official accusations of racialism and idolatry. The temple staff believed, said the temple keeper, that Indonesian moslem officials would not dare throw out an image of the former President. It is interesting and no doubt connected, that the image was in a Chinese temple in the birth place of the former President. The image, illustrated at Plate 18, regrettably does not bear much resemblance to President Sukarno. Hong Kong, 1981 KEITH STEVENS MORE ABOUT THE TUNG LUNG FORT* The Fat Tong Mun Fort or the Tung Lung Fort 東龍砲台 is situated on Tung Lung Island 東龍島. As recorded in the San On Yuen Chi, Chia Ch'ing edition***, it was erected during the K'ang Hsi period, for the protection of the waterway against the pirates.2 However, as the K'ang Hsi Reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty lasted for sixty-one years (1662-1722), I wonder when it was actually erected within that period? From the book Ch'ing Cho Hoi Keung To Shueta, published between 1727-17333, the following points bearing on the Fat Tong Mun Fort are mentioned: 1. In the San On County, four forts, namely: the Tor Ling Fort 沱泞砲台, the Fat Tong Mun Fort 佛堂門砲台, the Nam Tau Fort 南頭砲台, and the Tai Yu Shan Fort 大魚山砲台, were newly erected. 2. These forts were erected when Yeung Lin was Viceroy of the Kwangtung Province. 3. The Fat Tong Mun Fort was provided with eight cannon places and thirteen guard-houses. 4. There were no fixed number for the garrisons at the forts. Soldiers were sent to guard them as required. In the Kwangtung Tung Chi✯✯5 and the Ch'ing Shi Ko✯or 3, it was recorded that Yeung Lin was a Shau-pei. See also JHKBRAS 19 (1979): 209-210. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 136 NOTES AND QUERIES 3 Map of the East Coast of the Kwangtung Province, in the Ch'ing Cho Hoi Keung To Shuet 清初海疆圖說之粵東海圖說篇 The book was prepared in the Reign of Yung Cheng (1723-1735). * Chapter 43 and Chapter 255 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1864 edition 阮元廣東通志卷四十三及卷二百五十五 5 Table 37 of Ch'ing Shi Ko * In the 12th year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1673), Ng Shaam-kwai led an uprising against the Ch'ing Government. The uprising was suppressed in the 20th year of K'ang Hsi (1681). Some of his followers turned to piracy on the south coast of China. 7 Chapter 255 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1864 edition * As recorded in the Map of the East Coast of the Kwangtung Province, in the Ch'ing Cho Hoi Keung To Shuet, within 16 coastal counties of the Kwangtung Province, a total of 41 forts, 312 cannon places and 618 guard-houses were erected when Yeung Lin was Viceroy of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Province. Of these, 4 forts, 32 cannon places, and 74 guard-houses were erected in the San On county. * He was appointed as Viceroy of Kwangtung Province in the 1st year of the Yung Cheng Reign (1723). The Province of Kwangsi was then under Kung Yuk-sun, as Governor. 10 See my article The Fat Tong Mun Fort (or the Tung Lung Fort) in Volume 18 of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society. DISTRIBUTION OF TEMPLES ON LANTAU ISLAND AS RECORDED IN 1979 Lantau Island lies to the west of the Island of Hong Kong. Before the Sung Dynasty, the people living there were mainly of the Yiu tribes. Then came the refugees of the Southern Sung. The population increased during the Ming Dynasty; and many of the temples on the island were first built at this time. During the first year of the K'ang Hsi reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the people living in the coastal areas had to move back to the interior, because of the policy called the "Evacuation of the Coast". Seven years later, in the eighth year of the K'ang Hsi reign, they were allowed to come back. However, like many houses, some of the temples decayed during their absence. From then on the population increased rapidly, with people flocking to the area. The local temples were rebuilt and repaired. The temples listed below are in existence in 1979. Though some ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 NOTES AND QUERIES 141 (1810), General Chin Mun-fu ***** suggested that the Fat Tong Mun Fort be abandoned and be rebuilt near the Kowloon guard-station ✯ ✯ A Viceroy Pak Ling T✯ ordered the Magistrate of the San On County 觚 ***◊ to carry out the suggestion. Chapter 175 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition KKAR £&4-4*+ states, "The Kowloon Fort Aate lies 290 # E west of the Tai Pang Battalion 4. It was guarded by one pa-tsung and one ngai-wai with 48 guards." 5 After the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated, and Hong Kong was ceded to the British. In the 23rd year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1843) Ke Ying was Viceroy of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces **** and Wong Yan-tung & was Governor of the Liang Kwang-tung ✯✯✯. They proposed building the Kowloon Walled City. The work was completed in the 27th year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1847). * See Chapter 13 of the Kwangtung Tao Shuet, Tung Chih edition ŁATÁRUK+ which records. "The Kowloon Walled City was under the command of a fu-cheung ## or brigadier of the Naval Forces of the Tai Pang Battalion. Under him was an extra ngar-wai who guarded the Walled City with 150 men. There were 75 men under one tsin-tsune for lieutenant guarding the Kowloon Fort; and one ngai-wai-tsin-tsung ††or sub-lieutenant leading 15 men guarding the Kowloon Coastal Guard Station ALDA. * See Chapter 73 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsü edition ANA££*TE and Kwong Tung Hoi Tao Shuet, Kuang Hsü edition 張之洞廣東海圆說. * See my article 'The Old Cannons found in Hong Kong' in Volume 8, Part 2 of Kwangtung Man Hin REÆ : RKARXUŁ^ËZI * The Old Yamen is now occupied by the CNEC Grace Light School. TUEN MUN FROM CHINESE HISTORICAL RECORDS 2 Tuen Mun1 lies in the western part of the New Territories. The highest mountain in this area is the Tuen Mun Shan ₺F2 which reaches a height of 582.9 metres. To the east of the mountain is the Tuen Mun Bay, also called the Castle Peak Bay lying to its east, and the Lantau with Kau King Shan A Island lying to its south. Tuen Mun Bay is surrounded by mountains on three sides, thus forming a good typhoon shelter from the strong easterlies. It is also the waterway for entering the Chu Kiang i or Pearl River estuary of the Kwangtung Province. The Bay had been an important harbour for the Persians, the Arabs and the people from India, Indo-china and the East Indies. Their trading fleets had to anchor and gather at Tuen Mun before entering the Chu Kiang. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 146 NOTES AND QUERIES To the north of Chun Fa Lok on the mainland side are Kwai Chung 葵涌 and Chin Wan 淺灣.* Kap Shui Mun 急水門 lies to the south-west. South of the Kap Shui Mun is the Yeung Shun Chau 仰船洲? Judging from the position shown on the map, Chun Fa Lok's location is probably the same as that of Tsing Yi Island today. And from the present day maps of Hong Kong, we can find the name Chun Fa Lok on the east coast of Tsing Yi Island. I have twice visited the present Chun Fa Lok on Tsing Yi Island, once with Dr. James Hayes, and found that the huts there belong to one family, surnamed Chung. They came here a few decades ago, after the Second World War. Now, they are the second generation here. I was told that before the present reclamation there was a pier quite close to the village, and the seashore in front. Nothing about Chun Fa Lok itself is recorded in the local histories, but in the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition, it is recorded, 'In the 12th year of the Chia Ch'ing period of the Ming Dynasty, pirates called Hui Chat-kwai and Wan Chung-sin 溫宗卷 invaded Tung Kwun county. Ku Sing 顧晟, a military officer of Tsin-wu † rank, tried to capture them at Chun Fa Yeung ***, but was killed in the fight, Kong Leung-choi ‡, commander of the naval forces of that region, defeated them." Can Chun Fa Yeung be the waters near Chun Fa Lok of Tsing Yi Island today? This needs further proof. The names of Tsing Yi Mun 青衣門 and Tsing Yi Tam 青衣潭 appear in the local history books written in the later part of the Ch'ing Dynasty, but nothing about Chun Fa Lok is mentioned. Is Chun Fa Lok the old name of Tsing Yi? The local elders have been unable to state the connection, when consulted on this point, though confirming that Chun Fa Lok is an old place name. Hong Kong, April, 1980 ANTHONY K. K. SIU 1 Yuet Tai Kei NOTES was written by Kwok Fai in the Wan Li reign (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty. The map of the Kwangtung Coast is shown at the end of Chapter 32. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m THE HONG KONG ORIGINS OF DR. SUN YAT-SEN'S ADDRESS TO LI HUNG-CHANG 177 Translation from op. cit., vol. 3, p. 1. # The school was set up in 1870 and was originally named the Diocesan School and Orphanage for Boys and known in its short form as the Diocesan Home. The orphanage was closed in 1896, but the school has continued as the Diocesan Boys' School. Its early history is given in W.T. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School and Orphanage, Hong Kong, 1869 to 1919 (Hong Kong, 1930).* The Central School was set up by the Hong Kong Government in 1862 as a result of a proposal from the famous sinologue James Legge. It was the first government school put directly under the supervision of a government officer recruited from Britain. The school was meant to be a model school for the promotion of teaching of English and Western learning. For its history, see Gevenneth Stokes, Queen's College, 1862–1962 (Hong Kong, 1962). 7 The article was written in 1937, when the early school register was still in the possession of Queen's College. The Yellow Dragon, vol. 37, p. 94. It is still not clear when Sun entered the college. It is generally known that Sun was transferred to Hong Kong in early 1887, but the college was not opened until October of the same year. It is possible that Sun had been transferred to work at the Alice Memorial Hospital as a student before the college was officially opened. For Sun's student life in the college, see Lo Hsiang-lin, Kuo-fu chih ta-hsüeh shih-tai (Chungking, 1945). 10 A brief survey of the significant role of the Central School in this respect is given in Ng Lun Ngai-ha, “Role of Hong Kong Educated Chinese in the Shaping of Modern China”, paper presented to the 8th IAHA Conference, 1980. 11 “For more information on these and other early Hong Kong newspapers, see Ng Lun Ngai-ha, “A Survey of Source Materials in Hong Kong Related to Late Ch'ing China”, Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i, 4, (December 1979), 145–146, appendix A. 12 The China coast newspapers are valuable sources for the study of modern Chinese history. For a brief survey of these materials, see Frank H. H. King and P. Clarke (eds.), A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers, 1822-1911 (Camb. Mass., 1965). 13 It was said that Sun might have contributed articles to the local newspapers and also to the Wan-kuo kung-pao, of which Cheng Kuan-ying was a patron. See Sun Chung-shan nien-p'u (Peking, 1980), p. 24 and Lo Hsiang-lin, "Kuo-fu yü Ho Chi chüeh-shih ti kuan-hsi", Kuo-fu ti kao-ming kuang-ta (Taipei, 1965), p. 129. 14 The Hao T'ou yueh-k'an 14 and 15 (1947), a magazine published by a secondary school in Chung-shan county, noted that it was first published in the Macao Daily in 1892. Its full text can now be found in Sun Chung-shan Shih Jiao chuan chi (Kuang tung wen shih tzu-liao, Canton, 1891), pp. 271–273. 16 For a brief comparative study of the two letters, see Huang-yen, “Chi-shao Sun Chung-shan 'chih Cheng Tsao-ju shu'”, Li-shih yen-chiu (1980:6), pp. 184–189. 10 For a short description of Ho's life and career in Hong Kong, see Wu Hsing-lin, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1936), II, pp. 1–2. Ho's contributions to the reform movements in China have been studied in a number of works. The more recent ones are Chiu Ling-yeong, The Life and Thought of Sir Kai Ho Kai (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sydney, 1968) and Tsai Jung-fang, “Comprador Ideologists in Modern China: Ho Kai and Hu ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 253 opportunity alongside a continuing, but declining, traditional education, and finally, from 1932, the establishment of an eventually modern education within the village. Rising from a humble community of Hakka origin, the Liaos [Liu] of Sheung Shui had long paid special attention to educating their sons. Since the founding of the village, they had set their sights on education and participation in the civil examinations as a means of advancement, and for centuries they had been able to win numbers of official titles and honours1. Traditionally within the village, schooling was provided in private houses, the ancestral hall, and the study halls known as shu-shih#, shu-wu#, or chia-shou*. The existence of these study halls was considered an indication not only of wealth but also of the great encouragement given by the clan to learning. In addition to their well-known ancestral hall, the Wan Shih T'ang, there were in Sheung Shui at least six study halls that operated in the nineteenth century. According to the village elders' memories, each hall normally accommodated ten to thirty students, at an average of 20 per hall. Assuming that the Wan Shih Tang was not used regularly as a classroom and there were 15 sons of rich families taught by private arrangements, the total number of children attending class in the village would be about 135. As the population of Sheung Shui in 1898 was estimated to be 1800, school-going children then amounted to 7.5% of the whole population. This figure works out to be about 75% of the male population between 6 to 14. This gives credence to the belief that "very few males of the lineage were prevented from becoming literate." The length of schooling ranged from two to ten years, but the average was four. We can find no evidence of a hierarchy among the six study halls. However, according to the brief biographical notes recorded in the Hsin-an Hsien-chih of the villagers,10 most of the few villagers who achieved distinction at the county level, and indeed, most of the small number who were prepared to take part in the civil examinations at all were tutored first at private houses within the village and then sent to schools at Nam Tau, the county capital, or at Canton. * Plate 6. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 43 B-2 B-2 Pai-shou ling-ch'ien, Ku-shih chu-chieh ti by Cheng Chin-ling $436. Tsoying, Kaohsiung, 1976. M. Published Kuan-sheng Ti-chun ying-yan t'ao-yian ming-sheng ching E KNMVTÆ. Published by the Fu-ch'uan Fo-t'ang in Kang-shan, Kaohsiung. QUI÷HES, 1971. (The oracles are in the Appendix). B-6 Kuan Yin ling-ch'ien chu-chieh, erh-shih-szu shou Pi. Taichung: Jui-ch'eng Bookstore, 1975. B-34 Ch'ien-shu chu-chieh, Tien-shang Sheng-mu, lished by the Nan-yao Temple in Changhua M, R, LTE. Pub Mä, 1977. B-54 Huang Ta-hsien (Wong Tai Sin) ling-ch'ien, ku-pen chu-chieh A¶ LASER. Published by the Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, HK, n.d. (purchased in 1980). B-55 Po-chi hsien-fang 1981;. Taiwan (no exact place indicated but stamped by the Tz'u-yu Temple in Taipei, BMK), 1951. B-55 Lu Ti ling-ch'ien hsien-fang, PPARI), Hsinchu: Chu-lin Book-store 新竹市竹林書局,1977. B-55 Fu-yu Ti-chün chüeh-shih ching, Lü-tsu ling-ch'ien chi hsien-fang Fili MEIM.NG MAUZERO/2A07), Hong Kong, N.T., SEDILE. 8-0 1976. + Wu-nien ch'ien-sui ling-ch'ien chu-chieh 1F, Published the Chen-an Temple (2000) of Ma-ming-Shan in the county of Yiin lin, Taiwan, 1963. (ii) Taiwan Oracles: Temple Samples Werner Banck, Das Chinesische Tempelorakel PPE (part 1: Sources), Taipei: Ku-t'ing Bookstore, fillaliliPVM, 1976. (iii) Canton Temple Oracles, collected by the Library of the Center of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (not included in Banck's source edition) 1. Kuan-shih-yin ling-ch'ien, #, published by Wu-kui t'ang 4, in Canton, n.d. (circa 1940?) block print reproduction; contains 100 oracles). 2. Hung-sheng-wang ch'ien 1, published by I-wen tang in Canton, n.d. (blockprint reproduction; contains 64 oracles). 3. K'ang-kung ling-ch'ien 12, published by T'ien-pao Printing Co.: Ch'an-shan, Canton, dated 1855 (nice wood block print edition) + 4. Fu-shen T-u-ti ch'ien (@J:22, published by Wen-tang Bookstore, **W in Yue-tung ch'an shan 40, dated 1859. (woodblock print; 30 oracles). 5. Shang-ti ling-ch'ien (zar, published by Wen-t'ang Bookstore, Z, n.d. (wood block print; 50 oracles). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 127 practices dating back to the complainants childhood and before suggests that the Tanka were using the Tai Tam Tuk anchorage from at least the very beginning of the nineteenth century. I turn now to the important question of how far back was Hong Kong occupied? This is practically an impossible question to answer for lack of sufficient information. As in many other places, like Tsuen Wan and north-west Kowloon, the present old, local, formerly tenant families appear mainly to have come into the area after the Great Evacuation of the Coast ordered by the Kanghsi emperor, 1662-69, and many of them not until the eighteenth century or even after. Yet it is an interesting fact that the maps in a later 16th century geographical work on Kwangtung, the Yueh ta-chi(A) contain names that are familiar to us today, on Hong Kong island as well as on the other islands and mainland of the Hong Kong region. Thus we find Chek Chu (Stanley), Tai Tam, Wong Nei Chung, Tit Hang, Chun Hoi and Shau Kei Wan, as well as Hong Kong itself, implying surely, that these places were settled at that time or were at least resorted to periodically. Also, the Tang correspondence from the 1840s quoted above specifically refers to recultivation of their land in various places in the late seventeenth century — though not necessarily by the former tenant farmers after revocation of the edict of 1662 referred to above. We also learn that the Tang land on Hong Kong island was entered in the Tung Kwun district land registry, suggesting that the registration might well be earlier than 1573, at which date the San On district was carved out of Tung Kwun and established as a separate county. 71 The island was certainly well-established in settled communities long before 1841. The temples alone give proof of that. To this day, two existing temples at Stanley, and two at Aberdeen (one at the former village and one on an islet now joined by reclamation to Ap Lei Chau) and the Tin Hau Temple at Tin Hau Temple Road, Causeway Bay (formerly called Hung Heung Lo or "Crimson Incense Burner") contain items that go back to the eighteenth or very early nineteenth century. There were others now demolished or resited that probably predated 1841. Details are given in the Table below. 72 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 138 JAMES HAYES 37 CO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864. 38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45. 39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149. 40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308. 41 e.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there. 42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258. 43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151. 44 **科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78. 45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12. 46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132. 47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11). 48 Unpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17. 49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983). 50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3 51 52 53 Friend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith), Ibid. See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10. 54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill. 55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above. 56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843. 57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 282 CHEUNG AH-LUM, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE CHOI CHI-CHEUNG On February 2, 1857, Cheung Ah-lum, proprietor of the Esing Bakery, was charged with administering poison in bread with intent to murder on January 15 that year. The charge, defended by Dr. Bridge, who was Acting Colonial Secretary, was found unproven. However, Ah-lum was "re-arrested as a suspicious character and detained in gaol until July 31, 1857". He was released "on condition of his not resorting to the Colony for five years". This Cheung Ah-lum was a member of the Cheung lineage of Heung Shan County (Hsiang Shan) (= now Chungshan). The Clan Record of this lineage was published in 1934, and contains a lengthy biography written by an old colleague, Chen Chao-ch'ang, in 1904, four years after Ah-lum's death. Since this biography gives a very different view of Ah-lum to that more frequently found, it is felt that a translation of this biography might be of interest, and it is, therefore, given below. “An Account of Ancestor Wu-sheng of the Chang (Cheung) Clan, granted the Honour of a High Official Title” "His death name was Pei-lin, his style was Han-hung, and his assumed name was Wu-sheng. He was a native of Ya-kang of Heung Shan. His great-grandfather was Chiao-chin, his grandfather was Huan-pi, and his father was Wei-kang. He had two younger brothers, the first was Yu-hung, and the second was Tsan-hung. He was the eldest of the three sons of his father. From his youth, he was eager to excel. He could read the books his father gave him, and he had an excellent memory. However, because of poverty, he had to give up studying and followed Yung-yin, a man of the same surname whom he called uncle, to do business in Macao at the age of 13. From there, he learnt the ways of doing business with the foreigners. Knowing that Hong Kong was a newly opened port and that there were chances to develop business there, he decided to go to work in Hong Kong when he was 18. He became chief comprador of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 285 who can wear a colourful ribbon), and for his father and grandfather he applied for 2nd grade titles to be conferred on them." His filial piety was difficult to surpass. He died in Vietnam at the age of 73. When his sons and grandsons carried the coffin back to his native village, thousands of Chinese and foreigners, officials and commoners, accompanied it until they reached the ship. There were people crying for him, drawing pictures of him, and writing essays about him. Cities far away, such as Singapore, also had his life-story written in the newspapers with the headline ‘Death of a Philanthropic Gentry' (*). He was really a great man. I am his old colleague, thus, I know all about his personality and activities. Here I cannot give the details, but can only give a general account of him. “Written in 1904 by Chen chao-ch'ang (陈兆昌), a Tsun Sz (遵司), appointed by Imperial Command an official of the Han Lin Academy, and humbly offered while the writer was in charge of the Shan Hai Kuan area (山海关). NOTES Eitel, E.J., Europe in China: History of Hong Kong, 1895. p. 311 ff. Ah-lum's wife and children were poisoned, and Eitel clearly had doubts as to his involvement in the crime. The defence of Ah-lum was conducted in a lynch law atmosphere and his arrest and deportation, even though he had been found innocent had, according to Eitel "reduced (him) from affluence to beggary.” 2 Hsiang-shan T'ieh-ch'eng Chang Shih Tsu-pu (AKA) (Clan Record of the Chang clan of Heung Shan and Fat Shan) (1934). Chi-ching Pu (2) section, Hang Chuang (孝庄) sub-section, pp. 8-9a. 1 According to the Clan record, ancestor Chung-te (忠德) immigrated to Shih-t’ou village (石頭村), eight miles to the southwest of T'ieh-ch'eng (铁城) Fatshan (Foshan) during the latter part of the Southern Sung dynasty. The lineage then segmented into 3 sub-lineages in the 7th generation. The 1st remained in the original settlement, the 2nd moved to Nan-Ping (南屏), and the 3rd to Long-Mei (龙美) in Hsiang-shan (Heung Shan) county. 3 generations later, in the 10th generation, 3 descendants of the 1st sub-lineage emigrated to Ping-Lan (坪兰), Ya-Kang (雅岗) and Wai-chieh-yung (外借涌) in Heung Shan, respectively. Ancestor Ch'un-chen (纯真) of the 10th generation was the first to move to Ya-kang, but the family was not regarded as native to Ya-kang until ancestor Miu-hsien (妙贤) of the 14th generation registered and started a new segment of the lineage (开户立户). Thus, an Ancestral Hall was built in the middle of the Chia Ching (嘉靖) period in memory of him. Ah-lum was of the 18th generation of the Cheung lineage, and the 9th of the Ya-kang segment. He was born in 1828, and died in 1900. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 127 continued the guerilla war from bases in the nearby Nanlin Hills (Paul, 1982). As a revolutionary base was established, workers' and peasants' democratic governments were formed at the county level throughout Hainan, the first being set up in Lingshui County amongst the Li community (Gao, 1981). Threatened by the possible emergence of a unified China, Japan, which already had a firm foothold in northern China, landed troops in Shanghai in 1928 in order to weaken Chiang Kai-shek's power and prolong the onset of the inevitable Sino-Japanese war. Taking advantage of the rift between the KMT and Communists, Japan strengthened her influence, first by invading Manchuria in 1931, and finally, by means of a number of orchestrated landings in 1937, secured the whole of the coast of China, effectively severing all major supply arteries to the country: China was no longer a dangerous adversary (Eberhard, 1969). As part of this offensive, Hainan was first attacked in August, 1937 (Clark, 1938), and Japanese forces quickly occupied the coastal fringe. By February, 1939, Hainan, like the mainland, was subdued (Wigmore, 1957). Remnants of the old Red Guard units, hardened by 12 years of battle with the KMT, took up positions around the island immediately behind the Japanese and used their guerilla tactics to harass the intruders, while the KMT held defensive positions in the central mountains (Fairtex-Cholmeley, 1963). It appears that a non-interference agreement was quickly ratified between the Japanese and the KMT, leaving the Communist guerillas to pose the chief threat to the invading Japanese (Paul, 1982). Although Mao Tse-tung committed the Communist Party to collaborate with the KMT, conflict continued between the two factions even in Hainan where in 1943, the Li leaders, Wang Guo-xing* and Wang Yu-jin, led 20,000 tribesmen in an armed foray against KMT troops entrenched in the Five Finger Mountains (Gao, 1981). In spite of these "domestic" conflicts, the combined Chinese forces tied up two Japanese divisions in Hainan (MacCrae, personal communication). Due to its strategic location, Hainan became a training and staging area for the Japanese southward thrust, with components of the XXV Japanese Army being exercised on the island during ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 42 NOTES Anthony K.K. Siu, "The Kowloon Walled City”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (hereafter, JHKBRAS) vol 20 (1980) 139-140; his Chiu-lung ch'eng shih lun-chi ” (“Studies on the Kowloon Walled City") (Hong Kong: Hin Chiu Institute, 1987) p. 27. It was called miserable by the Rev. Krone in his “A Notice of the Sanon District” China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Transactions 6 (1859) 71-105, reprinted in the JHKBRAS 7 (1967) 104-137, 132. 2 Chou-pan i-wu shih-mo (The complete account of the management of barbarian affairs) 260 ch'uan (Photographic copy of original compilation, Hong Kong, 1964), ch'uan 70: 18b-19b. The hsun-chien originally administered 496 villages in the county; with the cession of Hong Kong Island, 5 were taken out of his hands, and in 1860, another 12 were lost with the cession of the Kowloon Peninsula. Thus by 1898, he was only responsible for 479. See Siu, Chiu-lung ch'eng, pp. 16-20. 3 ibid., p. 28. 4 Chou-pan i-wu shih-mo, ch'uan 76: 3a-4a. 5 J.H.S. Lockhart, [Report on the New Territory], enclosed in Lockhart to Chamberlain, October 8, 1898 in Great Britain. Colonial Office. Original Correspondence (Series 129) (hereafter CO129)/289; p. 74. According to a later account, however, the wall was about 23 English feet high, and the width at the top between approximately 5.8 feet and 11.75 feet. See Chiang-shan ku-jen LA, “Hsiang-kang hsin-chieh feng-t'u ming-sheng ta-kuan" (A panorama of local customs and famous places in Hong Kong and the New Territories) part 104. These articles appeared in the Hua-chiao jih-pao between 1935-36, and are collected in an album deposited at the University of Hong Kong Library. Based on observations, these articles are an important source of geographical and historical information of places in the territory. However, it seems that Lockhart, who had been commissioned to reconnoitre the newly leased territory, might have gone to greater lengths to obtain accurate measurements. 6 Another detailed observation of the wall and guard houses was made by Walter Schofield in 1928, and his notes are reproduced in JHKBRAS 9 (1969) 154–156. 7 Chiang-shan ku-jen, “feng-t'u”, part 104. 8 Lockhart, p. 75. 9 Lockhart, p. 75. 10 Chiang-shan ku-jen, “feng-t'u”, parts 109-110. 11 See the inscription recorded in David Faure, Bernard Luk and Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha ed. Hsiang-kang pei-ming hui-pien (Historical inscriptions of Hong Kong) 3 volumes. (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1986) vol. 1, p. 101, James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1977 (Hamden, Connecticut, 1977) pp. 167-168. The building was partially demolished in the early 1980s, and a high-rise apartment building was built over it. At the moment (1988), the frame of the entrance with the original couplet is still in place, and an altar, said to be from the school, still stands on the ground floor. 12 Hsun-huan jih-pao June 13, 1883. 13 Hayes, p. 168; Chiang-shan ku-jen, "feng-t'u”, part 107. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 278 NOTES AND QUERIES TAM KUNG: HIS LEGEND AND WORSHIP Occasionally, one hears of the deity Tam Kung #2 as having originated in Kowloon. That mistake arises from confusing Kowloon (Chiu-lung 九龍) with Chiu-lung shan in Lin Kuei-shan 歸 county. Tam Kung, named Tao, was a native of Kuei-shan (present Hui-tung) in the Yuan Dynasty. He cultivated his moral conduct at Chiu-lung shan. He was often seen in the mountains with a tiger carrying his things. He cured the sick when they approached him. He died and was revered as a deity. When drought came, people went to him to ask for rain, and often they were satisfied. In the 6th year of Hsien-feng (1856), he was granted the title ‘Hsiang-chi 祥濟’ (“Assistance and Aid”) by the emperor. In Hui-chou, two temples were erected to offer sacrifice to Tam Kung; one on Chiu-lung shan in Kuei-shan and the other in Hui-chou City. A pavilion was built at the place where he cultivated his moral conduct. On my visit to the Chiu-lung shan in 1986, I saw both the temple, the Lung-feng tsu-miao 龍峰祖廟, and the pavilion, the T'an-kung te-tao-t'ing 譚公德道亭. A stone tablet now kept in the Hui-tung county museum, given the title, "The repair of the T'an-kung Temple of Chiu-lung shan" dated 4th year of Tao-kuang (1824), records that the original temple was built thousands of years ago, was repaired in the 40th year of Ch'ien-lung (1775), and then rebuilt and enlarged in the 4th year of Tao-Kuang (1824). The pavilion that I saw was rebuilt quite recently. In Hong Kong, there are two Tam Kung temples. They were built in the late Ch'ing by people from Hui-chou. The Tam Kung Temple at Wongneichung was built in 1901. It was originally built on the hill slope near the present Hong Kong Sanatorium. A bell ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 96 moved from Fukien to Heong Shan county in Kwangtung during the Sung dynasty (960—1279). About a hundred years later, his great, great, great, great grandson, Heen Bow, who was a student at the county school, founded the village of Cha In and established the West Branch (145 or 945) of the clan. Since he was born during the latter part of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and died during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) at the age of 56, Cha In village was settled about the mid-1300s. An ancestral temple was built to honour him as the 'First Ancestor' and to pray for the glory and prosperity of his descendants. A great, great, great, great, great grandson of Joong Goong, named Jun Hung, branched out to Poo San #1, as did another great, great, great, great, great grandson, named Bow Sung. The son of Heen Bow, named Kwong Joong, had two wives, the first of whom died before the marriage was consummated. The second wife bore him three sons. The eldest, Li Jung, branched out to start the East Branch 東堡 or 東房, The second son of Kwong Joong, named Li Jen, entered the emperor's service when he was only 15 and his feats of courage surpassed others. At the age of 19, while on a mission for the emperor at King Jow Prefecture, he met his death at sea. This service to his country brought glory to the clan. A temple was built in his honour and a statue of him was placed there for sacrifices to him. During the reign of Hong He of the Ming dynasty, an official named Iu Goong was commissioned to find out all about Li Jen's background for a report back to his superiors. Iu Goong visited the temple and was so impressed by what he heard that the Emperor bestowed Li Jen posthumously with many honours for his distinguished service, naming him to a government post in Taiwan and Adjutant to the Viceroy of Fukien, and noted that although Li Jen was dead, it seemed as if he were still alive. Iu Goong also presented to the temple a tablet of honour and a stone lion to enhance its appearance and to serve as an inspiration to others 'to serve the emperor with loyalty and devotion, to bear the lance and follow the emperor to battle, to win glory, to extend benevolence, to protect the race, and to respond whenever the need arose.' Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 148 villages in the neighbourhood. Of the nuns of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz, the abbess from before 1920 to 1931, Wong Tik-yuen, is believed to have come from Fu Tin (Futian), just west of Sham Tsun. Her successor (1931-1944) was Yip Yuet-kwan. It is not known from which village she came, but she, like Wong Tik-yuen, was definitely Punti. This strongly suggests that there was a tradition in the New Territories area among the long-settled Punti lineages which made it respectable for girls of those lineages to refuse marriage and instead to enter a nunnery. Those lineages or village groups which owned nunneries were proud of them, and proud of the fact that the nuns came from within the lineage or from the village group or a nearby village. Certainly, the Ling Wan nunnery holds a critically important position within the folktales of the Tangs of Kam Tin.43 — For a district to have a nunnery with a few dedicated women living a pure life, eating vegetarian food, and offering shelter and prayer to and for all men, certainly helped protect the district from spiritual disaster, but equally it must have helped reduce social tensions by providing a socially acceptable outlet for girls who did not wish to marry. It is probable that most of these indigenous Buddhist establishments were usually nunneries;14 the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz is called a nunnery ( ) on the 1789 bell, and in the Hsin An County Gazetteer of 1820* and the folktales of the Tangs about the Ling Wan house clearly presuppose that it was always a nunnery (it is specifically called a nunnery on the bell there, of 1755). The evidence for Ling To and Lung Lai before about 1900 is less clear.¶ However, these nunneries were occasionally handed over to devout men to live in, if such men presented themselves to the villages which owned them when the nunnery would otherwise have been vacant. Villagers remember that, before Wong Tik-yuen became abbess, the nunnery was lived in by a man, who was not a monk (he wore his hair “like a Taoist''), and who terrified the children of the villages.** Lei Pui-yuen may have run the nunnery in the same way. The Ching Shan monastery at Tuen Mun must have been founded for men, and this alone may have remained a house of men in the nineteenth century.¶ What is clearer, however, is that there were no Hakka monasteries or nunneries within the New Territories — presumably the Hakka in this area had no nunnery-based tradition of socially acceptable marriage-refusing women. The question of nunneries and marriage-refusing women in this area requires further study. 48 49 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 152 Mun, founded by Pooi To. This is, however, perhaps unlikely. The note of 1089 on the history of Pooi To and his monastery (Hsin An County Gazetteers, loc.cit.) is sufficiently comprehensive that it is unlikely that it would have failed to notice if Pooi To had founded two monasteries in the immediate vicinity of Tuen Mun, but it refers to only one, and clearly identifies Pooi To's Kwangtung area of interest with this one monastery. I am indebted to the students of Ng Yuk Secondary School who presented a study of the Ling To monastery to the Hong Kong Institute for the Promotion of Chinese Culture for the Institute's 1990 Historical and Cultural Investigation Award for much of my information on the Ling To monastery. 4 See Sung Hok-p'ang, "Legends and Stories of the New Territories: Kam Tin (B)", in The Hong Kong Naturalist, June 1936, reprinted in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 13, 1973, p. 127-129. The nunnery bell is dated Kang Hsi 40 (1701), and this is probably the date of foundation. The bell speaks of a desire to achieve success for the Tang lineage in the imperial examination. 9 See Plan, and Plates 20 and 21. See Location Map. A two-day survey was conducted on December 11th and 12th, 1904, which showed that 1823 persons used the road on the 11th (a market day at Sham Tsun), and 708 on the 12th (a non-market day). The market day at Sha Tau Kok would have been the 10th. The survey was taken “on the road”, and very probably at the nunnery. These figures suggest a monthly total of up to 43,000 travellers: even if this is substantially discounted (the report suggests that travellers carrying rice after the second rice harvest, and fish, made the road very busy at that time) about 25,000 a month would seem a reasonable figure, or 300,000 a year. The Governor gave a more conservative statement of the yearly total, at 250,000, or about 20,000 a month. Of the 2531 travellers surveyed on the two days, 679, or 27%, (29% on the market day, 22% on the non-market day) were "carrying goods". Assuming that these carriers were carrying the standard cookie distance load of 100 lbs, then they were carrying 67,900 lbs, or 30 tons, implying perhaps 400 tons a month, or 4,800 tons a year. The survey for this road gave figures entirely in line with those shown by the surveys conducted at the same time on the other roads along the line of the railway. See file C.O.882, despatch No. 59, from Sir Matthew Nathan to Mr. Lyttelton, received February 13th, 1905, Public Record Office, London, (copy in P.R.O. Hong Kong). A second survey, conducted outside the nunnery, on 26th and 29th December, 1910 (both market days at Sham Tsun) showed 319 and 203 people "carrying goods" on those days. Assuming that the percentages of people carrying goods (those not carrying goods were not surveyed) was, as in 1904, 29%, then total passengers on those days would have been 1100 and 700, suggesting a monthly total of about 23,000, and a yearly total of just under 300,000. See file C.O.129/376, despatch no. 165 (page 582), from Sir Frederick Lugard to Rt. Hon. Lewis Harcourt, 28th April, 1911, (copy in P.R.O. Hong Kong). A monthly total of between 20,000 and 25,000 people passing the nunnery, therefore, seems very reasonable. ... The inscription is at Vol. 3, p. 679 of David Faure, Bernard H.K. Luk, and Alice N.H. Ng Lun, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, Urban Council of Hong Kong, 1986. The bell was donated to stand for ever before the altar of the Lord Buddha in the nunnery at Cheung Shan by "the mass of the devout people from all the villages". 各鄉衆信弟子慶具鳴鐘一口，敬酹長山廟佛生爺爺案前永遠供奉、福有攸歸。The nunnery is mentioned in the Hsin An County Gazetteer of 1819, as the "Cheung Chun nunnery, at the Loi Tung Pass", at ch'uan 18, page 149 of the Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 13 153 PP. 12 The inscription recording the rebuilding is at Faure, Luk and Ng, op. cit. Vol. I, 128-129, but it is unreadable through weathering, except for the heading and date. (4). Loe An-lim (羅安廉) (42), Qianren Wenxian (千人文献), ÑÍAL. [Collected Writings of Men of Past Ages], unpublished manuscript collection, Vol. 2, ff. 75a. (Copy in library of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Kowloon Central Library, Hong Kong). Lee An-lim was a villager of Sheung Wo Hang. (3) Lee An-lim, Qianren Wenxian, op. cit. ff 73-78. + As honour board recording the donors to the 1920 repair has recently been found. It lists the donors by village. Every village in Ta Kwu Ling donated (except Ping Che, Chuk Yuen, Nga Yiu Ha, very probably included with their lineage brethren in Tong Fong, Law Fong, Ping Yeung), as did the villages close to the road both in the Sha Tau Kok area (Shan Tsui, Yim Tso Ha, Yim Tin, Wo Hang, Nam Chung, Luk Keng, Wu Shek Kok and Sha Tau Kok Market) and in the Sham Tsun area (Sham Tsun Market, Lo Wu, and Wong Pui Ling). Shek Wu Hui from further away also donated. See Win Wen Wei Pao (SCHEW) of 17 September, 1991. U¿÷ 16 Detail from the tablets commemorating the departed leaders of the monastery, and from information given by the recently deceased resident nun. The tablet of Kuk Shan Kit reads: 羅浮山寶積古寺監裤正宗第上三代主持上谷下山潔老和尚莲座. The tablet Kuk Shan Kit placed to commemorate his deceased predecessors names the "ordained monks" HIBA · MAZA + J # and Ki£*, all of whom were dead by the date of erection + 1 of the tablet, and ✯, at that date still alive, as well as predecessors as rulers of this monastery" ALLKILMINER and "those monks who founded this monastery", A WILDFORIKA BAIMM- L 17 See P.H. Hase, “Notes on Rice Farming in Shatin', in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 21, 1981, pp. 196-206; D. Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China: Trade Increase and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. 46-57 and 212; and Hong Kong Annual Report: Report by District Commissioner, New Territories for Year Ending 31st March, 1950, Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, 1950, p. 5. TH The Ho clan of Tsung Yuen Ha descends from Ho Chan, the Earl of Tung Kuan in the early Ming, and the Ho family history (CBMGKR — a manuscript volume in the University of Cambridge Library) suggests this area was in Ho Chan's hands before the end of the Ming. It was certainly in Ho family control before 1393 when Ho Chan's family were proscribed. The Tang family has occupied the Lung Yeuk Tau villages, Loi Tung and Tai Tong Wu since the fourteenth century at the latest. A Tang clan also occupies Au Ha (PUF Aoxia) and Wang Kong Ha (Huanggangxia). I have not been able to discover if these two villagers are genealogically connected with the Loi Tung and Lung Yeuk Tau clan, although this is unlikely. The Man family has occupied Ping Che for **18 generations", according to village elders, i.e. probably from the fourteenth century. The same family occupies Tong Fong, Heung Yuen Wai, and Lin Tong, Liantang), and a branch of it was resident at Man Uk Pin (**Man Family Houses") before the present residents, the Chung (鍾) clan moved there in the early eighteenth century. The To clan has been resident at Chau Tin village for **500 years". Local villagers consider that the Lei family has been resident at Lei Uk for as long as the To and Man clans have been at Chau Tin and Ping Che. All these clans are Punti, although sections of the Man clan at Tong Fong, and those at Heung Yuen Wai and Lin Tong, now speak Hakka. Shan Kai Wat (Lam surname, 林), Fung Wong Wu (Yip surname, 葉), and Law Fong (Law surname, 羅), are all included in the list of villages in existence in 1661 included in the 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, along with Au Ha, Tsung Yuen Ha, Ping Che (Ping Yuen 平遠), and perhaps Ping Yeung (坪洋) (Gazetteer, Ch. 3, f 12-13). Other Punti clans in the Ta Kwu Ling area (Wong, 黃, Chan, 陳, and Law, 羅, at Kan Tau Wai, and Hau, 侯) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 156 Tsz people controlling the pass and the Cheungs controlling the river crossing; no one group had total control of the road; but if the Luk Yeuk controlled both the pass and the bridge, then the Shap Yeuk's interests could well have been at risk. Lin Ma Hang of the Shap Yeuk actually fought alongside Wong Pui Ling; the rest of the Shap Yeuk was probably friendly to the Cheungs, or at least neutral in the dispute. The Sze Yeuk were allied with the Tangs in their opposition to the establishment of the Tai Po New Market by the Tsat Yeuk; as is to be expected, Fanling and the Luk Yeuk supported the Tsat Yeuk. 32 33 It is unclear if the inscription still survives or not. They were Man Fuk-ting (Tong Fong, Chairman); Lei Yi-wa (Lei Uk); Chan Kwok-cheung (Ping Yeung); Tang King-shiu (Au Ha or Wang Kong Ha); Law King-fan (Law Fong); To Kan-yeung (Tin). 14 Between 1911 and 1924 Chan Ping-kei (Chau ...) and Chan Tai [or Ting]-cheung ... (+ [Chinese characters unknown]) were managers, and as such appear on the Land Memorials. 35 It was put up by Lin Tong and Wang Kong Ha villages, in "The Shing Ping She Shrine of Righteousness".ĦTH, Faure, Historical Inscriptions, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 850. 36 37 Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 104-105. Chau Tin village owned a small temple, or San Teng (神廳), as did Kan Tau Wai and Law Fong. Kan Tau Wai in addition owned a small house as a meeting place for its elders. None of these communal facilities had any income-producing land attached to them, except for the Law Fong and Kan Tau Wai temples, which owned 0.05 and 0.12 acres respectively. The Ping Yuen temple manager was registered only for the single temple building, but not for any income-producing land, although the temple did buy a piece of land (0.72 acres) from a Ping Che villager in 1906. See DD82, houselot CT20; lot 759; DD78, lot 1158; DD82, houselot KTW13; houselots PC1-3; Memorial 2744. Memorials 24058 (20 April 1913), 27471 (4 June 1914), 45919 (7 December 1920); see also Memorial 17779 (17 October 1911) for the succession of the She to a house at Tong Fong. 19 For the Po Tak Old Alliance, see Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 128-140. 40 41 See R.G. Groves, "The Origins of Two Market Towns'', loc.cit. For the Tung Ping Kuk and the Tung Wo Kuk, see Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 128-140. 42 (唔出嫁嘅女) 43 44 Sung Hok-p'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories: Kam Tin, op. cit. It should be noted that these nunneries are often called Tsz (寺) in ordinary speech and documents. This character strictly means "monastery", but, in this area, this does not necessarily imply that the religious living there were men. Thus the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz is almost always so called, as in the document printed in the Appendix. The use of the more correct character Am (庵, 'nunnery') is almost entirely limited to Ch'ing official documents (especially the County Gazetteer) and, sometimes, on bells. 45 46 loc.cit. See Faure, Luk and Ng, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 669. It is called Miu (廟, "temple") in Hsin An County Gazetteer, 1922, ch'uan 4 and 7, pages 49-50 and 82 of the Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, and in the 1688 Gazetteer. 47 Ling To is called Tsz (寺) in the Hsin An County Gazetteer, 1819, at ch'uan 18 and 21, pages 148 and 174 of the Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, and, given the care with which... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 305 Faat, who was an official of the Song Dynasty. His great-grandson Fu-Hip was the first to settle in Kam Tin. One of his two sons moved to Dongguan county and the other, named Seui, stayed. The two had a total of five sons whose descendants were known as the “five main branches”. In a time of chaos, a grandson of Seui married a daughter of the Song Emperor Gaozong. This member of the royal family was better known by her descendants as Wong-gu because her brother later became the Emperor Guangzong. Her husband was called the Gwan-ma. The Wong-gu sent one of their sons to see the Emperor, who granted official titles to her husband and sons and gave her some farm land as a gift. Present-day Dangs attribute their wealth to this event. Her descendants moved to different parts of Dongguan and Xin'an counties, including Lung Yeuk Tau, and Tai Po Tau in the New Territories. The nearest common ancestor of the present-day Dangs of Kam Tin, Hung-Yi, was a seventh-generation descendant of the youngest son of the Wong-gu. Hung-Yi's brother Hung-Ji was the ancestor of some of the Dangs of Ha Tsuen. Hung-Yi did not leave much property, and there is no ancestral hall dedicated to his worship. We do not know much about Hung-Yi. Oral tradition has it that in 1393 he was sent on penal servitude on behalf of his younger brother Hung-Ji. Before that, he had married a Miss Jeung and had three sons Yam, Jan, and Yeui. He survived the (unknown) period of servitude and obtained a teaching job in a wealthy family. His employer married him to a servant girl of the surname Wong. Miss Wong bore him a son by the name of Gyun. Upon his death, she brought his ashes and the son to Kam Tin. The son Gyun died soon afterwards, and subsequently Yam gave one of his sons as Gyun's heir. Yau-Leun Tong in the present Kam Tin Shi was the hall in honour of Hung-Yi. But there was no tablet for him in the tong. To explain the absence of a spirit tablet, one elder said, "Because Hung-Yi did not have much property, the fund was small. There was no spirit tablet for him in the tong. His spirit tablet was housed in the ancestral hall of his grandson, [i.e., the ancestral hall for Ching-Lok, see below.]" Another provided a different explanation. It was because the Fung Sheui was poor for the purpose. Whatever the reason, Yau-Leun Tong was not a place for setting up a spirit tablet. It was a place for gatherings only. Some younger villagers told me that the hall was once rented out, and once used as a kindergarten. Page 330 Page 331 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 309 B. Earliest Evidence of the Lineage Present-day Dangs of Kam Tin speak of the four branches of their lineage, which correspond to the four sons of Hung-Yi. This division into four branches stemming from Hung-Yi's sons was already clear in the sixteenth century: it is implied in the will of Dang Kei-fong, a fourth generation descendant of Dang Hung-Yi, of the fourth branch - the will was written in 1561. The earliest evidence we have of a lineage focussed on Hung-Yi is this will. The will was copied in a genealogy compiled by a descendant of his. In the will Kei Fong stated that he had inherited a substantial property from his father and had not added much to it. He now wished to set aside 90 sek of rental rice for the worship of his parents, himself and his wife, and the education of his male offsprings. He had also set aside 33 acres of farmland, the rent from which was to help his descendants to cope with the county corvée. Kei-Fong stated his intention to build an ancestral hall in honour of his parents, Chung-Yut and his wife. This, although probably never realized, is the earliest known plan to build an ancestral hall in Kam Tin. Kei-Fong started his will by naming his office-holding ancestors, Fu-hip, the gwan-ma's father, and the gwan-ma himself. No reference is made to Hung-Yi. But the will as preserved includes the names of the witnesses, which comprise a juk-jeung and four fong-jeung. Comparing the name list with genealogies, we find that the "clan" in this 1561 document is one that has Hung-Yi at its apex. The first of the four fong-jeung is a grandson of Yam, the eldest son of Hung-Yi. The third is a grandson of Jan, Hung-Yi's second son. The fourth is a grandson of Gyun, Hung Yi's fourth son. Curiously, the other fong-jeung is another grandson of Gyun rather than one of Yeui's. The juk-jeung, however, was not only a descendant of Yeui rather than Yam, but was also more junior in generation terms than the others. He was the eldest son of the eldest son of Siu-Geui, the only son of Ting-Jing. Ting-jing was the eldest son of Yeui. This may be a reflection of the continuing influence of Ting-jing's descendants in clan affairs in that period. In 1471 Ting-Jing (a son of Yeui) had been awarded a geui-yan degree and subsequently (in 1514) appointed as the Director of Studies of a Jiangxi county and subsequently promoted to be a County Magistrate ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 311 recorded by Sung (1974:181-182), Wan-Guk "was a very rich man, and he owned a lot of cultivated land in [Xin'an County]". He died before 1513 (ibid: 182). We have more detail about some of his great-great-grandsons, among them Dang Yun-Fan who made a donation of 1,000 sek of rice to the county government for relief during a bad famine. The details of Dang Yun-fan's descent from Wan-Guk are obscure. Because of this act of generosity Kam Tin was given its present name in 1587, instead of the Sham Tin used earlier (Sung 1973:111-112). The story must be quite close to the truth. Siu (1982:23:24) has checked the Xin'an gazetteer to verify it. He found an entry for a serious drought in 1583, and the County Magistrate named in the anecdote assumed his position in 1586. I have found other supportive data in a local manuscript that records some of the inside inscriptions of the spirit tablets in one of the ancestral halls of Kam Tin. Two ancestors of this period had "pen-names" (hou) that probably alluded to the new name of the settlement. An elder I interviewed attributed the change of the place name to Kam Tin to his ancestor Pou-Am, another great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's, and provided the following information. Pou-am's holdings reached Chuk Yuen near San Tin. He had house(s) where the rent collectors could stay when collecting the payment and being entertained by the tenants. Pou-Am's grandson Lok-Sin had comparable holdings. It was probably in the second half of the 16th century that an ancestral hall was built in honour of Ching-Lok, Wan-Guk's father. It was in all likelihood the earliest ancestral hall ever built in Kam Tin. We know the approximate date of the ancestral hall because a handbook for its rituals prescribed that extra portions of ritual pork were to be given to the descendants of certain individuals, some for their part in the initial building of the hall and some for their contribution towards subsequent repairs and rebuilding. These involved six people. Among them the two rewarded for the original building and another two rewarded for the first rebuilding were all Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. It was only in a subsequent repair in 1788 that one of the descendants of the other sons of Ching-Lok became involved. The spirit tablets in the hall confirm the dominance of Wan-Guk's segment. The two Dangs honoured for the initial effort, as already mentioned, were Wan-Guk's great-grandsons. The time when the ancestral hall was first built was probably not later than the time of Yun-Fan, the great-great-grandson of Wan-Guk's who made the donation to the county in 1587. It was also in the second half of the 16th Century that Kei-Fong (not a descendant of Ching-Lok) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 313 Documents confirm that Sing-Ngok's descendants had a large portion of the more than 160 acres of Kam Tin Dang land-holdings on Hong Kong island. D. Sung-Kok jou and the Gwong-Yu Tong and Lei-Ging Tong I have mentioned before that the second ancestor of the fourth branch, Naam-Kai, had been adopted from the first branch. This connection might be expected to serve to make the two branches feel closer together. However, fung-sheui stories hint at feelings of rivalry between the first and the fourth branches, especially after the rise of the latter during or after Dang Man-Wai's time in the later seventeenth century. However, it was only a few segments of the fourth branch which prospered: a letter from the leaders of the Kam Tin Dangs in 1941 claimed that the ancestral fund for Naam-Kai used to be a broken house in the county town of Xin'an until it was expanded to a farmland holding of over 200 sek in rent value under the management of the youngest son of Dang Kyun-Hin (1755-1822). It was only the families of Dang Man-Wai and of his brothers who enjoyed great prosperity from early in the Qing dynasty. The present descendants of Dang Man-Wai attribute the prosperity of their segment (known as Gwong-Yu Tong) to the jeun-si degree of Man-Wai, which he won in 1685. But from 1657, i.e. almost 20 years earlier, he was already a geui-yan, one of only two or three ever achieved from the Hong Kong region, which should have placed him in a very advantageous position especially in this period. According to a stone inscription, Man-Wai started the Yuen Long Market in 1669, and until it was replaced by the New Market in 1898 this market was run by the ancestral trust of Man-Wai, the Gwong-Yu Tong. Man-Wai was also credited with having compiled a genealogy and having initiated the building of an ancestral hall for the larger Dang clan. His sons and grandsons included many imperial degree/title holders involved in lineage matters. The spirit tablets of two of Dang Man-wai's brothers are housed in the Lei-Ging Tong, an ancestral hall which used to be in the present playground, but which was later moved to near the Sun Ngai Brass factory on Kam Sheung Road. The original building was only a little smaller than the Gwong-Yu Tong. One of the two brothers was Dang Ng-sang, who, according to Sung (1974:185), built the ancestral hall. Some village elders confirmed that he was the same Ng-sang who was the leader of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 314 10 the Dangs of Kam-Tin in the dispute with the Dangs of Ping Shan over the grave of the gwan-ma several decades before 1737. The descendants of Man Wai and his brothers (i.e. the members of the Gwong Yu Tong and the Lei Ging Tong) are all also members of the Sung-Kok jou segment which derives its name from the "pen name" of Man Wai's father. E. Loi-Sing Tong To avoid confusion with Gwong-Yu Tong (i.e. the descendants of Man-wai) I shall call the Gwong-Yu jou segment (Le, the descendants of Gwong-Yu) by the name of their ancestral hall, the Loi-Sing Tong. The first datable event relating to this segment was the building of the ancestral hall in 1701 by Jeung-Luk, a sixth generation descendant of Gwong-Yu. Probably the best known of the Loi-Sing Tong ancestors was Si-Daan. The details of Si-Daan's descent are obscure. He was probably a descendant, perhaps a grandson, of Jeung-Luk. Sung (1973:63-65) records a story that upon his birth there was an unmistakable sign that he was destined to be a rich man. According to Sung (1974:164) he “built himself a very big house called Naam Teng, the remains of which can still be seen on the South side of Kat Hing Wai". In 1755 when Si-Daan's uncle presented a bell to Ling-Wan Ji his name was included as one of the donors. The family probably had become rich before his father's generation. That uncle of his, Dang Yu-Jung, had purchased a minor official title. The donation list for the rebuilding of a temple in 1744 recorded a single sum donated by four Yus that included Yu-Jung and Si-Daan's father Yu-Man. Among the four, Yu-Ji had purchased a gung-sang degree in the Yongzheng period (1723-1735), and two others had degrees of gaam-sang. Si-Daan himself had purchased an official title of jau-tung. Of the ancestors whose tablets were housed in the hall Puk-Chai, gung-sang degree holder, is remembered by his descendants, who still keep an embroidery presented to the father of this degree holder on the occasion of a birthday." He was probably one of Jeung-Luk's brothers. F. Mau Ging Tong The period of the late Ming and the early Qing was an eventful period for the people of the Xin'an county. The Kam Tin jiu festival itself had started as a response to experiences in this period, especially the serious ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 315 piracy problem in the late Ming, the Coastal Evacuation and its aftermath. In 1662, to deny Ming loyalists supply and support, the Qing government ordered the coastal population of Xin'an county, among others, to evacuate inland (see Ng 1983:26-28). Many died. They were only allowed to return in 1669, thanks to the petitions of the Governor of Guangdong Wong Loi-Yam and the Governor-General Jau Yau-Tak. It is to be expected that the population became smaller in the period just after the evacuation. Many new lineages had migrated into the area in this period (Siu 1984:5-6). These newcomers would have been a threat to those who had settled long before the evacuation. Some of the “locals” had probably also learnt from the previous experience the need to get organized. Others would have to follow suit if they did not want to be dominated by large power groups. Students of the region see the Evacuation (1662-1669) as a turning point in its history. Watson (1985:25), for example, pointed out, "Many of south [Xin'an] temples, and large corporate descent groups trace their beginning to this period”. The construction of temples and ancestral halls, she suggested, were steps to strengthen the organizational framework and power of the dominant lineages. 12 The ancestral hall for Ching-Lok's segment, as I have noted above, was probably first built before this period. In Kam Tin a few other ancestral halls and the Jau and Wong Temple were erected in this period. Before this period, therefore, some of the Dangs in Kam Tin had ancestral halls and some had none. From early in this period every one "belonged” to at least one ancestral hall. One of them, the Mau-Ging Tong, was obviously different in nature from the earlier Ching-Lok ancestral hall. It encompassed the three junior branches of the lineage. An inscription for the rebuilding of the Mau Ging Tong included in the Si Gim Tong genealogy acknowledged that it was built subsequent to the Ching-lok ancestral hall, in the Kangxi period (1662-1735). Another ancestral hall, Loi-Sing tong, was also built in this period, in 1701, for the brother of Ching-Lok, as noted above. All of the Dangs of Kam Tin belong to one of these three ancestral halls. Even then, there is no common ancestral hall for all the Dangs of Kam Tin. The Gwun-Yam temple at the site of the present Ling-Wan Ji monastery, to which I shall return later, may have been important to Kam Tin as a whole since very early days. The Jau and Wong Temple built in 1685 dedicated to two officials, and its associated decennial jiu festival also provided all the Dangs of Kam Tin with a unified symbol of identity. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 317 Gaai jou was still studying when his brothers had already built for themselves many big houses. When he got married he got his share of his father's estate, which amounted to more than one thousand daam of rent rice. Oral tradition has it that Sou-Lau Yun was used as a yamen during Dang Kyun-Hin's time when Dang Sin, a provincial official, came to investigate bandits in the county. This segment dominated nineteenth century lineage and community life in many ways. They have at least ten spirit tablets in the Mau-Ging Tong ancestral hall, and Chung-Shaan and Yu-Gaai were among the five men whose descendants got extra portions of ritual pork in the ancestral worship at the same tong in recognition of their contributions. I have already mentioned that a letter dated 1941 from the head of the clan and others referred to Yu-Gaai's contribution in managing the property of Naam-Kai jou. The only piece of property had been a broken house in the county town which gave an income of 20 yun. Yu-Gaai sold that house and lent the proceeds at interest. In this way he expanded the property to farm land holding that gave a rental income of more than 200 sek of rice. Dang Kyun-Hin and his third son Ming-Lyun donated an incense burner to the Hung-Sing Temple in Shui Tau in 1821. Chung-Saan (alias Ming-Hok) donated another religious article in 1829 and a grandson of his donated an incense burner to the same temple in 1900. Dang Ting-Sam (known to his descendants as Chi-Naam), a son of Dang Ming-Lyun and a grandson of Dang Kyun-Hin, was an important figure in lineage affairs as well as county politics. He was a sau-choi, and his descendants explained that he was prevented by the death of relatives from taking the examinations for the higher degrees. One story tells how Chi-Naam revealed upon his death that he was the reincarnation of the Mountain God of Tai Mo Shan, which probably explains why he was so clever. Another anecdote is concerned with Chi-Naam's influence. When he married a lady named Ho from Sham Chun to his son, the procession carried banners saying "keep silent and stand aside” (suk-jing wui-bei) and sounding gongs. Some trouble-makers asked who this was. They were told that it was Chi-Naam of Kam Tin. The would-be trouble-makers were scared and went away. A descendant of one of Ting-sam's cousins knew the exact title of his degree. In this version Ting-sam was a laam-sang, but never attempted higher examinations. His classmates (rung-hok) always wondered why. He spent most of his time enjoying himself at home. When he ran out ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 318 of money, he would go up to Canton. This also surprised people, for they supposed that one spent money in Canton. But Chi-Naam would go to meet officials in Canton, and earned, so the story goes, much money on each trip by handling cases for clients. Another story of the same informant told of Chi-Naam's influence. Once upon a time, soldiers were sent to Kam Tin. These men were very impolite. They urinated in the open. Chi-Naam was angry and told his brothers to beat the soldiers up. The case was brought to a local official, who decided to take away the academic title of Chi-Naam's younger brother, who was held responsible. Chi-Naam asked the official if he had authorisation from his superiors. The official therefore dared not carry out the penalty. An informant related that Chi-Naam was once the head of the Dung Ping Guk, the council for the eastern section of the county established as the unofficial administrative and judicial organization for the eastern part (Dung-Lo) of the county, which decided local cases. 15 Dang Ting-sam played important roles in many lawsuits which involved the Dangs of Kam Tin and outsiders. We have documents of some of these lawsuits and oral stories for others. The earliest datable one I know of took place in 1854, when he brought a case to the Dongguan County Magistrate to request action against some Heungs who had kidnapped some of the Dangs who went to worship at the wong-gu's grave in Dongguan. I shall refer to the other cases later. 16 II. THE DANGS VS RIVALS AND TENANT COMMUNITIES The Dangs of Kam Tin had conflicts with their neighbours over various matters, especially land ownership, rent, and irrigation rights. These conflicts took the form of lawsuits and fighting. Those who died in fighting with enemies of the community were worshipped as "heroes”. A jiu festival document of 1895 indicates that up to that time 80 persons were recognized as "heroes" to whom special offerings of paper clothing were to be made in the festival. This kind of fighting (da-saat) was common in the area. Elders of Kam Tin told me that there had been fighting between Kam Tin and the alliance of Ping Shan and Pat Heung. This had taken place long ago, even before the birth of an elder born in 1900. Through fighting, Kam Tin lost much of its land holdings, because they had to sell land for money to pay as compensation for lives lost. In the past, people entered yeuk alliances for this kind of fighting. Pat Heung was part of the Ping Shan alliance. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 322 members of several neighbouring villages. Among the seven named, two have been identified by Cheng (n.d.) in ancestral tablets of Lin Fa Tei [Fung Yuk-Daan] and Yuen Kong [Leung Gwan-Daat], both of Pat Heung. The dispute was over the size of the measure for the rent rice. The inscription mentioned an earlier case of 1726 when some tenants accused the landlords of using a larger measure than that which was agreed. As a result of that earlier case, the authorities had ascertained the actual volume of the original measures and issued some standard measures. From then on there had been no more dispute until the 1777 case. According to the inscription, some of the tenants instigated those of the other heungs to take the case to the county magistrate. Meanwhile they fraudulently forged some measures in order to pay less than the agreed rent. The authorities applied the same method as in the previous case: they declared a standard conversion ratio for the different measures. They also decided to punish the tenants who had started the case and had forged the measures, as well as an outsider who had involved himself in helping the tenants. The punishment was waived in consequence of a general royal pardon. 20 A document dated 1873 suggests that the hostility between the Kam Tin Dangs and the Pat Heung villagers continued to that time. Some Dangs of Kam Tin, including Dang Ting-sam, who, as we have seen, had been involved in disputes between the Dangs and outsiders, made a formal complaint against five people among whom the names of two appear in the 1886 and 1861 stone inscriptions for repair/rebuilding of the Pat Heung Temple. The complaint was against a Leung of Pat Heung. The Dangs had found that their ancestral grave (which was over 200 years old) had been damaged but had failed to find the evil-doer. On Ching Ming festival of that year a named Dang went to worship at the grave with his younger brothers and nephews. For no reason at all, the accused, Leung, ordered his people to cause further damage to the grave. In the document the Dangs demanded that the accused repair the grave on a suitable day. If he should fail to do so, the Dangs threatened to take further action. B. Shap Pat Heung Hostility between the Dangs of Kam Tin and the Shap Pat Heung villages, especially those around the old market, is still evident today. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 328 winter. Once in a year they practised shooting at a police shooting range near Man Kam To. In earlier times the guards had used gwan sticks. C. The village market At present there are a few shops, mostly food stalls, in Kam Tin Shi. Some Dangs also live there. They are descendants of the senior branch, including descendants of Wan-Guk and Wan-Gaan. The place used to be the local market. It was active before the Japanese occupation. It had a sign in the form of an arch, which was removed by the Japanese. Some documentary information about the market has survived in a rent record.29 One of the shops entered into the rental contract in 1851. The rent book included entries for five shops in Kam Tin Shi. Among them one was run by a tailor. It also mentioned the names of three streets. These were Upper Main Street (Sheung Taai Gaai) and Lower Main Street (Ha Taai Gaai) as well as Middle Street (Jung Gaai). The elders remembered that the market had two or three butchers and two or three fishmongers. Besides these there were a few other shops. Two sold jaap-fo (“sundry goods”). Kam Tin Shi is remembered to have mainly catered for the needs of the Kam Tin people. Very few outsiders came. Some informants added that there was even one pawn shop inside Kat Hing Wai. The owner was a descendant of Wan-Gaan jou. I have no idea when the pawnshop was started. There was also a peanut oil factory which was started more than 100 years ago. It was owned by a Wan-Yu jou person. IV. SETTLEMENTS AND LINEAGE SEGMENTS 4 According to Sung (1973:111) Hon-Faat, the first Dang ancestor to come to the province, built the first house at the bottom of a hill called [Gwai Gok Saan] about three-quarters of a mile away from the present Kam Tin". His grandson Fu-Hip lived there on retirement and founded a school called Lik Ying Jai (ibid.: 116). The descendants of Fu-Hip's grandson Seui, lived in the Naam Wai and Bak Wai villages around the beginning of Ming dynasty (1368). The division of the Kam Tin settlement into Naam-Bin and Pak-Bin remain today. Yun-leung, father of the gwan-ma and one of the sons of Seui, remained in Kam Tin. The other four descendants of Fu-Hip moved to nearby Ping Shan and places in Dongguan county, among other places. The descendants of many of the sons of the gwan-ma moved away to Lung Yeuk Tau, Tai Po Tau, 30 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 335 A. Places of worship The gods worshipped in Kam Tin can be divided into four categories. They are gods housed in temples, localized gods in outdoor space, gods on family altars, and the general gods of Heaven. The gods of heaven (Tin-San) are worshipped outside the house door, often with a tablet saying "Blessings from the Gods of Heaven" (Tin-Gwun Chi-Fuk). More important for the community as a whole are temple gods and localized gods. Firstly there are the Ling-Wan Monastery and the Jau and Wong temple, which were important to the Dangs of Kam Tin as a whole. Stone inscriptions show that villagers of Kam Tin as a whole contributed money for rebuilding or repair, doing so on the basis of villages and higher order lineage estates, notably Ching-Lok Jou and Naam-Kai Jou. According to Sung (1973 and 1974) and the Si Kim Tong genealogy the Ling-Wan Ji was established by the Dangs of Kam Tin for the second wife of their founding ancestor Hung-Yi. But it is probable that Sung's source for this information was the author of the Si Gim Tong genealogy himself, and other villages seemed less aware of the connection of the monastery with their ancestor. Perhaps even more important is the idea that Ling-Wan Ji was the jyu-lou, or “head” of Kam Tin. That is why, a Mr. Dang explained to me, all the village gates should face Kwun Yam Shan, where Ling-Wan Ji is, and there is no need for a tall san-teng. Ko Po and Wing Lung Wai are exceptions to this rule. He knew that the position of the gate in Wing Lung Wai had been altered. He thought that the direction of the Ko Po one had been altered too. Interestingly the Xin'an gazetteer has no entry for the Ling-Wan Monastery under that name, but records the existence of a Gwun-Yam Temple on Kwun Yam Shan at the foot of Tai Po Shan, which matches the location of the monastery. The Xin'an gazetteer of 1688 is probably the earliest document mentioning the temple. Under the entry for the temple it mentioned a man of Dongguan county in the Ming dynasty who had lived there. It is not completely clear if this man was a Daoist. When Dang Si-daan's uncle donated the bell now at the monastery in 1755, the inscription referred to the place as the nunnery at Kwun Yam Shan. No one had heard about the temple named in the gazetteer, but Gwun-Yam is worshipped in the monastery, with various other gods such as Gwaan-Dai, and it is the goddess who has a central position, with Page 360 Page 361 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 348 D. The Taoist Priests and Their Rites The Taoist priests who performed the rites in this festival were hired on a contract basis. More than ten of them were involved, among whom four were in a senior position. The oldest of the four, Mr. Lam Pui, born before 1910, was from the New Territories. Another, Mr. Jeung Hoi, was from a village just across the present Chinese border. Mr. Lam Choi was probably from the New Territories too. Both were born about 1920. These three had been active as ritual experts in the area since when they were young, and had been in leading positions at least in the last few decades. The four had all performed in the 1965 celebration of the Kam Tin jiu festival. The other senior priest, Mr. Chan Gau, was from Sa Jeng in the western area of Bao'an county. He had come to Hong Kong more than ten years ago and since then has worked in the New Territories. Mr. Leung Tung, though not a priest by profession, had been working with this group of priests as a musician, and had trained in an early stage of his career in ceremonial music bands in the Bak Bin villages. Chan Gau, Jeung Hoi and Lam Pui were the partners who undertook to provide the priestly services on this occasion, and the other members of the team were hired to help. Besides the three-times daily Scripture chanting and small processions to make offerings at different spots, the priests performed about 20 rites in the festival. About ten of them were more elaborate and were considered to be the main ones. Each of the four senior priests took the leading role in different rites. Mr. Lam Pui, being the oldest and the most knowledgeable, acted as the high priest in most of the main rites, including the Opening Rite, the Purification of the Ritual Area, the Posting of the Placard, the Escort of the Holy Ones, and the Great Offering to Ghosts. Mr. Chan Gau, being younger and good at acrobatic feats, took care of the more martial rituals: the martial arts section of the Purification of the Ritual Area, and Going through the Gates of Life and Death, and headed the team for the Dipper Rite. Mr. Jeung Hoi acted as the main priest in some of the other important rites. Mr. Lam Choi, partly because he was not one of the partners, played secondary roles. The morning, noon-time, and afternoon Scripture chanting and offerings were performed by the more junior members of the team, as were the short concluding rites on the last day. 60 Although the rites differ one from another, there were many elements ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 372 yi-chung Ying Lung Wai ying-bong ying-sing 迎聖 Ying-Yun 英元 Yongzheng 雍正 Yuen Kong 元崗 Yuen Long 元朗 Yu-Gaai Yu-Ji 4* Yu-Jung 遇宗 Yu-Man yun 元 Yun 袁 yun-bou 元寶 Yun-Fan yun-sau 綠首 yung-fu seung-yan A Yut-Man # NOTES Sung Hok-p'ang, "Legends and Stories of the New Territories". 1974, pp. 168-9. 2 Included near the end of the Si Kim Tong genealogy. A different version of the early history named Hon-Faat as the first ancestor to settle in Kam Tin. See Faure (1984:240). In the custody of Mr. Dang Yu-Hing. The names are Gam-Tin (1474-?) and Gam-Lei (1512-?). 6 The Ching Lok Ancestral Hall ritual manual. I have consulted Taga (1982), which has some details about this segment on p. 19 and p. 91. He sounded less sure of this later, and a knowledgeable elder of a closely related segment knows nothing peculiar about the house. The petitions are included in vol. 2 of the Kam Tin Historical Documents, the Oral History Project Collection, (copy at Chinese University of Hong Kong) I had the opportunity to work out a chart for the Sing-Ngok segment from a fragment of their genealogy and compare the names with those in the petitions. 01 See Faure (1984). See the genealogy in Kam Tin Historical Documents vol. 1, and also Faure (1984:26-27). ET I did not have the opportunity to see the piece of embroidery which probably bears a useful name list. 12 An examination of the ritual handbook for the ancestral hall (included in the genealogy in Kam Tin Historical Documents vol. 1) shows that among the three branches it was the Naam-Kai jou people who dominated. 13 According to the Yeui branch genealogy in Hugh Baker's Collection of Genealogies and Taga (1982). 14 The Fenggang Shuyuan. See Ng (1983:60) about this school. 13 According to Mr. Yun Mui, whose great grandfather, he said, had held the position before Dang, 16 See the announcement from the Dongguan county magistrate included in the genealogy in Kam Tin Historical Documents vol. 1. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 42 disasters. the second is for those who died because of plague. The final reason is to thank the benevolent governors Wang Lai-ren and Zhou You-de of the beginning of the Qing dynasty. In my opinion, all these reasons can be integrated into the first one. (d) Chan Wing-hoi "The Tangs of Kam Tin and their Jiu festival", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29 (1989) 302-375, a rich and detailed account of the lineage, its temples and villages, and the festival which draws them together. Dr. Faure gradually switched his interest to the Pearl River Delta while Prof. Tanaka, as I was told, is now looking at Sichuan province. Talk on publishing a book on Hong Kong Jiao festivals has been going on for years by members of the "Research Circle of the Regional Society of Southern China''. In 1990, the editorial board of the society set up a schedule to compile a book focusing on the Jiao festival. It is expected that papers on various aspects will be completed by the end of April 1991. (Correspondence from the society dated 28.12.1990) Schipper, Kristofer M., "The Written Memorial in Taoist Ceremonies" in Wolf, Arthur P. (ed.) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 324, For example, according to Chan Wing-hoi, villagers of Shek O celebrated their 16th Jiao in 1986 (Chan, 78). The Dengs in Kam Tin claimed to have celebrated their Jiao since 1684 (Tanaka, 918). See for instance Basel Mission Archives, doct. Al-6, No. 51 (1869), and doct. Al-7, No. 51 (1870) and Der Evangelische Heidenbote, July 1867, in which a missionary describes how he was forced to go to the Magistrate to get his support before he could avoid having to pay his share of the Jiao expenses. All these cases are from Hsin An County. The Sha Tin poem will, it is hoped, shortly be published by Dr. P.H. Hase. These two series are part of the 15 series of historical documents collected by Dr. D. Faure and others in the New Territories. Copies of the collections are kept in the libraries of CUHK, Hong Kong University, Sha Tin Regional Council Library, and Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University. 31 Tanaka Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China] (Tokyo Univ. Press 1985), 608. Jiao festivals celebrated by the powerful communities in Hong Kong like Kam Tin, Ha Tsuen, Lung Yeuk Tau etc., were all performed by the Zhengyi Taoist group, led first by the late Master Lin Pei and now by Master Chan Kau. Another Zhengyi Taoist group is led by Master Chan Wah. However, many Taoist priests work for both groups. There are also other Taoist groups who performed for the Jiao festivals, like a Cantonese group which performed for Ho Chung and a Heklo group for Cheung Chau. In 1983, four out of five Jiao festivals were performed by monastery Taoists. It is not clear whether it was because of tradition or out of economic reasons. A comparison of the two Taoist groups has yet to be made. 14 Choi Chi-cheung **Sho matsuri no jinmei risuto ni mirareru shinzoku ban'i” [Kinship as seen in the name lists of Jiao festival] Bunka Jinnú Gaku 5 (1988): 131, table L. 35 **Shinshi men" [Section of Believers] in Fanling Wenxian (Historical Literature of Fanling) vol. 8. This brief account records details of the arrangement of the Jiao area, including the contents of couplets, names of deities invited, location and direction of matshed stages, and the sacrifices prepared etc.. See n. 32 for the depositories of Fanling Wenxian. 36 See (1972) Lin Chuan [Lam Tsuen] Xiang Taiping Qingjiao huiyi jilubu in Dapu [Tai Po] Wenzian [Historical Literature of Tai Po] vol. 1. (see n. 32 for depositories) 37 Tanaka Issei's three books, all published by the Tokyo Univ. Press are: Chugoku Saishi Engeki Kenkyu [Ritual Theatres in China] (1981), Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China) (1985), and Chugoku Kyoson Saishi Kenkyu: Chihogeki ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 194 Kang district of Chia I county where his grave is flanked by a pair of stone civil and military guardians and stone horses. Wang was created an Earl, granted the posthumous name Kuo-min, "Determined and Beneficial", and the posthumous title of T'ai-tzu T'ai-pao, the Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent. Votive tablets bearing the name Wang Te-lu can be seen in a number of temples in Taiwan, including the Lung-shan Ssu in Taipei, reflecting the importance with which he is held within the island. His paternal grandfather was a lieutenant in the force sent to Taiwan to put down the revolt by Chu I-kuei against the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in 1721. He was killed in battle in Feng-shan county, and was followed to Taiwan by his sons and grandsons who settled in the area now known as T'ai-pao village in T'ai-pao district of Chia I county, places bearing Wang's posthumous honour of Grand Guardian, T'ai-pao. According to folk memory Wang Te-lu was a feckless youth causing his parents to fear humiliation. They took the extreme step of constructing a secure area within the home where he was incarcerated and fed three meals a day by his elder brother's wife who perceived that his face bore the fateful signs of a formidable future. One day she failed to follow the instructions of her parents-in-law, left open the door to the secure area which permitted Te-lu to escape. He was ever beholden to his sister-in-law, and after she died and was buried in Pai-ho district of Tainan county, he memorialised the throne requesting she be raised posthumously to the "Lady of the first official grade”. In 1786 Lin Shuang-wen led a revolt in Taiwan against the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in support of the campaign to "Restore the Ming”. Although Wang Te-lu was a mere youth at the time, he would have been 15, he nevertheless became involved in the struggle to suppress the revolt and after the troubles were over was awarded Hung-ting Hua-ling: (the red button and the peacock's feather), mandarin's rank and an imperial honour. Local history maintains that in 1821 Wang was transferred to be the staff of the provincial military commander of the two provinces of Chekiang and Kiangsi, and in 1828, during the siege of Chia I led by Chang Ping, Wang Te-lu's service with the imperial force protecting the town and building up the town's walls resulted in him being awarded the honour of the Imperial Grand Guardian of the Apparent. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 149 about the beds, and growing concern in enlightened circles about the cruelties implied by the corvée. By the end of the Ming, the north and east shores of the Bay were merely home to a few scattered, small, agricultural villages. The waning of imperial interest in the area led to an explosion of piracy. This area had, by the late Ming, become a lightly populated and dangerous part of Hsin An County, insignificant, remote, and probably declining. 5 The Coastal Evacuation of 1662-1668, the forcible removal of people living near the coast, to deny anti-Ch'ing remnants support, was a traumatic event. Many of the previous inhabitants died - possibly half. It seems likely that, when the remnants of the people returned in 1668-1669, they concentrated themselves in the better lands to the west, around Yuen Long and Sham Chun (Shenzhen), and around Tai Po and Sha Tin at the head of Tolo Harbour, abandoning the declining Mirs Bay area. However, land taxes still had to be paid for this area. Lineages looked, therefore, for tenants or purchasers to take over these more marginal areas. The newcomers they found to repopulate the area were Hakkas from the north-east. All the present inhabitants of the northern and eastern parts of the Mirs Bay area are Hakka, and their clan traditions all speak of settlement in the area after 1668. A few villages claim to have been founded in the late seventeenth century, many in the eighteenth, and some only in the nineteenth, in every case by families who had moved into the area after 1668. Some of the Hakka newcomers living in the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay became, at least in village terms, wealthy during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Much of this wealth was poured into large reclamation projects. These aimed at increasing the arable land available in the area by filling in the mouths of the bays in front of the villages. These reclamation projects in turn brought yet more wealth to the area. The social status of the local Hakka rose steadily during this same period. In 1805 the Hakka were granted a quota of their own within the Hsin An County imperial examinations quota. Over a quarter of all the early Hakka examination successes from Hsin An County were from the north-west quadrant of Mirs Bay, and this should be seen as evidence of the wealth and self-confidence of the Hakka of that area in the early decades of the nineteenth century. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 155 such as Lo Hsiang-lin's collection, have greatly enhanced its value. The closest thing to a one-stop resource centre, the Hung On-To Library has undoubtedly benefited scholars in their pursuit of the study of Hong Kong, enabling the study to grow and mature The Hong Kong History Workshop In the 1970s, a History Workshop was established at the History Department, HKU, at the initiative of Alan Birch, to facilitate practical work in a historiography course. Local historical materials were collected and collated for students to use as primary sources to gain hands-on experience of how history is written. The ground work was laid primarily by Carl Smith who worked there in the mid-1970s. In the early 1980s, when the Department began teaching Hong Kong history to undergraduates, and the historiography course was dropped, the History Workshop, now more focused on Hong Kong, was renamed the Hong Kong History Workshop, but one of its main functions remains the training of historians. Besides the department's own students, it also offers information and advice to staff and students from other departments of the HKU, researchers from outside of the university and from overseas. It facilitates research by discovering archives and private holdings, by preparing tools such as bibliographies, catalogues and indexes, and by building up a network of historians working on Hong Kong. The Emergence of Local Scholars While these institutions were being set up to create an infrastructure to facilitate research, an equally significant development occurred - the emergence of locally-educated scholars studying Hong Kong. In the 1960s, a few postgraduate theses on Hong Kong history were produced at HKU, the most notable work on local history is Peter Ng's Master's thesis which reconstructs the history of the Hong Kong region from the Xin'an county gazetteer. But 'local scholars' only began to exert real influence in this area when some of them began teaching and publishing on Hong Kong history and carrying out systematic and large-scale research. One of the first was Ng Lun Ngan-ha, who, after completing her M.A. degree at HKU in 1967, proceeded to Minnesota for her Ph.D. degree. Both her theses and her first book dealt with Hong Kong. Other scholars were to follow. Being brought up in Hong Kong, these scholars are able to handle both English and Chinese sources while benefiting from different ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g I Jul 95 19 Aug 95 23 Sept 95 18 Nov 95 Traditional Trades and Crafts of Hong Kong - HK Museum of History (Exhibition) Heaven's Embroidered Cloths A Thousand Years of Chinese Textiles (Exhibition) - HK Museum of Art Life Under the Japanese Occupation 1941-45 (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History Exhibition of Chinese Folk Art - HK University Museum and Art Gallery New Territories Temples and Da Jiu at Kam Tin 26 Nov 95 16 Dec 95 Jade Exhibition - HK University Museum and Art Gallery 13 Jan 96 Prince of Wales Barracks and former HMS Tamar Site 20 Jan 96 Villages of the north eastern New Territories 10 Feb 96 Walk through the deserted villages of Sai Kung 9 Mar 96 Maritime Silk Route (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History 16 Mar 96 Organic Farm on Lamma Island Visits outside Hong Kong: 22/23 Apr 95 Dapeng, Xin'an County 2/3 Feb 96 14/17 Mar 96 Bocca Tigris Forts of the Pearl River Temples of northern Taiwan Such activity demands some very dedicated organisers and besides those already mentioned in the Activities Committee we are particularly grateful to Dr. Joseph Ting, Dr. Anthony Siu, Mr. John Wilson, Mr. Philip Bruce, Dr. Patrick Hase, Mr. David Sheil and Dr. Michael Lau for their help. Sometimes not all members can obtain places on these outings and I would like to say that we are quite willing to run the trip again provided we can find someone to assist in organising it. In fact, if any member is willing to propose any trip to somewhere of interest the Society will always be prepared to consider it. There is one other activity to which I would like to draw your ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 101 Southern China, as the Liannan document saying the Lü Shan Jiu Lang (written Lu Shan Jiu Lang) buried his father on a mountain in Gaozhou. One major source of information of religious practice during the Song is the Southern Song work of anecdotal literature, the Yi Jian Zhi. It made frequent mentions of the well-known styles of Daoist magic such as the Thunder Magic and the Tian Xin Zheng Fa, the Buddhist Weize spell related to the Yujia style of exorcism, as well as various popular gods, and magicians who were neither Daoist or Buddhist. Some of these lay magicians practiced magic of the Daoist and Buddhist varieties mentioned above. Noticeably some of those lay magicians blew the horns [of animals] in their rites, and some were practicing what is called Mao Shan magic. It curiously made no mention of Lú Shan Jiu Lang or his immediate disciples found in Bar's passage. But as I have mentioned, sources on Chinese religion of ancient times do have many examples of divinities with names of the same form as the Lú Shan Jiu Lang and his colleagues. The latter appear to be part of the trend between Tang and the Five Dynasties during which many of these other divinities are recorded. Some of the popular gods mentioned in Yi Jian Zhi do bear four character names ending with a numeric character and lang, resembling the names of Lü Shan Jiu Lang. Earlier examples include the Zhu Wang San Lang shen mentioned during the Southern Dynasties, which the book alleges to be the name in use at its time of writing in Yielang county in the present Sichuan Province, although in this example San Lang referred to three people rather than one. During the Tang, a work of anecdotal literature recorded that during the Emperor's visit to the mountain god of Huayue, he was told about a San Lang, who appeared to be a son of the god. Another work of anecdotal literature of about the same time recorded a female shaman(?) who specialized in communicating with the Jin Tian Wang (God of Hua Shan) and his son Hua Yue San Lang. This name, and many others, which are closer to Lu Shan Jiu Lang in form, is also found in Tang stories included in the Song compilation Taiping Guang Ji. During the Five Dynasties the Lu Yi Ji recorded a Pan Gu San Lang temple in a Guangdu county of the present Sichuan Province. An early Song work on the history of the Five Dynasties mentioned that in the year 932 the Emperor of Hou Tang conferred a title (styled "General") to a Tai Shan San Lang. Early during the Song it is reported 41 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 106 The genealogy of the Chengs of the Nam Wai traced their origin to a Song dynasty settlement in several places of Xingning, with farming and orchard land of several Chinese acres and population of more than one thousand. As the result of disorder during the Yuan they lost all names and burial places of ancestors save what was called their zheng shizu immediate Beginning Ancestor, ancestor Shao Ji(7) Lang. This name, while not indicated as a duming, also fits into the pattern of ordination names. The beginning ancestor's eldest son Shao Jiu(19), who was said to be of the Yuan dynasty, had only one son Shi Jiu (19). The latter moved to Changle County in the Taiding period (1324-1327) when he had no relatives around at the native place of Xingning. His son Liu Shi San (63) bore a son during the Hongwu years, Liu Shi Jiu (69). Liu Shi Jiu had a son called Sheng who lived during the Tianshun years (1457-1464), to whom the genealogy attributed magical powers,” but does not indicate any ordination name. One part of the genealogy listed the next eight generations, showing separately the two descendants of each of his two sons, while limiting itself to the descendants of the elder son in the last four generations. Another listed the descendants of the second son, who is an ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai. The first ancestor to have an ordination name in the genealogy is Fa You in the seventh generation, an ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai. His father lived in early Ming during the Hongwu years (1368-1398). But it was among the descendants of the first son that we find many with ordination names, a large proportion of the ancestors named for the 12nd to 14th generations." The only other ancestor of the Chengs of Nam Wai to have an ordination name was Fa Jing of the 16th generation who moved to the Xin'an county in the early years of Kangxi (1662-1722) at a very young age "His ordination, it therefore appears, probably took place in Xin'an county, Similarly, in a fragment of the genealogy of the Lis of Wu Kau Tan after the name of the 14th generation ancestor Ming Fang and his zi and hao names there are eight words which can be punctuated as "[alternative name] Fa Nian, and fang ming Li Mou Shi Lang”. While the term Shi Lang is the same as a title of an official it seemed to be originally Mou Shi(4)Lang. The caption of the plate says this is the first ancestor of the Lis to move to the Hong Kong region, probably in early Qing. The Chens of Luk Keng and elsewhere of the New Territories had some ancestors with ordination names since the 1st generation in early Ming until the 10th generation in early Qing. One Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 108 #2 included the rite for Fengchao itself. Towards the end of the Guangxu period (1875-1908) a sang magician, reportedly holder of an imperial degree, of the Zijin county where we had the report of ordination in the 17th Century, created secular songs and performed them after the rituals. The entertainment is known as Hua Zhao Opera, which became an independent genre probably around 1950.83 Fengchao rituals were performed for the groom before his wedding to ensure that his sons would have no deficiency. Villagers concerned seem to believe that deficiency is otherwise likely. In the case of Cheng Tau, where I witnessed a performance of the rite in 1981, there is a deformed boy in the family, and I happen to know that in a village just next to it there was a male child who suffered from what appears to be Down's Syndrome. In the Cheng Tau rite the priest's assistant joked with the deformed boy saying that if he is to get married the rite will be performed for him for free. I remember being told that the rite was not celebrated in Cheng Tau during an earlier period, probably since the communist uprising of the 1960s. If the deformed child was born after that period the villagers would be easily convinced again that the rite was necessary. At Ping Yeung I was told that if the rite is not performed, the slaughtering of pigs for the wedding would have to take place in a "far away" place, suggesting that the rite can be omitted. The informant added that when there were two or more sons in a family, the rite should be performed for at least one of them. 34 While not found in all Hakka villages, there seemed to be a large number of them who did have this tradition. According to the ritual expert hired to perform this rite, such villages in the New Territories include So Lo Pun, Kat O, Hung Ling, the Chens of Ping Yeung, the Pengs of Cheng Tau, the Lis of Ha Hang, the Zhengs of Shan Tau Kok, and the Zhengs of Lin Au, among them many probably had stopped the practice at the time of my interview in 1981.** Villages who had stopped having the rite performed include the Lis of Shuen Wan, the Nans of Shatin (probably Pai Tau or Wo Che, which are known to have some villagers of this surname). Many places had stopped the practice since the Japanese war when ritual specialists were not available. He knew that the same practice was found also in nearby Yantian, and Xiangshan and Shiqi in the Pearl River Delta area in the mainland. Besides the implication by the brief passage in the Gazetteer of } ! : ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 115 between three-compartment ancestral halls restricted to officials and ancestral worship within the domestic unit or bed chamber appropriate for commoners. Faure points out that the three-compartment ancestral hall is related to claims of official title. Faure sees some small ancestral halls found in the New Territories of Hong Kong as the “bed chamber” variety. Examples of villages in which ancestral halls of this style are found include Ping Long, Kau To, Man Uk Pin and Wo Hang, the last three of these four are Hakka villages. Faure thus writes of the New Territories in the 19th Century: "with rising prosperity and acquisition of official degrees, some of their ancestral halls became more ornate even though none quite reproduce the official style." Although the bed-chamber type ancestral hall is found in both Hakka and Cantonese villages, a Hakka ancestral hall holds a single spirit tablet, dedicated to unnamed shi, gao, zheng ancestors. This is probably related to the practice of moving incense ashes from the domestic unit to the incense burner of the ancestral hall mentioned above. This contrasts with the “major surname” clan ancestral halls in the Hakka county town of Xingning described in ZHJLS, in which those who had made donations had a spirit tablet of their ancestor installed. That ancestors are represented in individual ancestral tablets is a prerequisite of some ancestral hall ceremonies found in Cantonese lineages in Hong Kong, such as one found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, in which the group of ancestors to whom the ancestral hall is dedicated is escorted in the form of ancestral tablets for special treatment. Despite the possible difference in the form of ancestral halls, the Hakka probably followed the trend of development of lineages since the 16th century. Ancestral hall rites, Faure has pointed out, was an example of the incorporation of a literate tradition into a proto-literate culture, the literate tradition spread with the literati ideal, coming... in the Ming and the Qing dynasties as local government strengthened, as neo-Confucianism was taken for granted as an acceptable social code, and as examination awards were granted in large numbers for ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 123 bis being implication and subsequent death. One version says that as a result of 'pollution' by pregnancy of which his mother was unaware the bamboo horse on which he rode failed, causing a half-day delay in his arrival at court. As a result the Emperor was convinced of accusations that he had rebellious migntions. The other version, in a rather obscute passage, is that some method was devised by his enemies at court to show his magical power to the Emperor. The method worked and the Emperor was convinced by the accusation by his enemies. The Emperor ordered destruction of the fengshui of the lineage. Upon his return home he died suddenly. According to genealogy the Emperor wept upon hearing about bis death and ordered execution of the official responsible for the destruction of the Cheng's fengshui. The story bears striking similarity to stories in Faute op cup 229, about Huo Zhen and his sister Wu. L 2. Those are Fa Xuan in the 10th generation, Wan Yi Lang, Wan Er Lang, Fa Xing, Xian Yi Lang, Ning Yi Lang to Ning Wu Lang, and a Nian San Lang in the 12th generation, Gao Yi(1) Lang to Gao San(3) Lang, Zheng Si(4) Lang, Qian Wu(5) Lang, and Zheng Shi(10) Lang in the 13th generation, Fa Tang, Tong San(3) Lang, Pin San Lang and Fa Wen in the 14th generation. According to the genealogy his father died soon after arrival in the county and his young age was the reason given for an important event in the history of the family. **Reproduced in Sin, op cit, plate 4** "The same ancestors were traced to by the Chens of Lok Keng. 76 In the same interview he also said: 1312 generations. I did not ask about the apparent discrepancy. JH IN In a telephone conversation with the Hakka Buddhist funeral ritual expert Mr. Zhang on 5th March 1991, JH learned that Mr. Miao died years ago. His assistant Mr. Zheng Tangsheng moved to Hong Kong, lived in Tai Po, and died before Mr. Miao. Telephone conversation 5th March 1991 Zhang Zupu, Chonghua Juhu Lusuo 1993, reprinted from Zhongyuan Zazhi 1980. 10. The document reproduced in ZEILS indicates that a new name given to a troubled child in the rite does not resemble the ordination names seen in genealogies. * The author does not explain the meaning of "faona", "old house". Some of them were probably a kind of ancestral hall as he mentioned that money was collected from different branches for the celebration and where there was a wealthy ancestral trust money can be drawn for that purpose. See also a reference later to Nelson's article about a kind of ancestral hall known as "shengung". *2 Voc, 3, under Ankong 14 Untitled volume by Guangdong Sheng Xiju Yanjiu She, prefaced 1980, pp. 132-138. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 124 I am not sure if any link exists with some belief that descendants of those imitated in Mao Shan magic will have physical imperfection. The villagers of Lin Au are of Zheng and Li surnames. According to Mi Li Fu'an, in his mid-60s, the Zhengs had two ancestral hails there. One represents the lineage which moved from Shing Moon, and the other, the one which celebrated the Fengchao, was from Luoding. Li said the latter never had a genealogy, and are not genealogically related to the other Zhengs. According to Li, both the Zhengs and the Lis have lived in Lin Au for nine generations. The only Zheng of the lineage from Luoding now living in the village is a young man who did not know about the practice, and others have emigrated to Germany and other foreign countries. The other Zhengs used to witness the rite and Li said the groom was to carry an incense burner (being in bat) until dawn, probably the end of the rite. Li also learned from the other Zhengs that a groom can have the rite performed only if his father did so, and usually the first and last sons of a man have the rite performed. In my recent visit to Cheng Tau, Ha Hang and Shan Tau Kok, I have found little about those villages. Ha Hang, whose villagers are probably all of the Li surname, have two ancestral halls. Shan Tau Kok is a multi-surname village where the Zhengs form a separate cluster of houses which include an ancestral hall. The contents of the document is in one of the priest's manuals. I do not have a copy and did not write down anything when he showed it to me because I thought I would be able to make a copy of the manual afterwards. This document may be the "white [ordination] certificate" mentioned by Guangdong Xinyu and the gazetteer mentioned above. In my recording of the rite of Fengchao, a series of ordination names were recited during one session. I have to check if those are ordination names of the priest's ancestors or those of the client's. * The genealogy bears the title of Chenst Yuanlia Zupa, included in the British Library's Baker collection of genealogies of the New Territories, but is referred to in some lists as the Genealogy of the Chens of Ting Kok and Ping Yeung. Ordination names are found first in the 87th generation of the first section, among some brothers and cousins who moved to Fujian and Guangdong provinces. The following helps to date the 87th generation. A son of a brother of the 79th generation ancestor obtained a jiren degree in the year 889. Some brothers of the 84th generation ancestors moved "during the disorder [caused by the invasion of?] the Yuan". The 89th generation ancestor is a jinshi of Yuan dynasty. I fail to see how the "Founding Ancestor of Fujian" Jingwang in the second section of the genealogy relates to ancestors in the first section. A third section of the genealogy named the same Jingwang (ordination name Nian Yi(1) Lang) as the "Founding Ancestor of Changle" county, who was a descendant of a 83rd generation ancestor and a 86th generation ancestor, the latter being a brother of an ancestor in the earlier section. Jingwang's sons also had ordination names. According to a preface dated 1618, Jingwang moved to Changle some 200 years before then, i.e., around 1400. An 8th generation ancestor in the 3rd section moved to Ding'an of Xin'an county, probably Ting Kok in the New Territories. A 4th section of the genealogy started with Gulong as a second generation ancestor of Changle, who, according to a note before the section, was the third son of Jingwang, the Founding Ancestor of Changle, although Guilong's name does not match any of those of the sons of Jingwang in the previous section. Some of Guilong's 9th generation descendants moved to Ping Yeung of the New Territories. No ordination names are found in this 4th section. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 2 of the lower Pearl River Estuary. By AD 331, when the County of Tung Kuan was established, the then Salt Intendant certainly had his yamen (official residence and office) at Nam Tau. Nam Tau became the new county seat in that year, and the then Salt Intendant was promoted to County Magistrate, and the old Salt Monopoly yamen was upgraded to become the new County Magistrate's yamen, with a new yamen thereafter built for the incoming Salt Intendant. These early references also do not speak of Kowloon City specifically, but it is very likely that, with the Salt Intendancy headquarters so close, the salt-fields at Kowloon City were already then in full operation, probably with a Sub-Intendant in charge there, and it is likely that this was so from Nanyueh times. At some date between 331 and 1163 the Tung Kuan Salt Intendancy at Nam Tau was split into four, with one of the new Salt Intendants stationed at Kowloon City (then called Kwun Fu Cheung, "Rich Official Salt-fields"). The most likely period for this development (which was associated with an attempt to increase revenue from the Salt Monopoly in Kwangtung) is the tenth century, when again Kwangtung formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanhan (907-979); considerable amounts of Nanhan pottery have been found in the general Kowloon City area, suggesting that this was a place of some significance then. By the date of this split of the Salt Intendancy there can be no doubt that Kowloon City was an important Salt Monopoly centre. In 1163 the Kwun Fu Cheung Salt Intendancy yamen was moved to Tip Fuk (Tiefu) on Mirs Bay, where it stayed for a few decades — perhaps a hundred years — before returning to Kowloon City. In or shortly before 1293, the Kwun Fu Salt Intendancy was amalgamated with the Salt Intendancy headquartered at Wong Tin outside Sai Heung (Xixiang), a little to the north of Nam Tau, and the old Kowloon City Salt Intendant's yamen (which was a walled compound) became the yamen for a new County Sub-Magistracy then formed. This Sub-Magistracy was upgraded in 1370, and moved to Chek Mei Village outside Sham Chun (Shenzhen) in that year; it was moved back to Kowloon City in 1841, together with the yamen of the local Military Commander, which had previously been at Tai Pang (Dapeng) on Mirs Bay, to bring the Sub-Magistrate and Commander closer to the anticipated problems arising from the British occupation of Hong Kong. The walls of Kowloon City, which ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 10 were indeed set out by the same Fung Shui master. This strongly suggests that the walls of Nga Tsin Wai were built about 1570-1574. This date fits very neatly with the dates calculated above for Chan Chiu-yin, the first ancestor of the Chans to live in Nga Tsin Wai. It is, therefore, likely that Chan Chiu-yin was not the first of his name to move to Nga Tsin Wai, but was the villager in whose lifetime the place changed its name from Nga Pin Heung to Nga Tsin Wai, and that he was the first of the clan to move inside the newly built walls from his earlier residence in the open open fields The reason given by the Tai Wai villagers for building their walls in 1574 was the ravaging the area by bandits. Pirates or bandits are recorded in the Hsin An County Gazetteer as ravaging in the county in 1551 (when they killed the local Military Commander), 1566, 1567, and 1570 (when a local Military Sub-Commander was killed by them). Particularly active in the area during this period were the bandits under the command of Lam Fung (#, he was known as "Limahong" to the Portuguese, who also suffered from him). Lam Fung is credited in the Ming History with killing 20,000 people in the general Hong Kong area, which he dominated from 1568-1574: the County Gazetteer specifies attacks in the Tai Po area in 1570. Nga Tsin Wai, only a hundred yards or so inland from the best landing place in Kowloon Bay, was doubtless extremely exposed to the attacks of all these pirate bands. Pirates remained a problem here for many years. Cheung Po-tsai was active in the Victoria Harbour area in the mid-eighteenth century, and the Shau Kei Wan area was notorious for pirates right down to the middle nineteenth, when a vigorous local military commander drove them out for a while. In the unwalled village of Ngau Chi Wan even as late as the 1920s the village youths took turn to spend the night on watch from a bamboo shelter in front of the village - there was a gong there to waken the village if any bandits were spotted. Walls, therefore, were highly desirable, and a late sixteenth century date for them entirely reasonable. The Ng clan Tsuk Po starts with an ancestor who achieved a Tsun Sze degree in the period 1056-1063, who enjoyed significant official success in the early twelfth century, and who died in 1113. This man was unlikely to have been born any earlier than about 1040, since his eldest son was born in 1078 (this son died in 1158). This eldest son, Ng Kui-hau, (5), the second generation of the clan to live in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 28 of Cheung Yuk-tong (E) arrived (presumably this relieving force came from the garrison at the County City of Nam Tau), and retook the Walled City after a day of very heavy fighting, in which two of the Government soldiers died, and "over 30" bandits. Presumably, the successful defence of Nga Tsin Wai took place during this same seven-day period, in September - October 1854. There were probably other occasions when bandits were forced away. For instance, the villagers of the Siu Lek Yuen inter-village alliance in Sha Tin have a story of a heroic fight by their combined manpower against a gang of bandits in the 1860s or 1870s. The Siu Lek Yuen villagers, having killed a number of the bandits, forced the rest to flee over the mountains to Nga Tsin Wai, where the Siu Lek Yuen villagers left them to the further attentions of the men of the League of Seven27. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers also remember an attempt by the Tang clan (probably of Kam Tin) to impose Tang clan political control on this area. They relate that the elders of the League of Seven met the Tangs, and showed them the bags in which the silver which had been gathered by the League as a defence fund was kept, and the guns and gunpowder at their gate. "Every tsin of silver, and every grain of gunpowder will be spent to fight you off", the elders said, and the Tangs eventually left, with their tails between their legs2. The last time the Nga Tsin Wai villagers closed and barred their gates against attack was in 1967, during the Riots. When the Riots broke out in San Po Kong, the villagers closed their gate, and put themselves into a position of defence, although their valour was not then put to the test. Nga Tsin Wai's position at the head of the League of Seven put it into a very important position in the traditional politics of the Kowloon area. The Chief Elder of the League of Seven - usually the Chief Elder of Nga Tsin Wai - was one of the two or three most important figures in the district. The Sub-Magistrate would certainly have included him whenever he needed to consult the gentry of the district. As noted further below, Nga Tsin Wai village trusts were the subsoil land-owners of a good deal of the land in the area, especially in the Market, and at Sha Po, thus reinforcing their predominant local political position. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 62 market clearly grew in the later nineteenth century, but it was already large and prosperous by 1846. "The map is the Coastal Map of Kwangtung of 1553 of Ying Ka (MW l), reproduced in Hal Empson, Mapping Hong Kong: A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong, Government Information Services, 1992, Plate 1-2. Kowloon is not included in the list of Markets in the 1688 San On County Gazetteer (at least, not under an easily recognisable name), but both a "Kwun Fu Village" (九龍墟) and a “Kowloon Village" (九龍村) are, as well as Nga Tsin Wai, Po Kong, and Ma Tau Wai Villages. Despite this, however, it seems likely that a market was in existence at Kowloon City from well before the late seventeenth century. The Kowloon City Market is equally not included in the 1819 County Gazetteer, by which date there can be no shadow of a doubt that the market was very well, and very long, established. The earliest surviving land-deeds for the market date from 1751 and 1755, by when, clearly, the market was well-established: see J. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside, Hamden, Connecticut, 1977, p. 235, n. 14. In 1822, when the Hau Wong Temple near the market was restored, 85 shops from Kowloon City Market donated to the restoration, together with 5 (probably apothecaries), 31 quarries (石場), presumably from the surrounding hills, 4 ferryboats and 29 fishing-boats, as well as 8 shops from other markets. Clearly, the market was, in 1822, a vital and very well established place. See D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit. Vol. 1, pp. 75-78. WE The dates of 1354 and 1724 are included on a tablet giving the history of the village placed by the villagers in the Tin Hau Temple in the village. The details of the three founders' connections with the late Sung court are from statements made by village elders to Dr Hayes, and again to me, at various dates. 14 I have used a copy of one of the Nga Tsin Wai hand-written versions (kindly given to me by Mr Ng Hung-on, 吳雄安), the (privately printed) Nga Tsin Wai Wai Clan Genealogy (寶安縣衙前圍吳氏族譜), and the hand-written version from Siu Lek Yuen, a copy of which may be found in the “Historical Literature of Sha Tin" series in the library of United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. 15 A copy was kindly given me by Mr Chan Wai-hong (陳偉康). This Tsuk Po was produced some years ago, from genealogical information written on the back of the clan Ancestral Tablets. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 165 In 755, during the revolt of An Lushan, Guo helped defend the capital, and in 760 he was despatched to recover territory from Central Asian barbarians and finally, three years after the Turfans [Uighurs] had captured the capital, Guo raised an army and drove them out, more by cunning than military force. The disasters which broke out during the declining years of the Tang Ming Huang emperor were suppressed chiefly by the vigour and determination with which Guo wrested province after province from the hands of the insurgents. He spent a considerable part of his life in warfare and was uniformly successful. His images in temples in Northern and Central China usually portrayed him as an old mandarin, with a parted beard, both halves held separately in each of his hands, and with a tiered hat. Occasionally his image depicted him as an old man, sitting, with a long white beard and a white robe, carrying a ruyi sceptre engraved with the four characters for 'Everything shall be as You Desire'. According to one sect, the Jin Dan H., Guo is said to have founded the sect in collaboration with Lü Dongbin, the doctor of renown and one of the Eight Immortals. His image on altars in Sichuan was referred to as Cifu Tianguan14 where he was regarded as a God of Wealth. No images of Guo have been noted on temple altars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or South-east Asia, though a temple in Haikang in Tainan county bears the hall title of Fenyang Dian and contains on its main altar not an image of him but one of a local provincial cult deity, Guangze Zunwang, the patron of the Guo clan. Both Mesny and Timothy RichardR claim that Guo Ziyi was a follower of Nestorian Christianity, Mesny even claiming that Guo's name was carved on the famous Nestorian tablet at Xi'an. We move on to images of the two major deified heroes of the era on temple altars who have had their historic figures embellished by tea-house story-tellers down the centuries include: Zhang Xun✯ and Xu Yuan,F are heroes of renown and unique deities whose images have been seen on temple altars in Zhejiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia [Photographs 6 and 7]. Both are protective deities worshipped particularly by the southern Fukienese, both within Fujian province and in southern Fukienese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 373 COINCIDENCE? JENNIFER WELCH Keith Stevens sent me the following anecdote from amongst his collection of notes on Chinese religion: Tao Bing Taizi - The Earth Soldier Prince The story is that of a young man in his early twenties, with the surname Cai, who was killed by local people near Kaohsiung during a trip he made away from his home village of Hu Tung in Yun Lin county in central Taiwan. He was buried where he fell, but later his family, who regarded him as a heroic youth, came and took some soil from his grave, and built a shrine in his honour back in Hu Tung. As time passed people who prayed at his shrine found that their prayers were answered, and as a result of this success he became a popular local god. In the late 1890s, after the occupation of Taiwan by the Japanese, a troop of Japanese cavalry passed through the village of Hu Tung destroying crops as they went. The villagers were angry but too afraid to protest. The cavalry tethered their horses to the shrine, whereupon one of the horses neighed and dropped dead. This was seen as Cai punishing the Japanese both for destroying the crops and for desecrating his shrine by using it as a tethering post. The villagers considered that Cai had meted out retribution to the Japanese in this way so that they could not blame the villagers for the mishap. A few days after receiving this tale I took some visitors to see Beverley Minster, our local cathedral, founded before 1066, but a wonderful example of medieval architecture. On entering, an official offered to give us a guided tour, which included the 14th century stone canopied tomb of Lady Eleanor Percy, a truly beautiful work of exquisitely carved fruit, leaves, angel figures and symbolic beasts, where the central position is filled with a representation of the Deity raising the soul of a woman from her winding sheet. Our guide informed us that this was a rare surviving example of such medieval art in England, as in other churches similar depictions of Christ had been destroyed, not during the Reformation, but a century later by the Puritan Roundheads. We inquired how this carving had survived, and this is ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 435 VISITING ST JOHN'S ISLAND PETER STUCKEY AND CHRIS BAILEY Introduction St John's Island is about 160 kms WSW of Hong Kong. It is about the size of Lantau Island and is the largest of the Chuan Shan Islands which form part of Tai Shan County. The adoption of the name St John's Island appears to be through anglicisation of the Chinese name for the island, variously spelt as "Shang Chuan Island" on current Chinese maps, or as "Sancian". "Ilhas de San Joao" or "St Jean" Island on older western maps. Our interest in visiting the island was aroused by the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society's visit to Goa in January 2001. There, in the Basilica of Bom Jesus, in Old Goa, we had seen the preserved remains of St Francis Xavier. His corpse is displayed in an elaborate glass-sided, silver ornamented casket that rests high up on a Florentine marble mausoleum. St Francis, we learnt, had died on St John's Island on the night of 2/3 December 1552, aged 46. In view of the local interest two visits were made by members of the HK Branch, one travelling “independently" and the other through an organised China Travel Services guided tour. Here follow their accounts of the visits. Independent travel Two Branch members, Rocky Dang and myself, Peter Stuckey, went to the Island on 20th and 21st October 2001. We took a Chu Kong Shipping (CKS) ferry from the China Hong Kong ferry terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui, to Xin Hui, leaving at 8:45 a.m. The ferry passes between Macau and Taipa and then follows up the river system past the Yamen Fort to Xin Hui for a fare of HKD 188. At Xin Hui we took a short taxi ride to visit the "Bird's Paradise." Here egrets fly over a huge banyan tree. The tree is reputed to be 500 years old. It extends to cover over a hectare with many trunks formed from the aerial roots descending from the branches of the single organism. Similar trees exist in the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta and in Phimai in NE Thailand. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 436 After a good Chinese lunch at the Lai Yue Mun Restaurant in Xin Hui we took a taxi (RMB250) through the County city of Tai Shan and past some interesting old Chinese villages, including Yeung Do. We arrived at the Guang Hai Bay port of Shen Ju in good time to catch the 4:00 pm public ferry to Shang Chuan Island. The timetable shows ferries leave daily at 9:30 am, 11 am, 2 pm, and at 4 pm, for the crossing that took us just over an hour. They are scheduled for the Shang Chuan to Shen Ju crossing at 7:30 am, 9:30 am, 12:00 and 2:00 pm. A group could otherwise hire a speedboat. We were told that the island had been closed to visitors until 1983 and that there was still a sizeable PLA naval base there. As we entered the fishing harbour at the NW side of the island we passed some naval vessels and fishing boats. We also had our first view of the St Francis Xavier Church on the hillside. There were several modern large tourist hotels in the Fei Sha Tan Tourist Resort at the eastern side of the island. We took a public minibus from the port to the Resort. Probably the best of the hotels was the Biyun Tian Hotel (Eastern Harbour View Hotel), though we chose a smaller one. Both faced the beach, with a pleasant esplanade packed with plenty of hawkers in the evening. The choice of restaurants was uninspiring. In the morning we hired a minibus with driver for a half day (RMB150) to show us around the island. He took us to the fishing village, purpose-built in 1992, and over the Cheung Po Chai pirate pass with the Twin Treasure Rocks. He also took us to a grotesque Laughing Buddha cave with little figurines representing the Journey to the West. Such were the delights the driver thought we should enjoy, but for us the highlight was the visit to the Church of St Francis Xavier at the NW side of the Island. The church was a simple white tiled building with a plaque above the porch dating the church at 1869. There was reported to have been a church at the spot since 1700 with various restorations from 1813 to 1932. The caretaker unlocked the church for us. There are several rows of pews facing a large wooden cross. On the altar stands a statue of a bearded priest in front of which is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Religious paintings were hanging on the walls. In the centre of the church lay a stone sarcophagus with some Chinese inscriptions. Outside, a modernist sculpture had been erected by the Yamaguchi ================================================================================