Acknowledgements

This article is based on fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong during the academic year 1989-1990 and in Chaozhou (mainland China) and Taiwan during the academic year 1990-91. It developed out of a paper presented at the 3rd International Conference of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME) held at Leiden, The Netherlands, on August 29-31, 1997.

I am grateful to both the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and to the Office of International Studies Programmes (OISP) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for financing the year of research in Hong Kong. I am indebted to the Pacific Cultural Foundation in Taiwan for the grant that made possible the year of research in both Chaozhou and Taiwan. Follow-up fieldwork in 1992 was made possible by a Fritz scholarship from the Henry Jackson School for International Studies at the University of Washington. Write-up and revision were greatly facilitated by a research stipend and a semester-long leave of absence supported by a Goddard Fellowship from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of New York University. Thanks are due to Visvanathan Ramesh, Tom Brett, Scott Spencer, Stuart Frankel, Richard Caldwell and Giselle Felipe for their technical assistance in preparing this article for online publication.