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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