Introduction / Helen F. Siu and David Faure -- Lineage on the sands : the case of Shawan / Liu Zhiwei -- Territorial community at the town of Lubao, Sanshui County, from the Ming Dynasty / Luo Yixing -- Ordination names in Hakka genealogies : a religious practice and its decline / Chan Wing-Hoi -- Notes on the territorial connections of the Dan / Ye Xian'en -- Notes and impressions of the Cheung Chau community / James Hayes -- Reinforcing ethnicity : the Jiao Festival in Cheung Chau / Choi Chi-Cheung -- The alliance of ten : settlement and politics in the Sha Tau Kok area / Patrick Hase --Lineage socialism and community control : Tangang Xiang in the 1920s and 1930s / David Faure -- Subverting lineage power : local bosses and territorial control in the 1940s / Helen F. Siu -- Conclusion : History and anthropology / Helen F. Siu and David Faure.

Introduction -- Historical geography -- Exotic Guangzhou -- Confucian incursions -- We and they -- The land -- From registered households to lineages -- Early Ming society -- The recession of labor service -- The Yao wars and ritual orthodoxy -- Administrative transition -- Lineages gentrified -- Lineage building: the Huo surname of Foshan -- Magnates on the sands -- From Ming to Qing -- Gentry leadership in local society -- The end of empire -- The proliferation of lineage institutions -- The ordering of community in ritual life -- Incorporation: the power of an idea -- A note on prosperity -- The nineteenth-century transformation -- The Mulberry Garden dike -- From paramilitary to militia -- Local power in the Taiping rebellion -- The foreign element in Pearl River Delta Society -- Contradictions of the nation-state: the backwardness of lineages -- Epilogue -- Beyond the Pearl River Delta.