[ { "id": 204514, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "131\n\nLAMBIE, Dr. J.\n\nLANYON-ORGILL, Dr. P. A. LAU, Wai-mai LAW, Chung-kam\n\nLAWRY, R. E.\n\nLEE, J. S.\n\nLEE, Harold W.\n\nLEE, Hon. R. C., O.B.E.\n\nLeFEVOUR, Dr. Edward\n\nLE MARE, J. R.\n\nLI, Dr. Tsoo-yiu\n\nLIDDELL, Mrs. Marion LINDSAY, T. J.\n\nLINDSAY, Mrs. T. J. LIU, D. H.\n\nLIU, Dr. Tsun-yan\n\nLLEWELLYN, John\n\nLO, Chin-tang LO, T. S.\n\nLOTHROP, Francis B.\n\nLUM, Miss Ada\n\nLUPTON, G. C. M. MA, Meng McBAIN, E. B.\n\n2\n\nMACKENZIE, Lt. Col. B. D. McKERNESS, Miss Joan.\n\nMcCRARY, Michael\n\nMcDOUALL, Hon. J. C. McGRATH, David B.\n\nMACK, A. M.\n\nMCKEIRNAN, V. Rev. Michael J.\n\nMANEELY, R. B.\n\nMARTIN, Rev. Canon E. W. L.\n\nc/o Director of Medical & Health Services, H.K.\n\n1701 Beach Drive. Victoria, B.C., Canada,\n\nInstitute of Oriental Studies, H.K.U.\n\nVictoria Heights, 43-A Stubbs Road,\n\nFlat I-A, H.K.\n\nBritish Council, 1/F., Gloucester Bldg., H.K.\n\n74, Kennedy Road, Hong Kong.\n\n604, Edinburgh House, Hong Kong.\n\nLee Hysan Estate Co., Ltd. 604 Edinburgh House, H.K.\n\nDept. of History, H.K.U.\n\nc/o Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K.\n\n1-C-3-C, Broom Rd., Hong Kong.\n\n10-F, Headland Road, Hong Kong,\n\nc/o Butterfield & Swire, H.K.\n\n1, Mercury Street, 1/F., Causeway Bay, H.K.\n\n83 Sincere Terrace, Ground floor, Tai Hang Road, H.K.\n\nDept. of Geography & Geology, H.K.U.\n\nDept. of Chinese, H.K. University.\n\nc/o Lo and Lo, Jardine House, 7/F., H.K.\n\nc/o Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass. U.S.A.\n\n142, Boundary Street, Kowloon.\n\nThe District Officer, Taipo, New Territories,\n\nInstitute of Oriental Studies, H.K.U.\n\nc/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K.\n\nCRE, Victoria Barracks, Hong Kong.\n\n5, Magazine Gap Road, Hong Kong.\n\n25-A, Robinson Road, Top Floor, H.K.\n\nSCA., Connaught Road, Central, H.K.\n\nMINETT, Major F. R. D.\n\nMORGAN, L. G.\n\nMOYLE, G. C.\n\nc/o U.S. Consulate-General, Hong Kong.\n\nHong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corpn., H.K.\n\nMaryknoll Fathers, Stanley.\n\nAnatomy Department, H.K. University, H.K.\n\nSt. John's College, 82 Pokfulum, H.K.\n\nGarrison Clinic, Whitfield Barracks, Kln.\n\nc/o Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong.\n\nc/o Jardine Matheson & Co., Ltd, H.K.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204679, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "144\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthese removals, again from long established locations and substantial houses, is also said to have been mainly on fung shui grounds following a long period of decline, reduced births, infant deaths, and other difficulties.\n\nThese removals all took place within the last fifty years, that is, within the period of British rule in the New Territories, and it would be interesting to know if there were similar cases in other districts during this period. It is, of course, extremely likely that these periodic removals were a feature of village life in the past.\n\nJ. W. HAYES.\n\nAN OLD FORT AT TUNG CHUNG ON LANTAO ISLAND\n\nIf you take a ferry-boat from Hong Kong to Lantao and land at the bay of Tung Chung it is worth while looking at the old fort which still exists near the hamlet of Lung Ching Tau. The walls are still in good preservation and inside there is a broad gun-platform with six cannon in position, one of which has an inscription on it showing that it dates from the middle of Chia-Ch'ing's reign.\n\nIt is known that a fort and garrison was maintained at Tung Chung during most of Chia-Ch'ing's reign (1796-1821) when a large and successful fleet of junks manned by Chinese pirates terrorized the coasts of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. There is documentary evidence that a fort was constructed at Tung Chung in the twenty-second year of Chia-Ch'ing's reign (1817).1\n\nIn 1834, during the few months when Lord Napier was Superintendent of British Trade at Canton and relations between the two countries were very strained, the fort at Tung Chung was again mentioned in Chinese documents. The Governor-General of the two Kwangs at that time, Lu K'un, in a 'memorandum' to the throne submitted at the beginning of\n\n1 See Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chinese text (Institute of Chinese Culture, Hong Kong, 1959) footnote on p. 236. An English translation of this book published under this title in May 1963 omits the footnotes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204680, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n145\n\nSeptember 1834 stated: \"The English barbarians have always been very cunning. Hitherto they have squatted in Macao and have coveted Ta Yu Shan.1 Towards the end of this memorandum he wrote: \"Moreover your minister has dispatched three hundred picked troops from [his] Regiment and appointed the tu-ssu2 (? 'Captain') Hung Fa-k'e to go to Macao to reinforce the garrison. As to the fort[s] on Ta Yü Shan we have sent an officer there to take measures for defence and secretly to make dispositions at every place, without arousing suspicion. As soon as it is ascertained that the barbarians are peaceful we will withdraw them.\"\n\nThese precautions were confirmed by an edict issued to the members of the Grand Council dated the 28th day of the 8th month of the 14th year of Tao-kuang's reign (30 September 1834) which contained the following words: \"Junior officers and men must be dispatched to the places both inside and outside the provincial capital and to the neighbourhood of Macao and to the forts of Ta Yü Shan, and patrolling must be increased without arousing suspicion, and precautions taken unostentatiously.\n\nInside the walls of the old fort there is now a flourishing Government-subsidised school and it all looks very neat and peaceful; very different from the time when active preparations were made there to repel a possible attack from the British.\n\nIt would be interesting to know more about this fort and also the one at Fan Lau. Can anyone add any further information?\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG.\n\n1 The Chinese name of the island called by foreigners Lantao. Text in Shih-liao hsün-k'an, #21, 765b, column 6.\n\n2 Ibid., 766, columns 11-12.\n\n3 There was another fort on Lantao at Fan Lau on the Southwest corner of the island,\n\n4 Tung-hua hsü-lu. Reprinted in Chiang T'ing-fu, Chin-tai Chung-kuo wai-chiao shih tzu-liao chi-yao, Vol. I, p. 10, columns 12-13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204980, "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-1965", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n79\n\nwith sufficient knowledge of navigation and engineering for this. When Bias Bay or Mirs Bay was reached one or more of the ship's lifeboats might be used to take the pirates, their loot, and their prisoners ashore. Sometimes junks were used for this, which might be innocent junks which had arrived fortuitously, or pirate junks which had arrived by prior arrangement. Invariably at least one of the ship's officers would be held as a hostage during this operation, being released when it was completed.\n\nIf everything went smoothly in a piracy of this kind, no lives would be lost. But the pirates were ruthless if they encountered any opposition or if a hitch occurred. A few shots were usually fired in the opening exchanges, perhaps causing a few injuries, but this made the rest of the crew and passengers more co-operative. Towards the end of this era of modern piracy, when the Hong Kong Government and the shipping companies had adopted more effective anti-piracy measures, casualties became more common, as the pirates intensified their resentment to these measures.\n\nOne important anti-piracy measure was the isolation of the centre part of the ship—bridge, engine room, and saloon accommodation—from the rest of the ship by steel grilles. Access was by a steel door, locked and under constant guard. The guards were usually Chinese or Sikh policemen, under White Russian officers; but on special occasions, British soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison were employed. In spite of all these precautions, piracy continued to flourish along the South China coast right down to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, there were no attempts on ships with British soldiers as guards.\n\nThere were fifty-one major cases of piracy on the China coast in the years between the two World Wars. The great majority involved British ships, and twenty British Merchant Navy officers were killed. There were also many Chinese casualties, and many Chinese kidnapped and never heard of again. There were also many cases involving Chinese junks which received little publicity in the foreign press. The worst years were 1922, 1927, and 1928, in which there were five, six, and eight piracies respectively. A few of the most famous cases of this period are described below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204982, "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-1965", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n81\n\nThe pirates boarded the ship in Singapore along with the other passengers, and after taking over the ship took her to Bias Bay, where they made off ashore with over $100,000 in cash, and as much more in valuables. During the attack, the chief engineer, chief officer, and a Chinese quartermaster were killed, and the captain seriously injured. For some time after this, ships on this run were provided with guards from the British garrison at Hong Kong, and no piracy was ever attempted on any ship so guarded.\n\nThe piracy of the 4,500-ton Dutch motorship Van Heutz in December 1947 was notable for several reasons. It was the first serious piracy since the war, and the Van Heutz was the largest ship ever to be pirated on the coast. She left Hong Kong on 14th December for Amoy and Swatow with 1,600 deck passengers on board, repatriates from Indonesia, many with their life savings. The pirates, about twenty-five in all, captured the ship only four hours after she had left Hong Kong, and took her to Bias Bay. On arrival at Bias Bay they went ashore in commandeered junks, taking six wealthy Chinese passengers with them. During the few hours they had the ship, the passengers were robbed of cash and valuables worth more than $90,000, but the pirates were disappointed at not getting another $50,000 in currency which they believed was on board. On her previous trip when she had carried an even greater number of repatriates, the Van Heutz had had an armed guard of thirteen Dutch policemen. A few months after the piracy four men were arrested in Hong Kong, found guilty of being involved, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.\n\nThese four cases conformed to the traditional twentieth century pattern, where the pirates boarded as passengers, and when the passengers were likely to be well provided with money and valuables. During these same years, however, there were other piracies which did not conform to this pattern - the Tungchow piracies of 1925 and 1935, the Nanchang's of 1933, and the Shuntien's of 1935. All took place in the north, and all the ships belonged to the China Navigation Company. The Tungchow shares the distinction with the Sunning of being the only ship in modern times to have been pirated twice. On the first occasion in December 1925 it occurred between Tientsin\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205629, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "166 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\ntions and answers produced an interesting picture of life among the soldiers at the Fort in the few years before they withdrew from it after Lantau and other parts of the present New Territories were leased to the Hong Kong Government in 1898. Put together they amount to this: \n\nI was 24 sui when the British came to take over Lantau. Tung Chung Fort had a permanent garrison of Chinese troops before then. I can't remember exactly how many troops there were or what the rank or title of the officer-in-charge was, but they were none of them local people. Their families lived at Tung Chung too, in several rows of brick houses outside the Fort and some inside the walls also. There was a house nearby in which soldiers or their family members were put when sick, with a burial ground behind. The garrison's provisions were brought in by ship, though they bought fish and vegetables locally at Tung Chung. There were military boats at Ma Wan Chung [where the main stream empties into the sea], about 7 or 8 of them of different kinds, but they were not under the command of the Tung Chung officer and came and went between such places as Canton [the provincial capital], Nam Tau [the district city], Shum Chun etc. \n\nThe soldiers at the Fort had a big parade each year on the 1st day of the seventh moon. It was held on the level ground beside the Hau Wong temple (1) near the beach. Inspecting officers came from Nam Tau, Shum Chun and Canton, I think. There was much drumming and noise on that day, and the troops paraded with all their weapons. The soldiers had uniforms of all sorts, and many kinds of weapons too, but there was no uniformity of clothing or equipment. \n\nThe soldiers were generally well-behaved and gave no trouble to us local people, though they did not have much to do as they didn't cultivate any fields, inside or outside the Fort. They did not ask for money, but kept watch. There was a guard station at Ma Wan Chung, though there were rarely soldiers in it. There were lots of robbers and pirates in this area when I was young. They came from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205746, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "46\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nYee Yuen and donated sums to its resistance fund. The two lineages also comprised two yeuk within the Ts'at Yeuk and, as such, were represented in the fighting at Tai Po.\n\nAt some point after 1st April, leaders from the Yuen Long and Sheung U Divisions went together to the Tung P'ing Kuk at Sham Chun and attempted with little success to enlist wider support for their activities. An agent was sent to Tung-kuan Hsien, where a number of 'bare-sticks' were recruited. In addition, the help of the Tang lineage of Pan T'in, in the northern part of Hsin-an Hsien, was solicited. This lineage appears to have stood in a clan relationship with the Tang higher order lineage within the New Territory. Members of the Pan T'in lineage participated in the fighting within the territory and subsequently felt themselves threatened by the British occupation of Sham Chun.\n\nThe first confrontation between the Ts'at Yeuk and the vanguard of the occupying force occurred at Tai Po. Since late March, contractors had been erecting matsheds for the Hong Kong authorities on a hill near the market. Work had been obstructed by local villagers who claimed that the hill was private land and that the matsheds would disturb the feng shui of the area. On 3rd April Captain-Superintendent May set off for Tai Po, with a mixed party of Sikh policemen from Hong Kong and a detachment of Chinese soldiers, which had been temporarily assigned to him by the Commander of the Chinese military garrison stationed at Kowloon City. He hoped to get work on the matsheds started again and intended to leave the soldiers as a guard for the construction materials, pending assumption of British authority in the Territory.\n\nMay arrived at Tai Po early in the afternoon and went to a nearby temple, almost certainly the Man Mo Miu, where he knew he would meet local leaders. A large crowd gathered, both within the temple and in the narrow street outside. His efforts at persuasion failed and the bystanders \"became very offensive in their language and demeanour.\"59 May thought it wise to leave, but hope of a dignified withdrawal ended as soon as the British party reached the street. They were set upon by an angry crowd, wielding brooms, buckets, and other improvised weapons. An escape was made after the soldiers had threatened the crowd with their rifles and the Sikhs had made a bayonet charge to clear a path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206082, "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-1970", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n157\n\nbegging bowl. However, since the first reference to Buddhist worship on the mountain occurs in 954, when an officer of the garrison called Ch'an carved a figure of Buddha which he put in a cave, we can assume that its Buddhist connotations were created by the Chinese soldiers. Before being a Buddhist hill it was made famous as a sacred spot by the visit of Han Yü, the famous Confucian scholar and one of the greatest names in Chinese literature.\n\nHan Yü was brought up in North China in the same region as Confucius, for whom he had the greatest veneration. He was a particularly intransigent type of philosopher who disliked all signs of mysticism. In 820 he attacked the Emperor for installing a relic of Buddha in the palace. \"I am not so naif as to think Your Majesty is deceived by Buddhism,\" he wrote. \"This ceremony is no more than a pageant got up to please the people, and how could your august wisdom deem it anything else?\" For these scathing remarks he was sent into exile to Chao Chou, which was then one of the most remote outposts of the T'ang Empire. On his way, whether coming or going, he passed by this region, and according to the Topography, \"ascended the mountain of T'un Mun and looked over the vast unfathomable ocean and the forests and waters and felt that it was indeed a sacred spot.” This local tradition is confirmed by a passage from one of his poems which describes a storm at sea with the lines:\n\n\"Tun Mun is a high mountain they say,\n\nBut even the waves swallow it up.\"\n\nHan Yü held an official post at Chao Chou. Although the place is outside our region it is worth while illustrating the conditions then prevailing in South China by quoting from his famous ‘Address to the Crocodiles.\" Han Yü was asked by the aborigines to drive away crocodiles by throwing charms into a river. His address to the crocodiles was thrown into the river by the chief of the garrison. Part of it reads as follows:\n\n\"If the crocodiles have any intelligence they should listen to the words of the prefect of Chao Chou. The great ocean spreads in the South. There live huge whales and monster birds, tiny shrimps and little crabs: all creatures find space and nourishment therein. If the crocodiles start in the morning they will reach the sea by nightfall. I conjure them, if they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206120, "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-1970", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n193\n\nThe barracks are at present occupied by the 1st Battalion, The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, the old 33rd or 1st Yorkshire West Riding Regiment of Foot, raised in 1702 for the War of the Spanish Succession. It is one of the last surviving regiments of British Infantry to retain its individual identity. The Commanding Officer, Lt.-Col. D. W. Shuttleworth, the well-known Army and England Rugger International, has very kindly allowed us to take tea in the Officers' Mess where the Colours and some of the Regimental Silver will be on display. Some officers of the Regiment will be on hand in civilian clothes to act as hosts, to explain the Silver and to answer visitors' questions.\n\nStanley Military Cemetery\n\nThere are 663 graves in this 2.5 acre cemetery,* some of them dating from the 1840s and 1860s when there was a permanent garrison at Stanley (on the site of the present St. Stephen's Boys School) and others from the 1939-1945 War and the period of civilian internment at Stanley Prison. The cemetery pre-dates even the Colonial Cemetery, having been opened on 21st July, 1843. Note the large grave stones to some soldiers killed by Chinese Pirates in Stanley Bay in the 1840s.\n\nHong Kong, October 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nTHE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI\n\nIn last year's Journal (pp. 141-148) Dr. Ronald C. Y. Ng contributed an interesting article on this subject, reprinted by kind permission from the Geographical Journal Vol. 135, Part 2 (June) 1969.*\n\nNoting the bilingual nature of the map which used English and Chinese characters for place names Dr. Ng concluded that the document 'was intended primarily for English-speaking users' and described it as 'simultaneously a map and a gazetteer of the District'.\n\n* Readers may be interested to learn that the Australian National Library at Canberra has made available for sale Xerox copies of this interesting map from an original copy in their collection. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206355, "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-1971", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "156\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nthe regular army and militia during the South African War 1899-1902 and was reorganised as the Territorial Force (TA) in the Army Reforms of 1908. This movement influenced events in many colonies, and in the future Dominions of Canada and Australia. Hong Kong was thus no exception to the rule, particularly as, in her case, there were recurrent times of insecurity and uncertainty in the years to come.\n\n—\n\nAnother factor in the emergence of Hong Kong Volunteers at various times, and especially in its continuous manifestation from 1893 onwards, was the concern shown for Imperial Defence. Besides being an important port for the trade of and with China, Hong Kong was a naval base for coaling and refitting warships and was considered to be a vital link in the defence and maintenance of communications with the eastern parts of Britain's far-flung empire. In the 1880s there was much talk of its security which led first to the construction and arming of new batteries for coast defence at much cost—the Lei Yue Mun Fort dates from this time—and in the late 1890s the demand for the lease of the New Territories was made partly on defence grounds. This concern is reflected in the 1893 Volunteer Ordinance which made provision for two different bodies, the ordinary Volunteers—already well known to Hong Kong—and the Coast Defence Volunteers, who are here mentioned for the first time. (This Act also made the Hong Kong Volunteers subject to the Army Act whilst on active service in the same way as the Volunteers in England, and placed the Corps under the supervision of the Military Authorities).12 Imperial Defence was also later responsible, in 1902, for the conversion of the Corps, then comprising a field battery, machine gun and infantry companies, into garrison artillery which led to dissatisfaction among members and some resignations.13\n\nThe final stimulus at the end of the century was the enthusiasm and inspiration derived from being part of the British Empire which reached its emotional and material zenith in the decade between Queen Victoria's Silver and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897. An echo of this time remains in the Great Queen's\n\n11 S.P., 1884-85, p. 83.\n\n12 Section 18 of No. 6 of 1893 and Han., 1893, p. 70,\n\n13 Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 277.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206364, "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-1971", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n165\n\nkam Lo (1893-1959) as a private.40 He was Oxford-educated and a prominent barrister, related through marriage to the Ho Tung family, and thus could fit in. He was no doubt persuaded to join because of the emergency created by the General Strike of 1925-26; that is, if he had not joined earlier. It would be interesting to know whether he was the first, or among the first, Hong Kong Chinese to join the Corps.41\n\nBecause of the empire-wide Volunteer Movement and because of or perhaps despite two World Wars, the British volunteers have often been ex-Regulars, ex-Militia or, mostly, ex-Volunteers either at home or in other places. A few examples will show this general tendency over the years. H. H. Read, who sent a letter and photograph of the 1882 Volunteers for the 1937 Year-book, mentions that he had come out from England in 1882 “and having served in the 2nd Norfolk Rifle Volunteers (Windsor Review 1881) I joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Artillery which was commanded by Col. Crawford, R. A.”.42 Sir John Carrington, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, who was Commandant of the Corps 1896-1901, had served with the British Guiana Militia before coming to Hong Kong.43 Arthur Chapman, Commandant from 1907, had come to Hong Kong in 1889 as Assessor of Rates and had served in his native Yorkshire for some years as a member of the 1st East Riding of Yorkshire Royal Garrison Artillery (Volunteers).44 Many other examples could be quoted, including His Excellency Sir Thomas Southorn, Colonial Secretary and Officer Administering the Government in 1935 who, in his address to the Corps printed in the 1935-36 Year Book, was described as \"a Volunteer in Ceylon for many years\".45\n\nIn the later period, because of two world wars, the amount of previous military experience met with in the Volunteers has been considerable, particularly in the period between the wars when there were many persons in the Colony who had seen much service in 1914-18. When the Volunteers got going in earnest\n\n40 Vol, 1954, p. 240.\n\n41 But see note 28 above.\n\n42 Y.B., 1937, p. 28.\n\n43 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2 Vols, 1898): see index.\n\n44 Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 277.\n\n45 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206485, "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-1972", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON\n\n27\n\na loss to them as well as to ourselves, from shells fired by the Navy\". On the other hand, Mr. Loch, Lord Elgin's attaché with the attacking forces, reported back to Lord Elgin on 5th January 1858 that \"by the bombardment being continued till 9 o'clock instead of ceasing at 6 o'clock a.m., as was originally intended, we came under the fire of our own shells from the ships\".12\n\nOnce Canton was taken, the Artillery company formed part of the garrison. The authors of the official history of the Royal Marine Artillery make no reference to the \"Jingal pic-nic\" incident, but do mention a sortie against the Chinese on June 2nd 1858, in which Major Schomberg took part. Col. Fisher also relates this incident, in which the British forces lost several men and suffered from the extreme heat, but again does not give the names of the officers concerned.\n\nFor the rest of the summer after the voyage to the Peiho (not mentioned in The Royal Marine Artillery), Major Schomberg seems to have spent his time amusing himself as best he could in Canton. In September the garrison was enlivened by the visit of \"poor Albert Smith\" as Col. Fisher calls him. Their visitor, who seems to have been permanently suffering from stomach trouble and the heat, was taken on a round of the sights, including the Honan Temple (picture number XXXIII), and on 12th September 1858, notes that he had dinner with \"Captain\" Schomberg.\n\nFisher comments that apart from horse-racing \"cricket was one of the first sports we introduced; and the Tartar parade-ground at the foot of the heights formed really a very good ground\". Major Schomberg was not much of a cricketer, and the \"Hong Kong Register\" for the 9th March 1858, reports that in a match played in Canton between two military teams he scored a duck in both innings.\n\nThe Royal Marine Artillery gives the date of Schomberg's return to England as January 1859, which fits in well with the date on the last of the paintings: curiously, there is no mention of his name on any of the lists of passengers in Hong Kong newspapers for that month, but this may be because he returned on a troop-ship.\n\nIn later life Schomberg went on to be Deputy Adjutant General of the Royal Marines. He was made a general in 1877 and was knighted in 1896. He died at the age of eighty-six in 1907.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "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-1972", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207059, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "124\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nLocal people were placed in a difficult position when pirates or, in periods when China was at war with Britain and her allies, imperial war junks occupied their anchorages. At least two such instances occurred in the 1850s. In February 1857 two British vessels attacked war junks at the Chinese naval anchorage of Tung Chung on Lantau where there was also a fort and permanent garrison. The local population which had probably taken no part in the fighting had to make its peace with the squadron the day after it had burned the junks and dismantled some of the batteries on shore. An offering of two bullocks and some pigs, was sent with a letter from the elders begging the commander to spare their settlement.1 The same thing happened at Tai O, also on Lantau, in November 1854, when an expedition was sent to deal with pirate junks that had fired on the chartered steamer Queen, an American naval vessel. After shelling and an attack by the boats of the squadron, the pirate junks and storehouses were destroyed. An American naval officer, Lieutenant G. H. Preble, captured a pirate flag, inscribed with characters which, he wrote, 'state it is the flag of Lue-ming-suy-ming of the Hong Shing-tong Company, Chief of the Sea Squadron, and that he takes from the rich and not from the poor, and his flag can fly anywhere'. Local people did not see him in quite this light, for Preble records that ‘no sooner had we destroyed the piratical vessels, than a large fleet of fishing junks came into the Bay rejoicing and anchored'. These persons had to drive off a pirate attempt to take and make off in their boats during the night. The next morning a deputation of the chief men of the village came on board his steamer 'with a present of chickens, pork, fish, etc.'2\n\nIn this period, as at an earlier time, villagers took what measures they could to protect themselves from such villains. In the larger places like Cheung Chau, it was apparently possible for local people to prevent their being taken over by pirates as had happened at Tai O. As I have described in another place, their leaders established a Security Bureau in the early 1850s and repaired it when trouble again threatened some years later. In the villages\n\n1 Illustrated London News, 9th and 16th May 1857, pp. 463, 473-474. 2 Szczesniak, pp. 262-266. Another account of this expedition is given in Tronson, pp. 61-62. He calls the place 'Tyhoo', and Preble, 'Tyho'.\n\n3 Hayes 1963. Cheung Chau itself had previously been thought to harbour pirates; see CO129/6, No. 26 of 21 June 1844, in PRO London.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207334, "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-1975", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "94 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nemployment; but few stayed with the department. Most took to their gypsy life again, once they had accumulated a few dollars, and left for either Shanghai or Singapore, or simply went to earth in Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai until disinterred by the police, always on the look out for European destitutes. \n\nThere were always some troops on garrison duty in the colony or manning the various fortifications designed to repel a seaborne invasion. The garrison normally was small and numbered usually less than 1,500 men. But numbers fluctuated markedly at times. In March 1860, for example, over 14,000 troops (10,000 British and 4,000 French) were being drilled in a vast tented camp on two square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, leased from the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and awaiting transportation to the theatre of operations in the north. A witness of these events wrote that 'the streets of Victoria were thronged by soldiers and sailors; commissaries and staff officers were to be seen everywhere; all as busy as mortals could be'.7 \n\nIt was a policy of the government and the military to keep troops if possible out of European Victoria—the central commercial district—and to confine their debaucheries to special areas of the colony. Thus five brothels were specially opened at Wan Chai in the 1850s when soldiers at that time were prohibited by their officers from entering the central districts of the city. For soldiers on outpost duties access to Victoria was difficult in any case: \n\nGarrison life at these outposts is usually melancholy; society is impossible, as the fortifications are eight miles by water from the city, and communication over the mountains is arduous. It is not a question of which is the better of the two, but which the worse, to be of the British Garrison Artillery or the Chinese Lighthouse Service.& \n\nThere were usually more sailors than soldiers ashore in Hong Kong, or afloat in the harbour, at certain times of the year. During the three winter months, the British China squadron was stationed in Hong Kong; in summer most naval vessels left Hong Kong for the north and other stations. The large number of sailors, who at times outnumbered the civilian European population, was supplemented by merchant seamen of many nationalities; for by the 1890s Hong Kong had become, after London, Liverpool, and Port Said, the fourth largest port in the world in terms of seagoing tonnage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207336, "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-1975", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "96\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nand China Gas Company, the Hong Kong Electric Company, the Hong Kong Distillery Company, all needed skilled European labour.\n\nThe Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company employed European foremen, clerks, book-keepers, shipwrights, engineers, boiler-makers, storekeepers, and superintendents. 'Where the eastern seas', J.S. Thomson enthuses, 'bubble up hot to the flame of an equatorial sun, Chinese workmen, with Scotch overseers, turn out six thousand ton steel ships and do battleship repairing worthy of Woolwich or Devonport.' The skilled British mechanic experienced a degree of upward social mobility in Hong Kong: the skilled worker became an overseer, with all the compensations of improved status and salary.\n\n13\n\nApart from any non-qualified engineers, mechanics and artisans, there were a number of Europeans employed in other low status occupations. We should mention lighthouse keepers, employed by the Harbour Master's Department (later Marine Department), tide-waiters in the Chinese Maritime Customs, whose duty it was to board ships and junks at the various treaty ports, some of whom were domiciled in Hong Kong. They were, like the skippers and engineers of the vessels owned by the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macau Steamboat Company, mostly retired A.B.s from the Royal Navy and non-commissioned officers who had served their time. Lastly, there was a sprinkling of European tailors, hairdressers, milliners, confectioners, bakers, booksellers, printers, photographers, owners of sporting-goods shops, livery stable keepers, and gunsmiths. Most bars and tap-rooms employed Europeans as managers and barmen, though many were not of British nationality. As Macmillan concludes:\n\nThe bulk of the foreign population is employed in commerce, but the police, revenue, and sanitary staffs, schools, public works, docks, etc., give employment to a large number of overseers and supervisors, mostly engaged direct from home or from military and naval men whose service with the garrison is completed.1 Macmillan, however, forgot to mention the important beachcomber element in the overseer force.\n\n14\n\nEuropean outcastes were mainly prostitutes, nearly all of whom were of working class origin. Many of these women were professionals from the red light districts of San Francisco, Honolulu, Sydney, and Melbourne, who, for one reason or another (usually", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207397, "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-1975", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n157\n\nIn the Colony trade went on and there was much talk of the value of Hong Kong to Great Britain as a provider of foreign currency through its commerce. The fine young men in civil life in Hong Kong, prevented from travelling to join the forces at home, like many others, found it hard to reconcile the argument in favour of acquiring foreign currency with their knowledge that a large proportion of the goods exported found its way to Japan. They were all keen members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. It may be claimed that our trading policy delayed Japan's entry into the war, but to many it seemed that economic and strategic considerations were at cross purposes.\n\nI came in contact with Indian troops in the Colony mainly in an individual professional capacity when my surgical services were needed, but I imagine they were subject to the same effects of garrison duty as were the British troops. Garrison duty has never in any army provided a satisfactory training for active service, and Hong Kong provided yet another example of the truth of this. Once the arrangements for manning the defences were mastered the Island and the New Territories gave little scope for the most ingenious commander or space in which he could exercise and retain the interest of his troops. This left sports to absorb, by no means completely, the youthful energies of strong young men. Many of these had been received as friends in families in Hong Kong, some had contracted stable relationships with women but many had little to occupy themselves when off duty. I well remember seeing men flushed from their games trying to get into the China Fleet Club on the Victoria waterfront. They were obliged to shoulder their way physically through the crowd of Chinese and Eurasian women seeking them as companions. Not all of these were attractive, but girls of these races are among the most beautifully shaped that, in a wide experience, I have ever met. Co-habitation with a high proportion of these girls led to venereal infection and some men sought satisfaction in their own sex. Alas, this did not safeguard them from infection. Another hazard was malaria. About October 1941 the army manned the defences in an exercise and following this a substantial number of soldiers contracted malaria and needed treatment in hospital. Before many had regained strength after the fever, the army was deployed during the phase which led to open war. I pay high tribute to the spirit and the readiness with which these men met the call. Everyone who was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207507, "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-1975", "page_number": 275, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n267\n\nnever known a speech to have a more direct and immediate effect and the atmosphere on the troop decks changed vastly for the better.\n\nCASUALTIES AND EVACUATION OF WOUNDED DURING HOSTILITIES\n\nI shall now add a few sections on aspects of the period of captivity that are not conveniently included in the many records, under several heads.\n\nI have already said a little about the very difficult hilly and broken ground over which fighting took place in Hong Kong and about the roads suitable for wheeled transport which were under direct observation in many places by an enemy who not only knew every one of them but also knew the hill tracks as well. Movement by road was usually possible only at night and roads themselves were often cut by Japanese infiltrating troops. The conditions under which our troops had to carry out a continuous withdrawal, pressed closely by a very mobile enemy were extremely arduous. The supporting services, including the medical services likewise found their tasks extremely difficult and a short assessment of casualty evacuation may be of interest. The statistics are taken from Volume 11 of The Official Medical History of Campaigns in the Second World War.\n\nThe strength of our garrison when hostilities began was 10,976 officers and men of the British and Indian armies and when the locally raised units were added the total rose to about 14,500 of whom about eleven thousand were combatants. Many members of locally raised units probably melted into the civil population when the end of hostilities was seen to be approaching. A figure of 11,000 officers and men at risk is therefore assumed. The Official History records that 2,113 men were killed, died of wounds or were missing, and give a total of 1,332 as having been wounded seriously. Earlier in this account I reported that Indian army troops had their own hospital and that in Bowen Road we admitted Indian troops when they were wounded nearby, when they were transferred to us for special investigation and treatment by the Indian hospital and when they were transferred to us from other hospitals which were closing down after our surrender. The casualties for which we were responsible in Bowen Road therefore seem to be the total of 856 non-Indians recorded in the Official History.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207555, "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-1975", "page_number": 323, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n315 \n\nWhen Yuk-tong was a boy, he sat the local preliminary examinations. For seven times he failed in these examinations, so decided to give up and joined military service, where he enjoyed a very good reputation on account of his accumulated merits. In the 20th year of the Tao Kuang reign (*) he led his troops to fight a battle in Kwun Chung ('È'). Later, in the spring of the 4th year of Hsien Feng (A), i.e. 1853 he was transferred from being a staff officer stationed in Chin Shan Checkpoint to Taipang City and was promoted to be Deputy Garrison Commander, with his headquarters in what we call nowadays the Kowloon Walled City.* \n\nHe held this post for 13 years, once acting as Commander-in-chief of naval forces in Kwangtung province. It was under his care and supervision that Fort Bocca Tigris (✯✯) was repaired. When the Kowloon peninsula was first leased to Britain in 1860 and Sino-British diplomatic relations were established, negotiations between the two governments took place frequently. In spite of the fact that Gen. Cheung, the chief officer in the locality, was unavoidably involved in external affairs, he insisted that he was only responsible for local defence and the garrison and thus had no authority for making any decisions on foreign affairs. What he could do was to submit himself to instructions from higher authorities. \n\nIt happened on one occasion that the general crossed the harbour to Hong Kong island, where he stayed overnight, and on the next day all the inhabitants of the Walled City set off fire crackers in order to welcome him back. It is, of course, beyond our imagination nowadays to realize just how excited were those inhabitants at that time, but we do have strong reasons to believe that the general must have been greatly admired by them.† Although the general himself was not known for his academic achievement, yet there was one thing of which he was proud in his later days; that is, that his grandson Cheung Ching-san ( ) passed with distinction in the local examinations. \n\nIn the 5th year of the Tung Chi reign (♬✯) (1866) the general retired from military service at the age of 72, and died four years later, at the age of 76. \n\n* His rank was which may be translated as brigade-general. \n\n† At this time Hong Kong was under foreign i.e. British rule, and (though the article does not say so) the visit probably took place when a state of war existed between the two nations. Hence the great excitement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208498, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Chung Fort Shuen: 30 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Tai Yu Shan Fort Shuen: 30 garrison soldiers under 1 Tsing-tsung.\n\nTai Yu Shan Shuen: 40 garrison soldiers under 1 Tsing-tsung. Sha Lo Wan Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nTai Ho Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nMui Wo Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nFor the support of these guard-stations, other guard-stations were established on the mainland and the neighbouring islands. The following shows the distribution of garrison soldiers in these guard-stations:\n\nKowloon Walled City: 100 guard soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung and 2 Ngai-wai.\n\nKap Shui Mun Shuen: 10 garrison soldiers.\n\nShumshuipo Shuen: 35 garrison soldiers.\n\nTsing Lung Tau Shuen: 50 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Tsing Yi Tam Shuen: 15 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung.\n\nCheung Chau Shuen: 45 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung and 1 Ngai-wai.\n\nPing Chau Shuen: 15 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Yung Shu Wan Shuen (on Lamma Island): 10 garrison soldiers.\n\nPo Toi Shuen (on Po Toi Island, south of Hong Kong Island): 20 garrison soldiers.\n\nThese guard-stations were under the command of the Tung Chung Shau-pei of the Tai-pang Battalion.\n\nBesides the garrison soldiers, there were also war vessels with 60 soldiers under 2 Tsing-tsung and 1 Ngai-wai.\n\nThese forts and guard-stations remained in position till 1898, when the New Territories and the adjacent Islands were leased to the British. After that, they were redundant.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY CITED (all from Chinese Sources)\n\nO Mun Kei Leuk ¶ g. 1800 edition\n\nSan On Yuen Chi\n\n1819 edition\n\nKwong Tung Tung Chi ✯✯ 1864 edition", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208802, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "232\n\nbut at page 349, read,\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n\"Indeed, the Chinese garrison troops fled their strongholds en masse, before the assault forces reached the shore.\"\n\n\"... the Chinese defenses simply folded up....\"\n\n- and later, page 350,\n\n\"Once they (Chinese) had recovered their astonishment of seeing ships moving against wind and tide, they ranged along the banks, some performing kowtows as the gunboats passed.\"\n\nAnd see also numerous instances in Chapter II.\n\nBut the lapses do not greatly detract from the sound scholarship which this study represents. It is well documented and well articulated; it is written in a most elegant style; and this reader was greatly absorbed in the moving narrative. In more than one place one seems to hear strong echoes of Somerset Maugham relating the piques and barbs and jealousies and smoldering antipathies among colonial officials and merchants in the field. Certainly Napier and Pottinger were not universally loved; and Elgin and Admiral Seymour must have disliked each other intensely.\n\nThe book must be one of the most readable scholarly works on the period, and it makes excellent use of many specialist studies of some narrower issues and individual episodes, such as Peter W. Fay's The Opium War, 1840-42 (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), and Jack Gerson's excellent Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino-British Relations, 1854-60 (Cambridge, 1972), as well as all the now standard works on the nineteenth century opening of China.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong, May 1980.\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nTHE IMPACT OF CHINESE SECRET SOCIETIES IN MALAYA--A HISTORICAL STUDY. Wilfred Blythe, pp. XIV, 566, maps, ill, app. Oxford University Press, 1969.\n\nAs befits the complicated, extensive and important nature of the subject, this is a long book (566 pages). It carries an introduction by the Right Hon. Malcolm Macdonald who, rightly in my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209009, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUIRIES\n\n139\n\nFuk Tak Temple **\n\nTai O Market- No information.\n\nThe number of temples found in each area is as follows\n\n1. Mui Wo-2\n\n6. Tsin Yu Wan-1\n\n11. Sha Lo Wan-1\n\n2. Pui O-4\n\n7. Yi O-1\n\n12. Tung Chung 3\n\n3. Tong Fuk-2\n\n8. Tai O-7\n\n13. Tai Pak - 1\n\n4. Shek Pik-3\n\n9. Keung Shan- 1\n\n14. Nim Shue Wan-1\n\n5. Fan Lau-2 10. San Shek Wan-1\n\n15. Chak Lap Kok-1\n\nHong Kong, March 1980\n\nANTHONY K.K. SIU\n\nTHE KOWLOON WALLED CITY\n\nThe Kowloon Walled City was situated to the north of the present Kai Tak Airport. It had been the most important military base in Hong Kong during the later Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1911).\n\nAt the beginning of the Ch'ing period, there was no walled city. In the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1668), there was only a watchpost, called the 6, recorded as having thirty guards. Fourteen years later, in the 21st year of Kang Hsi (1682), the number of guards was reduced to only ten, and the post was turned into the Kowloon guard-station. This Kowloon guard-station, with only ten soldiers, was still in existence up to the 16th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1811)\n\n1\n\nDuring the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1810), the Fat Tong Mun Fort # was evacuated, and a new fort was built on the coast of Kowloon. This was the Kowloon Fort #. Its garrison was forty-eight men, under one pa-tsung and one ngai-wai.\n\nAfter the 22nd year of the Tao Kuang reign (1843), Hong Kong Island was under British rule. In order to strengthen the fortification of Kowloon, a walled city was built in the 27th year of Tao Kuang (1847). This was the Kowloon Walled City\n\n* See JHKBRAS 19 (1979)· 209-210.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209010, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "140\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe Walled City had an area of about 70 mou. It had a length of about 130 yards and its breadth was about 240 yards. The walls were about 20 feet high and five to ten feet thick. There were four main gates. The gateways were about ten feet high and eight feet wide, and they could be shut with iron gates.\n\nThe main entrance was the South Gate PT. Outside the main gate, there was the Lung Chun River. A stone bridge called the Lung Chun Bridge crossed the river. Soldiers could land at a pier and march directly into the Walled City.\n\nThe Walled City's garrison was 150 soldiers under one fu-cheung or brigadier. In addition, fifteen soldiers and one ngai-wai-tsin-tsung or sub-lieutenant guarded the Kowloon Coastal Guard Station 九龍海口汎 whilst the Kowloon Fort 九龍砲台 was guarded by one tsin-tsung or lieutenant with 75 men. The number of men remained the same until the early Kuang Hsü Reign.\n\nThen in the 24th year of the Kuang Hsü Reign (1898), the New Territories was leased to the British. The Walled City at first remained under the rule of the Ch'ing Government. However in 1899 the garrisons in that area were evacuated, and the Walled City was abandoned.\n\nNowadays, nothing of the Walled City remains, except two old cannons of the Chia Ch'ing Period and the old yamen which can still be found in Lung Chun Road inside the old Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, November 1980\n\nANTHONY K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Chapter 8 of the San On Yuen Chi, K'ang Hsi edition states, \"During the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1667), the Kowloon watch-post, guarded by thirty men, was established. Then, in the 21st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1682), the Kowloon watch-post was turned into the Kowloon guard-station and the number of guards was reduced to ten only.”\n\n2 See Chapter 11 of the San On Yuen Chi, Chia Ch'ing edition 新安縣志卷十一\n\n3 Chapter 125 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition records, “In the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing Reign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209013, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe Chien Lung period, it was turned into a guard-station\n\n143\n\nVillages rebuilt at that time were Tze Tuen Tsuen, Tuen Mun Tsuen, Siu Hang Tsuen, Po Tong Ha Tsuen, So Kwun Wat Tsuen and San Tsuen Wai.12\n\nIn the 16th year of the Chia Ching reign (1811), the Tuen Mun guard-station was strengthened. Besides the original garrison, a Pa-Tsung was posted to be the assistant. Five guard-stations, each under a Ngai-Wai with four men, were erected at Shing Mun, Wang Chau, Kwun Chung, Tsiu Keng and Ma Tseuk Leng. They were all under the command of the Tsin-Tsung of the Tuen Mun Guard Station. At that time, villages in that area were all under the charge of the Kwun-Fu-Shi TO: namely: Tuen Mun Tsuen, Tsing Chuen Wai, Tsz Tuen Wai, Siu Hang Tsuen, Po Tong Ha Tsuen, Sun Fung Wai, Chung Uk Tsuen, Nai Wai Tsz Tsuen, San Tsuen, So Kwun Wat Tsuen, Tai Lam Tsuen, Tin Fu Tsai Tsuen and Un Tan Tau Tsuen.4\n\nDuring the early years of the Tao Kuang reign, a Pa-Tsung and a Ngai-Wai with sixteen men were posted at the Tuen Mun Guard-station, sixty men were placed in the following six guard-stations which were all under the command of the Tuen Mun Guard Station. These guard stations were at Mong Tseng, Wang Chau (ten men), Kwun Chung (five men), Tai Po Tau (fifteen men), Shing Mun Au (fifteen men) and Tsiu Keng (five men).15 This continued until the 24th year of the Kuang Hsü reign (1898), when the Ch'ing Government leased the New Territories and the adjacent islands to the British, after which these guard-stations were abandoned.16\n\nIn 1899, the area was divided into the three sub-districts of Tuen Mun, Tai Lam Chung and Lung Ku Tan belonging to the Un Long District. Villages in these sub-districts were as follows:17\n\nTuen Mun Sub-district:- Chung Uk Tsun, Shun Fung Wai, Tsing Chun Wai, Tsz Tin Wai, Nai Wai, Tun Tsz Wai, Po Tong Ha, Siu Hang, Lam Ti and San Tsuen.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209645, "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": 302, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "280\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npotential dangers to the colony argued the need for a governor with an intimate knowledge of the territory and the reputation of being a strong disciplinarian.\n\nThe situation to which May returned was very different from that which he had left seventeen months previously. The early part of the year 1911 was fairly peaceful2 in spite of the abortive uprising in Canton in April and the assassination of the Manchu general there in August. But the outbreak of the revolution in central China in October soon spread to Canton and the Manchu governor was forced to flee to Hong Kong in early November. These successes were wildly celebrated by the Hong Kong population with demonstrations and firecrackers. But rejoicing soon gave way to hooliganism and violence as the feeling grew that the overthrow of the foreign Manchu government in China ought soon to be followed by the ousting of the British from Hong Kong. Shops were looted in broad daylight, the police were stoned, Europeans were threatened and attacked on the streets, bomb-making factories were discovered, and laws were openly defied. When police made arrests they were liable to be attacked by mobs attempting to release the prisoner. There was a rush by Europeans to buy firearms for self-defence.3\n\nLugard took strong measures to deal with this situation. There were daily route marches through the streets of the city by soldiers with fixed bayonets. On 30th November emergency powers under the Peace Preservation Ordinance were invoked by proclamation, giving the police wide powers to disperse crowds, enter houses and make arrests, and the same day an amending bill was rushed through the Legislative Council in one meeting to give magistrates the power to impose the penalty of up to 24 lashes with a cat o' nine tails for a wide range of offences, in addition to any other penalty prescribed by law. In the three months from December 1911 to February 1912 fifty-one prisoners were flogged with the cat o' nine tails for such offences as theft, assaults on the police and resisting arrest. At the same time the garrison was reinforced with two battalions of infantry and a battery of artillery sent from India,\n\nThese strong measures had their effect and before Lugard departed in March 1912 he felt sufficiently confident that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209646, "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": 303, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n281\n\ndisturbances were under control to rescind the proclamation invoking emergency powers as soon as the Chinese New Year celebrations were over. But conditions in the colony had not yet fully returned to normal and various wild rumours continued to be put into circulation, including the story that when May arrived the enlarged garrison would make an attack on China and annex further areas of Guangdong north of the New Territories. However, no-one was expecting any serious trouble on the morning of 4th July when the elite of the colony turned out to welcome the new governor.\n\nThe ship bringing Sir Henry May from Fiji arrived off Kowloon point early in the morning and at 10 a.m. Sir Henry crossed the harbour in the government launch to Blake Pier where he was greeted with a salute of 17 guns. He inspected the guard of honour and met the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, all of whom were well-known to him. Among them was Sir Kai Ho Kai, the senior member of the Legislative Council, who had just received his knighthood, the first ever given to a Chinese in Hong Kong. Sir Kai had strong connections with the reform movement in China, but he had loyally supported the British administration in the measures taken to deal with violence in the colony, and the knighthood was his reward for this as well as for his long career of public service.\n\nThe next part of the ceremonial was the procession to the City Hall. Sir Henry and Lady May took their seats side by side in two sedan chairs, each carried by eight coolies. The chairs were escorted by eight Indian constables, four on the right of Sir Henry's chair marching two paces apart, and four on the left of Lady May's chair. Behind them was a European police sergeant, and he was followed by four more chairs carrying the four daughters of the new governor. The route to the City Hall was lined by soldiers stationed at intervals of three paces on either side of the road.\n\nAs the procession left Blake Pier and passed along Pedder Street towards Des Voeux Road a Chinese dressed in European clothes was seen to push his way through the crowd around the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210180, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "130\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npreviously been located near Sham Chun, but, shortly after the cession of Hong Kong the sub-magistracy was moved to Kowloon, known as Kowloon City after a wall was built around it in 1847. A military garrison was transferred to Kowloon City from Tai Pang in north-east San On, at about the same time.\n\n73\n\nThere had been a few small military posts on the island of Hong Kong established long before 1841. These were manned by soldiers and ratings of the Tai Pang battalion which served as a kind of military marine constabulary, sailing war junks and manning small posts scattered across this part of the district. However, they may have been discontinued before 1841 as there does not seem to have been any civil or military establishment on Hong Kong island when it was taken over. Johnston wrote in 1843\n\n\"no public buildings were found on any part of the Island of Hong Kong when it was first occupied by the English, except a small tumble-down Chinese house at Chek-choo (now Stanley) and another at Shek-pie-wan (now Aberdeen) where the petty mandarins stopped occasionally\n\n76\n\n+74\n\nIt seems, then, that the magistrate sent collectors and runners to the island in connection with the land tax and that a clerk was sent in a boat to issue licences to the boat people. There are reports of the district magistrate's officers still attempting to collect land taxes at Stanley as late as 1844 and the boat people may have been subject to the annual charge of 400 cash said to be levied on the 150 boats privileged to fish in local waters. The San On magistrate was still trying to collect this in 1844. Such visitations were being reported by the inhabitants in the few years following the British occupation of Hong Kong, and the British official correspondence gives the impression that this had been a regular practice in past days. However, it was not to be tolerated after the cession, and after representations by the Hong Kong Government, the provincial treasurer of the Canton province indicated that any claims to the former land tax would now be relinquished.\n\n77\n\nOtherwise, the inhabitants were left to their own devices. In common with other communities of the region, large and small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210193, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "143\n\n# STATE REGULATION OF PROSTITUTION IN HONG KONG, 1857 TO 1941\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\nFrom its earliest days the male population of Hong Kong greatly outnumbered the females. Chinese men came to find work leaving their families in Kwangtung and the European community was also predominantly male because of the presence of the army garrison, the ships of the Royal Navy and the crews of merchant ships unloading their goods in the harbour. In 1872, when the first proper census was carried out, there were 3,264 European men compared to 669 European women, a ratio of practically 5:1, and the Chinese men outnumbered women by 78,484 to 22,837, a ratio of 7:2.1 This imbalance continued to exist, though to a diminishing extent, for the next 70 years: in 1931 Chinese men outnumbered women 4:3, but the European ratio was still only 7:2.2 Naturally, in order to satisfy the needs of this predominantly male community, prostitutes quickly moved in to ply their trade, numerous brothels were established and by the 1850s Hong Kong was already notorious for the prevalence of venereal disease.\n\nIn 1857, at the urgent request of the naval officer in command of the China station the Hong Kong government instituted a system for the registration and inspection of brothels, the compulsory medical examination of their inmates, the punishment of prostitutes who communicated venereal disease to their clients and their detention in the Lock Hospital until cured.3 This measure was approved by the Secretary of State primarily because it appeared that a system of licensed brothels and government inspection might provide a means of protecting the inmates from ill-treatment and virtual enslavement to their brothel-keepers.4 Ten years later the Hong Kong government was instructed by the Secretary of State to replace the ordinance of 1857 with a new one modelled on the Contagious Diseases Act which had just been passed by the British parliament. This had set up a system of controlled brothels and compulsory medical examination of prostitutes in twelve garrison towns in England. The new 1867 ordinance, though more comprehensive, made few changes in the system already in force, except that the police were given much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210208, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "158\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ntutes in Hong Kong suffered from disease. The committee considered that an ‘admirable arrangement' would be the restoration of the old system of tolerated brothels confined to servicemen and subject to medical inspection, but they recognised that this was out of the question. So a variety of palliative measures were proposed such as a wide definition of the offence of soliciting in the street, more police, greater use by government of the power of deportation to rid the colony of known prostitutes, increased provision of treatment facilities and free hostel accommodation to encourage infected women to persevere to the end of their treatment. There is no information on how far these measures were implemented in wartime Hong Kong, or how successful they were.\n\nAfter the occupation in 1941 the Japanese authorities reinstated a system of controlled and medically inspected houses in Wanchai for the use of their own troops. These were once more closed down as soon as British rule was restored.\n\nThe system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong originally had two purposes: the control of the spread of venereal disease, particularly among the soldiers and sailors of the garrison, and the prevention of the exploitation of Chinese prostitutes in conditions which often amounted to virtual servitude. In practice the first aim always had priority, and while the system of licensed prostitution was in operation, legally from 1857 to 1894, extra-legally from 1900 to 1932, it seems to have been largely achieved. But control over Chinese prostitutes catering for Chinese clients was always less comprehensive and less strictly enforced. It served to curb the environmental pollution of brothels operating in respectable residential neighbourhoods, (apparently the main concern of the Chinese elite), and it may have reduced somewhat the incidence of venereal disease, but it probably failed in its ostensible purpose of preventing brothel slavery. Practically all prostitutes appearing before the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in order to be registered were brought by their brothel mistresses and had been coached in the replies they should make to the stereotyped questions asked: 99 per cent claimed to be between 21 and 24 years old and to have entered the colony only a few days previously. Few if any attempted to avail themselves of the help of the secretariat to escape from their profession.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210994, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "31\n\n- fort was built at the head of the beach.' Its strategic, administrative and economic position remained relatively insignificant until the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. In 1843, after the ratification of the Treaty of Nanking, the hsün-chien (Assistant Magistrate) of the Hsin-an county, with administrative responsibilities for 491 villages, was transferred there.2 Also transferred there was the Commodore of Ta-p'eng, the chief military officer of the county, and the garrison was increased to 150.3\n\nIt soon became apparent that these measures were not enough. In 1846, Ch'i-ying, the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, further memorialized the imperial court pointing out the exposed position of the site, and suggested constructing a “walled-city” (tsai-ch'eng) mounted with cannon. He also proposed building offices and barracks, not only to provide accommodations for the civil and military personnel who had hitherto been billeted in private homes, but also facilities for drilling. Such measures, he felt, would have a “constraining effect” on the barbarian base in Hong Kong, and would greatly strengthen the coastal defence of the area.\n\nThe wall was completed in 1847, and the “Kowloon Walled City\" came into being.\n\nReports on the dimensions of the wall varied. As described by James Stewart Lockhart, who reconnoitred the newly leased territory in 1898, it formed a rough parallelogram measuring 700 ft. by 400 ft., enclosing an area of 6.5 acres. It was built of granite ashlar facing, 15 ft. in width at the top, and averaged 13 ft. in height. There were six watch towers and four gateways, with doors of wood lined with iron sheeting. Officially the main gate was the South Gate over which the four characters “Chiu-lung tsai-ch'eng” (Kowloon Walled City) were engraved, but it seems that the East Gate, which opened onto the market place, saw the most traffic. The parapet had 119 embrasures and an unknown number of cannon were mounted. At a later date, the wall was extended from the northern corners up the hill behind, forming the apex of a triangle at the top. The knoll, known both as White Crane Hill and Twin Phoenix Hill, had a number of romantic legends associated with it.4 With large boulders perched precariously on its slopes,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210995, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "32\n\nlooking as though they would roll down any moment, it formed a dramatic and distinctive backdrop to the Walled City.\n\nThe City was primarily a garrison town. In 1898, the garrison numbered 544, with a civilian population of only 200, largely dependents of the military. By then the watch towers were being used as family dwellings. Besides the several official buildings there was also the Lung-chin i-hsüeh ## (Lung-chin Communal School), named after the small Lung-chin river nearby. The school's raison d'etre is significant. Just as the British presence in Hong Kong had necessitated strengthening the civil and military establishment at Kowloon, so had it highlighted the need to strengthen the inhabitants' moral fibres against Western decadence and materialism. The Hsin-an Magistrate, commenting on the founding of the school in 1847, declared that since Kowloon had become a point of interaction with barbarians, the inhabitants needed to be fortified morally, thus making a school necessary, and he even hoped that they might exert a civilizing influence on the intruders.\n\n10\n\nBuilt of blue baked bricks on a granite foundation, with granite lintels and frames to the entrance, the school was an imposing building with two main halls and two courtyards, much like the grander ancestral halls of the New Territories. Local literati were elected to the school board each year. The source of fund was irregular. A generous official occasionally made a donation; in the 1880s, a special rate was levied on the sale of suckling pig meat to subsidize the school expenses. Characteristically, public meetings, often attended by officials, were also held there. Its reflecting wall bore the characters \"Hai-pin Tsou Lu\" to denote a place of high moral and academic excellence by the sea, emphasizing how strongly Confucian orthodoxy still prevailed in this outpost of Empire. In 1897, an annex, a fine two-storeyed building called the K'uei-hsing ke (Kuei-hsing pavilion) was added, K'uei-hsing being the god who protected the literati. This shows that fifty years after its foundation, the school was still a going concern.\n\n14\n\nA small paper-burning pavilion stood near the East Gate. Traditionally, the Chinese literati revered the written word and, to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210999, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "35 \n\nKong except for a short interval between 1867 and 1871, was a major attraction of Kowloon City.” Gambling houses fronting the beach offered free launch services and carried on a thriving business. This caused so much consternation in Hong Kong that, after a series of stunning embezzlement cases and a connection with the gambling \"hells” of Kowloon had been established, the Hong Kong government passed an ordinance making it an offence for civil servants to visit Kowloon for the purpose of gambling. Under pressure from the Hong Kong government in the late 1890s, Chinese officials actually suppressed gambling. Ironically, it was under “British rule” in the twentieth century that gambling was re-introduced. But it was only after the Second World War, when Hong Kong prohibited brothels and opium that the Walled City was transformed into the squalid enclave of vice for which it later became notorious.\n\n36 \n\nThe City had other attractions. Both the Walled City and the fort had been frequently visited by foreigners since the 1850s. It was the terminal point of several interesting walks on the mainland popular with European residents. They were not required to produce passes or go through other kinds of formalities normally required in a garrison town. Often at the end of an excursion, visitors took a quick walk around the wall, snapped a few pictures of \"this curious and particularly dirty town\", and left for the Island by launch from the Lung-chin jetty.\n\nThe great change came in 1899. In the previous year, the Convention of Peking had been signed between China and Britain leasing territory south of the Shumchun river to Britain. However, in face of strong Chinese insistence on retaining jurisdiction in the Kowloon Walled City, the British agreed to include a clause that \"within the city of Kowloon the Chinese officials now stationed there shall continue to exercise jurisdiction except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirement to the defence of Hong Kong.\" This reservation of Chinese jurisdiction upset many sectors of British interest, not least of all, foreign residents in Hong Kong, all seeing this Chinese enclave in the midst of a British administered territory a security risk.\n\nThe matter came to a head in 1899. The Hong Kong govern-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211000, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "37\n\nment, when attempting in April to occupy the New Territory (as the New Territories were then called), encountered much more ferocious resistance than anticipated. At this juncture, 600 men were sent into the Kowloon Walled City by the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and the British authorities, convinced that they were there to support the resistance, demanded their withdrawal. The Colonial Office went so far as to threaten starving out the garrison at the City until troops were removed.41 The Chinese, however, claimed that the troops had been sent by special request of the Hong Kong government to preserve order, and though some of the men were withdrawn, by 4th May, 200 were still stationed in the City.42\n\nThis prompted the British to take action to attack Shumchun and Kowloon City as punishment for the Governor-General's duplicity in abetting the local resistance. On 16th May, at 3:00 p.m., a force of 300 men consisting of Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 100 Hong Kong Volunteers proceeded to Kowloon and occupied it, apparently meeting little resistance.43 All Chinese civil and military officials were ordered to depart as the British claimed that their continued presence and the retention of Kowloon Walled City in Chinese hands had proven inconsistent to British military requirement. To “legalize” the situation, an Order-in-Council was issued in December, announcing British jurisdiction over the Walled City which was to be administered in the same manner as the rest of the Colony.44 Yet this remained a unilateral revision of the Convention which the Chinese government never recognized.\n\n44\n\n45\n\n46\n\nThe Chinese naturally responded bitterly to the development. T'an Chung-lin, the Governor-General, protested vehemently to the court of the undignified manner in which the military officers and soldiers were cast out.45 At Peking, the Tsungli Yamen complained to the British Minister.46 Chinese eagerness to recover jurisdiction at Kowloon is best revealed in the letters from Lo Feng-lu****, Chinese Minister at St. James, to the Foreign Office.Yet, paradoxically, this eagerness was not accompanied by action; no attempt was made by the Chinese to reinstate an administration in the Walled City.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211679, "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-1989", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "69\n\nThe embarkation took place at midnight. It had begun to rain. There was no street lighting; the night was very dark and the gangway up to the hulk was slippery. These hulks were great steel pontoons, two hundred feet long, with a large deck house, in which were located the shipping company's office and some residential quarters. Wide stairs led down to the holds below, where the inward and outward cargoes were stored pending transfer elsewhere. To approach the ship you had to walk round outside the hulk along a gangway, about three feet wide, left between the deckhouse and the edge. To facilitate the movement of cargo no railings were put along this edge. I was carrying our younger child and I remember the feeling of horror when our other child, at a moment when the amah's attention was attracted elsewhere, toddled along to the edge to look over at the black tide rushing between the steel sides of the ship and hulk. My wife just in time snatched him back from the wet slippery edge.\n\nThe steamer was of the usual river design, like any small sea-going merchantman, but with more super-structure and a flatter bottom. There were not berths sufficient for all the refugees, who began to sort themselves out, some in the saloon and others in the smoking room. A wild alcoholic glow added to the sociability induced by the common dangers of the situation and I regret to say bets were taken whether one of the refugees, who was conspicuously expecting a baby, could last out till the ship reached Shanghai. When the Captain decided to start, husbands and bachelors were reluctantly persuaded to go ashore to return to their solitary and darkened houses.\n\nNext day the Consul decided to get in touch with the Chinese general who held the appointment of Garrison Commander at Kiu Kiang. This official was elusive but he eventually agreed to come to the Consulate for a conference. The safety of the foreigners in Kiu Kiang was really his responsibility and after some pressing he undertook to furnish protection. The British guards were consequently withdrawn from the Concession gates to the two hulks.\n\nDuring times of civil commotion respectable and well-to-do Chinese would bolt their doors or put up the shop shutters, as the case might be, and remain inside; but in any Chinese town there would also be an unruly element of loafers, pickpockets, thieves, and toughs, as indeed in any western city. Now was the opportunity for these hooligans. By midday the streets of the Concession were filled with a seething mob", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211683, "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-1989", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "73\n\ntwin Thorneycroft semi-diesel engines drove the craft at six or seven knots, a speed by no means excessive when we remember that during the summer the Yangtze ran five knots. Furthest aft were quarters and a galley for the Chinese crew, the “laodah” and his assistants in crime, the engineer, and two deck-hands.\n\nThree of us were now accommodated in the \"Hsun Si\", and settled down to pass the time of day, assisted by the Consul's gramophone, which we had had the foresight to borrow, and his tantalus, which it had fallen to our lot to escort. We did well enough so long as the weather remained calm, but the houseboat was top-heavy, and when the east wind got up against the flow of the river, raising a short choppy sea, the boat would roll alarmingly and bump heavily against the side of the destroyer. The first lieutenant would come along and throw a jaundiced look over the side at his paint, and order us off. We would have to turn out the engineer to start up the engines, and away we would scurry, slapping into the chop, heading for a bend some miles up the river where we could find a lee under the north bank.\n\nThe Chinese authorities on shore had issued orders that no Chinese subject was to communicate with the foreigners in their ships: but the Navy had left guards in the hulks, to which launches passed back and forth; and it was not long before contacts were again established through this channel. For seventy years Chinese and foreigners had lived next door to each other in peace and friendship, and the ties thus formed could not so easily be broken. They had traded together to mutual advantage, they had feasted and toasted each other, they had helped each other in times of difficulty; on either side were memories of pleasant days and kind deeds.\n\nSo at night sampans would creep out in the dark; little gifts of food would be sent off from the shore, and news would be given of the situation. How much damage had been done? Were the native banks still open? Were our servants being ill-treated? Had the Garrison Commander issued any proclamation?\n\nMeanwhile the Rear-Admiral, commanding the Yangtze British Gunboat Flotilla, had chartered a middle river steamer for the evacuees. The S.S. “Kiang Wo\" had sufficient cabin and dining accommodation to take us all, and anchored in the Yangtze for three months the foreign population of Kiu Kiang lived in what came to be known as the \"Floating", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211769, "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-1989", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "159\n\nstill more because of the unsettled conditions in China during the 1850s and 1860s. Internal dissent manifested itself through the Taiping rebellion, in which Shanghai was threatened. The native city was occupied by insurgents during 1853-1855 and in order to prevent Imperial troops from threatening the neutrality of the Settlement, the recently formed Shanghai Volunteer Corps (which later, in the 1860s, gave some amateur dramatic performances) fought the Battle of Muddy Flat on April 4, 1854, a skirmish about which some Shanghailanders still spoke with unreserved pride fifty years later, but for which a performance of the dramatic corps had to be postponed for more than a month.\n\n―\n\nIn the early sixties, tension heightened again; in August 1860, the Taipings threatened the Settlement; 1861 was relatively calm, but in January and August 1862, the town was once more the target of the rebels. Foreign, mainly British, troops, however, had been brought down to Shanghai from North China, where they had been fighting another war, and with the aid of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, as well as mercenaries, all attacks could be staved off. Early in 1864, the Taiping insurrection was definitely quelled,\n\nAll this was not without its consequences, of which only those pertaining to theatrical life need detain us here. It was not to be wondered that, as long as the Settlement was under the threat of attack, its foreign population had other matters to attend to than mere amusement, so in these years (1861-1862), there is an almost total eclipse of entertainment. Yet, no sooner had tensions eased somewhat than \"nightlife\" again appeared in full swing. The thousands of soldiers and marines had swelled the originally small population; as a result, this led, on the one hand, to amateur dramatics by the garrison forces; on the other, to an increased audience for travelling companies, which gave, for the first time in Shanghai's history, rather lengthy seasons.\n\nAs was mentioned above, the resident foreign population was fairly small, and this should not be forgotten during any discussion of cultural life in the Settlement. In 1846, the total number of foreigners was given as 120; five years later, the British census showed 256, of whom 38 were females; in December 1859, there were 495 male and 74 female westerners, whereas the census of March 1865, which incorporated the results of events in recent years, showed a total of about 2100 resident foreigners, increased by 1850 military (a number which had no doubt been still higher in 1863 and 1864) --- 160 women again formed a tiny", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212176, "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-1990", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "95\n\nsuccessful in winning scholarships to England under the terms of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund. The tea party was held in the grounds of a lovely little Elizabethan-style house recently opened as the headquarters of the Sino-British Cultural Association.\n\nIt was hard to believe that all the work of reconstruction, the town planning, the laying out of parks, the building of government offices, which had continued uninterrupted since Nanking had become the capital, those material expressions of the national effort to drag administration out of the centuries-old morass of incompetence and venality, were so soon to be wrecked.\n\nThe fighting in the north went badly for the Chinese, who were repeatedly compelled to withdraw. They accordingly decided to divert the Japanese effort to a terrain more favourable to themselves, and nearer to the main bases of their army. Two divisions were concentrated on the outskirts of Shanghai, and it was their attempt in August to drive the small Japanese garrison into the Whangpoo, the tributary of the Yangtze on which Shanghai stands, that unleashed the aerial war in central China. The Chinese light bombers tried to sink the Japanese flagship, H.I.J.M.S. \"Idzumo\", where she lay anchored off the Shanghai waterfront, and the Japanese retaliated by attacking Chinese airfields in the vicinity of Shanghai, Hangchow, and Nanking.\n\nRealising the danger of air raids, but without experience, the authorities in Nanking in an excess of zeal issued instructions that all light-coloured buildings were to be painted black, and so through the advancing days the view from our windows turned from the bright red and green of brick and tile to a blurred dirty grey. Even the white and blue omnibuses were changed to match the mud of the roadway. For our part we got hold of some bituminous paint and caused it to be spread on our red-tiled roof; but in the course of time rain streaked it and spoiled the effect.\n\nThe first air raid caught us by surprise at lunch on August 15th. A warning system had been established, but when the 'phone rang to advise us that the alarm had gone we did not know what to do. Someone remembered we had a large Union Jack in the attic, which after some discussion, feeling rather foolish, we decided to spread on the lawn. Tim, the pup, thought it was a new toy to be pulled at and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212197, "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-1990", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "116\n\ncontrolling the rackets of the Shanghai underworld. With the advent of the Japanese they no longer felt safe there and so had taken refuge in Hongkong. The long-gowned men were their bodyguards. These were the gangster chiefs, well regarded by the Chinese government, who had been responsible for the communist purge ten years previously. You can imagine what sort of a strain the presence of such men placed on the vigilance of the Hongkong police.\n\nThe police, however, did trip up badly once. One day a well-dressed, good-looking Chinese gentleman landed from the Chungking passenger plane. He had no passport or credentials and refused to say who he was. So he was detained. He turned out to be Mr. Tai Li, the formidable head of Chiang Kai Shek's dreaded Gestapo. The detention, although very brief, involved a loss of face, and it took a special visit of the British Ambassador to China to Hongkong to smooth the affair over. It is said Mr. Tai Li has ever since used his influence in a direction unfavourable to Britain.\n\nHongkong carried imperial liabilities. It was less irresponsible than Shanghai: nor was it a place like Shanghai where Japanese bagmen flocked in the wake of their army as instruments of Japanese policy with the dual role on the one hand of beguiling the foreign businessman, and on the other of reaping a rich commercial harvest from the trade restrictions imposed by the army on all business which did not pass through Japanese channels. Hongkong knew it had nothing to expect from Japan. It guessed the defences and the garrison were both inadequate; two weak British battalions, one Indian battalion, four out-of-date aircraft, and a small assortment of guns. Yet small as they were, the armed forces looked to their defences. Workmen set to to build concrete pillboxes to cover the beaches, of which there were a large number; alternative sites were prepared for light anti-aircraft guns, roads were built to link weak points in the system, bomb shelters were tunnelled out of the hillsides, and the British civilians, enrolled as volunteers, went into military training. Others served as watchers of the fixed minefields laid off the island, and small naval vessels were set to patrol the adjacent waters outside the boom which floated ready to stretch across the harbour entrance.\n\nBut the Japanese had their spies everywhere. The excellent barber's shop on the ground floor of that English stronghold, the Hongkong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212211, "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-1990", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "130\n\nto commercial goods, as it moved under the Japanese shadow. Under her conception of “incident” Japan had methods of applying pressure to foreign shipping companies, a pressure which in the existing atmosphere of appeasement it was difficult to resist.\n\nFollowing on the occupation of Canton, the Japanese mopped back towards Hongkong, but they left only a small garrison to watch the border. A heavy smuggled trade sprang up, not only over the border, but also by junk through the countless small inlets and bays of the neighbourhood. The Japanese exerted themselves to coerce the Colonial Government to suppress the trade. Their efforts met with failure: until Hongkong was itself submerged in a wider conflict, the Chinese war effort continued to benefit.\n\nHongkong is one of the world's great ports, the offspring of British administrative practice and Chinese commercial fecundity. Every year twenty-two million tons of shipping were entered and cleared. In the harbour the flags of many nations could be seen, from those of the great Western Powers to that of the little republic of Panama. The flags of the Scandinavian nations, of Norway and Denmark, were particularly in evidence, so far from home, witness to the freedom of the seas for which Britain stood sponsor. The volume of trade which passed through Hongkong was naturally restricted by the Japanese occupation of Canton. Cargo vessels called less frequently, but the great liners on fixed passenger schedules continued to go alongside the Kowloon wharves, often two or three at a time, ships of the American President line, the Canadian Pacific line, the Peninsular and Oriental, the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, the Nippon Yoshen Kaisha, the Dutch J.C.L., the Lloyd Trestino, the Blue Funnel, the City, the Messageries Maritimes and many other lines.\n\nI was due for home leave and sailed in the new P.& O. liner, the R.M.S. \"Canton\", on her maiden trip, in December 1938. The passengers lined the rails as we steamed towards the Lyeemoon passage. Did they realise what a remarkable monument to Sino-British co-operation was that lovely green hill side at which they gazed? Hongkong bears happy testimony, in a difficult future, to the benefits that flow from cordial relations between China and the British Empire.\n\nShanghai and Eastern China 1939\n\nShanghai was the splendid stronghold of foreign interests in the Far", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212220, "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-1990", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "139\n\nI was in Ningpo when the announcement of the closing of the Burma road was received. It was a severe blow for the Chinese, but I think they appreciated the difficulties of Britain's position and that she had only been compelled by the force of circumstances to accede to the Japanese demand. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and courtesy shown to me by the merchants and officials whom I met.\n\nNingpo was one of the first five treaty ports, opened to trade in 1842. Early promises had not been fulfilled, and the port, overshadowed by Shanghai, had remained small. Off the mouth of the Ningpo river on the largest island of the Chusan archipelago lay the walled city of Tinghai, occupied by British troops twice for a space of several years between 1840 and 1860. Tinghai at one time was designated, instead of Hongkong, as the place to be ceded to Britain for the repair of vessels. It looks a healthy enough place, built up the slopes of a high hill, yet the troops suffered much from sickness and the stones in the graveyard bear witness to the numbers buried there. The garrison imported some turkeys, to provide variety for the larder. The British troops have long since left, but the climate was favourable to turkeys, and now large flocks descended from the original birds are bred to supply the Christmas market in Shanghai.\n\nIn Ningpo, the graveyard contains the stone monument, first erected outside the East gate of the city, to commemorate the assistance given by Captain Roderick Dew, R.N., and Lieutenant Kenny of the French Navy and their respective ships' companies, in 1862, to the Imperial Chinese troops in expelling the Taiping rebels from the town. It was nearby that the American General Ward, Gordon's predecessor in command of the Ever Victorious army, was killed. But times change. To Dr. Sun Yat Sen and the Kuo Min Tang the Taiping rebels are the glorious forerunners of their own revolution, and it is doubtful whether General Gordon, or the British, are given any credit for having assisted the Imperial Government to quell the rebellion.\n\nThe country round the little Ningpo plain is very beautiful. In previous winters I used to shoot on the shallow lakes which lay amongst the hills to the west. Most sportsmen waited to go after the early morning and evening flights of duck, but I preferred to work along the edge of the hills with my dog for the occasional pheasant. They were not so numerous here as amongst the reedbeds of the Yangtze. Beyond the lakes, the deep waters of Nimrod Sound were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212225, "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-1990", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "Under police escort, the Japanese broke through the screens and dashed at the ambulance, which was being brought up behind. They rescued Mr. Hayashi and carried him off in triumph, whereafter the meeting was declared adjourned. Next day the Japanese Consul General called on the Municipal Council to express apologies for the incident. Mr. Hayashi, it was learnt, had been removed to Japan, where he presumably became a national hero. The adjourned meeting was reconvened for a later date, when the proposed motion was carried, under the covering protection of a strong contingent of Japanese Consular police.\n\nThe compromise arrangement, which was also put into effect, placed the affairs of the Municipal Council in the hands of a nominated commission, to be known as the Provisional Council. It consisted of 4 Chinese, 3 Japanese, 3 British, 3 American, 1 German, 1 Dutch, and 1 Swiss. That gave a proportion of 8 Axis versus 8 non-Axis votes. It will be seen the balance depended on the ability of the Dutch and Swiss members to hold out. The Chinese members would inevitably be puppets of the Wang Ching Wei regime, and therefore tools of the Japanese.\n\nWith this little flurry, the tempo of terrorism in the Settlement tended to increase. The British had already withdrawn their contingent of troops to Hongkong, where they were required to strengthen the garrison. There was an argument with the Japanese about whether their troops were to be brought south of the Soochow creek into the centre of the Settlement to man the British sector, or whether the Americans were to be allowed to take it over. In the end a compromise was arrived at and the Shanghai Volunteer Corps took over the sector.\n\nI had been for some time trying to persuade my wife that it was necessary to leave Shanghai; the optimistic atmosphere which the women found amongst their friends in the Clubs and at the bridge tables made the task anything but easy. I think, perhaps, the attack on the Chairman of the Council helped to decide the issue. It was impossible to obtain passages direct to England, but passages could still be obtained on Japanese liners for America, and so my wife, with several other wives, left for San Francisco in a sister ship of the \"Asama Maru\". Owing to blocked currencies, it was not everyone who could afford to send their wives to the U.S.A., but I was fortunate enough to be able to buy sufficient dollar exchange to tide...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212604, "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-1991", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "138\n\nI was anxious to reach Burma, and when I arrived at Rangoon in July found that I was one of the early swallows. The garrison still only consisted of two British battalions, and some battalions of the Burma rifles. In 1937, when Burma was separated from India, the army, which had been part of the Indian army, achieved a nominal emancipation from that tutelage; but in practice, from the general downwards, the majority of the officers came from India and the dogmas peculiar to the North West Frontier prevailed.\n\nI was sent up to Maymyo, in the Shan hills, to collect the wherewithal for an establishment, later to be known as the Bush Warfare School. Maymyo was the hill resort for Burma, the summer capital of the government, and the station of one of the two British battalions. This battalion kindly provided an orderly room sergeant, a stout fellow from Yorkshire, and between us we started to get things ready for the troops who were due to arrive shortly. I made my first acquaintance with the great brotherhood of the Indian Babu, the parasitic growth that sucks energy from administration in India. The Babu's great idea in life is to find a job for his brothers, of whom there are many, and to do so he must write more and more letters. A reply, which postpones decision, invites further correspondence. The more letters, the more filing; the more filing, the more indexing; the more indexing, the more work; the more jobs for brother, until one job has been expanded into six, and promotion is created: for first-brother can then claim to be exalted to the rank of head-clerk, to supervise the other six. The promotion not only brings an increase of pay, but also creates yet another vacancy for yet another brother in the position originally held by first-brother. It is a great game, not, however, convenient for warfare.\n\nI was later to meet the Indian Canteen Contractor, whose profits are so great; and the Indian Controller of Military Accounts, who also multiplies himself exceedingly, and travels round with a whole shelf-full of Army Regulations, without reference to which he cannot place one foot before the other. In India, even in the banks, every entry, receipt, payment, or other transaction is checked and counter-checked by three people, as a control on corruption, a control, to judge by all one hears, that is not superlatively successful. In this welter of procrastination time ceases to have value: amidst this accumulation of paper, decision is bogged down. It is a bureaucrat's paradise.\n\nIn Burma too I first came across the great game of discards. It was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212639, "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-1991", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "173\n\nactivity of the British Military Mission in Hunan and to withdraw the British troops to India. It looked as if our party would be all that remained, and I hoped that now at last we should be given a medical officer - Dr. Petro had in the meantime left us - and our full complement of officers. We had been much handicapped by the shortage of officers which prevented our manning the forward dumps properly and maintaining our contacts with the forward generals, while the school courses were in progress.\n\nReports continued to come in of successful operations by our teams at the front. We were particularly pleased with the report of one military train, the engine of which was blown up by a specially laid pressure-switch mine with considerable casualties to the passengers. We also had some failures. The members of one of our best guerilla teams were laying a pipe mine in the road at night, when they suddenly found themselves surrounded by Japanese. The leader promptly trod on the mine and the report we received stated that in addition to killing the team the explosion had killed some of the enemy.\n\nIt would be wrong if I gave the impression that there was a positive state of activity along all the fronts round us. At the time the Japanese were advancing on Shangjao the front was more active than usual; but on the whole the warfare was passive rather than active. I think a passive state of war accords more with the Chinese genius. The Chinese have had few foreign wars; their wars for the most part have been amongst their own people, where cunning and silver bullets counted for more than actual fighting. Life, God knows, is held cheaply enough in China and it cannot have been from any desire to save life that the preference for manoeuvre and deception arose; I would judge it derived more from an appreciation of the intellectual concomitants of warfare, as is well exemplified in the teachings of Sun Tze.\n\nIt was by denying facilities, rather than by fighting, that the Chinese resisted the Japanese. Not by any positive activity was a large Japanese garrison, supported by a still larger puppet army, held in the Yangtze delta; it was the negative pressure of a potential activity, which had not to assert itself to make itself felt. In the same way I argued that if the Japanese knew there were fifty well-trained demolition teams in the delta country astride their communications - and I had little doubt the Japanese knew just how many teams we trained - then they would feel compelled to increase their defensive arrangements by that much, in case all fifty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212666, "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-1991", "page_number": 220, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "201\n\n# THE RE-OCCUPATION OF HONG KONG\n\n## IN AUGUST 1945\n\n### DAN WATERS\n\nIn May 1992, on a Royal British Legion pilgrimage to Italy to visit graves of comrades killed when my company fought there in World War II, I became friends with ex-company sergeant major John McLaren. We later exchanged letters and he enclosed comments by his stepbrother, a Fleet Air Arm naval rating, about the return of the Allied Forces to Hong Kong in August 1945. From Mr Roland Davidson's comments I have compiled the following. It should be remembered, of course, that recollections can become distorted over half a century.\n\nWhen the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki both the American 7th Fleet and the British 5th Fleet attached to it were at sea ready for strikes at the Japanese mainland. Everyone was delighted that Japan had surrendered. As Singapore and Hong Kong were both holding out the 7th Fleet was dispatched to Singapore and the 5th Fleet to Hong Kong. We arrived quite quickly and American Admiral Bill Halsey lost no time in demanding the presence of the Hong Kong garrison Japanese commander aboard the flagship “Indomitable” on which I was a crew member. One of our aircraft, a Fairy Fulmar if my memory serves me right, was sent to pick this worthy gentleman up. After a short time the plane returned. I might add that our ship was still at sea in a state of readiness.\n\nOut of the aircraft stepped this very well dressed, debonair Japanese army officer who treated the armed marine guard as if it was his guard of honour. Admiral Halsey was none too pleased and called down to the flight deck: 'Bring that man to the \"island\" (the bridge) at the double!' Documents of surrender were placed ready for signature on a small table.\n\nWhen the poor fellow arrived he was asked if he was indeed the Japanese commanding officer. He replied in perfect English that he was in fact the second-in-command. He said his commanding officer had absconded the previous day. The second-in-command was rather arrogant and swanky, and smartly dressed in uniform with high boots which had high heels. Halsey ordered a marine to break off the heel of his right boot who then had to hobble around the bridge and across the decks to the amusement of the ship's crew. I never saw a man's arrogance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212878, "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-1992", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "172\n\nThis letter is both a classic of its kind and rather special—in its content warranting translation in full. It was composed in the literary style, and the writer's calligraphy is of a high standard. It is altogether a superior production, and of a kind now seldom seen. The writer was either an old village scholar or a retired schoolmaster, since the younger generation no longer has these literary skills or is trained in them. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the grave tablet erected in 1962 by the four branches descended from Ancestor Shui-tai, and by a list of all male descendants in the after generations, including mention of those who had gone abroad. It is beyond doubt that the clan took the government's notice to remove the grave very seriously indeed.\n\nAccidental Damage to Graves and Urns\n\nSuch statements by those concerned—and they can be many times multiplied since they were the rule—indicate how very concerned villagers became if an old grave, and especially a founding ancestor's grave, was likely to be interfered with by the authorities. Sometimes the files record damage by accident or even by intent. Where accidental damage to graves occurred in the early postwar years, when a large military garrison engaged in frequent exercises across the countryside, the British Army was sometimes the culprit. In 1963, the District Office received a letter from the Tangs of Kam Tin about one of their ancestral graves on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. 'It has recently been discovered that this ancestral grave has been damaged by military trucks... We are anxious to have it repaired; and as we cannot afford to do so, shall be much obliged if you will sympathize with us and provide the cost of building materials, so that we may proceed to repair the grave as possible in order to pacify the souls of our ancestors and calm ourselves.'8\n\nOn another such occasion, the then District Commissioner, New Territories, upon learning that an ancestral grave had been damaged during a military exercise, arranged for a ceremonial visit to be paid to the village by the brigade commander, the command land agent, the district officer concerned and himself. This was done to show respect to the family and to acknowledge its concern, as well as to show the authorities' desire to make speedy reparation for the damage caused.9 The villagers no doubt appreciated this gesture.\n\nSuch actions could be two-way. Meritorious actions by officers of the District Administration were also recognized. I once received a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212931, "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-1992", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "225\n\nparallels Hong Kong's, petitioned the British government to acquire 'an insular possession near the coast of China... beyond the reach of future despotism and oppression,' Matheson, who did not have Hong Kong specifically in mind, thought of British merchants as 'princes of the earth,' and despised the Chinese, ‘a people characterized by marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy... [in] possession of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.'\n\nChinese officials were no less culture-bound: Commissioner Lin Zexu, the Emperor's man in Canton, confronted the British just before the 1839-1840 Opium War by burning 2,613,879 pounds of British opium, 'surely the largest drug haul ever collected,' says Welsh. The British had been smuggling opium into China, hoping to balance off the large amounts of money they were spending for tea and other products exported home to Britain. Lin Zexu advised punishing the British traders by withholding exports to them of rhubarb and tea, without which they could not exist. Because 'their legs were too tightly bound to permit them to box or wrestle,' British soldiers, he said, were not suited to fighting on shore. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their confiscation of opium was followed by attacks by British gunboats on their port cities. They were forced to open Shanghai and other coastal cities to the British and cede Hong Kong to them.\n\nNot until Chris Patten was appointed governor in 1992 did Hong Kong become a high British priority. While publicly demanding that the garrison lay down their lives for it, says Welsh, Churchill privately considered the colony not worth defending against the Japanese. During World War II, the Foreign Office regarded Hong Kong as 'something of a thorn in the side' - a view some of its diplomats still hold — and wanted to return it to China; the Americans wanted this too. In 1946, the first postwar governor, Sir Mark Young, drafted a plan for a 'Municipal Council' constituted on a fully representative basis, but this was consistently turned down. Later, the colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, commented, \"The electorate of Britain didn't care a brass farthing about Hong Kong.' Welsh says this remains true, but he also reminds us that, in 1992, Chris Patten was proposing a more democratically elected Legislative Council not for the British voters but for the people of Hong Kong. As Welsh suggests, in 1946 China would have been in no position to object. But Hong Kong has since become more valuable than anyone could have dreamed in 1946.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213108, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "158\n\nKong waters. This petition was probably written because of fears as to the practical problems they would face if they lived in British territory, and their market was in Chinese territory. \"In the early years after the lease, grievances over the Customs remained at high heat. In the winter of 1906, the villagers from the New Territories went on strike, and refused to go to market. In 1907 there was a full-scale riot, triggered by a Customs official beating a villager for not paying duty. Later that same year, the elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned to the authorities at Canton, begging that the Customs officials at Sha Tau Kok be restrained.4 Later, relations with the Customs improved a little, but the duty demanded from villagers remained a major irritant and grievance throughout the period from 1899 to 1951.\n\nAnother irritant, and brake on economic development, was the political chaos in the border area of China. As can be seen from the Calendar of Border Disturbances at Appendix 1, political trouble in this area began even before the Revolution of 1911. An abortive rebellion in the Wai Chau (Huizhou,H) area in 1900 saw the Ch'ing Government lose control of the wild lands east of Yim Tin. A second abortive rebellion was centred in these hills, at Sam Chau Tin (Sanzhoutian,E), in 1904-1905.\n\nA second period of disturbance came after the Revolution, during the years 1911-1928, when the area immediately north of the frontier was the plaything of various competing political groups and would-be warlords, passing from one to the other week by week - 'In those days, when we went to market, the soldiers would be wearing yellow, but the next week, they would be wearing brown'. This period was marked by large-scale banditry, piracy, and general turmoil. With the large garrison of Customs and military personnel at Sha Tau Kok, bandits never threatened the town itself, but the Yim Tin Customs post was sacked by bandits in 1913 and (three times) in 1916, Nam O (Nanao,) Customs post at the entrance to Mirs Bay, was sacked in 1913 and 1914, Chan Hang in 1915, and, a little east of Chan Hang, Kai Chung (Xichong,) Customs post was sacked in 1916 and 1917. The Customs post at Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong,) was sacked in 1919 and 1920, while the Sha Yue Chung Ferry (the lifeline of the market to the east) was captured by pirates in both 1921 and twice in 1922. For nearly one and a half years in 1918-1919, indeed, all the Customs Stations in Mirs Bay east of Yim Tin were forced to close, so lawless had the area become. The irregular soldiers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213122, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "172\n\nThe guesthouses (), lower down Wang Tau Street from the gambling house, were three-storeyed shop-houses. The ground floor was the residence of the owner; sometimes a small shop was run as well. Above, on the first floor, was a dormitory for villagers and poor travellers staying the night in town. A few large beds stood here - for one or two cents, you could share a bed with whoever else was looking for a place to stay. For the more fastidious and wealthy, small cubicles on the top floor offered privacy and an unshared bed. Military officers visiting the town would stay in these private cubicles. The guesthouses did not serve meals; guests took food at the adjacent noodle restaurant. The 'totally comfortless' guesthouse used by the Basel missionaries in 1859 must have been of this type.\n\nThere was only one full-time opium divan in the market, although opium could be taken in the prostitutes' houses as well. Up until 1917, there had also been several low-class opium divans in sheds in British Sha Tau Kok - these were closed in that year, as part of the agreement to end trade in opium between Hong Kong and China which, it was hoped, would allow the Chinese Government to end all opium imports, and to control the sale of opium in China. The chaos in the border area, however, made it impossible for the trade on the Chinese side of the frontier to be effectively controlled, and the Sha Tau Kok opium divan continued to trade unmolested until 1951. Opium could also be bought for home consumption from the two tobacco shops in the market. These shops were also heavily engaged in smuggling opium into Hong Kong.\n\nNext to the opium divan was the market barber. In 1853 there had only been itinerant barbers in the town. This shop should be seen, to a large degree, as one of the service trades attracted by the opportunities brought about by the new frontier and garrison, like the prostitutes and the gambling house.\n\nBeyond the guesthouses, near the sea, Wang Tau Street was occupied by the fish laans and the Kowloon Customs Station. The Customs Station was rebuilt several times during this period. The Station building in existence in the 1920s was a solidly built, European style, single-storey structure, with a verandah, built of brick and tile. One end was the residence of the Assistant Superintendent. In the middle were the offices, and the barrack quarters for the junior staff were at the further end. The Customs also rented some nearby houses for stores and quarters. After the Station", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213316, "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-1994", "page_number": 138, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "119\n\nTHE TAKING OF CHAPU\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nRecently my daughter and I visited Chapu, a town which for a moment in history was the scene of one of the first encounters between British Forces and the Tatars of the Imperial Chinese Army.\n\nChapu, sometimes recorded as Chapoo but now romanised as Zhapu, is a small town lying almost exactly half way between the cities of Shanghai and Hangchou, the latter being the provincial capital of the central Chinese province of Chekiang. It used to be an important port on the north coast of the Bay of Hangchou noted for its connections with the Japan trade during earlier times; however, by the 1840s it had become a backwater garrison town for the Chinese army of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in support of the small Manchu garrison. The original Ch'ing fighting force, the Tatar Banners from Manchuria and Mongolia, had become effete through soft living, whilst the provincial forces of Chinese so-called soldiery, the Green Banners, were ill-equipped, ill-trained, and under strength.\n\nDuring the eighteen thirties, China wanted nothing of foreigners, whilst the Europeans, seeing a vast land teeming with millions of potential customers, wanted admission into China and its lucrative trade. Europeans, and to a certain extent the Americans too, were becoming more and more frustrated by the Chinese attitude towards foreigners in general, refusing to accept them under what was considered in the West as normal international relations.\n\nMisunderstandings were centred around China looking upon Great Britain and other European countries as tributary states, and the British East India Company, which had had its monopoly abolished in 1833, had entered the opium trade. Opium was banned by the Chinese authorities, and after an official was sent from Peking to Canton—the only port open to foreigners for trade in general—especially to put an end to the opium trade. British officials became involved due to confusion over recognition of their status and the question of the illicit trade of opium. A further quarrel broke out over the jurisdiction of Chinese courts in cases involving British subjects.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213321, "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-1994", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "124\n\nup a rocket projector failed to breach them. For the first time in the three hours since the Tatars had taken refuge in the temple did their discipline begin to slip, a few tried to escape in ones and twos down the valley towards the harbour, only to be picked off on the way. It was now decided by the British to set fire to the building, and a second breach having been blown in the opposite side a fire was kindled which soon spread to the roof and in a short time the whole was reduced to ruins. When finally the Tatar resistance ceased and they were forced to abandon the temple only fifty-three were still alive to be taken prisoner. They were found crouching on the ground, with their arms folded and their matchlocks and swords laid aside, in evident expectation of a violent death. They were secured by having their queues tied together, whilst those with wounds were bandaged by British doctors which created considerable goodwill. In the midst of the smoke and death sat an old Tatar colonel who, when the red coats began to appear through the smoke, laid down his pipe, snatched up a sword and cut his own throat. He failed to kill himself and was bandaged up by the British doctors and then, along with all the other prisoners, was released. Ilipu, the Manchu, wrote thanking the British for their kindness in caring for the wounded.\n\nThe Manchu force in the temple was commanded by a company commander Lung Fu of the Bordered Red Banner * and he, like many of the 270 men within the temple, killed himself rather than be taken prisoner.\n\nMeanwhile, as this was the first time that the Manchu Tatars had encountered the British on the field of battle, and fearing that the British would slaughter and rape indiscriminately or probably more so because the Tatars were unable to bear the shame, they destroyed themselves in large numbers, first killing their wives and children. Whole families seem to have done away with themselves hanging from beams in their own homes, and the wells and every place where they could find water enough were full of bodies. Chinese gangs plundered the abandoned Tatar part of the town, and when the British entered the town the only noise was screams of those being killed or killing their own families.\n\nIn a Chinese account of the battle the British bombarded Chapu on the 18th May and landed a force to attack the east gate of the city. Here they were met by troops from Shensi and Kansu provinces armed with gingalls, and received such rough treatment that they went round to the south gate. As the Manchu Tatar garrison had been in the habit of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213324, "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-1994", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "127\n\n1\n\n# NOTES\n\nThe Manchus established the Ch'ing dynasty in AD 1644, having overthrown the native Chinese Ming rulers. The Manchus were related to the central Asian group speaking a language akin to Mongol who settled in Manchuria many centuries earlier. They were usually referred to by Europeans as Tatars.\n\n2. Lach garrison town, including Chapu, contained a Tatar walled city separate from the Chinese city.\n\nIn 1840 HMS bug Algerine paid a flying visit to Chapu and was fired upon from some batteries near the town. During the attack on Chapu in 1842, these batteries were quickly put out of action by the Royal Navy.\n\n4. Under command of Vice-Admiral Sir William Parker.\n\n*The Westmorland Regiment was granted the China Dragon superscribed “China” for service during the China War of 1840-42.\n\n*The Nemesis was the first iron steamer to round the Cape of Good Hope. She was never commissioned as one of HM's vessels of war, yet was generally commanded by Royal Navy officers. She was of the greatest use throughout the First China War and after the Treaty of Nanking returned to Bombay.\n\nA joss-house is the Victorian name for a Chinese temple or shrine, the house where the joss (god, from the Portuguese \"Deos\") was situated. From contemporary sketches and descriptions, the joss house in question would appear to have been a medium-sized Buddhist establishment, and although there were no references to priests, monks, or nuns, it had residential accommodation in addition to the usual altar halls.\n\nLung Fu was a company commander, Iso-ling (grade 4a), of one of the Eight Manchu Banners.\n\n*Parker, L. II. Chinese Account of the Opium War.\n\nA Tao-tai was an imperial Circuit Intendant, a member of the hierarchy controlling several prefectures.\n\nI-li-pu (1770-1847) was a member of the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner and an Imperial Clansman. He was banished for disobedience in 1841 but recalled and appointed acting assistant military lieutenant-governor at Chapu in early 1842, his predecessor having died of wounds during the British attack. Chapu was still occupied by the British, and I-li-pu had to remain in Hangchou, where he received orders to move to Soochou as it was understood that he was respected by the British, and the Court wished him to be on hand to carry out negotiations.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213641, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "212\n\nTarlar\n\nGarrison\n\n+\n\nMILITARY SKETCH\n\nof the Attack on the Chinese Position before\n\nCHAPOO.\n\non the 13 May 1842.\n\nDrawn by Lieutts Randall & Johnston\n\nof the Madras Engineers.\n\nCITY of CHAPOO\n\nChinese Forces entrenched.\n\nBritish Troops.\n\nNaval Brigade\n\n4. Inshorego\n\nPlan of Attack", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214063, "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-1997", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "98\n\nprovince.\n\nIn 1941, construction of a 457m-long tarmac-surfaced runway at Kai Tak for military use on an approximate south-east/north-west orientation, which had already necessitated the dismantling of the RAF hangar, was due to start on 8th December 1941, the precise day on which the Japanese invaded the New Territories and attacked Kai Tak airport.\n\nMilitary/Defence Works\n\nPrior to the British administration, there were several forts in the New Territories going back to the early years (17th century) of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the oldest existing fort (1717) probably being that on Tung Lung Chau overlooking the narrow Fat Tong Mun passage in the eastern approaches to the harbour, and the largest still remaining at Tung Chung (60m by 80m) on the northern coast of Lantau, which was completed in 1832. Little remains of the old 4m-high walled Kowloon City, a garrison fort (120m by 230m) with its sturdy granite parapet wall complete with embrasures and watchtowers, which was finished in 1847 soon after the British established themselves on Hong Kong Island.\n\nSubsequently, the British military have been involved in a considerable amount of civil engineering. The Royal Engineers were first involved in 1841 in the early construction of Queen's Road in Victoria. Perhaps their most impressive roadworks over the years, constructed before the Pacific war, have been Jat's Incline, which provides access to the upper levels of the steep hills overlooking Kowloon. Nevertheless, the main military engineering effort was expended on providing defences and back-up facilities (for example, naval dockyards, aviation needs, storage depots, barracks, and hospitals), principally against possible seaborne attack by Russia last century and later against the increasingly land/sea invasion threat by Japan in the 1930s. Novel defence measures included excavation of a cavern at Lei Yue Mun towards the end of the nineteenth century to house the sophisticated Brennan torpedo, which, after launching down a ramp, was controlled from the shore with a wire attached to the rudder.\n\nRegarding defence facilities, at the outbreak of the Pacific war in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214305, "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-1998", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "127\n\nMongolia during the next few years, the last being in 1915 and then wrote his book Fur and Feather in North China. In the autumn of 1915 he went over to meet his brother and sister, both missionaries in Sian, and took the opportunity to seek more specimens in the Ch'ingling range to the south of the city.\n\nDuring this period President Yuan Shih-kai's soldiers mutinied in Peking, and there was talk of Chinese troops in the Chinese city of Tientsin being in an ugly mood. Sowerby, having learned of the potential for trouble, went to discuss the matter with the Military Intelligence Officer of the British Garrison in Tientsin who then ensured that the Garrison was alert and properly guarded. Although expatriates were safe in the European quarters of the city the Chinese city of Tientsin suffered that night from mutineers on the rampage. The rioting was brought under control by the police together with the soldiers who did not mutiny and Sowerby, who had gone with a friend to see what was going on, watched something, he later wrote, that he could never forget.\n\nRR Sowerby [possibly a relative] explained in his short biography of Arthur Sowerby that Arthur travelled back to England during the first World War with the intention of joining the forces. He had already been told while still in China that his chronic arthritis, caused by exposure during expeditions to Manchuria, gave him no chance of success but despite this he went and \"to his disgust he was immediately posted to the Chinese Labour Corps [CLC] as there was urgent need of officers who could speak the language.\" As this Corps was not formed until 1917 and did not reach France until late that year it would seem that Arthur did not make his way to England until 1917 or even 1918. It would also appear from correspondence that he had already been involved with the Corps before, in Shantung, again from R R Sowerby: \"He had been anxious to avoid the CLC, having already had all he wanted of it, recruiting coolies in Shantung...\" He was posted to the Staff of the CLC base at Noyelles near Abbeville where he was involved in court-martial, criminal investigations and other similar duties but was soon struck down by another attack of arthritis and sent to hospital where he met up with his brother, now a major with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Some time later Sowerby heard that his brother had been gassed at Passchendaele and unlikely to live. In the event he recovered but his lungs were permanently damaged. Arthur was demobilised in 1919 and for one whole year settled down in England.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214423, "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-1998", "page_number": 281, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "247\n\nTHE STORY OF STANLEY FORT\n\nBrief History\n\nR.G. HORSNELL\n\nThere seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village), Tytam Bay. The English name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3 field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of fever within the Hong Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate 20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable, nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures which formerly had been used in the very early days.\n\nThe present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings:\n\n1 Barrack Block\n\n1 Sergeant's Mess\n\n1 Dining Room and Cookhouse\n\n1 Bath House\n\n1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214430, "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-1998", "page_number": 288, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "254\n\nbetween the two main batteries, but being mobile the battery could have been at any position within the fort at the time of the surrender. This battery would have had its own mobile searchlights.\n\nA wartime machine gun post is shown on some old maps beside the footpath leading down to the present pumphouse behind the new married quarters on the west side of the peninsula. Nothing is shown on the Ordinance Survey map and it is believed that this post would have been an improvised sandbagged strongpoint. Its purpose would have been to prevent the enemy coming up the path from the sea. It also may have had its own searchlight set up in a sandbagged emplacement.\n\n**\n\n*\n\nThe story of the fierce fighting in the Stanley area and the last stand at Stanley Fort, which in the latter stages of the battle had no water supply and no communications link with the Fortress Headquarters in Victoria Barracks, has been told in Oliver Lindsay's book “The Lasting Honour\", Tim Carew's \"The Fall of Hong Kong\", and the Volunteers' Little Red Book. It was in this final action on Christmas Day 1941, that severe damage was done to the Stanley Fort Batteries by intensive shell and mortar-fire bombardment from the Japanese counter-batteries combined with continuous air-raid attacks by Japanese dive-bombers throughout the day until the capitulation was made on written orders from Fortress HQ shortly after midnight.\n\nFrom 1942 to 1945 Stanley was used as a civilian internment camp by the Japanese. In July, 1943 the batteries at Stanley Fort, then of course in Japanese hands, were again subjected to air-raid attacks this time from American dive-bombers. Fourteen internees were unfortunately killed in one of these bombing raids by a stray bomb. These air-raids continued intermittently until the end of the War. The war damage sustained by the bunkers, magazines, observation posts, and pillboxes which made up the batteries can still be seen today.\n\nAfter the Liberation, Stanley Fort was again occupied by the British Army. The garrison was reinforced in 1949 and remained strong throughout the 1950s despite deployments to fight insurgency in Ma-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214480, "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-1998", "page_number": 338, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "307\n\nReport of the Committee of the Shanghai Cricket Club and a Statement of Accounts for 1940. Articles on cricket include, Days of Yore, China Coast Cricket (1922-23), A Brief History of Cricket in Hong Kong, by Peter Hall, written in the 1990s, and Cricket in Shanghai (2 pages). In 1981, Arnold Graham donated a large collection of cricketing books and magazines to the Hong Kong Cricket Association.\n\nIn fact, when Arnold Graham came to play cricket in Hong Kong in 1933, he was married in Saint John's Cathedral and there is a wedding photograph to prove it.\n\nAnother of Arnold Graham's pastimes appears to have been the Garrison Players and, on different occasions, he played the role of both producer and actor. Various plays, mostly with a British ring about them, were staged. These included HMS Pinafore, Trial by Jury, Merrie England (1926) and The Scarlet Pimpernel.\n\nIn the box sent by Arnold Graham's daughter there were also a number of photographs and snaps of places like Hangchow (1932 and 1933) and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on the Bund. Also included is what could have been a soccer team where all players are Chinese, except for one European. There are also photocopies of pictures of groups of people taken at the Hankow Races in 1888, the Hankow Club in 1934 and 1935, and a picture of the stewards of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club, season 1926-27. Many of the pastimes, years ago in Shanghai, were similar to those of Europeans in Hong Kong.\n\nArnold Graham also spent much of his spare time with the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, over a period of 13 years, and there is a paper about the socio-military history of the Corps (14 pages). There are photographs of a military tattoo and another of a group of officers, mainly Europeans (one presumes of the Corps), taken in 1937. There is also a large, dark-blue epaulette, which appears to have been cut from a uniform, embroidered with a gold dragon.\n\nHaving had only one home leave in 13 years he managed to persuade his employer to grant him furlough during the Second World War, whereupon he joined the army in New Zealand. For the latter part", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214558, "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-1998", "page_number": 416, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "385\n\nRev. Wright provided the text for Allom's China and wrote a short piece entitled The Fortress of Terror, Dinghai. He claimed that 'during the British descent upon the coast of China, nowhere was the destruction of life and property greater than at Dinghai. Every hill on the coast in the vicinity of Dinghai was crowned with a battery of apparent strength; some of them too elevated to be effective. At the entrance of a defile, watered by a rivulet flowing from the valley of Chae-hu [sic], and on an eminence about two hundred feet above the level of the bay, stood one of those deceptive structures, misnamed \"The Fortress of Terror,\" in which the Chinese so lucklessly reposed entire confidence, when the British fleet cast anchor in the roads beneath. No troops, however armed or disciplined, could have acted with more eminent personal gallantry, than the Tatar garrison of the fort of Terror, yet none ever encountered a more signal overthrow.\n\nWright described Zhoushan as an agreeable scene, with every hill cultivated to its summit, every valley, from the mountain's foot to the river's margin with industry and fertility, producing a large surplus for the enrichment of the labourers. These productions, including rice, cotton, seed potatoes, coarse tea and candles made from the seeds of the tallow tree, were conveyed along canals in barges. The roads of Zhoushan were not constructed for the convenience of visitors, the gratification of travellers, or the mere objects of pleasure.\n\nIn describing the city of Dinghai, Wright noted that it did not stand upon the marshy ground but on the sloping side of the Yongdong Valley. It was surrounded by a brick wall twenty-six feet in height, sixteen in thickness, and six miles in circuit, with four entrance gates corresponding exactly with the four cardinal points. The city was intersected by open sewer canals, the streets were narrow and paved, and intersected by canals along the middle.\n\nBetween 1841 and 1844 the Westmoreland Regiment served with the British force during the campaign to capture and hold the Island of Zhoushan. The assault on and occupation of Zhoushan during the First China War was one of many along the coast of Southern and Eastern China. It culminated in the Treaty of Nanjing [Nanking] in August 1842 under terms by which occupation forces held on to several places until the treaty was fully implemented, Zhoushan being one. There was a school of British opinion at the time which strongly believed that we", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214736, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "THE BATTLE OF HONG KONG:\n\nA NOTE ON THE LITERATURE\n\nAND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DEFENCE\n\nLAWRENCE LAI WAI-CHUNG\n\n115\n\nAbstract\n\nFrom the stance of a person growing up in Hong Kong, this short note re-assesses the Battle of Hong Kong of December 1941 as recorded in the English and Chinese literature largely found in the University of Hong Kong Library. It examines the views of political leaders, war historians, veterans, and civilians of different persuasions and makes some informed speculation about their focus. It argues that a common omission is the relative fighting power of the defender of Hong Kong. The essay argues that the performance of the Hong Kong garrison was much better than the defenders of Crete or Singapore. It makes a few speculative suggestions as to the effectiveness of the defence and concludes by making a case for further research into the Battle from historical and military science points of view.\n\nIntroduction\n\n\"Memories of the war in Hong Kong, of the sharp and bitter struggle which ended with the capture of the Colony on Christmas Day, are kept on a more realistic plane than most other places....It was by tacit agreement decided that the war in Hong Kong had best be forgotten.” This statement in a publication of Ricci Hall of the University of Hong Kong (Ricci Hall 1954) reflected the peculiar political context of Hong Kong as a Crown Colony in China. The Union Jack as a symbol of British reign in Hong Kong has gone, and the ruins of the Second World War, associated with Hong Kong's immediate colonial past, lie wasting. The military cemeteries in Stanley and Sai Wan, however, have been as well maintained as before. The respect for those who sacrificed their lives for a just cause has not been altered by a change in governance.\n\nAuthors from the belligerent countries have intensively studied military operations in Europe and North Africa in the Second World War since the end of hostilities. The intensity of the studies is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214738, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "117 \n\nA Review of the Literature? \n\nStrategy \n\nIn terms of the strategic and historical aspects of the Battle, the best known works from the British points of view are those of Winston Churchill (Churchill 1950), the Minister who led Britain to final victory, and Liddell Hart (Liddell Hart 1970), the strategist renowned for his theory on the use of tanks in modern warfare and \"indirect approach” (Liddell Hart 1991) as a general war strategy. There are few recent works in English that make reference to Hong Kong at this level of analysis. The common tenor of Churchill and Liddell Hart was that Hong Kong could not be defended. The former, however, held that Hong Kong should be nominally defended to deter the Japanese. In early 1941, Churchill told General Sir Hastings, his Chief of Staff: \n\n\"There is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of augmenting the garrison it ought to be reduced to a symbolic scale.... Japan will think long before declaring war on the British Empire, and whether there are two or six battalions at Hong Kong will make no difference to her choice.” \n\nIt was true that Churchill's Chiefs of Staff favoured reinforcing the Hong Kong garrison so that it could maintain a \"more worthy” defence or even a degree of deterrence, and Major-General A.E. Grasett, the former General Officer Commanding in Hong Kong, made a contribution to the strength of the defence by arranging for two Canadian battalions to arrive in the Colony in October 1941. Yet, under the dominant influence of Churchill's strategic concept, the Hong Kong garrison was outnumbered three to one by the Japanese when the invasion occurred. \n\nChurchill's position and decision apparently attracted universal criticism after the war. Liddell Hart thought that this was a patent mistake, which was exacerbated by Grasett's contribution, which cost many lives of the garrison. In other words, Liddell Hart considered that as Hong Kong could not be defended, it should not have been defended. In his History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart recalled what he said to General Dill in March 1935 about Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214742, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "121\n\nThe reality is that the British had been able to retain Hong Kong as a Colony for another 52 years after August 1945, notwithstanding the promise of Britain to the Chinese Government in 1943 that she would return all her possessions in China after the end of the war. In this light, Churchill's decision was not irrational, and the garrison's sacrifice was a contribution to the way of life and system of government in Hong Kong today.\n\nIn terms of duty and moral responsibility, Churchill's decision was also reasonable, given the constraints confronting his administration. For the sake of argument, what other options were available to Churchill in December 1941, assuming that \"the British Far Eastern Strategy\" (Bell, 1996), for which he was not responsible, with respect to Hong Kong had been wrong? Should he have handed over the Colony to the invading Japanese forces without a fight? Should he have \"returned\" the Colony to the Chinese Government, which had lost control of Canton and a meagre military presence in or near Hong Kong? Or should he have made efforts to evacuate the Governor and the Hong Kong garrison by sea or air and left the rest of the population of Hong Kong in a state of anarchy?11 Bell suggests that demilitarisation and evacuation were feasible options and that the ruling out of these options by the British Government was not justified (Bell, 1996). I do not think that these options were politically sensible or morally responsible. Therefore, I dispute the view that the efforts of the Hong Kong garrison, though militarily probably doomed to fail, were unnecessary or pointless. The complaint by some authors, such as (Blackburn, 1989) about looting by the \"Chinese\" during and after the fighting testified the need for British military presence in Hong Kong to avoid a state of anarchy amongst the population. I further dispute the view of some recent authors that the British administration was humiliated in the eyes of the local population when the small Hong Kong garrison surrendered. That would have been the case had they fled or surrendered Hong Kong without a shot being fired. The majority of the law-abiding Chinese population, irrespective of their views towards colonialism in Chinese territories, had always been supportive of measures to defend their liberty, lives and property against Japanese invaders. At the time the Japanese troops marched on Hong Kong, they had already plundered Chinese soil for more than a decade. There is no doubt that the Chinese population of Hong Kong were not, as represented by some authors, apathetic about the invasion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214743, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "122\n\nThose who are resting in peace in the military cemeteries in Sai Wan and Stanley and those not buried there have not just earned for themselves a reputation for obedience and courage, but also won a way of life for the future generations of Hong Kong. Above all, they served their home countries and mankind by making a contribution to a war that was a crime against humanity.\n\nThe Performance of the Hong Kong Garrison\n\nWhile politics and good will may be controversial, an objective assessment of the actual performance of the defenders vis-à-vis the invaders is not impossible.\n\nAll authors referred to in the literature above pointed out that the Hong Kong garrison was, militarily, facing a hopeless situation on 8 December 1941. The Colony was isolated, with virtually no air cover or naval support, outnumbered three to one by the Japanese, and largely without combat experience, adequate training, sufficient ammunition or even winter uniform. Furthermore, it was an assortment of nationals who spoke different native languages; English, Cantonese and several Indian dialects. It was thrown into a battle against well-prepared and veterans of the Japanese Imperial Army, which had at least five years of combat history in China and was well supplied with detailed intelligence and mapping information about the Colony. During the Battle, Japanese agents and Chinese collaborators living in the Colony also assisted the invaders. The British forces also laboured under the impression that the offer of assistance by the Chinese forces and other Chinese groups was reliable. The final collapse of the resistance happened not only earlier than the London authorities had expected - 17 days instead of 9012 - but also far ahead of schedule for the Japanese, who contemplated that half a year13 would be required to conquer the Colony. Thus, many commentators argue that the defence of Hong Kong was a shambles. However, no author has actually attempted to measure the \"fighting power\" or effectiveness of the Hong Kong garrison or made a comparative study of the tactics of the defender vis-à-vis the invaders.\n\nI argue that it is unfair to pass judgement on the performance of the garrison by solely comparing the actual and planned duration of the battle or any other military dimension of the fall of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214744, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "123\n\nThe performance of a military force is always a relative term in many senses. Authors writing about the Battle of Hong Kong have not rigorously compared the performance of the Hong Kong garrison with that of the Japanese invaders, save statistics of casualties and strength. Nor have they compared the performance of the garrison with British garrisons in other theatres of war.\n\nIt is true that the performance of the Hong Kong garrison did not prevent the fall of Hong Kong. Yet, it should be recognised by the military historian that the Hong Kong garrison, notwithstanding its inferior strength, did not only (a) manage to hold out for a much longer period of time; but also (b) sustain a much lower loss rate, as weighed by relative strength, than its adversary relative to the latter's strength. The former was probably the true mission of the garrison as contemplated by Churchill and both (a) and (b) testified to the battle worthiness of the garrison.\n\nEvidence of these two points is adduced in Table 1, which compares several dimensions of the Battles of Crete, Hong Kong and Singapore. These battles all involved British forces repulsing invading well-prepared Axis forces which had either absolute or relative local air superiority and which succeeded eventually in overrunning the defended territories, taking a large number of prisoners. Each battle has attracted much post-war criticism of the failure of Churchill's strategy or tactics about defence of the island concerned. In all cases, the battles were mainly fought on land, though the German invaders of Crete were air-borne. In the cases of both Hong Kong and Singapore, the conflict was largely between infantries supported by artillery and there was no naval support during the hostility as the navy either was absent or had been wiped out. Evacuation by sea was only possible for a part of the Crete garrison.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214746, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Luis osses \n\n[loss rate] \n\nPENYA BARU PE \n\n6.580 \n\n(6000 paratroopers) \n\n2.096 \n\n(Killed in action: 683) \n\n5.093 \n\n(killed in action: 1715) \n\n[30%] \n\n[15%] \n\n[15] \n\n[Battle of Malaya: 125 dead, 9.612 3.507 wounded, 6,105] \n\nRatio of British/Axis losses \n\n2.39 \n\n(Y) \n\n2.11 \n\n(killed in action: 31) \n\n0.73 \n\nBattle of Malaya: 14 431 \n\nRelative loss rate of defenders to invaders in combat \n\n4.60 \n\n0.68 \n\nweighted by relative strength of invaders to defenders \n\n1.74 \n\nBattle of Malaya: 28.861 \n\n(Y/N) \n\nThe British defenders of Crete and Singapore outnumbered their invaders. The German forces that invaded Crete had a strength that was only about 50% of the British garrison. The garrison in Singapore had a numerical superiority of more than 2 to 1. Yet, Crete yielded in 14 days and Singapore surrendered in one week. The outnumbered garrison in Hong Kong, however, was able to hold out for more than half a month.\n\nThe loss rates for the three invasions for both sides were high in the Battle of Crete. The Axis loss, including missing figures, was 30%, which also meant a hard blow on Hitler's paratroopers' strength. The British loss was 5% higher and was almost 40%. In the case of Hong Kong, the loss rate of the British forces measured in terms of killed and wounded alone amounted to 34% whereas the Japanese incurred just 5%. If we compare only these rates of Hong Kong with those of Singapore, it would seem that the Hong Kong garrison was less effective in inflicting casualties on the enemy. Both the Crete and Hong Kong garrisons had sustained a relative loss rate of more than 2 to 1. However, if we weigh the relative loss rate of the British garrison by its relative strength vis-à-vis the invaders for each battlefield, then we might come to the conclusion that the Hong Kong garrison was most effective in inflicting disproportionate casualties upon the invader. As", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214748, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "127\n\nfighting pitched battles in fence works on the upland and coastal low-land of the Island of Hong Kong. The defence works in the uplands did pose for some time death barriers for the advancing Japanese infantry, though these works were often only defended with small infantry arms. It is well reported that the Japanese had good maps as to the locations of these defence positions. It is also correct to say that the best post-war documentation of the routes of invasions and battles is that produced by Japanese authors rather than the British. Nevertheless, there are reports that the Japanese Army had to make several pointless raids on unmanned defence positions, such as those in Sai Kung, and that it had to force civilians to be guides when approaching lines of resistance. It is interesting to know just how well informed the Japanese were about these defence works at the time of hostilities.\n\nFourthly, while the British might have made a tactical mistake by abandoning the defence works in the Devil's Peak area on the Kowloon side, the Japanese also appeared to have committed a number of tactical mistakes that delayed their victory. The withdrawal of the defending forces and equipment to the Island from the mainland was unhindered by much Japanese interference. As commented on by Tse (Tse, 1996), the Japanese apparently missed an opportunity to pursue the retreating British forces. Besides, the Japanese infantry suffered huge losses on the Island until it had obtained artillery support.\n\nFifthly, the frequent argument that the Hong Kong garrison was significantly less well equipped in weaponry than the invading forces must be carefully interpreted. While it is true that the Japanese had absolute control of the air, the Battle of Hong Kong was mainly fought on the ground. A close analysis of the weapons and transport equipment possessed by the Hong Kong garrison shows that the defenders had at their disposal quite a high percentage of machine guns, field guns and conveyances. The garrison had over 2,042 machines (a very high ratio of one per six defenders); 152 mobile guns (comprising 49 field guns; at least 27 anti-aircraft guns and 86 mortars) as well as 31 coastal defence guns in fixed locations. Ignoring the fixed guns, the defenders used 152 mobile guns to contest 203 guns and mortars, various calibres, of the invaders. The defenders were not overwhelmingly outnumbered in the number of mobile guns in absolute terms. In relative terms, the defenders had one gun per 85 persons and the Japanese one per 197. This observation should of course be qualified by the\n\nof", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214749, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "128\n\nclaim that the defenders faced shortages in ammunition, notably for mortars. However, the movement of the defenders' guns within the defence perimeter throughout the Battle was rather hectic, aided by at least 20 armoured cars and more than 3,000 motor cars and 600 trucks. This indicated that the artillery arm of the garrison was playing a key role in prolonging the duration of the defence. Therefore, the effective firepower of the defenders did not appear to be as weak as frequently represented in publications up to now on the Battle of Hong Kong. The story of the defence of Hong Kong apparently could well have been distorted in favour of the winner.\n\nConclusion: a Plea for Further Research\n\nThe above points are just informed speculation and the Battle of Hong Kong is certainly an under-researched military episode in the Second World War. This being the case, it should be just a matter of interest not only to those directly involved.\n\n...\n\nIn broad historical terms, the significance of the Battle of Hong Kong should not be limited to a matter of war relics or past history. It has implications for the post-war political development of Hong Kong, a living issue that affects the present both physically and socially. We have mentioned the credibility of the defence of Hong Kong as a matter of responsible government and a matter of fact but not as an apology for British colonialism. There are still unknown numbers of unexploded bombs, both Japanese and Allied, yet to be unearthed in highly congested urban sites. There are also quite a number of old people in Hong Kong (and elsewhere in Asia) who still hold Japanese military currency, forced upon them when their convertible currencies were expropriated during the occupation, in the vain hope of obtaining compensation by the Japanese government (Keniti; Kobayasi Hideo and Isida Jimtarou, 1995).\n\nThe military aspects of the fighting itself should be interesting case study materials for the military scientist. Many other questions remain unanswered. The size and role and size of the \"fifth columnists\", the tactics of the Japanese and the useful value of occupied Hong Kong to the Japanese are just a few examples. Though these questions for a minor theatre of war may not catch the attention of those who are only interested in the broad-brush views of Liddell Hart (1970), they should", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214965, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "PROUDFOOT, W.J.: Notes from Biographical Memoir of James Dinwiddie, LL.D, embracing his account of travels in China as a member of Macartney's Embassy, Edward Howell, Liverpool, 1886.\n\nWALEY, A.: The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes, Allen and Unwin, London, 1958.\n\nWONG, J.Y.: Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, 1998.\n\nWOODWARD, N.H.: Teas of the World, Collier Macmillan, London, 1980.\n\nThis paper was presented at the \"International Conference on Lin Zexu, the Opium War and Hong Kong,” held at the Hong Kong Museum of History in December 1998.\n\nAmong his many other accomplishments, Dr. S. M. Bard, OBE, ED, is also a historian.\n\nHis published works include the following: In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong (Urban Council Hong Kong 1988); Traders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841-1899 (Urban Council Hong Kong 1993); and Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley (Antiquities and Monuments Office, Hong Kong: Occasional Paper No. 4, 1997).\n\nSome scholars prefer to divide the Wars into the Opium War, 1839-1842, and the Arrow War, 1856-1860.\n\n* A Dutchman, Dr Cornelius Decker, advocated 40-50 cups a day.\n\nPortuguese Princess Catherine is credited with introducing tea to Britain when she married King Charles II.\n\nA story is told of German Radio, during the 2nd World War, which announced that due to shortage of tea in Britain, the British were ready to sue for peace, not having access to their 5-o'clock tea. It only served to amuse the British, for the Germans got the time wrong!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214995, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "47\n\ntherefore separated into their own camps, for their own protection and also so that they could not mix with the British troops in general. They were supervised by their own British officers and NCOs. In death Chinese members of the CLC were buried in separate cemeteries or, if buried in cemeteries with Commonwealth dead, in separate areas apart from them. However, deceased British officers and NCOs serving with or transferred to the CLC were buried amongst other Commonwealth fallen. In life and in death the Chinese were isolated [reflecting the attitude of Europeans towards Asians in general and non-Christians in particular]\n\nIn mid-September 1917, Alec Paton, stationed at Zillebeke, Ypres, and serving with the Royal Garrison Artillery, obtained permission to visit Reninghelst to meet Claude Betts, a friend who had been promoted to company commander in the CLC. Before leaving Paton was in conversation with one of his officers who commented that he thought 'it would be a good idea to use Chinese as infantry, there being so many of them.' Adding that he wondered what the Germans would do if they saw ten thousand Chinamen coming over the top? In reply a wag said 'Run and bring their washing, I should think.'\n\nClaud Betts had learnt a few Chinese phrases as his labourers could speak no English and they were cunning enough to pretend they could not understand sign language if such meant work. As Alec Paton was passing through Reninghelst he noticed a sign, erected by HQ for the troops, which read ‘DO NOT SPEAK TO THE CHINESE.' Underneath, also in large letters, a wit had written, 'WHO THE HELL CAN?’.\n\nOnce again, to quote from the Directorate of Labour's Notes:\n\nComplaints. The Chinese, in China, are accustomed to seek redress of grievances by means of written petitions: locked petition boxes should be provided.\n\nThe Notes also included the following facts regarding the Chinese:\n\na] The Chinese coolie has an inherent contempt for foreigners\n\nb] He comes here purely and simply for money, with no interest in the war.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215008, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "60\n\nremembered that the cemeteries and memorials are primarily places of individual commemoration and excessive signage can detract from this.\n\nThere are many cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and France where members of the Commonwealth forces are buried and commemorated. The Menin Gate at Ypres commemorates over 54,270 who died in the Ypres Salient, from October 1914 to the 15/16th August 1917, and who have no known grave. Those who died from 17 August 1917 to the end of the war and have no known grave, over 34,880, are commemorated on panels at Tynecot, which is also the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world with 11,856 graves. In France, the memorial at Thiepval commemorates over 72,000 Commonwealth members who died on the Somme and who have no known grave. At none of the above are there any names of members of the CLC. At Etaples, there are over 11,400 graves of World War I, including that of one Chinese member of the CLC, Fu Puzhen, 9436, a Ganger of the 56th Company. As Keith Stevens remarked, Fu here, alone, represents his countrymen with a population amounting to a quarter of the world's total.\n\nThe last cemetery the Friends visited was Les Baraques Military at Sangatte, south of Calais. Of the 197 named CLC members buried there virtually all were from Shandong province and the metropolitan area of Zhili. Only two came from other provinces, Anhui and Hubei. There were several seamen commemorated who most probably would have been Cantonese from the south and recruited by the Royal Navy in Hong Kong. There are also graves of British personnel who served with or were attached to the CLC. We saw the grave of 2Lt E S Burley, Army Labour Corps, attached to the Chinese Labour Corps, who died on 15th February 1919, aged 44 years, whose parents came from London, England and whose wife lived in South Africa.\n\nOn a later personal visit to this cemetery, with my wife, we located the grave of Gunner M E Barnes of the 43rd Company, Royal Garrison Artillery who transferred, in the rank of corporal, to the 135th Labour Company, Chinese Labour Corps Royal Garrison Artillery. He died on 19th November 1919, aged 49 years; and was a native of Lewes in Sussex. Also the grave of Private M Cooper of the 2nd/6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, who transferred to the 88th Labour Company,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215538, "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-2001", "page_number": 315, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "265\n\nSayer, S.R. (1980). HONG KONG 1841 - 1862: BIRTH, ADOLESCENCE AND COMING OF AGE. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 117.\n\n7 Eitel, E.J. (1895). EUROPE IN CHINA: THE HISTORY OF HONGKONG FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE YEAR 1882. Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, p. 175.\n\n3 Ticozzi, Sergio (1997). HISTORICAL DOCUMENT OF THE HONG KONG CATHOLIC CHURCH. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives, p. 13.\n\n9 Ibid.\n\n10 Hawkins, R.S. (1968). Far East Outpost, The Royal Engineers Journal Vol. LXXXII, p. 41.\n\n11 Endacott, G.B. (1988). A HISTORY OF HONG KONG. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, p. 67.\n\n12 Oxley, p. 28.\n\n13 For details of some of the military graves, see Bard, Solomon (1997), Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley, The Antiquities and Monuments Office Occasional Paper No.4. Hong Kong: The Antiquities and Monuments Office.\n\n14 Illustrated London News, 8 November 1845.\n\n15 Smith, Carl T. (1985). NOTES FOR A VISIT TO THE GOVERNMENT CEMETERY AT HAPPY VALLEY, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 25, pp. 17-18. Also see the same author's work, A SENSE OF HISTORY: Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (1995), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Education Publishing Co, pp. 113-114.\n\n16 Wong Nai Chung Valley was at first intended by British merchants and the Land Officer and Colonial Engineer A.T. Gordon for the principal business centre, but the project was abandoned as the valley was found to be unhealthy. See Eitel, p. 167 and Endacott, p. 45.\n\n17 A list of these graves and monuments can be found in HKGG Notification of 2nd\n\nPage 315\n\nPage 316", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215666, "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-2001", "page_number": 443, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "395\n\ncorrespondent for The Times in southeast Asia, having previously supplied articles to the paper on a freelance basis. One of the last to escape the invading Japanese, he reported the retreat along the Malay Peninsula and the last stand and surrender of the British garrison in Singapore on 15 February, 1942.\n\nAfter Singapore, Mr. Morrison went to Java before following the campaigns in the South West Pacific under General MacArthur, and later in Southeast Asia under Admiral Mountbatten.\n\nMr. Morrison was a courageous correspondent who never thought twice about entering a dangerous situation to get a good story. During the Second World War he spent a lot of time reporting from the front and shared the soldiers' life in the jungle. He regularly hitch-hiked on Australian or American army transport planes in order to follow the action and provide authentic accounts of the fighting with the Japanese. He often came close to death. In late November 1942 he was slightly injured during an air raid on the Buna front in Papua, and in December 1943 he was involved in a plane crash which resulted in head wounds and fractured vertebrae. This is how he telegraphed the paper:\n\n'Regret involved in airplane accident enroute obtain eyewitness operational full stop hospitalised injuries seriouser than yestertime hope recover soon Dickson Brown newschronicler kindly consented cover next three days thereafter Curthoys sorry disappoint you good story - Morrison'\n\nHis injuries on that occasion kept him out of action until July 1944, when he returned to cover the South East Area Command. He was not out of trouble for long. On 10 December 1945, while reporting from Batavia (now Jakarta) covering a local campaign he was again wounded and cabled the paper:\n\n'Left hospital today. Thumb, in which fragments of Dutch bullet are lodged, will take at least a fortnight to\n\nIan Morrison and family, circa 1950", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215872, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "104\n\nPottinger Battery were relocated to Bokhara Battery, Cape D'Aguilar in 1939 or 1940 (Rollo: 201). The batteries' arc of fire at Devil's Peak in 1938 reached the southwestern tip of Lamma Island and the south of the Po Toi Group of islands, whereas those at Stanley reached beyond the southwestern part of the Lema Islands (Dangan Liedao).\n\nThus, before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong on 8th December 1941, there were no guns at either the Gough or Pottinger Battery. However, the sites at Devil's Peak had become part of the Gin Drinker's Line in the 1930s. This Line runs from Gin Drinker's Bay (Kwai Chung) in the west to Port Shelter in the east. The Devil's Peak was a crucial component of the Kowloon segment of the Line. The Japanese had good maps about the location of the defences of Hong Kong. Some remarks on the defence works at Devil's Peak are registered in a map produced in 1939/1940 (Empson 1992). Defensive positions in the military sites on Devil's Peak were taken up by the 5/7 Rajputs of the Hong Kong Garrison on 12 December, after the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt in the western part of the Line three days before.\n\nThe sites at Devil's Peak witnessed heavy defensive fighting by the 5/7 Rajputs and the First Mountain Battery of the Hong Kong and Singapore Artillery. The latter expended 400 rounds with their four 3.7 inch field guns before the evacuation of the defenders to Hong Kong Island on the morning of 13th December. The defenders destroyed all equipment before they crossed the Harbour during the night. Thereafter, the Japanese used the sites to bombard the Island and the defenders' gun returned fire.\n\nAfter the defeat of Japan, the Devil's Peak sites were abandoned by the British, although the batteries on the Island side of Lei Yue Mun Pass were reoccupied and put into active military use until the mid-1980s. Before 1997, there had been little news connected with British military activities at Devil's Peak, save for an air accident in the 1950s. In March 1956, two Royal Navy Sea Hawks struck fog-shrouded Devil's Peak, killing the pilots and an elderly lady (Eather 1996).\n\nA surviving example of the 9.2-inch guns that were deployed on the batteries at Devil's Peak can be seen at the Buyu Battery (Siu 1997: Plate 6 at p.76) that guards Humen (The Bogue). This battery was modernised in 1883 with the assistance of British and German military experts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215928, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "161\n\nTHE MYTH OF UNPREPAREDNESS: THE ORIGINS OF ANTI-JAPANESE RESISTANCE IN PREWAR HONG KONG\n\nANNE OZORIO\n\n[Hon. Ed. - I was initially hesitant to sanction this article because it seemed to me to be significantly under-referenced, even to the extent of \"personal communications.\" It draws significantly upon Hong Kong Eclipse (Endacott and Birch, 1978), which is not acknowledged. Ms Ozorio contends that the referencing is adequate and assures me that, to the best of her knowledge and belief, the article is an accurate resumé of events. In accordance with the general principles of free expression I have left untouched Ms Ozorio's editorial comments on 'colonials,' 'the British,' colonial administration and society, and (Sir) Lindsay Ride.]\n\nHong Kong fell to the Japanese in eighteen days: the wonder was that it took so long. [Hon. Ed. - The doggedness of the resistance and the bravery of the defenders, perhaps? See Lawrence Lai's article in Vol. 39 of the Journal, pp.115-136.] In the cosy, cocooned world of colonial society, the invincibility of Empire was taken for granted. Despite all that was happening in China, many Europeans in Hong Kong just couldn't conceive that any Asiatic might challenge their superiority. There were anecdotes that the Japanese planes bombing China were secretly manned by Germans, since Japanese were night blind. As the colonials sat comfortably mocking them, Japanese waiters, barbers, and menials were listening. Many would appear later, no longer servile, in full dress uniform, revealing their true status as high-ranking intelligence agents. The overwhelming Japanese victory was a shock to those who believed that Empire was unassailable. They assumed automatically, that if they had been caught off balance, then the authorities too must have been unprepared. This, however, is a myth.\n\ni\n\nIn January, 1941, General Ismay declared that there was 'not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of augmenting the garrison it should be reduced to a symbolic scale.' Defending a city crowded with a million civilians, little air cover, long supply lines and nowhere to retreat but the sea was a logistics nightmare. What may have been unimaginable for the average colonial civilian was clear", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216048, "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": 347, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "281\n\nsmall boys were always at hand to do the beating, gun-carrying, ditching and picking up. It often occurred, under these circumstances, that a few dust-shot were put into the calf of a man's leg, and occasionally even an eye was injured. A fairly definite tariff gradually established itself; so much so that people used to dodge behind bushes or lurk in the ditches, so as to be ready to raise their hands and yell the instant a gun went off in their direction. Very few Chinese rustic skins were without an assortment of sores and bruises; and nothing was easier than to rub a shot or some powder in and pretend that an ‘internal injury' had occurred. With irate villagers gathering around timid or non-Chinese-speaking sportsmen were often only too glad to compromise on the spot; especially if a few old women with buckets of liquid manure joined in the discussion.\n\nZhenjiang, some twelve to fourteen hours sailing upstream from Shanghai, was yet one more of the points of call on the Yangzi. Ships only stayed a matter of 30 or so minutes and tied up alongside one of the hulks or pontoons. These belonged mostly to foreign shipping or trading companies, though there were one or two hulks owned by Chinese businessmen, moored off the concession, from which it was reached by a bridge as there are pronounced seasonal differences in level. Passengers landed and were quickly cleared by the Customs House. The city, at the back of the foreign concession, was the prefectural capital with a Daotai, a Prefect or Circuit Intendant, and the Dantu, the County Magistrate. A Co-Prefect in charge of coast defences and a Prefect of Police were also located in the city, and in addition to the Manchu [Tartar] garrison stationed in Zhenjiang, under the command of a Lieutenant-General there was the ordinary Chinese garrison under a Lieutenant-Colonel, consisting of several battalions of local militiamen and trainbands [bodies of citizens trained in the use of arms].\n\nLaw and order was maintained in the settlement up to the turn of the 20th century by a body of British-officered Sikh policemen. Tall, imposing and forbidding-looking, they despised the Chinese and were equally heartily feared and disliked by them. The Chinese, amongst other things, complained bitterly about the iniquitous rates of usury charged by the Sikhs!\n\nAt the age of 65, the indomitable traveller and writer Isabella Bird,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]