ABSTRACT
A basic idea of traditional Chinese rural society in the Guangdong Province is that land is an agnatic source. Rice cultivation in flooded fields is everywhere endowed with special meaning. Charles Grant supplied with some land use maps from the period, which show that rice was an important crop then. Rising costs of living, lack of arable land, and population growth are factors which together created a situation characterized by feminization of the farm work process, and an increasing abandonment of land. In some instances villagers in Tai Wai have sold off their inherited land holdings to urban speculators and deposited the money thus gained in a bank. The villagers, both the majority who act as landlords and the few, who have followed the outsiders in taking up gardening, remain within a system of meaning, linked with the cultivation of rice.
