[
    {
        "id": 204467,
        "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": 99,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "88 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\n36 \n\nDisturbances apart, the common people preferred to be left to themselves. They rarely had anything to do with the magistrate and his followers and preferred it that way. The magistrate, in his turn, was glad to leave routine affairs to the local tribunals. The price paid for these attitudes was the prevalence of crime. Poor communications were no help. The magistrate was often rendered powerless by unrest and disturbances of all kinds. Robberies and descents on shore by pirate gangs could take place with impunity since, even if help came, it invariably arrived far too late. Crime might eventually be punished but it was seldom prevented. No one would inform on disturbers of the peace for fear of reprisals or being entangled in the meshes of the law. Commenting on coastal piracy in 1897 Consul Brenan wrote, \"The boat people never attempt to effect an arrest; there would probably be bloodshed and they would then be involved in judicial proceedings almost as unpleasant for themselves as for the pirates. They are thankful enough if they can get rid of their dangerous passengers, and persuade them to go off and try their fortune elsewhere\"** \n\nHowever, it is only fair to state that the people of the district were also apt to create trouble among themselves, especially when circumstances conspired to make life difficult as in the dry season. This was especially true of the more closely populated agricultural areas, with villages in close proximity to each other, often sharing the same water supply for their fields and personal needs. The volatile Cantonese temperament is not suited to a cautious settlement of complicated personal problems: it is easier by far to fly off the handle and strike an attitude than to sit down and think. Hence difficult situations often were made intolerable by proximity and a quick temper, and clan fights were not uncommon, especially in the Yuen Long area. Hostilities between southern villages were well known at the time.** A tablet in the Tin Hau temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, refers to the death of seventeen male villagers by armed conflict between this village and Shing Mun Pat Heung in three years of intermit-tent strife which began in 1861. To these disturbances between the Punti villagers can be added a general antipathy between Hakka and Punti which sometimes erupted into violence and was still smouldering after the Hakka rebellion thirty years before.\"\" \n\n38",
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    {
        "id": 204477,
        "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": 109,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\napproval. This authority, with powers of discretion, was given to the D.O. to help preserve the traditional way of managing land within the clan, and to provide a cheap and impartial arbiter in case of dispute.\n\n13 In Shek Pik village the TSUI, CHEUNG, HO and CHI clans owned 1.1, 0.39, 0.55, and 0.04 acres of agricultural land in 1898. With the exception of the HO clan, they were intact in 1959. The TSUI tso probably dates from the fifteenth generation, and is therefore three hundred years old. The FUNG clan in Fan Pui owned 9.2 acres in 1898 but this was sold in 1953.\n\n14 At Fan Pui I dealt with a disputed case of ownership in which the defendant stated that eight lots totalling 9,581 square feet of agricultural land had been specially set aside as joss and oil fields (shen you tian). Fields are also set aside for the worship of earth spirits. At Cheung Kwan O village in 1898 the two clans of CHAN and NG administered 1.41 acres of agricultural land under the name of a to tei wui. The rentals were originally devoted to the maintenance of the to tei or earth spirit who looked after the village, but for many years the revenue has simply gone to the clans. Many other cases are known at Mui Wo and Tung Chung.\n\n15 See Chapter III (iii) and (iv) of H. B. Morse The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1908) which is based on an article by Byron Brenan \"The Office of District Magistrate in China” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society XXII, (1897-98), 36-65, and incorporates his own wide experience of China and her officials in the course of over thirty years' service in the Imperial Maritime Customs. Brenan himself (1847-1927) had served in China from 1866 and was H.B.M.'s Consul-General in Shanghai 1898-1901. Of the district magistrate Brenan wrote, \"The magistrate is the unit of government; he is the backbone of the whole official system; and to ninety per cent of the population he is the Government\"; op. cit. p. 37.\n\n16 Papers 1899 p. 583.\n\nThe text of the stone tablet outside the Tin Hau temple at Kat O, referred to elsewhere in the article, uses this picturesque phraseology. Contrasting their sorry lot beside the power of the yamen officials they had written in their petition to the Viceroy \"We, civilians, whose lives are cheap as ants... who are we to start a lawsuit against the district yamen's worms?\" An interesting feature of this inscription is that it follows the customary form of Ch'ing document in which reference is made in the text to other papers, by summary or quotation, instead of the western method of adding enclosures. See John K. Fairbank, Ch'ing Documents, an introductory syllabus, (Harvard University Press 1952) p. 21.\n\n18 When I asked an old gentleman who graduated sau choi in 1896 about extortion and venality among magistrates, he replied in distinctly extenuating tones \"Some did; but then they had so many people to look after\". He observed that there were some rich districts in Kwangtung in which a magistrate had to do nothing to obtain money as it came rolling into the Office in the way of presents, inducements, additions to land and other taxes etc., whilst there were others which were so poor that the magistrate could squeeze very little from them even if he tried very hard. This is curiously echoed in Morse, Trade and Administration p. 92 “In Kwangtung we (the Imperial Maritime Customs) have regularly applied to",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204479,
        "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": 111,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208460,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "168\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nSu, Sing Ging; The Chinese Family System. New York, International Press, 1922.\n\nTang, Chi-yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture. No place, no pub., 1924. (Cornell University Ph.D. Thesis.)\n\nTayler, J. B.; See: Malone, C. B., and Tayler, J. B.\n\nTsu, Yu-yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy; a Study in Mutual Aid. New York, Columbia, 1912.\n\nTyau, Min-ch'ien (Ed); Two Years of Nationalist China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1930.\n\nWerner, E. T. C.; China of the Chinese. London, Pitman, 1920. Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology: or Groups of Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer. Chinese; Compiled and Abstracted upon the Plan Organized by Herbert Spencer. London, Williams and Norgate, 1910. (Folio no. 9 of series).\n\nWilhelm, Richard; A Short History of Chinese Civilization. (Translated by Joan Joshua). New York, Viking, 1929.\n\nWilliams, Edward T.; China Yesterday and Today. New York, Crowell, 1923.\n\nWilliams, Edward T.; A Short History of China. New York, Harpers, 1928.\n\nYen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China. No place, Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement, 1929 (Reprint. Yale Review, vol. 18, No. 2)\n\nII. USEFUL WORKS NOT CITED.\n\nBrenan, Bryon; \"The Office of District Magistrate in China\" (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, 1897-98, p. 36-65).\n\nChen, Ta; \"Socio-economic Conditions in Two Chinese Villages” (Chinese Economic Monthly, vol. 2, no. 5, 1925, p. 11-23).\n\nChiao, C. M. and Buck, John L.; \"The Composition and Growth of Population Groups in China\" (Chinese Economic Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 1928, p. 219-235),\n\n\"Chinese Clans and Their Customs\" (Chinese and Japanese Repository, vol. 3, no. 23, 1865, p. 281-284).\n\nDickinson, Jean; Observations on the Social Life of a North China Village. (Chien Ying, Wu Ching Hsien) Oct.-Dec. 1924. Peking, Yenching, no date.\n\nFang, Fu-an; Chinese Labour; an Economic and Statistical Survey of the Labour Conditions and Labour Movement in China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1931.\n\nGamble, Sidney D., and Burgess, John S.; Peking; a Social Survey. New York, Doran, 1921.\n\nHalhoun, Gustov; \"Contributions to the History of Clan Settlement in Ancient China” (Asia Major, vol. 1, 1924, p. 76-111, 587-623).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208576,
        "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-1979",
        "page_number": 33,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "6 \n\nand support.24\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nThe first time the American government was called upon to act on the question of Hong Kong occurred towards the end of 1942 in connection with the extraterritoriality negotiations which the United States and Britain were conducting simultaneously with China. The initiative of the negotiations clearly belonged to the United States.25 Britain, however, was anxious that her treaty would as far as possible be identical with the American one, and that she would not lag behind the United States in signing the treaty. In this Britain keenly felt the pressure of time in that the United States, eager to please the Chinese, attempted to have the matter settled as fast as possible. Negotiations, which began early in October, were well advanced by about mid-November when disagreement remained on three questions which involved America and Britain alike: national treatment for commerce, coastal trade and inland navigation, and the right to acquire real property in China. Britain, however, had the additional problem of having to face China's demand, made on 13 November, for the rendition of concessions and to provide for the termination of the territory leased to Britain in 1898, i.e. the New Territories of Hong Kong, which included the area known as New Kowloon.\n\nBy the beginning of December 1943, the United States had given way over all the three questions with which she was concerned. Britain's disappointment and exasperation were thus summed up by Sir John Brenan: \"The Americans have now let us down on the three subjects to which we attached the greatest importance, namely national treatment for commerce, coastal trade and inland navigation, and the right to acquire real property. Moreover, by their rush tactics they have deprived us of any opportunity of real negotiation with the Chinese. We could hardly have done worse for ourselves if we had acted alone. It now remains to be seen if the Chinese, having got all they want from the United States, will hold up our treaty over the Kowloon question.\" Eden made a strong remonstrance to the United States on the way she had treated Britain in the latter phase of the extraterritoriality negotiations.27\n\nBy then the British Foreign Office had already reached a decision with regard to the Chinese demand for the return of the New Territories. Britain did not want to accede to the Chinese proposal, in that the New Territories were interdependent with, and economically and strategically vital to, Hong Kong and Kowloon. She",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208587,
        "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-1979",
        "page_number": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n17\n\n◄ Hornbeck to Cordell Hull, secretary of state, 20 May 1942, Hornbeck Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 465.\n\n* Generally see Thorne, op. cit., p. 163, and note 51 on pp. 168-9, referring to Leahy's diary and the King Papers. Also Hornbeck's memorandum, 3 October 1942, Hornbeck Papers, box 180.\n\n• Ballantine's diary in Ballantine Papers (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), box 1. Also see Tung Hsien-kuang, Chiang Tsung-t'ung ch’uan (Biography of Chiang Kai-shek; Taipei, 1954), II, pp. 343-4; and B. W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York, 1971), p. 352.\n\n'Hornbeck's memorandum, 20 May 1942, op. cit.\n\n8 The two sets of statistics are available in Hornbeck Papers, box 466 and box 467 respectively.\n\n\"Thorne, op. cit., pp. 175-6.\n\n1o Announcement of the loan was made on 1 February, but the agreement was not signed until 21 March. For details of the loan and its use during subsequent years, see Department of State, United States Relations with China (hereafter US and China; Washington, 1949), pp. 470-71.\n\n11 Hornbeck's autobiography, Hornbeck Papers, box 497.\n\n12 For more details, see US and China, p. 37,\n\n1a Madame Chiang, however, was intensely disliked by Roosevelt's household staff at Hyde Park who found her \"arrogant and overbearing\", W. D. Hassett, then aide to President Roosevelt, Off the Record with F.D.R. (Rutgers University Press, 1958), pp. 181-2, 288.\n\n14 For text of the relevant treaty between the United States and China, see US and China, pp. 514-7.\n\n15 For more details, see ibid., p. 37.\n\n1 Chinese leaders freely expressed their anti-British sentiments to the Americans; see, for example, H. Morgenthan, Morgenthau Diary (China; Washington, 1965), II, pp. 862-895.\n\n17 Minute of Sir John Brenan, a veteran official in the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, on Anglo-Chinese relations since the outbreak of the Pacific War, 3 November 1942, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/31627.\n\n18 For elaboration on this point, see author's article, \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American Chinese Relations\", Modern Asian Studies, 11, 2 (1977), pp. 262-3.\n\n19 Thorne, op. cit., p. 195.\n\n20 Details of the British discussion leading to the invitation are available in FO 371/31627. The British government was understandably embarrassed by the Chinese response. Ashley Clarke, an official in the Far Eastern Department, confided this point to Stanley Hornbeck, his opposite number in the Department of State. See Hornbeck's attempt to explain for Madame Chiang, Hornbeck to Clarke, strictly confidential, 27 February 1943, Hornbeck Papers, box 467.\n\n21 Thorne, op. cit., p. 161.\n\n22 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)\", p. 58.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208588,
        "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-1979",
        "page_number": 45,
        "title": "RAS-1979",
        "content_text": "18\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\n23 W. Range, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (University of Georgia Press; 1959), p. 105.\n\n24 This is according to the observation of Ashley Clarke, head of the Far Eastern Department in the British Foreign Office, during his one month visit to the Department of State early in the summer of 1942; see his report on his visit to A. Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, 11 June 1942, FO371/31804. See also Ministry of Information to Colonial Office, 22 October 1942, communicated to the Foreign Office, FO371/31774.\n\n25 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", pp. 266-272.\n\n26 Brenan's minute, 3 December, on J. G. Winant, American ambassador to London, to Eden, 2 December 1942, FO371/31664.\n\n27 Eden to Winant, 7 December 1942, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), China, 1942 (Washington, 1956), p. 390.\n\n28 \"The Abrogation of British Extraterritoriality in China 1942-43: A Study of Anglo-American-Chinese Relations\", op. cit., pp. 284-5.\n\n29 Ibid., pp. 287-8.\n\n30 Ibid., pp. 288-9.\n\n31 War cabinet conclusions 173 (42), 28 December 1942, Cab65/28. Also Eden to Winant, 29 December; and Eden to Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, tel. 8264, immediate, 29 December 1942, FO371/31665.\n\n32 Thorne, op. cit., p. 179, and note 53, p. 198, referring to G. Atcheson to Hornbeck, 29 December 1942, Department of State, Decimal and Other Files, National Archives (Washington D.C.) 793.003/12-2942.\n\n33 W. L. Tung in his book V. K. Wellington Koo and China's Wartime Diplomacy (New York, 1977), based on the Wellington Koo Papers deposited with Columbia University, gives a possible explanation: \"Koo was then Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain and returned to Chungking for consultations. As an experienced diplomat well familiar with the attitude of British official and unofficial circles, he counselled the government to conclude the treaty on the relinquishment of extraterritoriality but reserve the right of later negotiations on the Kowloon question”, p. 53.\n\n34 Halifax to Eden, tel. 6310, immediate, 31 December 1942, FO371/35679.\n\n35 \"The Hong Kong Question during the Pacific War (1941-45)\", pp. 58-68.\n\n34 Ibid., p. 68.\n\n*7 See memorandum in Hornbeck Papers, box 466.\n\n** Cordell Hull, secretary of state, to United States chargé d'affaires in London, tel., 4 April 1943, in FRUS, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, The Far East, 1943 (Washington, 1963), III, pp. 46-7. Also see R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 707.\n\n30 For American interest in India, especially early in the war, see for example, M. S. Venkatramani and B. K. Shrivastava, \"The United States and the Cripps Mission\", India Quarterly, XIX, no. 3 (July-September, 1963), pp. 214-65. See also author's article, \"Britain's Reaction to Chiang\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46",
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    {
        "id": 209654,
        "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-1982",
        "page_number": 311,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n289\n\nThe conclusion of the matter is shown in F.O.228, v.654, p.146-152. In a letter to Sir Thomas Wade, written from Hong Kong on 28th Aug. 1880, Byron Brenan describes how he went to Canton \"in obedience to your instructions\", and finding the Governor General would not be available for two weeks owing to a death in the family, argued the case with the Superintendent of Customs. This did not go straightforwardly, and involved Brenan in a trip to Hoihow to obtain the receipts required as evidence that the sums had been paid as claimed. Eventually, however, he was able to obtain payment of $787.12 as the amount of tax in excess of what would have been due under the transit pass system, plus interest of $118.06, being 5% for three years, $905.18 in all. The last paper on the matter is a receipt for the refund, signed by Louis Jüdell, who is mentioned in Mr. Herton's letter to Mr. Keswick, in the capacity of his duly authorized attorney. It also appears from the covering letter of Acting Consul Scott that Mr. Ebell had severed his connection with the firm in August 1879.\n\nThe other letter to Mr. Keswick is less interesting, as it does not lead one into such a long paper chase (albeit on microfilm) through Foreign Office records. Nevertheless, it adds to the picture of problems faced by foreign merchants in China at that time. It reads as follows:\n\nHong Kong 12th March 1879\n\nDear Mr. Keswick,\n\nIn compliance with your request that I should give you a statement of the position of the Transit Pass Question at Pakhoi when I was at that port a month ago I beg to submit the following remarks.\n\nI was informed that a proclamation was to be issued on the day I left the 21st Feb. authorizing the issue of passes for cloth, specifying linen and camlets, but the Commissioner stated that the word cloth would be construed liberally as to",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209659,
        "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-1982",
        "page_number": 316,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "294\n\nG\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn 1884 Brenan was H.B.M. Consul at Chefoo. His position in 1880 is not clear from papers to hand, but he appears to have been making official visits to various places on the China Coast.\n\n* China, Imperial Maritime Customs, Reports on trade at the treaty ports for the year 1879. Shanghai, 1880, p. 246,\n\nIbid., p. 247. It was on behalf of one of Thomas Piry's grandsons that this volume of the trade reports was consulted, leading to the discovery of the two letters to W. Keswick.\n\n& Ibid., p. 246.\n\nTHE VILLAGE WATCH IN THE\n\nHONG KONG REGION\n\nBefore 1899 most New Territories villages of any size had watchmen or constables employed by the elders to enforce local rules, and in the bigger villages these may have had permanent employment. Lockhart wrote of “kang fu (kaang foo) or village constables, who are appointed by the village, and paid out of contributions made by the villagers according to the extent of their holdings in land\". He continued, \"Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power to arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village\". Writing four years after the transfer of the New Territories, another official, F. H. May, added a qualification: \"The so called Police really only village watchmen formerly and still in some instances employed by the villagers were only responsible for prevention of larcenies between villagers. They were not held responsible for robberies by outsiders which were supposed to be beyond their power to prevent\".2\n\nThe village watch was still a feature of the local security arrangements in the 1960s. Baker gives an account of it in the Sheung Shui villages of the northern New Territories in the 1960s, whilst Watson mentions it in his book on the Man lineage of San Tin, in an adjoining area. My own notes, which follow, made at Nga Tsin Wai, the last surviving village of central Kowloon, in the mid 1960s also offer some information on the subject.\n\nBefore and after 1899, this old walled village* had an office\n\nthere was no wall as such, but the houses all faced inward, giving the same effect as an enclosure.",
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