Ancestral Images: A Hong Kong Collection by Hugh Baker (review)

Book Reviews 93 These quibbles aside, Adamek has done the field a great service by making this fascinating early Chan work much more accessible. The translation is meticulous and lucid. Beyond its Chan-specific concerns, the Lidai fabao ji also touches on key issues found throughout Chinese religion, such as state patronage, miracles, gender, misbehaving clergy, and the relationships between the various traditions. In short, The Teachings of Master Wuzhu can look forward to a long career in enlightening and provoking discussion about Chinese Buddhism. MARK HALPERIN, University of California, Davis Ancestral Images: A Hong Kong Collection HUGH BAKER. Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. xiii, 390 pages. HK$350.00, US$50.00 hardcover. This volume re-prints 120 newspaper columns that were first published in the late 1970s in Hong Kong’s leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post. Originally called “From My Album,” each weekly column had a photograph that was the starting point for the topic of the column. In the book, the photos are well reproduced, mostly in color, and they are followed by about 1000 words of text to make a three-page chapter. The author lived in a New Territories lineage village for his initial anthropological field work, and in many other parts of Hong Kong over the years, and uses his wealth of experience as well as academic knowledge to inform the reader about Cantonese culture. Topics discussed include ancestor worship and burials; fengshui 風水 and graves; gods and religious practices; food; places of interest; and language, including puns, felicitous homonyms, and the origins of terms. There is some repetition of facts and ideas, but since the book is not intended to be read cover to cover, this is not a problem. The book has an index which makes searching for topics possible. Many columns connect a series of topics, ranging far from the photograph and title. Chapter 117 on “Women,” for example, starts with a photograph of women at a funeral in 1963, then discusses the function of rituals, the strength of feelings at funerals, the “three subserviences” (三從), arranged marriage, the inferiority and lack of agency of women as shown in forced ghost marriages of women, and the possibility that through personality or love, women could gain considerable influence. 94 Journal of Chinese Religions The audience for the original columns was the educated reader interested in Hong Kong’s Cantonese culture. The book is, in many ways, a study of folklore. It helps the expatriate in Hong Kong understand Chinese culture, and records many practices and beliefs that are rare or have disappeared from contemporary Hong Kong, as well as current customs and cultural practices that are puzzling to, or not known by, most expatriates in the city. All Chinese terms are Romanized in Cantonese, and the Chinese characters are provided as well. This makes the book entertaining and interesting even for readers who are knowledgeable about Chinese culture, but who may not know about Cantonese practices. The book also resembles the works of travel writers and missionaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it includes amusing anecdotes that illustrate a point. Many chapters also quote from early Westerners’ observations of China. The difference from the travel literature is that our guide is more erudite and lacks the condescension common a century ago, using instead a humble and self-deprecatory tone. The author’s enthusiasm for Chinese practices will help explain Hong Kong traditional culture to visitors and expatriate residents (though it is unlikely his appreciation for eating duck feet will sway any expats, for whom denigrating such delicacies is almost a marker of ethnic identity). These columns had been previously published in three volumes by the SCMP Press, but have long been out of print. The chapters have been updated, but a few entries are dated. In discussing ducks (p. 51), the author says “huge flocks (or should it be ‘herds,’ or perhaps ‘divisions’?) of them inhabit the New Territories.” This well illustrates the author’s humor, but should have been changed to the past tense, since there are no ducks today. Most of the book does not...