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CARL SMITH
invited all the important people and white men in Malacca,
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う
to a gathering at six o'clock in the morning. Assembling there they buried their contributions of money, altogether $70 or $80, in a hole scooped out in a stone below the door. Then they all raised the door into position and Mr. Milne, coming forward and striking it with his hand, declared that the place was the Anglo-Chinese College."
Abdullah must have been at the edge of the crowd unable to see clearly what was put into the hole in the foundation stone. Seventy or eighty dollars would not likely have been buried. What probably was buried was a few token coins which were often placed in foundation stones.
A-FA: SEEDS OF THE TAIPING REBELLION
The first full-time Chinese student of the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca was Liang A-fa. There is no evidence that he was a particularly brilliant scholar, but the college was always proud to claim him as a former student.
He was a native of Ko Ming District in the province of Kwangtung. His previous education had consisted of a few years at his village school. He began his education late, at the age of 11, and when he was 15 he left the village to learn a trade in the city of Canton as village schools usually provided only a rudimentary education. If one had hopes of being a scholar, attendance at an advanced academy or instruction by a private tutor was the usual procedure.
Liang A-fa, in spite of the few years of study when an adult at the Anglo-Chinese College, never developed a proper classical style of writing. This, however, did not discourage him from composing and printing Christian tracts. Sometimes he would have a scholar revise them to make them more literary.
After learning the block cutting trade in Canton, he was engaged by one of Rev. Dr. Robert Morrison's assistants to carve blocks for the printing of a Chinese translation of the New Testament. Such work for foreigners was not looked on with favour by Chinese