Women as Worshippers, Women Worshipped: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong

Abstract

Women's religious practices in the two-lineage village of Kwan Mun Hau, located within the district of Tsuen Wan in the New Territories of Hong Kong, are the focus of this article, which is based on fieldwork carried out over the past forty years. This village remains a distinct entity because of the policies of the British colonial government, which supported the preservation of New Territories villages that were already in existence in 1898. Government also gave support to their traditions, even in a rapidly urbanizing district such as Tsuen Wan. The resulting cohesion of Kwan Mun Hau fostered the preservation and transmission of the religious practices of the village, the lineages, and their constituent families. These circumstances allowed for the comparisons that are made, broadly encompassing both continuity and change over time in the relationships between the religious practices of men and women, as well as some contrasts with the practices of indigenous Cantonese communities. Women's religious practices were and are addressed to various supernatural beings, but exclude the propitiation of ghosts, from which their ancestors offer protection. With the exception of very important occasions, when men lead worship, women worship the gods of localities: Tianhou, who protects their district; the village protective gods; the heavenly gods; and their household earth gods. They also participate in the worshipping of ancestors in the spring and autumn tomb rites, although men lead these rites, and married-in women worship lineage and family ancestors in the ancestral halls. Upon death, these women's souls are individually installed in the single ancestral tablet there, as are those of men, where they can receive offerings and enjoy peace and ancestral status in the company of others. The participation and inclusion of these Hakka women in kinship religion invites comparison with the practices of the Cantonese indigenous majority.