ENG-1961 — Page 29

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REVIEW

or passports-the standard age can always be calculated, if the lunar birth date is known, by consulting the almanac. But this takes more time than a census enumerator can spare, and an almanac is too expensive a volume to supply to thirteen thousand

enumerators.

But if the census day is carefully chosen this problem too can be reduced to manageable proportions. A man who is 30 by lunar reckoning can be 27 or 30 only between the earliest and latest dates on which Lunar New Year can fall, that is to say from 21st January to 20th February. Outside those dates he can only be 28 or 29. So if census day is arranged to fall after 20th February or before 21st January the alternative values of any lunar age are only two, which can be found from a single-sheet table.

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The date chosen, 7th March, satisfied this condition. It could be made, by the co-operation of school and college authorities, to fall in vacation time. It was early enough for farming work to be at a minimum, and the weather ought to be dry and cool. But it would not do for the boat people, who only concentrate in really large numbers at major festivals, especially Lunar New Year. So their census had to be three weeks earlier, just before Chinese New Year's Eve, and a more complicated age conversion table had to be constructed just for them.

7th March 1961, was also, by the sheerest coincidence, the precise thirtieth anniversary of the last census, which was taken on 7th March 1931. The lunar date also differed by only two days.

Just as the methods used were partly those used anywhere and partly specially devised local modifications, so the topics covered were mostly those normal for all modern censuses and partly special.

Sex, age and conjugal status are standard topics. Age, as already explained, was recorded in the standard fashion, in completed years last birthday according to the Gregorian calendar, and all ages given in Chinese reckoning were converted to standard ages by the enumerators. Various checks conducted after the census showed that this conversion was fairly successful, about 88 per cent of all ages being correctly recorded. Of the ages wrongly