Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 August 29

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August 29

Was Perseus on the Argo?

User:Drawingpad has edited the Argonauts article to indicate that Perseus was on the Argo, with no source given. Is this true, and can someone give a source? It seems implausible, because his great-grandson Heracles was also on the ship for a short while. – b_jonas 08:57, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

No, Perseus is a character in Argonautica but was not himself an Argonaut. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:08, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Stairway to heaven?

In our flats a lift tower has been built out in front of the staircase, which connects the balconies of the different floors. Between the stairs and the lift on each floor there is a landing with a wide ledge on each side. At lunchtime yesterday as I passed one landing on the way out I saw the ledge on the side adjacent to a Chinese family's flat piled high with the most wonderful meal - all different kinds of sweetmeat and fruit and bordered with candle holders. It reminded me of what I saw, on a smaller scale, when I went into a temple in Kuala Lumpur 44 years ago. When I returned later in the afternoon it had vanished.

My question is - is this something to do with a Chinese religious festival? Yesterday was a full moon and I heard that the eighth (August) moon is an important (dragon boat?) festival. If the Chinese New Year was about three weeks into January (as it sometimes is) this would tally, but if it was about three weeks into February (as it also sometimes is) then it wouldn't. Is this traditional and what might have happened to the meal? I could of course simply knock on the Chinese family's door and ask but I don't really know them and I don't want to be thought nosy. 80.43.176.34 (talk) 10:48, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

By the time you returned, maybe they had finished defrosting their refrigerator. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:38, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

But why the candles and all the bother of taking the food outside when they could just leave it on the work surface? There was nobody around so if this was just routine housekeeping there was the added disincentive that any passing resident could tuck in or divert some of it to their own use. 80.43.176.34 (talk) 12:12, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese holidays says Aug 28 this year is the date for the Ghost Festival.184.147.128.46 (talk) 15:53, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, and the voices of those who stand looking. If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. A new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter. Dear lady, did you hear the wind blow? InedibleHulk (talk) 03:34, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

And that strange bit of poetry would likely make sense only to people who would leave food outside in the hallway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

There's a truth to your call, but I want to make sure, because sometimes words have two meanings. Like, sometimes plants aren't in hedgerows and pages aren't in books. In other other words, Led Zeppelin appeals to those people, not me. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the hallway. In this country flats are arranged with an external balcony so that residents can enter their homes directly from the street - the only hallways are in their own homes. This allows the postman to deliver to houses individually, just as on a normal street. He posts the mail directly into each house through a letter box carved into the front door like a catflap. The tenants were doing what the article says - leaving food on an outside table for the spirits of their ancestors to eat, this being the time of year when they visit their relations who are living. 78.145.16.226 (talk) 13:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Non whites in the UK (1960s/70s)

How visible were black and Asian people in Britain's streets in the 1960s and 70s? I am referring to average towns not including London or Birmingham. Thank you. --Edmund-islington (talk) 20:44, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Just personal anecdote here, but while I was at school in a provincial county town in the late 60s to mid 70s, we didn't have a single black person in the entire school. The only people of non-British origin were a second-generation Ukrainian and an Iranian. Rojomoke (talk) 21:56, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Another personal anecdote: my primary school class in 1966 in Leytonstone, East London was all white British. In our last year at primary school, 1970, of 32 children there was one girl from a West Indian family and one girl from India, although some of the other classes were a little more mixed. At my comprehensive school, by the mid-1970s, we were about two thirds white British with a lot more Indian and Pakistani children, many of whom seen to have come from Kenya. The total population of that borough, Waltham Forest, is now 62% "from minority ethnic background". [1] Alansplodge (talk) 23:26, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Another personal anecdote, growing up in rural North Wales, I was about 10 years old when I first saw black people in the flesh, a group of kids at the Marine Lake amusement park in Rhyl, who if I recall from their accents were probably from Birmingham; I remember being amazed (probably just as much at Brummies as their being black). When I started secondary school in 1969, out of over 600 kids in school there were two - an Indian kid whose dad was a doctor in a local hospital (I remember our teacher taking a survey of what language we spoke at home, getting the usual answers of "English", and "Welsh", and being totally flummoxed by "Merathi" and having to find out how to spell it!), and an Italian kid with distinctly olive-coloured skin who was a bit unusual. Later on we had a couple of Chinese kids whose parents ran the take-away. The biggest ethnic minority in our area at the time was Polish, as one of the biggest post-war resettlement camps had been around 20 miles away. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 08:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

It even varied between villages in conurbations. Aged 9, I moved from a school in one part of the borough which was about 40% non-white, to a school the other side of the borough which was totally white. It's much the same now to be honest, but such neighbourhoods are fewer and farther between. --TammyMoet (talk) 08:55, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

We could do with a bit less anecdotal evidence here, and more direction towards reliable sources. Unfortunately, the raw information from the 1971 census is not at all easy to track down online - but that is where surely we should be looking. (But, it should be noted that in 1971 questions were only asked about birthplace and parents' birthplace, not specifically about perceived ethnicity.) You may be able to find the original documents in your local public library, of course. And, an "average town" is difficult to identify - the original enquirer needs to specify more precisely whether we are talking about a medium-sized city, a medium-sized rural market town, or somewhere in between. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:15, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Most of the Asian (Indian-subcontinent) and Afro-Caribbean immigration to the UK was immediately post-WWII (Modern_immigration_to_the_United_Kingdom#Post-war_immigration_.(1945–1983) ); I'm not sure what time-period most of the Oriental (Far-East) immigration to the UK occurred. Given that, most of the Asian and Afro-Caribbean immigrants would be either first or second generation immigrants, you could dig through the census for several representative towns, finding those who were born aboard, and check the ages of their children (if that was asked in the census). LongHairedFop (talk) 11:20, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The phrase "immediately post-WWII" may need qualification, our MV Empire Windrush article says it is "best remembered today for bringing one of the first large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom... in 1948" so the peak period of Caribbean immigration would have to be later than that. Alansplodge (talk) 17:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Population Trends - Stability and change in ethnic groups in England and Wales (Pdf 166Kb) may help. It is a report on a group of people who were picked randomly from the census and then followed from 1974 to 2004. Therefore, the people were a sample of the entirety of England and Wales. Although ethnicity wasn't asked about on earlier census, it was after 1991, so they were able to find out retroactively the ethnicities of their sample in 1974.

Numbers aren't my forte so I welcome correction, but if you look at the chart on page 39, it seems to say that they were following 417,514 people in total. Using their best retroactive guess, in 1974 392,582 or 94% were white. 3392+1225+1235 or 1.4% were from the Caribbean or Africa. 8576+4310+1652+1341 or 3.8% were from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh. 1118+2053 or less than 1% were from China or ticked “other”.

I didn’t read on to see if these data were broken down by location, so do that, Edmund, but if they aren’t you’ll still need the anecdotal information given above. 184.147.128.46 (talk) 12:07, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The anecdotal information is still needed because the OP asked about "visibility" which you don't get from boring old statistics. A census can tell you where someone was born, but it won't necessarily tell you who was white (for example, Colin Cowdrey or Cliff Richard) or who was black or Asian: nor will it tell you what their habits were, whether they socialised openly and were visible on the streets. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:55, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

True, but it's more likely to give more helpful information than the reminiscences of random people on the internet. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)