[ { "id": 206246, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "LETTERS FROM China 1835-36\n\n57\n\nof subjects that will one day avenge themselves on all of us if neglected. This is almost a more painful sight than the ignorance of the poor Chinese around us; it is being regularly \"blinded by the god of this world\" in spite of the light of day; in the other case, day has not yet dawned on the benighted souls.....\n\nI am more chagrined than I can tell you, at being unable as the time draws nigh, to give Herschel any hopes of meteorological observations here on the 21st Inst. Instruments cannot be borrowed from the Ships at Whampoa, and I cannot leave Canton for two days at this over-busy season to go to the instruments, and I have tried to move one or two Ships' Officers residing there in vain. My old Partner G.I. Gordon (whom you may know by my report of old, for a man of uncommon talents and most cultivated mind, as well as amiable and honorable feelings) is at Macao now, with Herschel's brochure in his hands, endeavoring something: he may be up here in a few days and then I shall know the worst. I look forward to disappointment on this 21st Decr as now fixed. But if I live till 21st March, I shall have better hopes of doing something, however little that something be, because for one thing I shall not be so excessively busy in office at that period as at present. So my regret though great is not altogether despair; and I wish you would give H. [Herschel] my warm love with the assurance of the hearty zeal I take in this matter, and which I shall yet evince I hope more practically than in all this bow-wowing.\n\nI am sending under the care of Lieutenant P. Nicolson by this opportunity, a small parcel to H's [Herschel's] address containing what I daresay will be a great curiosity to you both – genuine Chinese Map of China, and eke of both hemispheres. The latter (the Old World at least) you will make out immediately. But the New World will be new to most Geographers who look at it. I am sorry I have not time to search for some translation of the Chinese characters on it, but perhaps I may supply the want yet. Accompanying this map, is a Prospectus of a most excellent Institution lately set agoing here, for the success of which I feel a deep interest - a Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society in China! Is not the idea good? Simple elementary Treatises on all useful subjects to be translated by it and diffused as much as possible, over the Empire, and into the Imperial Palace itself if", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206973, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "38 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nsize—we hear the gong, and set off along its passages into the dining room. It is a regular hall, 50 or 60 yards long. The far side is broken by a row of French windows opening on to the stone verandah, which looks out over the harbour. A double row of great white punkahs, down the whole length of the place, swing slowly. The bright blazing sunshine outside is tempered by green blinds, let down over the arches of the verandah. Thirty or forty Chinese \"boys\" in complete and flowing white, keep up a perpetual come and go in their attendance on the tables. These suitably imposing surroundings became the setting for Mayréna's Hong Kong adventure.\n\nMayréna, the China Mail animadverted, ‘from an ardent pietist became a man of the world... He became an admirer of the opera and with royal prodigality distributed tickets to his friends'. The 'Queen' with her dames d'honneur were welcomed frequently at the Hotel, the 'Queen' arriving in a chair with four bearers, draped in regal sashes. Hong Kong, of course, was electrified by Mayréna's theatrical coups; but money was not forthcoming from the amused public. J.J. Francis, for example, was almost persuaded to finance a company for the working of the new kingdom but at the last moment backed out; other astute European businessmen refused to invest. But the King continued to make friends, to enchant his visitors, and to hold nightly revels in the public rooms and tap-rooms of the Hotel. After all, Mayréna, a great showman, provided splendid entertainment for a dull little Colony, accustomed to a stale diet of 'At Homes' and stodgy dinner-parties.\n\nUnluckily, Mayréna's waking hours were dogged by one Afong, a Chinese shopkeeper from Haiphong, who had supplied a large number of uniforms for the King's warrior hosts and had come to Hong Kong to present his bill. The jaunty Mayréna at first ‘gave it out that the Chinaman was a member of a syndicate that wished to advance him money; but as this story would hardly hold for long, the Chinaman was finally appeased'. It soon became clear, then, that Mayréna was not a man of substance, that his schemes were insubstantial, and that he was simply an amusing adventurer, good for a convivial debauch but hardly a sound partner in any serious business venture.\n\nIt was, however, the editor of the China Mail, George Murray Bain, who really brought about Mayréna's downfall by a systema-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "94\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\nThe 1876 Reciprocity Treaty with the United States increased the demand for labor. The 1876 biennial report of the Hawaiian Minister of Finance furnished some data of government expenditures for its active assistance in importation of Chinese labor. The expenditures for the aid of immigration during that past fiscal period was $8,850; of which $3,850 was to pay the passages for 154 arriving Chinese laborers and $5,000 was advanced to a firm of rice planters, Chulan and Company, who had 210 Chinese laborers on their way from Hong Kong.\n\n3\n\nLetters of credit were also given to Afong and Achuck and to Luke Asiu to assist passages of 400 laborers to come to Hawaii's sugar plantations. The Hawaiian government expected return of the money advanced by an arrangement with the plantations through payroll deductions.\n\nLabor conditions in Hawaii were strongly influenced by Christian missionary presence in Hawaii. In the 1882 report of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, it was said that missionaries kept vigilant watch on the treatment of laborers. \"A responsibility rests upon the plantations and the Christian public for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Chinese laborers who are not mere chattels but as human beings possessing rational and immortal souls and having the same natural rights as all others.\n\nThe labor supply problem was one of the concerns that led King Kalakaua to make his historic voyage.\n\nWith the affairs of his Kingdom in good order, King Kalakaua started on his world trip on January 20, 1881, on the City of Sydney which was then northbound from Australia to San Francisco. Accompanying him were Attorney General William Armstrong and the Royal Chamberlain, Colonel Charles H. Judd. Armstrong was commissioned as Minister of State, which would place him in the same rank as the Cabinet Ministers of any sovereign and entitle him to the respect and courtesies due to that rank. He was also made Royal Commissioner of Immigration to look for \"cognate\" sources of labor to solve the problem of a depleted native population. Colonel Judd, also from an American missionary family and an 1849 schoolmate of David Kalakaua at the Royal School, joined the Royal party to advise and guide the King on protocol and etiquette. Robert von Oehlhoffen, former German baron and an...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210835, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "169\n\nTHE BITTER FRUIT OF MISSIONARY CHARITY\n\nNg Mun-sow, one of the three students baptised in Scotland, was the closest to Dr. James Legge. As a boy he had been received as a foster son in the Legge family.\n\nThe missionaries of that day had a way of picking up homeless or orphan children and providing them with a home and education. There were numerous instances of this kind of benevolence.\n\nThe effect on the child was not always beneficial. It took him out of his natural element and placed him in a foreign language group, taught him manners and customs different from his countrymen and sometimes gave him an inflated sense of his own importance. The initial act of compassion and kindness could not clearly anticipate the effect it might produce.\n\nDr. Legge reports how he first met Ng Mun-sow at Malacca. “I was visiting one day some districts in the neighbourhood, rather thickly occupied by Chinese farmers, and distributed tracts along with several members of the native church. As we passed a herd of buffaloes, the Evangelist Agong, pointing to the boy who was in charge of them, said: “There is an object for the benevolence of the mission. His father and mother are dead and none of his people will do much for him. Why should you not take him with you to the college, and educate him as your own son, to be a preacher of the Word?\"\n\n\"The boy was called, and at once signified his willingness to follow us. A few words of explanation served to satisfy the farmer with whom he was residing. A-sow went with us.”\n\nDr. Legge became very fond of him. He was clever. He had an outgoing personality. He made friends easily, perhaps a little too easily.\n\nWhen the Legge family moved from Malacca to Hongkong in 1843, Ng Mun-sow was with them. He was in the first class of the reorganised Anglo-Chinese College. He had ability and made good progress. Dr. Legge's expectation regarding his future was greatly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210839, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "173\n\nmisdeeds and asking to be received back. He was not immediately reinstated as a member in good standing by the church, but the missionary committee permitted him to teach again. His salary, however, was reduced from $20 to $15 a month, until he was granted full fellowship in the church.\n\nIn reporting this, Dr. Legge says: \"He continues to exhibit a humble and subdued deportment.” Some time after he was restored by the church, he was described as “a wiser and seemingly better man.\"\n\n**\n\nIn 1853 he was sent by Dr. Legge to Shanghai to investigate the possibility of missionaries taking up residence at Nanking, the capital of the Taiping Kingdom.\n\nThe missionaries hoped to influence the Taiping movement and correct some of its mistaken views of Christianity which formed a part of its ideology.\n\nAs a companion on the trip A-sow had another Hongkong mission worker, Keuh Agong, sometimes also called Wat Angong. He was the same man who years earlier had called Dr. Legge's attention to the boy A-sow as a possible object of Dr. Legge's benevolence.\n\nThe investigatory trip of the two men from Hongkong was unsuccessful. Conditions created by the conflict between the Taiping and the Imperialist armies prevented their making the necessary contacts at Nanking.\n\nAfter his return to Hongkong, A-sow taught English to advanced students at a day school opened by the London Missionary Society in their rebuilt Bazaar Chapel. He also began to do some preaching, but not for long.\n\nTowards the close of 1855, Dr. Legge had this to report: \"The young man A-sow, who had received so many advantages, turned aside in the course of the year to the world, and we had to declare his separation from the church.” He was again associating with bad companions and his conduct violated the standards of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211725, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "115\n\ncheapest tenements, on the upper floors.\n\nConclusion\n\nFollowing the boom period in the 1970s, the joss stick industry is having a hard time in the 1980s. The failure of the industry to mechanize constitutes the major stumbling block to its future development. Faced with the problems of rising labour costs and labour shortage, the industry is now increasingly left in the hands of an aging labour force which averaged over 60 years of age in 1987. This decrease in overall productivity caused by aging would cope very well with the dwindling market if not for the increased competition from China. Since China's open door policy was announced in 1978, joss sticks were allowed to be produced again and production quickly resumed in Hsin-hui, Tung-kuan and Shao-hsing. The incomparably lower wages demanded in China and the availability of large pieces of cheap land enable the incense products of China to be more competitive. Though only two-grade products are currently being produced there, the potential of the Chinese supply is strongly shown in its dominance of the Hong Kong and South-East Asian markets for low-grade incense. It is generally felt that the aging of the labour force, shortage of capital, failure to mechanize factories and external competition will result in the inevitable decline of the industry in Hong Kong. The general attitude of the industry is pessimistic and a total collapse of the industry in Hong Kong within 20 years is anticipated.\n\nAcknowledgements:\n\nThis paper is based in part on an undergraduate thesis written by the author in the Department of Geography and Geology, University of Hong Kong. The author would like to thank Dr. Richard T.A. Irving for his supervision, and Dr. Elizabeth Y.Y. Sinn and Dr. P.H. Hase for their comments and suggestions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215995, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 294, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "228\n\nany rate habitually did not, and those who did, is one of the most significant within the literate realm, perhaps as important as the distinction between those who did and did not have full access to the literary tradition.\n\nThe fact that Ch'a later had others write down what he dictated about his experiences suggests that he was one of these people in the middle: able to read, but not yet able to write well. See the further discussion in David Johnson's article, \"Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China”, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, pp. 34-72, here p. 38.\n\n30. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n31. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215.\n\n32. This story is part of the collection of vignettes in a typed manuscript entitled Reminiscences (pp. 15-18, quotation from p. 15) held in the Bodleian Library (Ms. Eng. misc. c. 812). Many of these stories show signs of an aging man not remembering particular details of dates and places, but there appears to be no good reason to doubt the authenticity of this encounter between Legge and Ch'ëa itself. It appears nowhere else in Legge's writings, and serves as one of the basic texts for Helen Edith Legge's typescript, \"Che'a Kin-Kwang.”\n\n33. Rambo refers to this as a further motif in conversion initially identified by John Lofland and Rodney Stark. It involves the \"direct, personal experience of being loved, nurtured, and affirmed by a group and its leaders\" (Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, p. 15).\n\n34. For a helpful summary of Mary Isabella Legge's life see the section related to \"Mary Isabella Morison\" in Wong Man-kong, \"Hidden in History: London Missionary Society Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century China (1807-1877)”, in Lí Hànjī, ed., Dú shĩ cúngão (Reading History: Extant Documents) (Hong Kong: Xuéfeng wénhuà Co., 1998), esp. pages 156-160.\n\n35. The timing of Ch'ea's leaving his post at the Poklo temple was not certain in an earlier letter, but Ch'ea himself dictates this fact in a letter translated into English for overseas readers. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p.207. The following descriptions come from this and another translated statement (pp. 207-209) prepared by another convert led back to Hong Kong by Ch'ea, as will be described below.\n\n36. This is the intent of the seventh of the sixteen edicts, translated by Legge as \"Discountenance and put away strange principles, in order to exalt the correct doctrine” (chủ viduàn vì chống zhèng xuê). Among the “strange principles” regarded as unacceptable were Buddhist and Daoist extremities, rebellious groups like the secret societies of the White Lotus, and the Catholic religion. Legge makes clear that the condemnation of Catholicism \"must be understood simply of Christianity\" as a whole. See James Legge, \"Imperial Confucianism\" (Lecture II), China Review, 6:4 (October 1877), pp. 232-235.\n\n37. In a similar way Hong Xiùquán was seen as \"mad\" by his family and neighbours, but had experienced a physical breakdown after repeated failures in the civil examinations during the time he began having visions. The experience of Ch'ea on this score is quite different, in that he apparently maintained a relative engagement with his local lifeworld until he returned from Hong Kong in the summer of 1856. Compare Hamberg's account taken down from Hong Réngan's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]