[ { "id": 205348, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 103\n\nmany Punti villages from \"squeezes\" formerly levied on them, \"especially the Hakkas\".\n\n13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63.\n\n14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist.\n\n15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration.\n\n16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98,\n\n17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon,\n\n18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century.\n\nWhere no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries,\n\nAddition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's \"The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911\", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205815, "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-1969", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n115\n\nliving unit; and yet the surveyors gave each structure a separate number.\n\nChinese village houses are not strongly built: once left unoccupied and untended, they rapidly succumb to the ravages of typhoons without, white ants and weeds within. They may be used for a while for storage, but without care they soon lose even this function. How is one to decide at what stage of decrepitude a structure ceases to qualify as a house and becomes an insignificant ruin? More importantly, what criterion did the 1905 surveyors use? There seems little doubt that they failed to number structures that were ruined then (gaps in the sequence of numbers in a row have since been filled with \"New Grant Lots\"), and gave numbers to structures that were destined to crumble away altogether by 1968 (many lot numbers correspond to nothing discernible on the ground at present). Therefore, just as it would be wrong to suppose that the habitable structures now visible represent the sum of houses listed in Government Land Records, so it would be a mistake to regard the entries in the Block Crown Lease as an exact reflection of the number of habitable structures on the ground in 1905.6\n\nA further problem is raised by the fact that the use to which village structures are put changes over time: relatively few are built as cowsheds, but a great many do service as such (or as pigsties) at some stage, and are restored for human habitation when necessary. They may even serve a dual purpose. My own attempt at defining \"house\" ran aground when I discovered two households which had insufficient space to accommodate each husband's aged mother: one mother slept in one of the separate kitchens mentioned above, while the other shared a house with the family's pigs.\n\nFor the purposes of this article, it is not necessary to make a hard and fast definition of “village house”, but simply to point out that the present-day observer cannot be certain that his understanding of the term coincides with that of the 1905 surveyors: so that the apparent total of \"houses\" recorded in the Block Crown Lease may include a good many structures that were unfit for human habitation, or used for other purposes, at that time. What follows is an attempt to explain why at any one time many of the houses that are fit for human habitation are likely not to be in use.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207158, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\nTwo Garden Cities; Kowloon Tong and Kadoorie Avenue \n\n223 \n\nIn 1920 a plan was proposed for the redevelopment of a large area east of the Kowloon-Canton Railway between Boundary Street and the Kowloon foothills with Waterloo Road to form its eastern boundary. The Kowloon Tong and New Territories Development Company was registered in 1922 to put into execution a plan for a 'garden city'. The promoters of the Company had a large vision. They proposed a planned community with houses and bungalows surrounded by gardens. There were to be no commercial establishments. Subscribers to the scheme could choose from a variety of plans drawn up by the Company's architect, Mr. E. D. Shank. The houses were to provide pleasant housing for middle-class families. They could be paid for in instalments. Some 250 houses were to be built on a mass scale. Costs were to be kept low as materials were bought in bulk. The Company established its own brick, tile, and cement block factory and a sawing mill on an adjacent site.\n\nThe Company, under the management of C. Montague Ede, entered into an agreement with Government in 1922. Government, for its part, undertook to prepare the sites, levelling them to an agreed height and provide sewers, water, streets, etc. In return, the Company was to pay a premium on the land at stipulated periods as the project was executed.\n\nTo many, the project seemed a bargain, and a boon in the light of the housing shortage which prevailed at the time the Company was formed. There was little difficulty in attracting sufficient subscribers to the scheme. All went well until the middle of 1925, when at least one-fourth of the area had been handed over by Government to the developers according to the agreed time schedule. Soon, however, the preparation of sites lagged more and more. Government claimed it was due to typhoons, strikes, and unexpected difficulties in site formation. The delay in handing over sites put the Company in an increasingly difficult financial position. It was finally forced into bankruptcy, and Government re-entered those portions of the tract not yet held by individual purchasers under Crown Leases. The whole affair became most complicated and put Government in a difficult position. The project was finally completed in 1930, some five years behind schedule.\n\nFrom the standpoint of the original subscribers, the scheme was a success. They acquired pleasant properties at a reasonable price.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209020, "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-1980", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "150\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ntional times, the social community tended to be isomorphic with the territorial unit, but times have changed, and territorial definition no longer counts. Outsiders in Fung Yuen, whether other New Territories villagers now resident in the valley or immigrants from across the border, never worship at these shrines or participate in any of the annual ceremonies performed to honor these gods.\n\nThe remaining, somewhat abbreviated ceremonies of the tun fu took place at important sites scattered throughout the valley. The sequence in which they were conducted seemed to follow the shortest path covering all sites, rather than any rank order of significance. The point of interest in these ceremonies is that certain pots (and their associated bamboo stalks and charms) protect residential units, while others protect units constituted socially, represented symbolically in a shrine or hall of some religious significance. Some pots embody both dimensions simultaneously, and every household requires protection of both sorts; inclusion in a social unit that is symbolically protected apparently must be supplemented by having a charm in close proximity to one's own home.\n\nWhen the 1905 Block Crown Leases were prepared, most villagers lived together in a nucleated cluster of six rows of terraced houses at the back of the valley. One of the lineages had already begun to splinter off into a single-surname hamlet in front of the old village, however, and in the early decades of this century that move was completed. A second lineage hived off at about the same time to form a separate hamlet along one edge of the valley. Since it was essential that protection be afforded equally to all Fung Yuen people, incense pots and bamboo fronds had been placed at strategic points in each of the three hamlets in previous tun fu ceremonies, and these now had to be reconsecrated. Though all hamlets received equal protection, however, the number and placement of the pots varied in each.\n\nIn the old village there is a community hall, the center for lunar new year rituals in which all of the four lineages share equally. One tun fu pot was placed in front of this house, signifying protection for all members of the multilineage alliance that is formalized in this building and in land held in trust to support its rituals. This single pot is, it seems, able to offer protection at two other levels as well, however. Next to the community hall stands the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210213, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "163\n\narea of about 115 km2 and contains 330 Mm3 of water at mean sea level (about 1.3 m above Hong Kong principal datum (PD)). Sand is brought into Deep Bay close to Black Point on the flood current and moved along the Hong Kong coast by wave action during storms. Silts and clays appear to be largely derived from the catchment draining to the inner part of Deep Bay.\n\nThe tides are complex, with a strong diurnal component superimposed on a semi-diurnal pattern. The usual sequence is thus two high waters and two low waters in just over 24 hours, with one high and one low significantly higher or lower respectively than the other. On certain occasions (14 in 1984) the diurnal component completely dominates and only one high and one low occur in a day. The maximum tidal range is about 2.8 m.\n\nHistorical background\n\nOyster cultivation is traditional and has been practised in the Pearl River estuary for several hundred years. The coastal town of Shajing (JP) has long been associated with oyster fattening. Oyster cultivation has been practised in Deep Bay since at least 1800 (Bromhall, 1958; Mok, 1973).\n\nDisputes over the ownership of Deep Bay oyster beds led to short term leases being granted in 1909 to those organisations, both those based in Hong Kong and those based in China, who could prove good claim to ownership prior to 1898 when the Crown Lease of the New Territories commenced. One oyster bed was reclaimed from the sea around 1915/16 and now forms part of the Tin Shui Wai area. Additional oyster beds were leased, mainly in the mouth of the Shenzhen River, during the period 1909 to 1933. The original 1909 leases were extended from 1931 to 1952.\n\nDuring the early part of World War II many oyster farmers with much traditional expertise moved from Shajing to settle in the Lau Fau Shan area, but the majority of the beds were either ruined or fell into disuse by 1945. Reorganisation of the industry in the immediately post-war era was influenced by events within China culminating with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Further leases were granted to some oyster farmers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211234, "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-1987", "page_number": 295, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "270\n\nWell, I found that this was just not so in Tsuen Wan. Practically all the lineages there had had a genealogy at one time, and about two-thirds of them still have. Moreover, if you consult the 1905 Block Crown Leases for land in Tsuen Wan, and look at the descriptions of house lots in the villages of the sub-district, you will get the impression that there were not any ancestral halls in places like Tsuen Wan. This again turned out to be quite wrong. Going through the villages, old people would say \"This is our ancestral hall\" or more often \"That was the site of our ancestral hall”. Even a small clan with, say, only 5 or 10 houses at the turn of the century had its own ancestral hall. Also, there were old schoolrooms and other institutions which indicated that the infrastructure of local village society was greater than the written records would show.\n\nMy third point and I am just over my time concerns another clue to the nature of local society. I had done collecting in \"Town\", i.e. Hong Kong's central areas, at second-hand bookshops, stalls and so on and I had found quite a lot of printed guides to letter writing, social etiquette, and how to carry out a wide range of family, village and business affairs. I thought \"Surely these must have existed in the villages too, and it would be interesting to find if they have the printed versions or the manuscript versions of them, or both\". To cut a long story short, there were such guides to be found in the Tsuen Wan villages. They were practically all of the hand-written type, copied no doubt from generation to generation. They were often kept by the school teachers, and (I was told) dictated to promising pupils or passed on to them. Some elders also possessed them.\n\nSo these were the sort of things I found in Tsuen Wan over my seven year stay. The only other thing worth noting in this connection is that we were in the business of trying to preserve a few old villages, and that in fact we managed to preserve two. One of them, Sam Tung Uk, was located in the middle of Tsuen Wan, right next to the new Mass Transit Railway. Another was up in the hills at a place called Yuen Tun where the main block has been preserved. It is inside the Civil Aid Services camp site, and is a magnificent building to go and look at. I say that with enthusiasm. It is a perfectly ordinary village building, but is a fine example of its kind. These initiatives came mainly from a few officials.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211540, "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-1988", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "DEZAKETTRE DWUKISME)\n\nJames Hayes\n\n233\n\nNOTES\n\nSee the list of printed papers given at pp. 271-272 of my book, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1977). Perhaps I should add that whilst the progress of the survey and land settlement are described, the records of hearings in cases where disputes could not otherwise be settled are not now available, save for some reports in the local English-language newspapers.1 See Chapter 4, \"Shek Pik, A Multilineage Settlement of Cantonese Farmers\" in Hayes 1977, op cit, pp. 104-128. I have also used some of the documentary material in my paper Education and Management in Rural South China in the Late Ch'ing at pp. 575-592 of Vol. 1 of Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Asian Studies 1984, (Hong Kong, Asian Research Service, 1985).\n\n1 Although surviving “Chi Tsai” from the New Territories are few in number, they are not rare either. I have come across them here and there in my research, but unfortunately dismissed them as being of no particular interest or value, compared with the Block Crown Leases and actual customary deeds of sale and mortgage.\n\nOne entry from my Notes, for instance, taken at Chuk Yuen Village, New Kowloon, in July 1963, states, \"Her husband's father was Lam Hei (), and she showed me a few chits for lot numbers claimed at the Land Court in 1901. They included one interesting receipt for 13 tax receipts, presumably Ch'ing land tax receipts, which must have been submitted as proofs of ownership at the land settlement following the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898“. A collection of some dozens of chi tsai from New Kowloon villages is in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong (HKMS104): these will be the subject of a separate note in due course.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213450, "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-1995", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "13\n\nwithin 30 years, perpetual leases at low rentals and leases for short terms of 5 to 10 years. Red deeds are the only deeds of which the Government takes cognisance and the Crown Rent is collected on these deeds only.'\n\nWe need not consider further the details of the Chinese deeds and their system of registration since Lockhart reported-\n\n\"Although the system of land registration adopted by the Chinese is apparently simple, the difficulties that have been experienced in connection with it show it to be of the most unsatisfactory nature, especially as not much reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of any title deeds registered under it.\n\n15\n\nThe expedient adopted by the Hong Kong Government to resolve these difficulties is well-known, a Land Court was set up to hear claims to tenure of land and those established were confirmed by the Government and recorded as Block Crown Leases, commonly known as \"Old Schedule Plots.'\n\n11\n\nLockhart in his Report described the Chinese method of Land measurement:-\n\n\"Owners or occupiers report their land in mau or Chinese acres, but as it has not been the general custom in the districts to calculate the area of land by mau, but rather by the amount of grain required to sow a field, they also report the area of their land in this manner, two and a half tau of grain being equivalent to one mau (0.1515 English acre)\n\nBut even this tau varies in different localities. The Kun Tau or Chinese official standard measure of 10 shing, is adopted at Taipo, in Sheung Shui District and at Sha Tau Kok. The Ts'ong Tau or grain measure of 11 shing, is used throughout the Fanling District. The Tsin Tau of 8 shing is employed in the Tsuen Wan and some other Districts..\n\nAs to hill and waste land the Memorandum reads:-\n\n\"All hills and waste lands are claimed by the nearest villages or most powerful clans in the neighbourhood or even at a distance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 } ]