This book explores the cultural traditions of Cantonese villagers who first settled in South China's Pearl River Delta during the Tang and Song dynasties (10th to 12th centuries). The authors lived and worked in the New Territories, Hong Kong's rural hinterland, during the 1960s and 1970s.
Two villages, in particular, are featured in this book: San Tin and Ha Tsuen, homes (respectively) of the Man and Teng lineages. These are single-surname communities of the type that once dominated rural politics in South China. In the 60s and 70s, village life revolved around the performance of expensive and time-consuming rituals associated with birth, marriage, and ancestor worship. Geomancy (fengshui) was a universally accepted system of belief that linked the living to the dead. Men and women lived in separate social worlds that were closed to members of the opposite sex. The Watsons worked as a team and thus were able to document both sides of this gender divide.
Many of the rituals and social activities described in this book are no longer performed in the New Territories, or in adjacent regions of Guangdong province. The physical landscape has also changed dramatically in recent decades. Several of the tenant communities studied by the Watsons were demolished in the wake of "New Town" development during the 1980s and 1990s. Nonetheless, indigenous villagers of the New Territories still constitute a vibrant, recognizable minority in Hong Kong's rapidly expanding population. Globalization and hyper-urbanization have combined to create a new, postmodern society in an area that was, until recently, a rural hinterland. Village Life in Hong Kong constitutes a unique ethnographic record of a cultural system teetering on the threshold of this historic transition.

作者簡介：

James L. Watson is Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University.

Rubie S. Watson is Howells Director, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. The Watsons have conducted ethnographic research in South China (Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Jiangxi) since the late 1960s.

退換貨說明：

會員均享有10天的商品猶豫期（含例假日）。若您欲辦理退換貨，請於取得該商品10日內寄回。

辦理退換貨時，請保持商品全新狀態與完整包裝（商品本身、贈品、贈票、附件、內外包裝、保證書、隨貨文件等）一併寄回。若退回商品無法回復原狀者，可能影響退換貨權利之行使或須負擔部分費用。