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MATERIALS FOR A HISTORY OF
EDUCATION IN HONGKONG.
The compiler of the subjoined Materials for a History of Education in Hongkong' has no further aim on this occasion beyond putting together desultory fragments of in- formation on the subjet which he has so far been able to collect. Although these mate- rials are mostly in rough and unhewn form, and defective with reference to some particu- lar
years, the compiler nevertheless thinks that, even in this incomplete form, they will give the reader a tolerably clear picture of the course which education has run in this Colony. The general ignorance which pre- vails in vogkong as to the earliest periods of the history of lucul education, say from 1841 to 1857, and the absence of any publication bearing on this epoch, are surely a sufficient excuse for publishing the subjoined annals, crude and fragmentary as they are,
If any one better qualified will some day under- take the task of writing a pragmatic history of local education, he may find this collection of materials of considerable help. for, as the years pass by, the sources of information as to the earlier decades of our local history become less accessible and less intelligible.
1841. The history of Hongkong, as a British Colony, commences with the year 1841. At the beginning of that year the Island of Hongkong was ceded to the British
Crown (20 January, 1841) under the treaty which was solemnly concluded between the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Kisben, and H. M. Chief Saperintendent of the Trade of British Subjeels in China, Captain Ch. Elliot, R. N., at the fort called Chuen- pi, bear the Boces Tigris, below Whampoa. At that time there were residing in Hoog- kong about 5000 Chinese, some 4000 of whom spoke the Punti and the remainder the Hakka dialect. These people were seat- tered over more than twenty villages and hamlets, among which Shaukiwan (then called Ngo-yan-wan), Wonguaichung, Chik- chi (subsequently named Stanley), Shek. paiwan (now known as Aberdeen), Heong- kong (the present Little Hongkong), and Shekb counted the largest number of in- habitants. With the exception of the Hakka villages of Wongnaichung, Little Hongkong and some smaller inland hamlets (Sookonpoe, Hungheungloo, Shaiwan, Tui- tumtuk and Wongmakok), the inhabitants of which made their living chiefly by agri- cultural pursuits, the Chinese, who for cen- turies post had settled at various points along the shores of Hongkong, were almost exclusively fisherman, But many of the latter, and notably the boat population of Shankiwau and Aberdeen (including the islet of Aplichau), combined professional,
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