[ { "id": 204360, "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-1961", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n124\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nNote on a Collection of Chinese Books Presented to The Royal Asiatic Society by Sir George Thomas Staunton in 1824.\n\nAs a boy of twelve G. T. Staunton had accompanied his father, Sir George Leonard Staunton, on the Macartney embassy to China in 1793. During the long outward voyage young Staunton had learned some Chinese from two Chinese Catholic priests who were returning to China after studying at Naples. When Lord Macartney was received in audience by the Emperor Ch'ien-lung at Jehol on 14 September, 1793 young Staunton acted as his page. In 1798 he became a writer in the East India Company's Factory at Canton, in 1804 he was appointed a Supercargo, in 1808 promoted to the post of Interpreter, and in 1816 he became Chief of the Factory. In the same year he accompanied the abortive Amherst embassy to Peking. On the return of the embassy he settled in England and became a Member of Parliament. In 1823 he was active in founding the Asiatic Society.\n\nThe following letter was written by Sir G. T. Staunton to the Secretary of the Asiatic Society in 1823.\n\nSir,\n\nHaving in the course of my residence in China formed a considerable Collection of Chinese printed Books, and also of Manuscript Dictionaries, and other works of Europeans, calculated to assist the Student in the acquisition of a knowledge of the language and literature of the Chinese, I feel confident that I cannot more effectually promote the object I had in view making the Collection, namely, the more general acquaintance in this Country with whatever may be found curious or useful among the productions of the Chinese press, than by a respectful offer of the Collection to the Asiatic Society.\n\nMy wish is, that it should be preserved entire, and placed in such a situation as may admit of its being at all times readily accessible to the British and other Students of Chinese Literature, who may frequent this Metropolis, under such regulations as the Asiatic Society may deem it expedient to prescribe.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204542, "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-1963", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "18\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nDr. Robert Morrison. It is easily found, for if one continues straight on through the terrace from the end of the path one comes upon it amongst a group of altar tombs in the south-east corner of the cemetery. Morrison was a member of the London Missionary Society and was the first Protestant missionary in China, arriving from England via the States in 1807. He was a great Chinese scholar, wrote a Chinese grammar, compiled an English-Cantonese dictionary, and, along with a colleague, translated the whole Bible into Chinese. He became the indispensable interpreter and translator of the Select Committee of the East India Company, was taken by Lord Amherst in that capacity on his embassy to Peking in 1816, and was appointed in 1834 by Lord Napier to his staff when he assumed office in place of the East India Company in China. In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in virtue of his outstanding scholastic achievements, and was also a member of the society under whose auspices we meet tonight — the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nMorrison was buried alongside his wife, and next to her lies their very gifted son, John Robert Morrison, who died just as he was appointed the first Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong. Nearby lies another colleague from the same missionary society, Samuel Dyer, who did much to introduce metallic movable type to replace wooden blocks in the printing of Chinese books and tracts.\n\nAlong the eastern wall are to be found a number of members of East India Company families, and in the second row parallel to this wall is the second most frequently photographed memorial in the cemetery, that of Sir Winston Churchill's great-great-grand uncle, the 4th son of the 5th Duke of Marlborough, Lord Henry John Spencer Churchill, Captain, R.N. Near him lies a group of naval officers—Lieut. John Astell, Lieut. FitzGerald of the H.M.S. Modeste, and Captain Sir Humphrey le Fleming Senhouse, Senior Naval Officer in the China Seas during the attack on Canton in 1841.\n\nThe most conspicuous monument in the whole of the cemetery is a tall column near the north wall. It commemorates the life and death of Captain John Crockett who must have made a fortune when in command for some years of an opium storeship at Lintin. Nearby lies one of America's great ambassadors, Edmund Roberts, who served in the West Indies, South America, Muscat, Zanzibar,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205407, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "162\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nApart from being an old landmark, the main interest of the present stone is that it bears the characters Kwan Tai Lo (# #). Sayer discusses (pages 90-92) the various meanings which have been attributed to this phrase at one time or another. Among them are suggestions that the name Kwan Tai Lo was the original Chinese name for Hong Kong Island (a small fishing village of this name was listed in the first Hong Kong Government Gazette of 15th May 1841; it was located at East Point near the present Daimaru Department Store); that the name was associated with the famous Admiral Kwan who fought the British in 1841; that the character 'Kwan' was an alliteration for the English word 'Queen'; and finally that the name is descriptive for a road which, like a petticoat girdle, encircles the island. As he says, the name \"has evoked endless speculation\". Another suggestion is that it was the personal name of a girl from the boat people who led the British round the island.\n\nII. LITTLE HONG KONG (**)\n\nThe Setting. With the exercise of a little imagination Little Hong Kong is still, in its outward appearance, the world of the Chinese peasant before 1841. Substitute rice fields for vegetable plots and chicken farms, clear away their associated structures and the modern buildings in the surrounding area, concentrate your attention on the groups of old structures that form the nuclei of the two old villages and you are back in one of the most beautiful valleys on old Hong Kong Island. It was up this valley that Sir George Staunton, the eminent sinologue and Third Commissioner in the Amherst Embassy to Peking in 1816, strolled from the Aberdeen anchorage the following year to visit the village — in so doing to give his name to Staunton Creek now, 150 years later, being reclaimed from the sea.4\n\nThe Southern Side of Hong Kong Island in 1841. When the British came in 1841 the population of Little Hong Kong was around 200 persons (the Census of 1856 gives 229). One of the visiting British officers at that time was impressed with the villages and the scenery. \"In general\", he wrote, \"the south side of Hong Kong Island is far more picturesque and less bleak than the north. The villages we saw, unlike the mat-huts in the harbour, are exceedingly neat in appearance with blue-tiled and white-walled houses\". The village inhabitants, too, were given a good charac-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205428, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n183\n\nagain draw back the curtain and look at what lay concealed behind it\" (p.11). “At this point we must take another look behind the scenes\" (p.29). On Anson's seizure of the Spanish galleon bringing treasure from Acapulco to Manila he writes that \"to the weird, unreal mandarinate of China it appeared horrific\". \"Weird' and 'unreal' to whom? To the English at that time, or to the Chinese people, or to the author alone? There is no evidence on which to base these epithets. They have meaning only in the author's own mind. On the same page he writes of the \"dastardly\" opinion which the Chinese were forming of Anson, But dastardly from whose point of view? Who is justified in calling it dastardly? Next an example of the author's jocular style: \"The failure of the Amherst embassy and we enter the final straight\". Finally an example of the author's oracular style: “A sense that there was no turning back seeped into the till then strangely changeless atmosphere, and in the extraordinary way in which one thing led to another, both in England and China, soon practically nothing was the same.”\n\nIt would be tedious to challenge the author on the many dubious statements and judgments which mar this book - it would also require a very long review. But any reader with an enquiring mind and a regard for historical accuracy will constantly find himself irritated into asking \"Where is the evidence for this statement?\" In some places the author is simply inaccurate. Thus, in one of his rare footnotes, he states: \"Governors usually, but not always, ruled two provinces, in this case Kwangtung and Kwangsi, the Eastern and Western Kwangs; thus the Governor of the Two Kwangs\". In fact there was a Governor-General (tsung-tu) for the two Kwangs and a Governor (hsün-fu) for each province. This is an elementary mistake which a knowledge of the Chinese sources would have corrected. Similarly, a greater familiarity with the Chinese scene would have saved him from writing \"the Summer Palace in the Western Hills near Peking\", when in fact it lies in the plain between Peking and the Western Hills. Also in the brief chapter on Lord Macartney's embassy to China he mentions that Macartney \"presented to the Grand Secretary a short memorandum of the points he was authorized to raise. But which Grand Secretary? There were six members of the Grand Secretariat when Macartney was in Peking in 1793. Clearly he means Ho-shen, the favourite minister of the Emperor Ch'ien-\n\n++", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205642, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "The Library\n\n179\n\nof the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society up to 20th May, 1968, is copied from the catalogue. A list of the other contents of the library, including periodicals, scrolls, tape-recordings, and other materials will be compiled and published in due course. It is also intended to issue annual supplements to the list of books and periodicals.\n\nLIST OF BOOKS\n\n'ABD ALLAH IBN 'ABD AL-KADIR, Munshi.\n\nThe voyage of Abdullah; a translation from the Malay, by A. E. Coope, with notes and appendices. Singapore, Malaya Publ. House, 1949.\n\nABEL, Clarke.\n\nNarrative of a journey in the interior of China, and of a voyage to and from that country, in the years 1816 and 1817; containing an account of the most interesting transactions of Lord Amherst's embassy to the court of Pekin... London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1819.\n\nADAMS, Arthur.\n\nTravels of a naturalist in Japan and Manchuria. London, Hurst and Blackett, 1870.\n\nALEXEIEV, Basil M.\n\nThe Chinese gods of wealth: a lecture delivered at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, on 26th March, 1926. [London] School of Oriental Studies, 1928.\n\nALLEY, Rewi\n\nPeking opera: an introduction through pictures by Eva Siao and text by Rewi Alley. Peking, New World P., 1957.\n\nANDERSON, Æneas.\n\nA narrative of the British embassy to China in the years 1792, 1793 and 1794... London, Debrett, 1795.\n\nARLINGTON, L. C.\n\nChinese women's coiffure. [Shanghai, China Society of Science and Arts, 1929]\n\nReprinted from the China journal, v.11, 1929, pp. 4-10, 69-76 and 119-126. Presentation copy signed by the author.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209827, "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-1983", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "64\n\nI am perfectly aware that it is notoriously difficult to ascribe lexical innovations to specific dates or occurrences with any degree of authority or accuracy. But my focus is on Hong Kong English at the present time, the English which is in use among native speakers of English. By 'native speaker', I mean L1 users of English, those who have not had to acquire it as a second language in Hong Kong today. The business of etymology-hunting becomes less tenuous: we have actually witnessed the initial appearance of specific loan words, then the process of their being popularized by the media; for example, mafoo (stable boy), a word which was already current in Shanghai and which gained currency here because of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club's dispute between management and labour in the 1970's and now once more in the news. This time it appears unmarked, unglossed, whereas when it appeared over ten years ago, it was almost inevitably accompanied by an explanation.\n\nThough the borrowing from Chinese to-date has not been very significant, it is evident that, because of the cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong and the easy movement of people to and from Hong Kong, some of these lexical innovations, such as they are, may find their way outside Hong Kong, gain international currency and eventual sanction by inclusion in reputable dictionaries. Contact between various dialects of Chinese immigrants, in Hawaii, in Chinatowns in New York, San Francisco, Boston, London, and Sydney, etc., has also resulted in mutual lexical borrowing. Some of the immigrants originate from Hong Kong. And since the late 1960's and early 70's, the English-speaking world has had much more direct access to China and to the Chinese language used on the Mainland.\n\nMy co-researcher and I have made an investigation of the subject according to the following headings.\n\nI. An outline history of contact between the two languages, with illustrative examples of the loan words resulting from various types of contacts. The focus is on the lexical consequences of historical events, not the events themselves; for example, we are interested more in the popularizing of the term kowtow than in the political or commercial results of the Amherst embassy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210165, "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-1984", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "speaking particularly of the Hong Kong villages, stated:\n\n115\n\n\"The inhabitants, from our knowledge of their character, appear to be industrious and obliging... From all accounts they seem in general to have been very peaceably disposed; nor did they exhibit any marked approbation or disapprobation, on their transfer to the British sway.\n\n+32\n\nAnother officer, Captain Loch, described a visit to one of the Hong Kong villages, possibly Tai Tam Tuk which was removed for the last of the reservoirs of that name in 1913:\n\n\"The path now wound round a tongue of land to the left into a small dell, where there were a few houses built in a line. The patriarch and ruler of this community was standing foremost, ready to receive us. This universal custom of acknowledging the superiority of age has been recognized by us throughout the island.”33\n\nMcKenzie also mentions being entertained by a village elder ‘during an excursion into the interior' of the island.34\n\nThis civility and hospitality was apparently not new, nor wholly to be ascribed to the circumspection that was surely felt at the change of rulers. A guide to navigation on the South China coast published in 1806 quotes a report on Hong Kong and its approaches dated September 1793 which says of the island.\n\n\"You will be supplied here with almost every kind of refreshment; especially fish, hogs, beef and poultry. We found the Inhabitants very civil and were daily on shore at the Villages, and fowling in the interior parts of the Island (sic).\n\n+35\n\nSentiments of a similar kind relating to some years later, are contained in Sir John Davis' account of his visit to China as part of the Amherst embassy in 1816. Describing some Hong Kong persons, \"mostly fishermen\", encountered on the way to the Pearl River he added “To such of the embassy as were accustomed to the impertinence of the Canton people their behaviour appeared very quiet and civil.”36", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214842, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "224\n\nseemingly well prepared for paying imperial honours. Surgeon Cree relates in his diary that upon the signature of the Treaty of 1842 on board the British flagship on 29 August, a plain yellow flag was hoisted at the main and saluted with twenty-one guns. On September 14 following he noted that \"all ships of the Expedition hoisted the yellow flag at the main - the royal standard of China - and at noon fired a royal salute of twenty-one guns.\"\n\n50\n\nThere was a distinct awareness of the fineness of the country itself. Of Central China, Sir John Davis declared that “it yields to none in the whole world, and is equalled by very few.\"5 Lieutenant Wyndham Baker of the Madras Artillery also waxed lyrical on the subject.52 Even Sir Henry Pottinger, the Plenipotentiary responsible for forcing the Treaty of Nanking upon the Chinese, had called China \"this superb country,” in his despatch to the British Foreign Secretary announcing the event. Several decades earlier, Sir Henry Ellis, member of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, had written that \"it was impossible to travel through the Emperor of China's dominions without feeling that he has the finest country within an imperial ring-fence in the world.\"54\n\n53\n\nNone of the books and letters consulted contains the derogatory or offensive terms for Chinese in use later in the century. British sailors jocularly used the term “Fokies\" for their opponents,55 and referred to the mandarins as “mad-marines,\"56 but the Chinese themselves are not here dismissed as “Chinks,” “Chows,\" \"Heathen Chinee” or “Mongolians\" (as they so often were at a later time, in those English-speaking countries to which they had gone in search of gold or employment) but invariably as \"the Chinese\" or \"Chinamen.\" Indeed, many of the authors pay tribute to the honesty and good manners of the ordinary people.\n\nIn short, our naval, military and civilian writers of the period were still generally respectful of China, its Court and its inhabitants.57\n\nThese facts are worth keeping in mind when considering the Opium War. We should be careful to view the conflict in the context of its own time, and not of that later period when Western attitudes towards China had changed for the worse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214957, "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-2000", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "8 \n\nposed as to whether the Chinese as a whole were \"anti-commercial\" or whether it was only the government. Greenberg believes that \"trade in the long run mattered little to the Chinese economy.\"2 A further factor contributing to distrust of foreigners and the consequent restriction in contacts and trade was fear of European expansionist policy apparent to the Chinese in Tibet, the East Indies, the Philippines, Burma, and Nepal. \n\nBy the 1830s British demand for tea had become enormous; tea worth twenty million pounds sterling was imported into Britain annually. It was paid for from huge profits made on the sale of smuggled opium. Many foreign firms in Guangzhou, other than British, had engaged in the lucrative trade, with two notable exceptions,13 Britain accounting for more than 80% of the trade. Dissatisfied with the capricious nature of its trade in Guangzhou, Britain made three high-level attempts to form full diplomatic relations with Beijing, sending embassies under Macartney in 1793, Amherst in 1816, and Napier in 1834; all failed. The last two reached no further than Guangzhou before being unceremoniously sent back. But it may be of interest to deal in some length with Macartney's Mission because it seemed to succeed; that it failed was the most significant disaster in relations between the two nations, eventually leading to war. \n\nAfter a long journey, Macartney's Embassy embarked on Chinese boats to proceed up Baihe (Peiho) River on the 9th of August 1793. The following day they reached Tianjin (Tientsin) where they met the Emperor's envoy at a formal ceremony, which, however, lasted a mere 20 minutes. After staying in Beijing for some two weeks, they set out for Chengde (Jehol) where, on the 30th of September, they met Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). Lord Macartney was graciously permitted to dispense with kowtow; it was agreed that the salutation was to be made on the right knee. According to Macartney, the Emperor was polite, and the conversation, conducted through interpreters, was lively and interesting. Moreover, the various scientific instruments, which were brought as gifts, were examined with obvious interest. The Embassy was told that they should depart on the 7th of October. Three days' grace was promised but immediately withdrawn, ostensibly because the Emperor was concerned that an early onset of cold weather would inconvenience the Ambassador. To reach their ships at Zhoushan (Chusan) Island, the Embassy had to travel across China, partly overland and partly by rivers - a journey that took nearly two months. It has", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216327, "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-2003", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "35\n\nremarks each still makes about the other to this day. Northerners thought that Cantonese were quick and tricky, often rebellious, and overly concerned with money. They rarely got a good press from the officials, Manchus or Chinese from other provinces, who were posted to the South.\n\n‘Ungrateful and avaricious,' the Emperor was advised by the Imperial Commissioner in Canton in 1841, who said he wrote in these terms 'after personal observation of the character and disposition of the people of this province,23 Earlier, in 1807, a Viceroy observed that 'not only do the common people desire to obtain money, and do all they can to get it, but the gentry talk of nothing else but money.24 In 1847, the Xinan magistrate commented, 'In Kowloon, the people mingle with foreigners, and the custom of the residents is that they value money and material things and belittle poetry and studies.'25\n\nCantonese also had a reputation for being rude to Westerners. Returning with the Amherst Embassy from Beijing in 1816, the future Sir John Davis recounted that, upon approaching Canton, 'Here for the first time in the course of our travels, my ears were greeted with the sounds so frequent and familiar at Canton, Fankwei and Hoong-maou, \"Foreign devil\" and \"Rufus\" - without having the slightest personal claims to the last distinction, however indisputable my claims to the first.'26\n\nThe Boat People of Canton\n\nThe Canton waterfront was noted for the very large number of boat people whose tiny craft were anchored off and along the whole frontage. These were the Tanka, or indigenous boat people of the Pearl River Delta. They appear in many of the China Trade Pictures, whether lying off the Foreign Factories or at Whampoa, Lintin or Macau.\n\nThe river attracted the intense interest of foreigners because of the numbers and great variety of craft and activity to be seen upon its crowded, animated waters. They were impressed by the most remarkable degree of 'order' reigning, but were less enthusiastic about the 'noise of the music, gongs, and other discordant sounds' which 'defied description', compensated in part by the night scene, 'when all the boats display coloured lanterns [and] the scene is extremely pleasing.'\n\nThe boat people provided utility services to the factories and ferried", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216342, "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-2003", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "50\n\nmore detail, the returns for the Company and 'Country' trade at Appendix I in Greenberg, Michael (1951), British Trade and the Opening of China. Cambridge University Press.\n\ns Cited in Views of the Pearl River Delta, Macau, Canton and Hong Kong (1996). Urban Council, Hong Kong joint exhibition organized by the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum, USA, p.108.\n\n9\n\nBall, B.L., M.D., Rambles in Eastern Asia Including China and Manilla During Several Years' Residence, Boston, 1855, pp.97-8,\n\n10 Davis, John Francis (1845). Sketches of China Partly During an Inland Journey of Four Months, Between Peking, Nanking and Canton. [made with Lord Amherst's Embassy in 1816]. London, as a Supplement to the 1845 edition of The Chinese, p.262.\n\n11 Cited in Views, op.cit., p.109.\n\n12 Parkinson, op.cit., pp.257-8.\n\n13 Gutzlaff, Rev. Charles (1838). China Opened, or A Display of the Topography, History, Customs, Manners, Arts, Manufactures, Commerce, Literature, Religion, Jurisprudence, Etc., of the Chinese Empire. London, Smith, Elder & Co., 2 vols. At Vol. I, p.138.\n\n14 For an evocative recent account of Canton, see Garrett, Valery M. (2002). Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away, Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press.\n\n15 For a description, see Davis, The Chinese, vol. II, pp.114-116.\n\n16 Herbert A. Giles (1900). A Glossary of Reference of Subjects Connected with the Far East. Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, Third Edition, p.87. A plan of the Factories, as drawn in 1856, is given in Morse, Hosea Ballou (1910), The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, The Period of Conflict 1834-1860. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, opposite p.70.\n\n17 Ball, Rambles in Eastern Asia, op.cit., p.100. The earlier remark is by Commodore Mathew Perry, USN, when en route to his Mission to Japan, but other than having recorded \"Perry, p.136\" I cannot at present trace my source.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]