[
    {
        "id": 208110,
        "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-1977",
        "page_number": 149,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND\n\n133\n\nTyphoons bring with them torrents of rain. More falls in the two or three days that follow than in a whole year in drier climates. It is these rains which make possible the dense population of the deltas of South China as well as the disastrous floods.\n\nFrom October to March there is little rain, but the sun is always bright and hot. The wind blows for the most part from the North and East, and the cool air, hot sun, and brilliant sea make an exhilarating setting for the activities of the little state. Even in summer the climate is far superior to Hongkong's, the air fresher and the oppressive canopy of clouds less unbroken. Hence there are summer visitors, missionaries and their families from the interior, and business and professional men from Hongkong, who live apart from the village but in perfect friendliness and to mutual advantage.\n\nThe town itself stretches for a mile along the shore, being only a few streets deep at the ends, but widening out in the middle to a little market square, some three streets wide. The main landing stage opens on to this market place, and here the police and the male and female searchers take their stand to prevent the smuggling of arms or opium which would otherwise most certainly take place. There is another and older pier a hundred yards or so away, at which the salt junks load.\n\nIn the main street almost every building is a shop, workshop, or both, until we reach the end nearest the Pak Tai Temple, which is in the \"West End\" of the town. There we find private houses of the usual narrow type. The backs of half these shops and houses run out on to the beach on a picturesque disarray of piles and retaining walls, interspersed with garbage heaps. There is none of the beautiful and simple cleanliness of the Japanese village. On this beach side or on the beach itself are two slipways for beaching and repairing the junks, a tannery, several boat-building yards, a distillery, coffin maker, and several blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and coppersmiths' shops.\n\nThe beach is a scene of constant activity. At the Eastern end is a floating village of sampans, occupied by families of the Tan Ka tribe, and when one of these sampans becomes too old to float any more, it is hauled above high water mark, and some family or other lives there until it literally drops to pieces. They look rather like huge sea slugs taking to life on shore when the struggle for survival on the water has become too severe for them.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210380,
        "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": 351,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "330\n\nShayuchung: just as it took the Northern pundits half a century to recognize that the Cantonese (ex-Yao) word \"I\" was to be rendered \"zhun\" and not \"ch'uan\", so they will not yet be told that in Cantonese usage \"東\" and \"北\" are not, as they are in North China, the same word, but different words of which the latter is pronounced like \"dung4)\". Likewise, to write Blacksmiths' Street (p. 80) \"Ta T'ich Chich\" is, pardon me, sheer barbarism, and a mixture of two systems like \"Po Kat in ... Paoan\" (p. 40, for either \"Po Kat in Po On\" or, if we must have this wretched Northern jargon, \"Buji in Baoan\") is ridiculous.\n\nAnd if there be any who will take up the challenge for Sha Tau Kok, & c., they cannot do better than emulate Dr. Hayes's Chapter 2 (Peng Chau) and Chapter 4 (Tai Tam Tuk — even though he does mistranslate the second word of the name). Both chapters are models of how this kind of study should be written up. And the same applies to nearly every part of the book. I wish I had written it!\n\nThe quotation with which I opened is, by the way, in one local variety of Naam T'au dialect, and means\n\nOne shagoo (small humped cattle) is worth 20 piculs of unhusked rice;\n\nOne water buffalo is worth a house,\n\nSuch mnemonic jingles used to be common in the rural areas. Can anybody be found to collect them, while they are still remembered? I read recently that the Hakka \"shan-ko\" had been rediscovered in N.E. Kwangtung. Is anybody collecting them? And how about itinerant story-tellers? All right, all right, I was only asking. There is so much to be done.\n\nK.M.A. BARNETT\n\ni",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213111,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 179,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "161\n\ncontinued without break until 1932, when the street was completely lined with shops on the New Territories side. The border street, however, could not provide sufficient space for all the shops of the market. In 1931, a reclamation project began just west of the town, along the frontier, to allow a second border street to be built. This was completed, and the shops on San Lau Street built, in 1933-1934. This project included a new pier and fish market, and allowed the fish wholesalers in the market to cross over into the New Territories as well. By 1935 only a few shops were left operating in the old market in Chinese territory, mostly those (like the pawnshop, the boatyard, and the opium divan) which could not move because of physical or legal restraints. A terrible typhoon and storm-surge on 2nd September 1937 destroyed most of what was left of the old market: it never recovered.\n\nThe effect on the market of the new frontier was not, however, entirely negative. In 1899 it is unlikely that the town housed more than about 500 people; the 100 Customs staff, 30 or so soldiers, and 25 or so Hong Kong Police who became stationed there represented a significant increase in the town's population. The local market for fuel, vegetables, and daily necessities grew sharply, bringing benefits to both the market shopkeepers and to the villagers. Uniforms required repair, bringing work to tailors and cobblers. Even blacksmiths and carpenters found increased work opportunities. The Customs steam-launch brought new engineering skills to the town, and provided a new market in coal. Shortly after the Customs steam-launch was domiciled in the town, the Sha Yue Chung Ferry took advantage of the presence of these new skills and converted to a steam vessel - one of the earliest regular steam ferries in the New Territories area.\n\nOther modern developments reached Sha Tau Kok early because of the needs of the frontier. Thus, the telegraph line reached the town in 1899, and the telephone in 1900. Electric light was provided to the town in 1933. While the construction of the railway was predominantly due to economic factors, again the needs of the frontier were among the reasons for this early extension of modern facilities to the town. 47\n\nAs in most garrison towns, however, it was the entertainment industry which most benefited from the new frontier. Very soon after the new frontier was established, prostitutes from Hong Kong saw the opportunities, and set up house in the market. From the present-day elders' recollections",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215210,
        "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": 306,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "270\n\nconnection, as my mother was a Yip from Chan Uk Village, also at Nam Tau. There were over ten families of Ng in Kowloon Tsai, but we had no ancestral hall there. There were two parts to the village, an upper and lower part - Sheung and Ha Wai. We lived in the Ha Wai. There was a Tin Hau temple at the village, and we had puppet shows on the goddess' birthday every year when I was young. We also had a Ta Chiu in the village every ten years.\n\n'I was married to a Li of Sheung Sha Po Village when I was 18. My husband was a revenue officer in the Customs service. We had three houses in the village, but they were all demolished for the airfield extension. We were sent first to a vacant tenement house in Cheung On Street [not identified in a modern street guide, but very likely to have been in nearby suburban Kowloon] whose owner had left. We were there for 4-6 months, before moving to Model Village.\n\n'I am Shing Sung, now 55, a Hakka. I was born at Nam Tau and came to Kowloon when I was 18 to join my uncle who owned a wooden house at Tsat Kan Uk [The Seven Houses], a place north of old Kowloon Tsai Village. I later built a wooden hut there for myself. I came to Model Village after the war. I remember that there were private fields in the general area, as well as government land. People named Fung, Hui and Tsang owned fields there before the war.\n\n'I am Madam Law Mui, aged 57, also Hakka. I was born at Nam Tau, and came to Kowloon when I was 20, to marry Shing Sung's elder brother - also to The Seven Houses. We farmed government land there, for which we had a permit and paid fees, both before and after the war. There were many people at Ap Tsai Wu (Duckling Pond), the name of the general area where we lived and farmed. They were scattered here and there, because we were all vegetable farmers and you built your own house beside your own plot of land. Like Shing Sung, we moved to Model Village after the war.\n\n'I am Madam Kwai-fung, aged 64. I am a Hakka, born at Sha Po Tsai, Kowloon, where my family had lived for several generations. My father kept a store in Lower Sha Po, near Blacksmiths' Street in the Kowloon City suburb. When I was 22, I was married to Ng Sam-hong, a Punti, of Old Kak Hang Village, next to Nga Tsin Wai, when we had gone to live in a newly repaired house. We had two houses of our own at the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]