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The Control of “Sacred” Space: Conflicts Over the Chinese Burial Grounds in Colonial Singapore, 1880–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Brenda S.A. Yeoh
Brenda S.A. Yeoh
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Extract

In traditional societies, a sense of the “sacred” is often inherent in the form of the urban built-environment, which, in turn, cannot be understood apart from the “mythical-magical concern with place”. According to Mircea Eliade, the act of settlement itself is perceived as a re-enactment of the mythical creation of the world. Ancient Indian cities were designed according to a mandala replicating a cosmic image of the laws governing the universe and, similarly, Chinese cities were conceived as “cosmo-magical symbols” of the universe. These cities were laid out as terrestrial images of the macrocosmos, distinct spaces sacralized for habitation within a continuum of profane space.

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Articles
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Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , September 1991 , pp. 282 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1991

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References

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35 The Burials Bill of 1887 proposed to transfer the control of burial and burning grounds, hitherto vested in the Municipality, to the Government. It directed the Governor-in-Council to issue licences for existing burial grounds on the conditions that application for a licence was made within three months of the Ordinance coming into force and also that the continued use of the burial ground would not endanger “the health and comfort of the public”. It further specified that internment was to be allowed only in places licensed for the purpose and that burying or burning corpses in unlicensed grounds incurred a maximum penalty of one hundred dollars. The Governor-in-Council was also authorized to frame rules and regulations to fix the depth of graves, the amount of fees charged for burials, and for the registration, inspection and management of cemeteries and burning grounds (PLCSS, 8 08 1887, pp. B91–B92Google Scholar; ST, 20 08 1887Google Scholar).

36 PLCSS, 15 08 1887, p. B101Google Scholar.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., p. B102.

39 Ibid., p. B103.

40 Among the Chinese plebeian classes, there were signs of “much alarm”, largely because of the rumour that the bill proposed to give magistrates the power to remove bodies which had already been buried (“Report on Ordinance [XI] of 1887 by J.W. Bonser, Attorney-General, 5 Sept. 1887”, in Weld to Holland, 10 Sept. 1887, CO 273/146/20985). While widespread “alarm” did not culminate in violence on this occasion, it was probable that ill-feeling against the Government generated by the introduction of the Burials Bill contributed in part to the outbreak of the “verandah riots” in February the following year.

41 The Penang memorialists, for example, made it clear that not only were they fully aware of the channels of protest open to them, but also from whom they had learnt their strategies:

We admit that we have not refused to avail ourselves of constitutional means to fight our own rights and privileges [sic] when such a vital and important matter as our time-honoured usages were threatened with interference, and probable eventual abolition…. Enlightenment, consequent on liberal education and contact with civilized people, encourages loyal subjects and citizens to act as their brethren in civilized countries, in contending for their rights and privileges when they are deemed to be encroached on, or threatened, by any Legislative measure (Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, 14 Oct. 1887).

42 The Burials Bill was passed as Ordinance [XI] of 1887 on 25 August 1887, merely eighteen days after its first reading (PLCSS, 25 08 1887, p. B125Google Scholar).

43 Each of the Chinese communities in Penang, Malacca and Singapore sent a separate memorial to Holland. See enclosures in Smith to Holland, 1 Feb. 1888, CO 273/151/4517.

44 To the Chinese, Government control of burial sites was considered oppressive because in China itself, people were not bound, either by law or custom, to bury their dead in special areas. According to de Groot, “everyone had full liberty to inter his dead wherever he [chose], provided he possess[ed] the ground, or [held] it by some legal title acquired from the legal owner”. There were also severe laws against the violation of dead bodies and the desecration of graves. See de Groot, J.J.M., The Religious System of China 3 (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen, 1969, first published in 1892), pp. 867, 874–75, 939Google Scholar. What often impressed the western observer as unusual about the Chinese landscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was “the ubiquity of individual and clan graves among the tilled fields”. See Knapp, R.G., “The Changing Landscape of the Chinese Cemetery”, The China Geographer 8 (1977): 1Google Scholar.

45 Cf. Knapp, , “The Changing Landscape”, p. 7Google Scholar.

46 Feng-shui literally means “winds and waters” and is defined by Chatley as “the art of adapting residences of the living and the dead so as to cooperate and harmonise with the local currents of the cosmic breath” inherent in a particular configuration of the landscape. Although translated as “geomancy”, it is entirely different from divination methods which passed under that name in the west. See Needham, J., Science and Civilisation in China 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 359Google Scholar.

47 For more detailed discussions on the use of geomantic principles among the Chinese in Singapore and China in siting burial places see Eitel, E.J., Feng-Shui (Singapore: Graham Brash, 1985, first published in 1873)Google Scholar; de Groot, , The Religious System in China 3, pp. 935–55Google Scholar; Feuchtwang, S., An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy (Vientiane: Vithagna, 1974)Google Scholar; Lip, E., Chinese Geomancy (Singapore: Times Books International, 1979)Google Scholar.

48 Needham, , Science and Civilisation 2, p. 361Google Scholar.

49 “The Humble Memorial from the Undersigned Chinese Merchants, Traders, Planters and other Chinese Inhabitants of Singapore to Sir H.T. Holland, 30 Nov. 1887” (enclosure in Smith to Holland, 1 Feb. 1988, CO 273/151/4517).

50 Quoted by Koh Seang Tat, one of the Penang leaders in the protest, in his representation to the Governor, dated 25 Aug. 1887 (reproduced in the Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, 14 Oct. 1887). The passage appears to be a loose paraphrase of paragraphs 6 and 9 in Book 2 (on “The Law of Things”) of The Institutes of Gaius, trans. de Zulueta, F. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), Part I, p. 67Google Scholar, which defends the sacro-sanctity and inalienability of burial grounds.

51 Spengler, O., The Decline of the West (London: George Allen and Unwin, English abridged edition 1961, first published 1932), p. 115Google Scholar.

52 Ibid.

53 Freedman, M., “Geomancy”, in Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1968 (London, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1969), p. 7Google Scholar.

54 Ibid.

55 Boxer, B., “Space, Change and Feng-shui in Tsuen Wan's Urbanization”, Journal of Asian and African Studies 3 (1968): 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 ST, 19 08 1887Google Scholar; PLCSS, 22 08 1887, p. B122Google Scholar, “The Humble Memorial … 30 Nov. 1887”.

57 “The Humble Memorial … 30 Nov. 1887”.

58 Ibid.

59 “Report on Chinese Memorial Against the Burial Ordinance [XI] of 1887”.

60 The Colonial Secretary referred to an article published in the Lat Pau, the local Chinese newspaper, detailing an actual case in the Nam Hoi district in China wherein an ancestral temple and certain houses in front of the yamen were acquired for demolition (“News from China”, Lat Pau, 28 08 1886Google Scholar, translated by Pickering, W.A., the Protector of Chinese and reproduced in PLCSS, 15 08 1887, pp. B102–B103Google Scholar). The Straits Times further cited the clearance of graves to facilitate the laying of a railway line from Tientsin to Taku in China. The editor claimed that the incident was clear evidence that “the Chinese Government set little store by any superstitious feelings among the people as regards the disturbance of graves” and urged the Straits Government to “profit from the example given by the Chinese Government” (ST, 7 09 1887Google Scholar).

61 PLCSS, 15 08 1887, p. B103Google Scholar. In his representation to the Government, Koh Seang Tat, one of the Penang Chinese leading the protest against the Burials Bill, refuted the view that storage of remains in urns was proof of lack of veneration of the dead among the Chinese. He claimed that this custom, which was only practised by the wealthy Chinese, was not contrary but in fact in accordance with their “well-meaning and pious belief in Geomancy”. According to strict geomantic principles, the Chinese were obliged to keep the remains in urns and wait for a propitious time and place for burial (Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, 14 Oct. 1887). Opposing interpretations of Chinese burial customs were symptomatic of the fact that the ritual repertoire associated with death in Chinese society was extremely complex and also variable among different regions and dialect groups. For example, it has been observed that among the Cantonese, a system of “double burial” was practised whereby the burial of a body in a coffin was followed by exhumation, the temporary storage of the bones in an urn and reburial of the urn in a geomantically suitable tomb [Watson, J.L., “Of Flesh and Bones: The Management of Death Pollution in Cantonese Society”, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar]. In north China, “double burial” was uncommon and the encoffined body was directly laid to rest in substantial tombs [Naquin, S., “Funerals in North China: Uniformity and Variation”, in Death Ritual in Late and Modern China, ed. Watson, J.L. and Rawski, E.S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 44]Google Scholar. In colonial Singapore, the latter custom was the norm, it being common for wealthy Chinese to prepare elaborate family graves well ahead of time (“Memo. on the Burials Ordinance [XI] of 1887, Straits Settlements by D.F.A. Harvey, 25 Oct. 1887”, in Weld to Holland, 10 Sept. 1887, CO 273/146/20985.

62 Smith to Holland, 1 Feb. 1888, CO 273/151/4517.

63 “Report on Chinese Memorial Against the Burial Ordinance [XI] of 1887”.

64 Ibid.

65 PLCSS, 29 11 1887, p. B164Google Scholar.

66 In 1889, when the Indian Act [XIV] of 1856 and the Conservancy Ordinance [II] of 1879 (both containing clauses which hitherto governed burial grounds) were repealed by the Municipal Amendment Ordinance [XVII], no provisions were made to introduce new regulations and hence from 1889 to 1896, no laws existed for the control of burial grounds (Administrative Report of the Singapore Municipality [hereafter, ARSM] 1900, p. 13Google Scholar).

67 Garrad, C.G., The Acts and Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements from 1st April 1867 to 7th March 1898 2 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898), pp. 1544–46Google Scholar.

68 ARSM 1896, p. 16Google Scholar.

69 PLCSS, 23 07 1896Google Scholar, reported in ST, 24 07 1896Google Scholar.

70 ARSM 1900, p. 13Google Scholar.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., p. 12.

73 Ibid.

74 The amendment was introduced on the orders of the Secretary of State for the Colonies who objected to the severity of penalties prescribed by the 1896 Burials Ordinance (PLCSS, 15 04 1897, p. B29Google Scholar; PLCSS, 29 08 1897, pp. B41–42Google Scholar).

75 Jan Jakob Mariade de Groot, writing about religious customs in China in the late nineteenth century, observed that for the Chinese, “graves … are not a means to rid one's self of useless mortal remains in a way considered most decent; nor are they merely rendered sacred to the memory of the dead…. [T]he grave … is sacred especially as an abode of the soul, not only indispensable for its happiness, but also for its existence, for no disembodied spirit can long escape destruction unless the body co-exists with it to serve it as a natural support. Both the body and the soul require a grave for their preservation. Hence the grave, being the chief shelter of the soul, virtually becomes the principal altar dedicated to it and to its worship.” (de Groot, , The Religious System of China 3, p. 855Google Scholar).

76 Watson, J.L., “The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and the Primacy of Performance”, in Watson, and Rawski, , Death Ritual, p.9Google Scholar; Kiong, Tong Chee, “Dangerous Blood, Refined Souls: Death Rituals among the Chinese in Singapore” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1987), pp.340–42Google Scholar.

77 Watson, R.S., “Remembering the Dead: Graves and Politics in Southeastern China”, in Watson, and Rawski, , Death Ritual, pp. 206–207Google Scholar.

78 “The Humble Memorial … 30 Nov. 1887”.

79 Low, N.I., Recollections: Chinese Jetsam on a Tropical Shore [and] When Singapore was Syonan-to (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1983), p. 112Google Scholar.

80 According to municipal records, in 1900, there were 162 private burial grounds belonging to all ethnic communities within municipal limits, of which 143 were still in use and 19 disused (ARSM 1900, p. 12Google Scholar).

81 In 1892, Tay Geok Teat, one of the Chinese Commissioners in the latter half of the year, for example, applied for permission from the Municipal Board to make two graves, one for his recently deceased wife and one for himself, on a piece of land in Teluk Blangah where nine family graves were already sited (MPMCOM, 26 Oct. 1892). Similarly, in 1893, the wealthy landowner, Cheang Hong Lim, was buried in a grave “already prepared on his property on Alexandra Road” (MPMCOM, 15 Mar. 1893). For the Chinese, the procurement of a grave and the preparation of grave clothes and a coffin well before death were considered symbols of longevity and status (de Groot, , The Religious System of China 3, p. 1031Google Scholar).

82 Vaughan, , The Manners and Customs of the Chinese, p. 32Google Scholar; SFP, 15 Aug. 1887; “The Humble Memorial … 30 Nov. 1887”.

83 Tong, , “Dangerous Blood, Refined Souls”, p. 133Google Scholar.

84 “The Humble Memorial … 30 Nov. 1887”.

85 Ibid.

86 Prior, L., The Social Organization of Death: Medical Discourse and Social Practices in Belfast (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1989), p. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 “Copy of a Minute by J.W. Bonser, Attorney-General, 12 Nov. 1887”, in Smith to Holland, 16 Nov. 1887, CO 273/148/25479.

88 Sack, , Conceptions of Space, pp. 148, 163–64, 189–93Google Scholar.

89 “Copy of a Minute by J.W. Bonser, Attorney-General, 12 Nov. 1887”.

90 Yang shi zong pu [The Yang Clan Genealogy] (Singapore, 1965), p. G16Google Scholar. In a different context, David Lai demonstrates retrospectively that geomantic principles were important in the siting of a late nineteenth century burial ground belonging to the Chinese Association in Victoria, British Columbia (Lai, C.Y.D., “A Feng Shui Model as a Location Index”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64, no. 4 (1974): pp. 506–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Hwang, Yen Ching, A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya, 1800–1911 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 45Google Scholar.

92 Cited from Singapore Coroners' Inquests and Inquiries No. 229, of Wong Wan, 14 Apr. 1931 by Yeo, K., “Hawkers and the State in Colonial Singapore: Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1939” (M.A. diss., Monash University, 1989), p. 56Google Scholar.

93 Several clan associations and mutual benefit societies ran so-called “dying houses” where the chronically ill or incapacitated could seek shelter and succour. In 1908, a municipal survey recorded fourteen of these dying houses (ARSM 1908, “Health Officer's Report”, p. 37Google Scholar).

94 Qing Ming Jie (the Chinese “All Souls' Day”) and Chong Yang Jie (the “Double Ninth” Festival) are Chinese festive periods devoted to the veneration of deceased ancestors and family members. During these festivals, it is the practice to visit the graves of forebears to make ritual offerings and to sweep the graves (Hua ren li su jie re shou ce (Chinese Customs and Festivals in Singapore) (Singapore: Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, 1989), pp. 45–49, 74–77Google Scholar.

95 “Unlawful Burials in the Hokkien Burial Ground, Alexandra Road”, 25 Nov. 1924, SIT 116/25.

96 MPMCOM, 24 Feb. 1881; MPMCOM, 2 June 1882.

97 MPMCOM, 3 July 1889.

98 The motion was initially opposed by the Chinese Commissioners, Tan Jiak Kim and Tan Beng Wan, who claimed that the fault did not lie with the owners or trustees of burial grounds who were “ignorant of the law” but with the authorities themselves who in former years had neglected to enforce the law. They withdrew their opposition on the assurance that any steps taken to deal with the burials question would only apply to future burial grounds and would not interfere with existing grounds (MPMCOM, 3 July 1889; MPMCOM, 31 July 1889).

99 MPMCOM, 31 July 1889.

100 Ibid.

101 MPMCOM, 27 Oct. 1890; MPMCOM, 19 Aug. 1891; MPMCOM, 6 July 1892; MPMCOM, 20 July 1892.

102 MPMCOM, 31 July 1889.

103 MPMCOM, 27 Oct. 1890.

104 “Tiong Bahru Improvement Scheme, Acquisition of Two Graves from Lot 185 Mukim 1”, 28 Oct. 1926, SIT 724/26.

105 MPMCOM, 6 July 1892.

106 “Unlawful Burials in the Hokkien Burial Ground, Alexandra Road”. The Singapore Coroners' Inquests and Inquiries also contain some evidence that illegal burials were more common than discovered by municipal inspectors (for examples, see Inquests No. 185 of Unknown Female Child, 16 Nov. 1904 and No. 99 of Tan Buan, 1 June 1905).

107 PLCSS, 23 07 1896Google Scholar, reported in ST, 24 07 1896Google Scholar.

108 ARSM 1904, “Health Officer's Department”, p. 26Google Scholar; MPMCOM, 6 May 1904; MPMCOM, 18 Nov. 1904; ARSM 1906, “Health Officer's Report”, p. 29Google Scholar; MPMCOM, 30 Nov. 1906; ARSM 1907, “Health Officer's Report”, p. 38Google Scholar; MPMCOM, 8 May 1908.

109 Contrary to expectations, a large number of remains were unearthed despite the fact that the burial ground had been closed for forty or fifty years. As a consequence, the initial vote of $10,000 set aside in 1907 for compensation was quickly exhausted and had to be supplemented by two further votes of $10,000 each the following year (PLCSS, 17 07 1908, p. B33Google Scholar).

110 Siang, Song Ong, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984, first published in 1902), p. 421Google Scholar.

111 SFP, quoted in Song, , One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese, p. 421Google Scholar.

112 ARSM 1925, “Appendix B: Singapore Improvement Trust [1925]”, pp. 23–24Google Scholar; ARSM 1926, “Appendix: [Singapore Improvement Trust, 1926]”, pp. 16–17Google Scholar; ARSM 1927, “Appendix: Singapore Improvement Trust [1927]”, pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

113 “Appendix: [Singapore Improvement Trust, 1926]”, p. 17; “Wee Swee Teow and Co. Asks that Some Compensation may be Included in the Award for Acquisition of Lot 15 Mukim I on Account of the Exhumation and Reburial of Their Client's Ancestors”; “Tiong Bahru Improvement Scheme, Acquisition of Two Graves from Lot 185 Mukim 1”, 23 Aug. 1926, SIT 553/26.

114 For example, the trustees of the Hokkien Seh Chua burial ground negotiated for a new site in Toah Payoh on the outskirts of the Municipality in place of their old grounds at Silat Road, Telok Blangah, which were acquired by the Singapore Improvement Trust (“Forwarding Copy of a Letter from the Secretary of Chinese Affairs on the Subject of Acquiring Land Comprised in Grant No. 49 Toah Payoh as a Burial Ground for the Seh Chua Community”).

115 Report of the Committee Appointed to Make Recommendations Regarding Burial and Burial Grounds, p. 4Google Scholar.

116 MPMCOM, 26 July 1907; ARSM 1908, “Health Officer's Report”, p. 40Google Scholar.

117 MPMCOM, 2 June 1905; ARSM 1910, “Health Officer's Report”, p. 45Google Scholar.

118 Keng, Lim Boon, “Straits Chinese Reform”, The Straits Chinese Magazine 3, no. 9 (1899): 22–25Google Scholar.

119 MPMCOM, 2 June 1904; MPMCOM, 14 Dec. 1906; MPMCOM, 31 Aug. 1911.

120 Song, , One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese, p. 407Google Scholar.

121 Minutes of Joint Meeting of Finance and General Purpose and Sanitary Committees (hereafter, MJMFGPSYC), 7 July 1916; MJMFGPSYC, 25 May 1917; MPMCOM, 26 Oct. 1917.

122 MJMFGPSYC, 25 May 1917.

123 MGCM, 4 Jan. 1918; MGCM, 8 Mar. 1918; MPMCOM, 25 Oct. 1918; MPMCOM, 30 May 1919; MPMCOM, 25 July 1919; MPMCOM, 31 Oct. 1919; MPMCOM, 28 Nov. 1919.

124 MCGM, 12 Mar. 1920; Minutes of Proceedings of the Municipal Commissioners at a Special Meeting (hereafter, MPMCSM), 29 Apr. 1921.

125 ARSM 1922, “Municipal Health Officer”, p. 40DGoogle Scholar; MPMCSM, 25 Aug. 1922. By the end of 1922, there had only been 98 burials in the municipal cemetery for 1922.

126 Freedman, , “Geomancy”, p. 13Google Scholar.

127 In Chinese burial grounds, grave-plots measured a minimum of about twenty by ten feet (200 square feet) to provide space not simply for the coffin (the largest taking up about 50 square feet), but also for adequate room in front of the tombstone to provide a platform for ritual. Among the wealthy Chinese, grave-plots were considerably larger. For example, in 1926, in order to re-inter the body of their father from a private site in Tiong Bahru to the Municipal Cemetery, Lim Chan Siew and Lim Chew Chye had to reserve six adjoining plots in the latter in order to accommodate the tombstone (Report of the Committee Appointed to Make Recommendations Regarding Burial and Burial Grounds, pp. 8–9Google Scholar; “Tiong Bahru Improvement Scheme, Acquisition of Two Graves from Lot 185 Mukim 1”).

128 For the beneficial power of feng-shui to be optimized, grave alignments had to be oriented in particular directions judged auspicious for the deceased's horoscope and birth year. Each birth year is associated with particular auspicious and inauspicious compass directions and as a result, Chinese burial grounds tended to present a helter-skelter appearance with graves oriented in different directions. The provision of plots oriented in two different directions in the municipal cemetery allowed the Chinese a limited degree of geomantic choice. In general terms, a southerly orientation was considered favourable as the south was traditionally considered “the cradle of warmth, light, life and productive summer rains” (Knapp, , “The Changing Landscape”, p. 7Google Scholar; de Groot, , The Religious System of China, p. 942Google Scholar).

129 Minutes of Meeting of Sub-Committee 2, 9 Aug. 1922; MPMCOM, 25 Aug. 1922; MPMCSM, 25 Aug. 1922. It also appears that consecutive burial was not insisted upon, particular in the case of the wealthy. Instead, in certain cases, relatives could request specific plots in accordance with the geomantic requirements of the deceased. In re-intering the remains of two family members from the late Cheang Hong Lim's Alexandra Road estate to Bukit Brown, the Cheang family required a site “well above sea level”, supporting their request by reminding the authorities that “Mr Cheang Hong Lim was one of the best known citizens in this Colony during his lifetime” (“Allen and Gledhill to Messrs J.G. Campbell, 14 Oct. 1929” in “Burial Grounds on Lot No. 53 Grant 63 [Tanglin] and Lot No. 4 Grant 2 [Telok Blangah]”, 13 Feb. 1928, SIT 145/28.

130 Minutes of Meeting of Sub-Committee (Special), 14 Oct. 1921.

131 Freedman, , “Geomancy”, p. 13Google Scholar.

132 Contemporary western observers who had attempted to measure the rudimentary “science” of fengshui against “western views of physics” had often found much to disparage in the Chinese system. Rev. E.J. Eitel of the London Missionary Society, for example, concludes his monograph on feng-shui with the following words:

[W]hat I have hitherto, by a stretch of charity, called Chinese physical science is, from a scientific point of view, but a conglomeration of rough guesses of nature, sublimated by fanciful play with puerile diagrams…. It is simply the blind gropings of the Chinese mind after a system of natural science, which gropings, untutored by practical observation of nature and trusting almost exclusively in the force of abstract reasoning, naturally left the Chinese mind completely in the dark. The system of feng-shui, therefore, based as it is on human speculation and superstition and not on [a] careful study of nature, is marked for decay and dissolution (Eitel, , Feng-Shui, pp. 65, 69Google Scholar).

It was left to later writers in the 1950s such as Joseph Needham in his Science and Civilisation in China to re-evaluate the proper role of feng-shui within the context of the development of Chinese science for a western readership.

133 In a similar vein, Maurice Freedman observes that in the British colony of Hong Kong, the Government experienced difficulty countering “popular resistance by geomancy” largely because it was unable to “talk back [to the people] in their own language”. He adds,

[w]ere the Government … to share the belief of the people, it would be in a position to resist their consequences, for its officials would then be able to match their own feng-shui opinions against those of the objectors, and, if necessary call in professional geomancers to argue with those retained by the people (Freedman, , “Geomancy”, pp. 8–9Google Scholar).