[ { "id": 204509, "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-1962", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "126\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE SUNG WONG TOI INSCRIPTION\n\nIn the year 1277 A.D. Mongol troops overran the Canton area and the one but last Sung emperor, Ti Cheng, who was still a boy, took refuge in the neighbourhood of the present Kowloon City. In this area there was a small hill with a flat top and on this the followers of the boy emperor constructed a lookout, which afterwards became known as Sung Wong T’oi ('terrace of the Sung emperor') while the hill was called the 'Sacred Mount'.\n\nIn 1807 the three characters 宋皇台 (Sung-wong t'oi) were carved on a very large boulder on the Sacred Mount, and remained there until 1943 when the Japanese partially demolished the hill during their occupation of Hong Kong in order to make room for an extension to the airport. Eventually the inscription from the great rock of Sung Wong Toi was placed in its present position in the Sung Wong Toi Park which is off Sung Wong Toi Road near Kai Tak airport.\n\nThus this stone inscription has been preserved and provides a permanent reminder of Kowloon's association with the end of the Sung Dynasty.\n\nThere is a detailed account of these events written in Chinese by Mr. Lo Hsiang-lin ✯ of the Department of Oriental Studies in the University of Hong Kong which can be found in his book Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, 1959).\n\nJ. L. C-B.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205399, "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-1967", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "154\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n1626 the Manchus were stopped in their tracks at Ning-yüan by the foreign artillery. But this setback was not to last very long. They saw the usefulness of these weapons and set about casting some themselves. These proved effective in the conquest of the northern frontier (1643-44) and in the years to follow as their armies plunged on down across both the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers to Kwangtung and Kweichow.\n\nColumbia University\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nNOTES\n\n1 In this I have consulted Mr. C. N. Tay of the American Museum of Numismatics, New York City.\n\n2 The inscription on the cannon is given below. This cannon was found lying on open ground in the Tsiu Keng sub-district in the northern part of the New Territories. It was reported by Mr. R. E. dos Remedios, Senior Land Assistant in the District Office, Taipo in August 1966. The cannon was completely exposed and must have been in this condition for a long time. It is not clear how it came to be there.\n\n* This cannon, which was mentioned in passing in the note on the Tung Chung Fort, at p. 148 of Vol. 4 of the Journal (1964), was dredged from the sea in 1956, either from Kowloon Bay in the course of work on the extension to Hong Kong airport or from Fat Tong Mun (otherwise called Joss House Bay) in the approaches to Hong Kong Harbour—sources differ. It is now mounted with a plaque in Chinese and English outside the Central Government Offices (East Wing), Hong Kong. It was heavier than the one recently discovered; 300 catties as compared with 300 catties. The Chinese inscription, which is much the same, is also given below.\n\n4 An insight into the happenings of these troubled times is preserved in the family record of the Tsui (徐) clan formerly of Shek Pik on Lantau island, to which their ancestor had removed in the 16th Century. The family came from Mong Ngau Tun (望牛墩) in Tung Kwun district (東莞) where they had settled in the Sung dynasty from Kiangsi province. There was fighting in Tung Kwun against the Manchus after their success in the North. The record which gives no precise date for this occurrence, though it must have been within a few years of the change of dynasty in 1644 — reads\n\n—\n\nSau Yeung-kap, a civil officer, and Li Shing-tung, a general, instigated an uprising against the new dynasty in Tung Kwun. As the revolt gathered momentum, oxen and horses were killed for food, and rice and corn became as expensive as pearls. For miles, one could see nothing animate; the fields were covered with dead bodies. In some places, human flesh was eaten by the starving people, and piles of human bones filled the ruined houses.\n\nA detachment of the Manchu army was sent to besiege the district city, then occupied by the rebels. In the conflict that ensued, human beings were massacred as though they were ants, and law-abiding people and bad characters alike were destroyed.\n\nFortunately, our clansmen, then living at Mong Ngau Tun, escaped this calamity. However, many of our former neighbours and fellow-natives in Ming Ka Lane lost their lives and [as the record says in another place] all the dispensations of the previous dynasty were regarded as scrap paper.\n\n(I am grateful to Mr. Gilbert Louie for this translation. Ed) Readers will note that Li Shing-tung (Li Ch'eng-tung) is mentioned in Prof. LO Hsiang-lin's Additional Note where he is described as Governor of Kwangtung.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205530, "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-1968", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "67\n\nFURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nThe very interesting paper by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin on the Sung Wong T'oi and the travelling courts of the Sung Dynasty, in Volume III No. 2 of the Journal of Oriental Studies,† and the partial wrecking of the historic site by the Japanese in the war,‡ have prompted the writer to put on record some notes made during the years 1918 and 1937 on the earthworks, inscriptions and relics found by him on and near the site, which may help to supplement Professor Lo's paper. In what follows the hill is described as it was in 1937, as the writer has not seen it since 1938.\n\nIt is a crescent-shaped hill, convex towards the east, where it rises steeply from the beach to a height of nearly 40 metres. It commands a good view of the south slope of the Kowloon hills and the plain beneath, the east half of the harbour, and of Lyemun channel and the west end of the Fat Tau Mun channel beyond, except for a few hundred metres at its north side by Slope Island (see Plate 5). A watch-tower on its summit would provide an observation post well over 40 metres above sea level. The concave side, on which lies the main path to the top, is terraced for cultivation up to 15 or 20 metres.\n\nThe objects investigated on and near the hill can be classed in three categories, earthworks, inscriptions, and pottery and other objects, and will be dealt with in that order.\n\nThe Earthworks (see sketch plan at Plate 3)\n\nThere are signs that the hill was formerly fortified. On its top from the south end above the 20 metre contour as far as the great inscribed rock on the summit, there is a gentle rise from which the ground falls away steeply to the east, and rather less so to the west and south. At the south end of the ridge traces of a bank at the edge appear to form a rough semicircle, presumably as a flank defence, for a clearly defined earth bank about a metre high by three or four wide at the base runs northward from it nearly straight along the centre of the hill crest to a point near the south-\n\n*See biographical note at the end of this article.\n\n† Published by the Hong Kong University Press, May 1958. [See also Mr. Jen Yu-wen's article \"The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 21-38. Ed.]\n\nMr. Schofield writes in the present tense, Unfortunately the hill has now disappeared completely, what was left by the Japanese being removed for the airport extension about 1958. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214654, "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-1999", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "33\n\nartisans. In many of the uncle-and-nephew joint ownerships, the older man would work the farm, while the younger went off as a seaman - when the older man died or got too old to work the land, the younger would return to work the farm and marry, while the uncle's son in turn would go off as a seaman. In others, one of the owners would work a shop in the Market, with his brother or cousin working the farm. In all these cases the subsistence income from the farm, and the cash income from the shop or ship were regarded as the joint property of the whole family. These joint ownerships, therefore, tended to allow more flexibility in management of the economic opportunities available than the single-ownership properties.\n\nOf course, where, as at Nga Tsin Wai after the foundation of the City at Hong Kong in 1841, a good deal of the land was devoted to market gardening, then a household could subsist on less land than was needed for rice subsistence, so long as the village had good access to a vigorous market. Market gardening, however, required considerably more labour than a rice farm, perhaps three or four adults to the acre.\n\nNga Tsin Wai was, therefore, not seriously short of arable land. The villagers could, in normal years, feed themselves, especially since a good deal of the land was devoted to market gardening, even in the nineteenth century. Indeed, even as late as the Japanese Occupation, the village could subsist on its own land: Nga Tsin Wai is one of the few New Territories villages where no-one died of starvation under the Japanese - the village fields (by then entirely given over to market gardening) could still feed the village, even when a third or more had been confiscated by the Japanese for the construction of the Airport Extension and the new nullah.\n\nvery\n\nThe Ng clan comprised 58.8% of the recorded 1902 Nga Tsin Wai house-owning households (including those households only owning land in Sha Po or Kowloon City), but owned 68.59% of the arable land (including land held by Ng clan trusts). If the Chan and Yung households who held only houses are ignored, then the Ngs represent 63.09% of the recorded house-owning households. At the same time, the Ngs owned 20 of the 30 premises owned by villagers within the Market at Kowloon, (66%), and their premises were equivalent to 73 standard shop-sites (76.84%). The Ng clan was thus a little wealthier than the rest of the village.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214680, "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-1999", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "59\n\nsize of the old Hall), and the Government built a new school behind the village, and handed it over to the villagers to manage. At about the same date, however, the Government included all the remaining houses within the walls in its Squatter Survey, giving them the Squatter Survey numbers they still show painted on their outer walls. By thus classing the ancient houses in Nga Tsin Wai as squatter structures, the Government made it difficult, or even impossible, for the houses to be rebuilt, or even to be given anything other than the most cursory of repairs. As a result, the village, already very run-down in the mid 1950s following the Wartime emergency repairs to the houses, became slowly more and more shabby. By the 1960s, very little survived to remind visitors of the proud and prosperous village of a half-century before. The incident in 1967, when the villagers closed their gates and readied themselves for a possible defence of the village against the rioters in San Po Kong was the last flicker of the old village pride.\n\nAlmost all the Nga Tsin Wai clan ancestral graves have been cleared for development in the last 45 years. Resites have proved very difficult to find. The Ngs have re-buried many of their disturbed graves in a single site near Shap Yi Wat village, high in the hills behind Kowloon. The clan have, however, been forced to store many other sets of remains within their Ancestral Hall, a sad abuse forced on the clan because of these resite problems.\n\nThe area within the semi-circle of Choi Hung Road, which had been taken by the Japanese for the extension of the Airport, in turn was developed for industrial and residential use in the early 1960s. A major programme of expansion was undertaken at the Airport, around a huge reclamation project involving a new runway extending out to sea (1956). The seaward end of the Japanese nullah was re-laid further to the east (this did not affect the part close to Nga Tsin Wai village). When this was completed, Prince Edward Road was extended across the old Japanese Airport site, to allow development to start at the Kwun Tong New Town. The area between the new Prince Edward Road and Choi Hung Road became superfluous to the Airport, and thus was freed for re-development. The new re-development area was given the name San Po Kong, \"New Po Kong\"), although few people realise today the significance of the name.\n\nThus, year-by-year, the old village communities of Kowloon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215830, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "62\n\nOH: USAAF, 1944), p.178 (hereafter referred to as USAAF). The higher the altitude of an airfield, the softer the surface of its runway, and/or the heavier the B-29, the longer its runway had to be for the aircraft to take off. Kai Tak was at sea level, but its runway was soft-surfaced for much of the war.\n\n37 The B-29 runways that were constructed in India and China were 8,500 feet (2,591 metres) long and hard-surfaced. See Keith Wheeler and the editors of Time-Life Books, Bombers Over Japan (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982), p.99.\n\n38 Peter Pigott, Kai Tak: A History of Aviation in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1990), p.67. After the war, the press reported that the Japanese had cleared some residences and hills around Kai Tak to make way for its expansion. See SCMP, September 11, 1945 (Morning Edition), p.2.\n\n39 (1) Eather, p.53. (2) Hong Kong Government Information Services, Hong Kong Airport (Hong Kong: s.n., 1962), p.27. (3) Wings Over Hong Kong: a Tribute to Kai Tak: an Aviation History, 1891-1998 (Hong Kong: Odyssey, 1998), p.131. The Japanese apparently had a scheme to extend one of Kai Tak's runways to about 5,580 feet (1,700 metres), which still didn't allow much latitude for B-29 operations. See \"Japanese Scheme for Extension of Kai Tak,\" 7 Nov 42: Series 10/38; WIZ (Waichow Intelligence Summary) Vol.2; Nos.27-72 (Excluding Nos. 35, 37, 64, 65), April 1943-April 1944; Ride Papers.\n\n40 Wheeler, p.39, 44, 59, 63.\n\n41 Wheeler, p.44.\n\n42 USAAF, p.178. The U.S. also faced a rubber shortage after Japan gained control over most of the world's natural supplies. But it eventually produced synthetic substitutes.\n\n43 USAAF, p.180.\n\n44 According to temperature data available for the three most recent years before the war in Hong Kong (1937-1939), early morning (1-5 AM) temperatures began to approach 75°F by late April, and didn't dip well below this figure until mid- to late November. See HKRO, Meteorological Results, 1937, 1938, and 1939 (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1938, 1939, and 1940) for hourly temperature readings for each day of the year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216239, "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": 538, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "472\n\nlacking in balance and discrimination: luckily, this is not true of the vital central three-quarters of the book. But readers should beware of the lack of balance in these two sections.\n\nThere are a few other minor flaws as well. Thus, while, of the two main Hong Kong Chinese-language newspapers, one is spoken of as the Wah Kiu Yat Po, the other is spoken of as the Xing Dao Ribao (Star Isle Daily), thus disguising (very effectively) the Sing Tao. It is difficult to discern any pattern here. There are also a few errors of fact, particularly in the first and last chapters. Thus, inter alia, nowhere near 20,000 villagers were displaced for the Japanese extension of the Airport - there were no more than a tenth of that number living in Po Kong, Sha Tei Yuen, and Kak Hang. The demolished tenements in the Kowloon City area in the 1930s were not inside the Walled City, but outside, in the Kowloon Market area. Sir Thomas Jackson was not the founder of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (1864): he was its General Manager from 1876-1902.\n\nThese flaws, however, are minor, in comparison with the immense value and interest of the bulk of the book. It is, despite the flaws, confidently and wholeheartedly recommended to anyone interested in the history of Hong Kong.\n\nPATRICK H. HASE\n\nJane Hutcheon, From Rice to Riches, A personal journey through a changing China Sydney, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2003.\n\nThis book delivers. Its coverage is broad but deep, it has the right mix of passion and detachment, with impish but biting humour, and is quietly but cleverly constructed by the author who, for five years from 1995, was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent in China.\n\nThe author is well-suited to her task. A “China-coast\" background on both sides of her family over several generations, her Hong Kong birth and upbringing, her family's devotion to journalism, plus a genuine interest in China and its people, combine with her own independent and questing spirit to make this a memorable account of their recent and current history. It is, indeed, a tale of 'China's wrestle with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]