64
the need to make the record appear to indicate a full three years' participation in such a scheme. This is slightly more convincing as an explanation. A final possibility is that Mok wished to draw attention away from the fact that he was a teacher at the Central School from 1884 to 1887. It is interesting to speculate about the reasons for this desire. Is it a coincidence, for example, that these were precisely the years during which Sun Yat Sen, the future revolutionary leader and President of the Republic of China, then known as Sun Tai Tseung, attended the Central School? It is possible that the young assistant teacher and the new pupil became friends. It is also possible that, in 1906, it struck Mok Man Cheung that public knowledge of this attachment would have been inconvenient and, therefore, he post-dated his teaching career's commencement to 1888, the year after Sun Yat Sen left the Central School for the newly formed Hong Kong College of Medicine for the Chinese. In 1906, the Empress Dowager was still alive. A belated Reform Movement was in operation in a last desperate, but vain, attempt to save the Qing dynasty and the Imperial system. As mentioned above, only two years earlier, in the first edition of his English Made Easy, Mok Man Cheung had given precedence to words like Emperor and Crown Prince. He had referred to queues and queue-strings as normal items, at the very time when for revolutionaries and even reformers they were regarded as symbols of Manchu oppression. There is no doubt that at this particular time open evidence of an affiliation with Sun Yat Sen would have been commercially, socially and politically undesirable, though, like several other middlemen of the period, Mok might have been quietly keeping his connections open with all sides.
Discussion of the significance of Mok Man Cheung's career
So much then for the worldly successes and possible problems of Mok Man Cheung. Whatever his innermost thoughts may have been, there can be little doubt that he strove outwardly to take advantage of the colonial, commercial, and social establishment of his time. Significantly, his book, English Made Easy, attempted to bridge the enormous gap between the Chinese and British communities in Hong Kong at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned above, this was a period which was not
64
the need to make the record appear to indicate a full three years' participation in such a scheme. This is slightly more convincing as an explanation. A final possibility is that Mok wished to draw attention away from the fact that he was a teacher at the Central School from 1884 to 1887. It is interesting to speculate about the reasons for this desire. Is it a coincidence, for example, that these were precisely the years during which Sun Yat Sen, the future revolutionary leader and President of the Republic of China, then known as Sun Tai Tseung, attended the Central School? It is possi- ble that the young assistant teacher and the new pupil became friends. It is also possible that, in 1906, it struck Mok Man Cheung that public knowledge of this attachment would have been incon- venient and, therefore, he post-dated his teaching career's com- mencement to 1888, the year after Sun Yat Sen left the Central School for the newly formed Hong Kong College of Medicine for the Chinese. In 1906, the Empress Dowager was still alive. A belat- ed Reform Movement was in operation in a last desperate, but vain, attempt to save the Qing dynasty and the Imperial system. As mentioned above, only two years earlier, in the first edition of his English Made Easy, Mok Man Cheung had given precedence to words like Emperor and Crown Prince. He had referred to queues and queue-strings as normal items, at the very time when for revolutionaries and even reformers they were regarded as sym- bols of Manchu oppression. There is no doubt that at this particu- lar time open evidence of an affiliation with Sun Yat Sen would have been commercially, socially and politically undesirable, though, like several other middlemen of the period, Mok might have been quietly keeping his connections open with all sides.
Discussion of the significance of Mok Man Cheung's career
So much then for the worldly successes and possible problems of Mok Man Cheung." Whatever his innermost thoughts may have been, there can be little doubt that he strove outwardly to take advantage of the colonial, commercial, and social establish- ment of his time. Significantly, his book, English Made Easy, attempted to bridge the enormous gap between the Chinese and British communities in Hong Kong at the beginning of the twenti- eth century. As mentioned above, this was a period which was not
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.