73
tion of schools, contained in the Government Gazette, included: “An Upper Grade School means one in which at least part of the Staff is European. Lower Grade Schools are those under purely native management” (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 30th June, 1905, p. 1023). Earlier, Bishop Hoare, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria and South China announced at the annual prize distribution of a school noted for its ethnically ‘mixed' admissions policy that he "did not believe it was a good thing to put two races side by side in the school. He did not think they mixed. There was a gulf between the Chinaman as a Chinaman and an Englishman as an Englishman, and he did not think it was a good thing for Chinese boys to be educated side by side with English boys” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 30th January, 1901, p. 3). Amongst the largely supportive correspondence in the letters to the editor pages of the local press provoked by the report of Bishop Hoare's speech, there is a letter from a local Chinese resident, Wang Chung-yu, who argued, “Now, to exclude Chinese from certain schools means to go against the law of nature and to aggravate the hatred between Chinese and foreigners.... My experience goes to show that, as a rule, European boys in school generally depreciate things Chinese, and therefore there is no need to fear that European boys may learn any bad method of thinking peculiar to the Chinese.” (Hong Kong Daily Press, 7th February, 1901, p. 3).
48 Sweeting (1983), p. 274.
49 Despite the lack of warmth and closeness in the personal and social relations between the two communities, there was, in a sense, a reciprocal interest by certain Westerners for "Things Chinese". This interest was largely intellectual (anthropological and literary) and is, perhaps, best exemplified by Dyer Ball's large publication, which in later editions became increasingly larger, actually entitled Things Chinese. See the Introduction and Prefaces of J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press reprint, with Introduction by H.J. Lethbridge, 1982 of the 5th Edition revised by E. Chalmers Werner, 1925). Interestingly enough, Dyer Ball also published a book entitled Cantonese Made Easy, which by 1904 had reached its 3rd Edition.