Kaihsienkung

English

Etymology

From Mandarin 開弦弓／开弦弓 (Kāixiángōng), Wade–Giles romanization: Kʻai¹-hsien²-kung¹.

Proper noun

Kaihsienkung

1. Alternative form of Kaixiangong
   • 1939, Hsiao-tung (費孝通) Fei, 江村經濟 [Peasant Life in China]‎^[1], London: George Routledge and Sons, →OCLC, →OL, pages 9–10:

     The village chosen for my investigation is called Kaihsienkung, locally pronounced kejiug’on. It is situated on the south-east bank of Lake Tai, in the lower course of the Yangtze River and about eighty miles west of Shanghai.

   • 1958, Elman R. Service, Profiles in Ethnology‎^[2], Harper & Row, published 1963, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 451:

     At the time of Fei’s study, Kaihsienkung had two headmen. The elder of the two did not deal with the higher government, having allowed a younger man to fill the official post.

   • 1966, Maurice Freedman, “Relations Between Lineages”, in Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung‎^[3], Athlone Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 98:

     Geddes goes over what Fei said on cross-cousin marriage in the village, amplifying the analysis at one point, but not treating the matter more generally. The implication appears to be that cross-cousin marriage no longer takes place in Kaihsienkung.

   • 1980, Arthur P. Wolf, Chieh-shan Huang, “Introduction”, in Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945‎^[4], Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 8:

     Since it is unlikely that these families averaged more than one unmarried son old enough to be matched with a t’ung-yang-hsi, these figures suggest that minor marriages accounted for approximately 20 percent of all first marriages. This was in 1931. Five years later the distinguished anthropologist Fei Hsiao-tung found approximately the same incidence of minor marriage in Kaihsienkung, a village on the shore of Lake T’ai in southern Kiangsu.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Kaihsienkung.

Further reading

• Kaihsienkung at Google Ngram Viewer