Japanese Journal of Ethnology

In social anthropology, the "community study" is commonly held to be the orthodox way of field research, and in HanChinese society too, many anthropologists have been struggling for the detailed study of their own villages. There are innumerable "villages" in rural China and in rural Hong Kong, and at first sight it seems very easy to find "communities" there. But m the actual process of research rt rs sometimes difficult to fmd a "village" as a concrete unit. In my field, the New Territories of Hong Kong, although the settlement pattern is usually compact, sometimes we find that several settlements, each of which has the term "village" in its own name, are combined to make a larger unit which is also called "village". That is to say that people can refer to the various levels of local units with the same term "village". In this article. I have tried to analyze the religious activities connected to the "villages" of this area and through them, I have also tried to show a certain flexibility and durability in the Chinese village. In analyzing rural Taiwanese society, the early Japanese sociologist Yuzuru OKADA presented the term "religious sphere". This term is very useful in understanding the flexibility of the people's religious life in relation to local units. In his model, the religious life of rural Taiwanese people was conceptualized as several overlapping "spheres". Although some other scholars emphasize the role of the "village temple" in the religious and social life of Chinese local people, I think we cannot overestimate this role.

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Among various studies on the Chinese kinship system, not much has been written on affinal relationship. There are two reasons for that: Chinese society is organized on precise simple patrilineal discipline : and kinship studies have mainly been carried out in the southern part of mainland China, where patrilineality is especially prominent. For example, in a "lineage village" in the New Territories, Hong Kong, almost all social needs are satisfied within the "Imeage". In this situation, for the selfsufficient villagers, affines remain mere "wife-givers", necessary partners in order to conform to the rule of "surname exogamy". The relationship with one's affines is unfriendly and distant [WATSON 1985]. On the other hand, in Taiwanese society, where the lineage system is relatively undeveloped, affinal relationship is far more important and cannot be ignored. Several studies have been done on affinity in Taiwan. Based on his field research in a Fukien Chinese village in the central part of Taiwan, Gallin stressed the importance of affinal bonds for villagers in expanding their socioeconomic relationships beyond village boundaries [GALLIN 1960, etc.]. AHERN, from materials collected in a northern Fuhien village, argued the existence of a ritual superiority of "wife-giver" over "wife-taker"[AHERN 1974]. More recently UENo's study on a southern Fukien Village focused on the unity of brothers. Brothers act as guardians to their out-marrying sisters and help maintain their sisters' status after marriage. Because of this shared responsibility to their sisters, even after the partition of their households, strong ties are kept among brothers [UENO 1987].

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