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Introduction The song s discusse d i n thi s monograp h wer e onc e popula r i n many town s an d village s i n Guangdong Province . We knew a few o f the m ourselves , having learne d the m fro m ou r mother , maternal grandmothe r an d othe r olde r relatives . Lik e othe r children who belonged to relatively affluent uppe r middle-clas s families growin g up firs t i n Guangzhou an d Hon g Kong in th e 1940s an d 50 s w e ha d on e o r mor e amahs or femal e domesti c servants a t home , an d thes e women , especiall y baby amahs, domestics entrusted with the care of infants and children, would teach th e childre n thes e songs . Our ow n children , no w youn g adults, learne d fragment s o f thes e song s a t hom e an d als o a t kindergarten from thei r more traditional kindergarten teachers . But thes e song s hav e al l bu t disappeare d i n modern , cosmopolitan Hon g Kong. The style of life that produced the m has become alien to the younger people here, and the increasing trend towards the nuclear family unit and industrialization which has virtually destroye d th e institution o f the Chinese domesti c servant even for affluent familie s mean that, generally speaking, Hong Kong children have lost any form of constant contact with grandparents or other older relatives and indeed with the older, more traditional Chinese women who served as baby amahs. The songs, which express the ideas and feeling s of a predominantl y semi-literate peasant population of a by-gone era, are in dange r of total extinction because of the oral nature of their transmission. There is so much in these songs and rhymes, both from the point of view of content and of style, that we felt it would be a pity to lose them . I t wa s therefor e primaril y i n a spiri t o f conservin g what wa s worthwhil e fro m th e pas t tha t w e se t ou t o n ou r project in 1986. Our aim was to collect as many of the songs and rhymes a s possibl e an d t o obtai n informatio n relatin g t o thei r composition. W e starte d of f wit h th e awarenes s tha t accurat e information relating to the origins of the songs would be virtually impossible to collect. This is the nature of oral literature, especially when preserve d amon g a n essentiall y illiterat e populace . W e were also aware we would have to confine our research to Hong Kong, a territor y adjacen t t o Guangdon g province , a Britis h 2฀ Fossils from a Rural Past colony sinc e 1841 , which wil l revert t o Chinese sovereignt y i n 1997. Contact s betwee n th e souther n provinc e o f Guangdon g and Hon g Kon g hav e been maintained throug h th e movemen t of people over the years since the Opium War and the imposition of British rule in Hong Kong. Hong Kong today on the surface is a highly cosmopolitan city, an 'international' city one may thin k from lookin g a t it s externa l trappings . Bu t underneat h th e cosmopolitan gloss , it is also a deeply Chines e city , and thi s i s not only because 98% of the population are Chinese. As expert s will attest, Hong Kong is essentially a monolingual society, and is becoming more so. And the language is the Cantonese dialec t of Chinese . Chin a i s a n enormou s countr y wit h it s ove r on e billion inhabitants, speaking a great diversity of dialects. On th e whole, Hong Kong residents think in terms of it~fjh 'Norther n people' an d MJjK 'Souther n people' , wit h distinc t cultura l traits an d physica l characteristics , an d the y identif y wit h th e latter group . Generalization s ar e alway s dangerous , bu t th e Cantonese ar e note d fo r thei r raciness , Rabelaisia...

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