I wish to thank the Social Science Research Council (Anthropology Grant no. HR 5272/1) and the University of London (Central Research Fund) for supporting the field research (1977–78) upon which this study is based. I should particularly like to thank Pamela Atwell, William Atwell, Maurice Bloch, Jonathan Parry, G. William Skinner, and James Watson for their useful comments on this paper. I owe a special debt to Teng Tim-sing for his translation of many local documents. The Wade-Giles system of Mandarin romanization is used in this paper, except for Hong Kong place names which follow the Cantonese system found in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Press, 1969).Google Scholar

¹ In this paper the term ‘dominant lineage’ refers to a populous, localized descent group with a high degree of internal differentiation. These lineages maintain political and economic control over a territory (or hsiang) which incorporates unrelated, tenant villages. On tenancy and dominant lineages see particularly Watson, James L., ‘Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. II (1977).Google Scholar

² Ha Tsuen Hsiang Shih Nien Yi Chieh T'ai P'ing Ch'ing Chiao (Ha Tsuen District Decennial Purificatory Sacrifice). Published in Hong Kong New Territories (1974).

³ In this paper ‘patrilineal descent group’ refers to a set of males linked by demonstrated descent. The group maintains corporate property and makes up a ritual community based on the worship of common ancestors.

⁴ Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone Press, 1966), pp. 162ff.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., pp. 159ff. See also Potter, Jack, ‘Land and Lineage in Traditional China’, in Family and Kinship in Chinese Society, ed. Freedman, M. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), p. 138.Google Scholar

⁶ Pasternak, Burton, ‘The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the frontier question in south China see also Watson, James L., Emigration and the Chinese Lineage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 33–5.Google Scholar

⁷ Some historians, most notably Denis Twitchett in his essay ‘The Fan Clan's Charitable Estate, 1050–1760’, in Confucianism in Action, ed. Nivison, D. and Wright, A. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar and Beattie, Hilary in her Land and Lineage in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, have provided insightful and careful accounts of lineage development in central China. Although these studies are extremely valuable we do not know how the lineages they describe fit into the local environment. Are they localized or non-localized, do they have demonstrated descent of not, do they have a village base, how are they involved in the local political scene? It is therefore difficult to compare their findings with my own. This is not meant to be critical of Twitchett and Beattie, for they are interested in a different set of questions from those which concern me in this paper.

⁸ Freedman, , Chinese Lineage and Society, p. 8.Google Scholar

⁹ In Chinese Lineage and Society, chs 1 and 6, Freedman develops his ideas about lineage formation as a process of fission and segmentation. In one of his last published works, however, he accepts the possibility of lineage formation by fusion in Taiwan. Freedman writes: ‘Whereas, therefore, the process of lineage formation on the mainland is seen as a matter of segmentation—a small agnatic group growing and gradually becoming differentiated internally by the emergence of new segments, and segments within segments, as in the simple model constructed earlier in this essay—in Taiwan, lineages appear to have come about by a process of fusion, independent units being welded together,’ He then goes on to conclude this discussion by suggesting: ‘A more sophisticated model of the foundation and growth of the Chinese lineage…might then include, before the phase of elaborate internal differentiation, a phase during which scattered elements are brought together (territorially and genealogically, or at least genealogically) to form the lineage to begin with.’ See Freedman, Maurice, ‘The Politics of an Old State: A View from the Chinese Lineage’, in Choice and Change: Essays in Honour of Lucy Mair, ed. Davis, John (London: Athlone Press, 1974), pp. 79–81.Google Scholar In the present paper I show how a mainland Kwangtung lineage was formed by fusion, and I relate this formation to the economic and political conditions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

¹⁰ Beattie, , Land and Lineage in China, p. 112.Google Scholar

¹¹ Mathias, John, ‘A study of the Jiao, A Taoist Ritual, in Kam Tin, in Hong Kong New Territories’ (D.Phil. Thesis, Anthropology, Oxford University, 1977).Google Scholar In this paper I stress the view of Teng history held by the people of Ha Tsuen. Readers are advised to see Mathias for details of the Kam Tin Teng point of view. The ‘Ha Tsuen Teng’ and the ‘Kam Tin Teng’ are members of the same higher-order-lineage and their two villages are separated by about six miles.

¹² Fitzgerald, C. P., China: A Short Cultural History (New York: Praeger, 1965), pp. 183ff.Google Scholar

¹³ On expansion of ethnic Chinese into South China see Wiens, Harold J., Han Chinese Expansion in South China (The Shoe String Press, 1967), pp. 182ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ ‘Kam Tin Teng Chia P'u’ (Kam Tin Teng Family History), Vol. 2 (Manuscript, n.d.). Hong Kong University Library.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Some present-day; Teng report that Hung-sheng himself moved from the Ha Tsuen area to the vicinity of Tung Kuan City, while others say that it was descendants of Hung-sheng who made this move (at some unspecified date). The various stories do suggest, however, that at least some of Hung-sheng's descendants have lived in Ha Tsuen since the fourteenth century.

¹⁷ On Ping Shan Teng see Potter, Jack, Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant: Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley: University of California, 1968).Google Scholar

¹⁸ According to Maurice Freedman, in his Chinese Lineage and Society, pp. 20–1, a higher-order-lineage is made up of local lineages. ‘[T]he ancestors of these lineages are all descended agnatically from a common ancestor, the whole unit in turn being focused on an ancestral hall or other piece of property.’

¹⁹ On armed disputes between the two communities see, for example, Potter, Jack, ‘The Structure of Rural Chinese Society in New Territories’, in Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, ed. Jarvie, I. C. and Agassi, J. (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 13.Google Scholar

²⁰ ‘Historical and Genealogical Notes—New Territories’ (Yuen Long District Office, File No. Y.L. 204/6/01, 1962).

²¹ Hsin-an Hsien-chih (Hsin-an County Gazetteer) (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen Reprint Series, 1819), p. 269.Google Scholar It is difficult to know how accurate the population figures presented in the gazetteer are, but I would suggest that they provide an indication of population trends. For a detailed discussion of population figures during the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties see Ping-ti, Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

²² Atwell, William, ‘Notes on Silver, Foreign Trade, and the Late Ming Economy’, Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i, Vol. 8 (1977).Google Scholar

²³ Hsin-an Hsien-chih, p. 365. On epidemics in late Ming see Dunstan, Helen, ‘The Late Ming Epidemics: A Preliminary Survey’, Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i’, Vol. 3 (1975).Google Scholar

²⁴ Baker, Hugh, Sheung Shui: A Chinese Lineage Village (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 30.Google Scholar

²⁵ Hsin-an Hsien-chih, pp. 269–70.

²⁶ See, for example, Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 30;Google ScholarHayes, James, ‘The Hong Kong Region: Its Place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events Since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 14 (1974), p. 118;Google ScholarMathias, , ‘A Study of the Jiao’, p. 15.Google Scholar

²⁷ Kuo-ching, Hsieh, ’, The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. 15 (1932).Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid.; see also Baker, Hugh, ‘The Five Great Clans of the New Territories’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

²⁹ Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 41.Google Scholar

³⁰ Hayes, , ‘The Hong Kong Region’, p. 120;Google ScholarBaker, , Sheung Shui, p. 41.Google Scholar

³¹ In this paper I use ‘élite’ to mean wealthy landlords and merchants. Some of these men were also degree holders, but most were not.

³² Baker, Hugh, Chinese Family and Kinship (London: Macmillan Press, 1979), p. 52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ Beattie, , Land and Lineage in China, pp. 44ff.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., p. 47.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 93.

³⁶ Fitzgerald, , China: A Short Cultural History, p. 547.Google Scholar See also Murphy, Rhoads, ‘The Treaty Ports and China's Modernization’, in The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, ed. Elvin, Mark and Skinner, G. Willian (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

³⁷ Fitzgerald, , China: A Short Cultural History, p. 547.Google Scholar

³⁸ Pritchard, Earl H., ‘The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750–1800’, Research Studies of the State College of Washington, Vol. 4 (1936), p. 115.Google Scholar See also Wakeman, Frederic, Strangers at the Gate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).Google Scholar

³⁹ Pritchard, , ‘The Crucial Years’, p. 128.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Hayes, , ‘The Hong Kong Region’, pp. 121ff.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Hsin-an Hsien-chih, p. 83.

⁴² ‘Teng Shih Tsu P'u’ (Teng Lineage Genealogy), (Manuscript, Ha Tsuen n.d.). See also Hayes, James, The Hong Kong Region 1850–1911 (Archon Books, 1977), p. 36.Google Scholar

⁴³ Baker, in his Sheung Shui, p. 190Google Scholar, reports that the Liao lineage of Sheung Shui established Shek Wu Hui. Groves, Robert in his ‘The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories’, in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories (Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, 1964), p. 17Google Scholar, notes that two members of another Teng lineage (at Lung Yeuk Tao) started Tai Po Market sometime in the 1670s.

⁴⁴ See, for example, Groves, ‘The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories’; Skinner, G. William, ‘Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24 (1964), p. 36–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁵ Skinner, , ‘Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China’, pp. 32–43.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 41.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 38.

⁴⁸ Baker, , ‘The Five Great Clans’, p. 38;Google ScholarBaker, , Sheung Shui, pp. 194ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ ‘Teng Shih Tsu P'u’.

⁵⁰ Teng Fu-hsieh's grave is visited every year during the Chung Yang festival in the ninth lunar month by dozens of Teng elders who worship as a unit. Worshippers come from Kam Tin, Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Lung Yeuk Tao. Even Teng who now live in urban Hong Kong join in the worship. The latter category includes recent migrants from Tung Kuan County, Kwangtung.

⁵¹ The mobilization of resistance to the British occupiers in 1899 provides further evidence of the élitist nature of these higher-order-lineages. Groves, Robert in his ‘Militia, Market and Lineage’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 9 (1969)Google Scholar shows how the Teng élite of Hsin An and Tung Kuan Counties used the framework of the higher-order-lineage to organize a show of force against the invading foreigners.

⁵² The term ‘clan’ refers to associations based on shared surname. Clans often have corporate property and may even build ancestral halls. Although these organizations are patterned after lineages, clan members cannot always trace genealogical links to each other. Clan organizations are usually found in urban centers or in overseas Chinese communities. On élite participation in non-localized lineage ritual see Yuenfong, Woon, ‘The Non-Localized Descent Group in Traditional China’, Ethnology, Vol. 18 (1979), p. 25.Google Scholar

⁵³ Kung-chuan, Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), p. 355.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 44.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Grimm, Tilemann, ‘Academies and Urban Systems in Kwangtung’, in The City in Late Imperial China, ed. Skinner, G. William (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), p. 481.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The Teng of Ha Tsuen have only three men in the 1819 Gazetteer listed as imperial degree holders.

⁵⁷ These two Yang Hou temples were, I believe, built by two rival groups of Teng based in two different hamlets. One temple is located in Tung Tao Tsuen, and the other near the hamlet of San Wai.

⁵⁸ Hsin-an Hsien-chih, pp. 270–3. In 1898, the population of the New Territories was estimated to be approximately 100,000 (reported in Baker, Sheung Shui, p. 3). The British leased only a portion of Hsin An County and the larger towns remained in Chinese territory. It is therefore possible that the population of the entire county could easily have been in excess of 200,000 in 1819.

⁵⁹ Hsin-an Hsien-chih, p. 92. It may be that the notes on Ha Tsuen which appear in the 1819 gazetteer were copied from the 1688 edition without alteration. When villagers were shown a copy of the gazetteer, they remarked that no Ha Tsuen people were on the editorial board. This explains why, in their view, there were so few references to Ha Tsuen in the 1819 edition.

⁶⁰ A stone set in Yu Kung T'ang (see page 91) does make a vague reference to an earlier ancestral shelter/shrine, tz'u yü. Significantly, the term t'ang (hall) is not used in this context but yü, which in local usage refers to a minor shrine. The stone does not make clear who among the Teng used this yü. There is, in fact, no supporting evidence (i.e., architectural remains, records, or legends) to prove that this shrine even existed.

⁶¹ Watson, James L., ‘The Protection of Privilege: Self Defence Corps and Local Politics on the South China Coast’ (Manuscript).Google Scholar

⁶² Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 31.Google Scholar

⁶³ Compared to Ha Tsuen the residents of the dominant lineage communities of San Tin and Sheung Shui are clustered into what today looks far more like a large village than a dispersed group of hamlets. Both nucleated and dispersed villages are found in the New Territories.

⁶⁴ Twitchett, , ‘The Fan Clan's Charitable Estate, 1050–1760’;Google ScholarBeattie, , Land and Lineage in China.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Fried, Morton, ‘The Classification of Corporate Unilineal Descent Groups’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 87 (1957);Google ScholarFried, , ‘Some Political Aspects of Clanship in a Modern Chinese City’, in Political Anthropology, ed. Swartz, M. (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Baker, , Chinese Family and Kinship, p. 52.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Freedman, Maurice, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone Press, 1958), pp. 77ff.Google Scholar On the importance of geographical separation and migration to Chinese lineage development see Ahern, Emily, ‘Segmentation in Chinese Lineages: A View through Written Genealogies’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 3 (1976).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ When present-day villagers speak of a corporate ancestral estate, they use the term tsu. Fang, in this context, does not imply a property holding group.

⁶⁹ Shih-wen, Teng, ‘Teng Tsu Li Shih’ (Teng Lineage History), Ha Tsuen Hsiang Shih Nien Yi Chieh T'ai P'ing Ch'ing Chiao (published in Hong Kong New Territories, 1964).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Yu Kung T'ang was directly involved in the extensive development of fishing stations and oyster beds along Ha Tsuen hsiang's coastline. Yu Kung T'ang was responsible for the management of Ha Tsuen Market, and it was the framework within which most community decisions were taken. I hope to develop the economic and political role of Yu Kung T'ang during the nineteenth century in later publications.

⁷¹ Freedman, , Lineage Organization in Southeastern China, p. 74.Google Scholar

⁷² Hsiao-t'ung, Fei, ‘Peasantry and Gentry: An Interpretation of Chinese Social Structure and its Changes’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52 (1946).Google Scholar

⁷³ Beattie, , Land and Lineage in China, p. 128.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Although Freedman does not deny the possibility that some descent groups may develop by fusion (see footnote 9 above), his work is almost exclusively taken up by the model of segmentation.

⁷⁵ Baker, , Chinese Family and Kinship, p. 52.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Pasternak, ‘The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development’; Pasternak, , ‘Chinese Tale-Telling Tombs’, Ethnology, Vol. 12 (1973);CrossRefGoogle ScholarCohen, Myron, ‘Agnatic Kinship in South Taiwan’, Ethnology, Vol. 8 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Woon, ‘The Non-Localized Descent Group’.

⁷⁷ Cohen, , ‘Agnatic Kinship in South Taiwan’, p. 177.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Unilineal descent groups are usually thought to be closed. That is, membership is not a matter of choice but is determined by genealogical relationships. In the case of a voluntary association one normally joins as a matter of choice. For Taiwan, Cohen (‘Agnatic Kinship in South Taiwan’, p. 180) reports cases of ‘dispersed lineages’ where membership is primarily determined by financial contribution.

⁷⁹ A similar case is reported in Pasternak, , ‘Chinese Tale-Telling Tombs’, p. 268.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See Twitchett, ‘The Fan Chan's Charitable Estate, 1050–1760’; Beattie, , Land and Lineage in China, pp. 42, 91.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Pasternak, , ‘The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development’, p. 551.Google Scholar

⁸² Hugh Baker (‘The Five Great Clans of the New Territories’) and James Watson (Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, Ch. 3) have argued that the communities which today make up the New Territories, dominant lineages were settled prior to the mid-seventeenth century. By 1600, the Teng had been living in the area for over 200 years. There is, therefore, some basis for suggesting that southern Hsin An could be considered a ‘settled’ area by the end of the sixteenth century.