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- and these should be seen in the context of other idiosyncrasies and other errors in the published works of those Europeans who wrote about Chinese culture, society, and language English Made Easy remains an interesting and substantial effort to help others less fortunate than himself. For this reason, the life and career of Mok Man Cheung needs to be examined to enable the full significance of his publication to be gauged. As will be seen in more detail below, Mok made his effort to help his compatriots nearly twenty years after he had left the teaching profession and several years after he had ceased being a professional interpreter and translator. By 1904, Mok Man Cheung was well established as a compradore and commission agent. There was certainly no financial need behind his writing of the book. Instead, he should receive the credit for having taken up the challenge of being a middleman and go-between in the most practical and, to his fellow-Chinese, the most helpful of ways. That he deemed this task worthwhile is a comment which itself provides insight into the social history of the time and, especially into the social history of education.
Significance of the life and career of Mok Man Cheung (the setting for snapshots 2 and 3)
In many ways, Mok Man Cheung was a typical product of the interaction of Chinese culture and enterprise with British colonial, bureaucratic, and commercial power. This interaction put a premium on the development of a group of middlemen or go-between. As the details outlined below demonstrate, Mok Man Cheung's education and career qualify him for membership of several of the categories analyzed by Carl Smith for the emerging Chinese elite in Hong Kong, even though his name has not yet been singled out by Smith. He was "English educated". He worked for a time as a translator. He became involved in the educational and the legal professions. He moved into the compradore class and, later, as “commission agent", also performed compradorial services on a freelance basis. As a non-official Justice of the Peace towards the end of his career, he can be counted as one of the “English-speaking Chinese advisers to the Government”
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- and these should be seen in the context of other idiosyncracies and other errors in the published works of those Europeans who wrote about Chinese culture, society, and language English Made Easy remains an interesting and substantial effort to help others less fortunate than himself. For this reason, the life and career of Mok Man Cheung needs to be examined to enable the full significance of his publication to be gauged. As will be seen in more detail below, Mok made his effort to help his compatriots nearly twenty years after he had left the teaching profession and several years after he had ceased being a professional interpreter and translator. By 1904, Mok Man Cheung was well established as a compradore and commission agent. There was certainly no fi- nancial need behind his writing of the book. Instead, he should receive the credit for having taken up the challenge of being a middleman and go-between in the most practical and, to his fellow-Chinese, the most helpful of ways. That he deemed this task worthwhile is a comment which itself provides insight into the social history of the time and, especially into the social history of education.
Significance of the life and career of Mok Man Cheung (the setting for snapshots 2 and 3)
In many ways, Mok Man Cheung was a typical product of the interaction of Chinese culture and enterprise with British colonial, bureaucratic, and commercial power. This interaction put a pre- mium on the development of a group of middlemen or go- between." As the details outlined below demonstrate, Mok Man Cheung's education and career qualify him for membership of several of the categories analyzed by Carl Smith for the emerging Chinese elite in Hong Kong, even though his name has not yet been singled out by Smith." He was "English educated”. He worked for a time as a translator. He became involved in the educational and the legal professions. He moved into the compra- dore class and, later, as “commission agent", also performed compradorial services on a freelance basis. As a non-official Justice of the Peace towards the end of his career, he can be counted as one of the “English-speaking Chinese advisers to the Government" 22
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