[ { "id": 204450, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "CHINA'S 35 MILLION NON-CHINESE\n\n71\n\nbeen pushed into the higher mountain districts and are surrounded by Han or T'ai people in the lower valleys.\n\nThe chief Yao concentration is in the border mountains where Hunan, Kwangsi and Kwangtung come together. In Kwangsi they form a compact group in the Yao Mountains. According to Bruk, only a third of the Yao still speak the Yao language; the other two-thirds are said to have adopted one or the other of the Miao, Tung, Chuang or Han Chinese languages. Of the Miao-Yao group, but set somewhat farther apart culturally by time, is the She cultural group which mostly are in the east coast provinces but consider themselves to have come from Kwangsi. All except about 3,000 of the 151,000 She are in Fukien and Chekiang, the most compact settlement region being Ching-ning district in southern Chekiang, in which about a third of the total number reside.\n\nAside from whatever problem the minorities constitute to the controlling Han Chinese, their occupation of the frontier regions of south and southwest China give them a peculiar significance. Many of them inhabit blocs of territory overlapping the international boundaries. With the development of national consciousness, especially in periods of real or imagined oppression by governments not of their own choosing on one side or the other of the border, resentments tend to be reflected in desires for pan-national or pan-ethnic consolidation. Trouble on one side of the border leads to easy flight across the border to receptive and related peoples on the other side. This also works for criminal elements wishing to escape from police authority in their home territory. Frontier smuggling and banditry require the cooperative effort of friendly neighbour states, but are hard to deal with when neither side exercises effective control in the isolated, sparsely-settled frontiers of southwest China. International grievances over minority peoples in the past have been numerous between former British-controlled Burma and China.\n\n21\n\nWithin China, the ethnic character of its southwest clearly indicates its frontier aspects. This is a region of clashing cultures in various stages of peaceful or compulsory Sinicization. Today the acculturation process is being greatly accelerated by the\n\nChang Hu, T'eng-yueh pien-ti chuang-k'uang chi chih-nien ch'u-yin (A discussion of the situation in the T'eng-yueh frontiers and of their control), Yunnan Frontier Research, Kunming, 1933, 321-322.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204618, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "86\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG\n\nin the north-east quarter of the city, well away from the new diplomatic quarter.2\n\nAll accommodation for foreign embassies was to be concentrated in one area outside the east wall of the city, and about one and a half miles from a newly constructed gate, just near to the old astronomical instruments which can still be seen on top of the east wall. Eventually, after negotiations, the new British Legation was allotted two large houses and two blocks of flats in this new diplomatic quarter. The last christening was performed in the Legation chapel, the books in the small library were taken off their shelves, the flag at the gate was hauled down, and everything was packed.3 Among the more colourful of the closing scenes in the life of the old British Legation should be mentioned the two Commonwealth cricket matches played in the Autumn of 1958 between the Moonrakers, captained by Mr. Duncan Wilson, the British Chargé d'Affaires, and the Woolgatherers captained by the Indian Ambassador, Mr. G. Parthasaratly. The rules governing this diplomatic cricket were many and local but the chief rule of all was that if anyone hit a ball into the grounds of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security next door his whole side was out.\n\nFinally, in September 1959, the staff moved to their new quarters and thus after nearly one hundred years of continuous occupation the existence of the old British Legation in Peking came to an end. From an historical and sentimental point of view its loss was sad. But from a realistic point of view which\n\n20 This was built on a site which had been granted to Russia as far back as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). As a result of fighting between Russian settlers on the frontier between Siberia and Manchuria about a hundred Russian prisoners were brought to Peking in the period 1683-5. They were formed into a company, given a place of residence in the northeast corner of Peking, close to the Lama Temple, and intermarried with Chinese and Manchus. They retained their Greek Orthodox faith and were allowed to have their own priests. See Michel N. Pavlovsky, Chinese-Russian Relations (New York, 1949) 145-164. It was to this place, known as the Pei-kuan (\"Northern Hostel\") that the members of the Russian ecclesiastical mission transferred in 1861.\n\n30 Unfortunately the imposing Royal Coat of Arms which dignified the gateway of the old Legation was too large to fit properly into the new Legation buildings. Mr. Michael Stewart, the Chargé d'Affaires at the time of the move, arranged with Sir Robert Black, the Governor of Hong Kong, that the Coat of Arms should be sent to Government House in Hong Kong. It is now fixed onto the wall at the far end of the long ballroom of Government House, which it dominates by the brilliance of its colours,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204755, "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-1964", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE \n\n47 \n\nby a very powerful clan surnamed Mo. This clan fell foul of authority early in the Sung132 Dynasty and several slightly different accounts of their misdeeds and eventual extermination are preserved in three different clans, one of which claims descent from the sole posthumous survivor of the massacre. The latest edition of the San On Yuen Chi123 has only a brief mention, but earlier editions may have dealt with the subject more fully. The next clan to settle on the swamp land in these parts was surnamed Chan and I have not been able to find any of their descendants. In the wake of the Mo9s catastrophe came the very successful clan of Tang44 whose branches by the end of the Sung Dynasty132 appear to have held most of the best land in several parts of the territory, including some near Tsuen Wan2 from which they have since vanished. When I mentioned that the Chan1 clan had disappeared I do not wish to indicate that there is no evidence to support the tradition that a group with this surname were among the early Chinese settlers. There are several small families found here and there, often in close association with the Tang:44 but none of them has preserved a tradition connecting itself with these early settlements.\n\nThe Puzzle. I must here leave the subject of the earliest Chinese settlers, since my main theme is what they found when they first arrived. I have mentioned these details generally to indicate the strength of the tradition which indicates that the present Deep Bay152 extended over the Yuen Long\" Valley, up to Sheung Shui130 and over Laffan's Plain.27 On the other side of the territory the sea has been gaining; therefore it is much more difficult to be sure of the original coastline, since when the sea gains, sections of submerged land are often churned away to some depth by wave action, whereas when the sea recedes the contours do not otherwise change. However, we do have the evidence of the cadastral survey completed in the New Territories shortly after the British occupation I believe it began in 1902. Comparing this survey with what is now to be seen sixty years later testifies to three instances (one on Discovery Bay,32 Lantao; one on Tolo Harbour;3 and one on Plover Covel) where the sea has not merely encroached but churned away substantial pieces of arable land leaving in their place fairly deep water. They also testify to the obliteration of three villages106 and thus afford", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204780, "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-1964", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "72 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nbe shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss.\n\nFortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern \"Domesday\" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside.\n\nThere are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204806, "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-1964", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "97\n\nHONG KONG BUTTERFLIES\n\nV. R. BURKHARDT\n\nRichard South, the author of the most popular handbook of British butterflies, prefaces his work by saying, \"Almost everyone admires the wild flowers that Nature produces so lavishly, and in such charming variety of form and colour; but, in addition to their own proper florescence, the plants of woodland, meadow, moor, and down have other blossoms that arise from them, although they are not of them. These are the beautiful winged creatures called butterflies, which, as crawling caterpillars, obtain their nourishment from plant leafage, and in the perfect state help the bees to rifle the flowers of their sweets, and at the same time assist in the work of fertilisation.\n\nEnglish butterflies rarely obtrude themselves on the stroller's gaze apart from the whites which devastate his cabbages, and the apparently aimless flight of the Meadow Brown, when crossing a hayfield. The real country lover passing through the leafless copse on a sunny windless day in February, may be heartened by the sight of the sulphur yellow of the male Brimstone which, as the \"butter-coloured fly\", gives its English name to the whole race. In Hong Kong, the most unobservant cannot fail to notice the brilliant \"aerial flowers\" referred to by the British naturalist, as the purple shot Euploeas, or the yellow Euremas pass him in the very centre of the city.\n\nThough the Colony lies just within the tropic of Cancer, at least seventy per cent of its butterflies are Palaearctic, that is to say, to be found normally in a zone running from Africa north of the Sahara across Europe and Asia to Japan and Formosa. The geology and climate of the Colony both militate against the luxurious vegetation associated with a tropical country. Though much has been done by the Government in the way of afforestation, there has not been time since the British occupation to produce the leaf mould and rich subsoil found in primitive jungle and forest, and the flora on which the larvae of butterflies feed is much more restricted than in countries like Malaya and Indonesia.\n\nEarly collectors identified about 140 different species of butterflies in the Colony, and J. C. Kershaw in his \"Butterflies of Hong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205290, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n45\n\nOrchards with pineapples and tangerine oranges are located in Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village. These orchards seem to be much exposed to typhoon damage, and are more or less of an experimental nature. Orchards form a new feature in the valley and have been introduced only in the last decade. They are not very profitable.\n\nThe terraces mentioned above were once used for tea plantations also. It is possible to trace the remains of such terraces on the steep slopes all along the valley. They are the remains of plantations of tea and a shrub giving a dye, most probably the indigo plant Indigofera tinctoria, common in South China. The tea plantations are mentioned in an early report:\n\nTea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill. The bushes are grown in lines on narrow steps or terraces out in the rich soil of recently felled woods or along the dividing banks of sheltered vegetable fields, in either case only in fairly elevated situations. There is a tradition that tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces similar to the above are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation has diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone count for it.5\n\nTea plantation in South-eastern China experienced a general crisis towards the end of the last century as Indian and Ceylon tea invaded the Western market. There is no reason to assume that these circumstances had a direct effect on the New Territories plantations, but generally unsettled conditions on the tea market might have contributed to the actual decline. Wild-growing tea shrubs are still plucked of their leaves for local use. As to the dye plant cultivation, it seems reasonable to suggest that the introduction of foreign artificial indigo and aniline dyes in the beginning of this century was the main reason for the abandonment of these plantations. During an earlier period, however, the production of tea and dye-stuff will have been prominent features in the economic activity, complementary to rice production.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205293, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "48\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nJapanese Occupation, but this was only temporarily. It is reasonable to relate the decline in these two trades to two main factors. Extensive exploitation of the woodlands gradually brought about a destruction of the supply, so that today only some patches remain in their original state. What the wood-cutters had left was laid waste during the Japanese Occupation. The other factor was the introduction of paraffin which seems to have reduced the general demand for fire-wood and charcoal in a drastic way.\n\nI have been informed that women, apart from their assistance in farming tasks, used to devote spare time to weaving as a subsidiary occupation. This was particularly so in the slack season during winter, from the Chinese New Year up to the third month. The appearance of factory-made textiles on the market made handicraft industry come to an end.\n\nBy way of summing up we could say that, in the past, the insufficient production of rice in this particular valley was complemented mainly by planting tea and indigo, cutting fire-wood and burning charcoal, and weaving cloth. The tea production had apparently already disappeared before the British arrival, and the production of dye and charcoal as well as the fire-wood cutting and the handicraft industry came gradually to an end at the appearance of foreign industrial products in the market. Animal breeding has always been of some importance, but has on the whole suffered from bad transportation.\n\nIt could be added that, at an earlier stage, some shooting of deer and wild boar took place, but restrictions on fire-arms imposed by the British, together with deforestation, put an end to this. At the present time outsiders make use of some minor resources in the valley. In the summer frog collectors go hunting in the paddies, and in the winter season bird catchers come up to the mountains. Wild growing taro and other plants attract herb collectors who are often a nuisance to the villagers as they set fire to the shrub in order to facilitate their work. These trades require an intimate knowledge of very special markets a knowledge that only these 'outsider' specialists are in possession of.\n\nThus we have seen that, as a result of its confrontation with the impact of Western industrialism, the traditional economic system of these villages was deprived of the whole sector of activities complementary to the basic rice production. This situa-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205306, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205323, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "78\n\nFRANK, H. A.\n\nL. G. AIJMER\n\n1925 Roving through Southern China, (New York and London, The Century Company).\n\nFREEDMAN, M.\n\n1958 Lineage Organization in Southeastern China. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 18, (London, The Athlone Press).\n\n1966 Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 33, (London, The Athlone Press).\n\n1967 Personal Communication, 2. 1. 1967.\n\nGROVES, R. G.\n\n1965a Report of Field Work in Hong Kong, London-Cornell Project, mimeographed.\n\n1965b 'The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d.\n\nHAYES, J. W.\n\n1962 'The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2.\n\n1966 'Old British Kowloon', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 6.\n\nHong Kong 1963\n\n1964 Hong Kong. Report for the Year 1963, (Hong Kong, Government Printer).\n\nHong Kong 1964\n\n1965 Hong Kong, Report for the Year 1964, (Hong Kong, Government Printer).\n\nHSU, F. L. K.\n\n1945 'Influence of South-seas Emigration on Certain Chinese Provinces', Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. v.\n\nHUI KIM-BING\n\n1963 'The Lion Rock and the Deserting of the Coastal Strip and Subsequent Re-occupation of the Region during Early Manchu Rule' Hong Kong and its External Communications Before 1842, Lo Hsiang-lin (ed.), (Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture).\n\nINGRAMS, H.\n\n1952 Hong Kong. (London, H.M.S.O.)\n\nIZIKOWITZ, K. G.\n\n1963 'Expansion', Folk, Vol. 5.\n\nKUO SHOU-HUA\n\n1964 (Chinese Article), English title: History of Hakka Chinese, 4th edn., Taipei.\n\nLEE, R. H.\n\n1960 The Chinese in the United States of America, (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nLockhart Report\n\n1899 'Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong', Government Notification No. 204, The Hongkong Government Gazette, Vol. xlv.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205589, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "126\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\ncase put by Fei Hsiao-tung and others who were influenced by the \"orthodox\" Marxist-Leninist interpretation is now convincingly shown to be oversimplified and misleading; and if not wholly unsatisfactory, at least open to serious question. Nevertheless, by his change of title, Potter exposes himself to the criticism that his original choice of field and the data he drew from it may not have been an adequate testing ground for so large an hypothesis. He asserts that in all relevant respects, the situation of Ping Shan resembled that of villages in the hinterland of other Western Treaty Ports; and although he acknowledges the fact of the security of land-tenure given by the British registration of all holdings in the Colony, he is inclined to minimise its importance. Villages in the Chinese mainland, however, had no such security, and, more importantly, lacked the benefits of the Pax Britannica. Hong Kong's peaceful development was interrupted only by the Japanese Occupation, and Potter recognises that as a watershed of change: how much greater changes must have been caused in China by the long series of upheavals that took place there?\n\nPotter's objections to the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of rural China's economy are otherwise well-founded. He shows that while in some areas rural handicrafts were destroyed, the extent to which peasants depended for their livelihood on rural handicraft industries was in general very slight: relatively few areas were as dependent as was Fei's Kaihsienkung on the silk industry. There is, in fact, evidence for the stimulation of China's rural industries by the presence of the Treaty Ports. Similarly, absentee landlordism was not so major a problem as has been supposed. Potter adduces data from a wide variety of sources on other villages in comparable situations, and concludes that the \"orthodox\" interpretation is invalidated by its failure to take into account the tremendous complexity and diversity of the data. He could indeed have brought his point home by citing the wide variety of reactions to modernisation apparent within the limited compass of the New Territories themselves.\n\nPotter has tackled a problem which is of major significance not only to the history of modern China but to the worldwide impact of the developed upon the undeveloped nations. It is not only the student of China who will welcome his eclectic approach and thorough re-examination of accepted views. He has made us aware of the diversity of China's rural scene before 1949, the com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205605, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "142\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIt is clear from these comments that the Government of Hong Kong at that time was uncertain of the religious affiliations of these halls and it is not possible therefore to say with certainty whether or not they were all sectarian or how many were of the Hsien-t'ien sect. Nevertheless, from the remarks made about the secretiveness of the promoters and managers as to their objects, one must assume that some at least belonged to the sects. It is particularly interesting to note the reference to the opinion of the Government of Kwangtung, and one may wonder how far traditional Chinese ideas of unorthodoxy influenced the ideas not only of the Chinese citizens commenting and who may have known more of their true nature, but also, more subtly, those of the British officer in charge of the District in which the vegetarian hall boom was being experienced. One can of course appreciate Kwangtung's feelings about this boom. Expulsion of sects from its territory would be of little avail if they were planning to set up establishments not far away and from where they hoped to conduct work for the millennium!\n\nIt is interesting, perhaps, to compare the situation here with that in Singapore about the same time, where it is clear from evidence collected by Marjorie Topley there was a similar boom in development. The Singapore Government was clearly unaware of the sectarian connexions of halls built at that time, and indeed is still unaware, as far as she knows, of such connexions with halls built also in the thirties when there was another boom associated with the influx of unattached working women from Kwangtung at that time. Presumably, these developments were too far away to concern the Government of China, or perhaps they were unaware of them also.\n\nToday, in Hong Kong, the Hsien-t'ien sect of concern is a registered company, going under the name of the Sin Tin Taoism Association Ltd. (“Taoism” as used here comes from the term Tao used in the sect's name: Hsien-t'ien Tao, and should not be confused, as in fact it sometimes is, with the religious system of this name). It does not appear to be militant today in its search for its religious goals but, on the contrary, does much valuable charitable work. In 1943, during the Japanese Occupation, the Sin Tin Taoism Association raised money to provide a home for the aged, which it established at Tung Choi Street, Kowloon. In 1945,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205731, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "31\n\nMILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE:\n\nCHINESE RESISTANCE TO THE OCCUPATION OF HONG KONG'S NEW TERRITORIES IN 18991\n\nR. G. GROVES*\n\nIntroduction\n\nViolence, or the very real possibility of violence, was endemic in southeastern China during the nineteenth century. The provinces of Kwangsi, Kwangtung, and Fukien were notorious to imperial official and foreign observer alike for their varieties of armed conflict. Brine, a British naval officer with contemporary experience of the coastal provinces, described the mid-nineteenth century situation as follows: \"the whole history of the period is little else than a continual series of local insurrections, bursting out in all directions. The coast was infested with pirates, who not only caused great injury to the coasting trade, but frequently landed and sacked the villages lying adjacent to the sea. In the two Kwang provinces armed bodies of men moved from town to town, and committed large robberies in open day... the Pekin Gazettes were full of reports from the provincial governors acquainting the emperor with the disorganized state of the country, and complaining of the inadequacy of their troops to quell the interminable revolts.\" To this catalogue of ills may be added the Opium and Arrow Wars, inter-lineage and clan warfare, ethnic conflict, and major and minor rebellions.\n\nThe prevalence of violence was by no means new. Writing of the Hsin-an District of Kwangtung Province, just over a century ago, the German missionary Krone noted: \"Hung-mo the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary... to appoint an officer with the title ‘Shou-yu-sho'... Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.\"3 More recently Professor Maurice Freedman, surveying a mass of evidence and arguing that organized violence\n\n* Mr. Groves is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia. He conducted field research in the New Territories between 1963-65. His article \"The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories\" appeared in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories (ed. M. Topley) published by the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. in 1965.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205733, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n33\n\nBritish at Canton, and second, the Taiping Rebellion. Imperial resources were now strained to the limit and the paramilitary associations of the Kwangtung hinterland became an essential if volatile and unpredictable adjunct to government strategy. Contingents of gentry-organized militia contributed, with government encouragement and varying degrees of success, to the defence of Canton on several occasions and were largely responsible for the suppression of the mid-century Red Turban revolt.?\n\nThe existence of such composite militia forces raises many interesting problems. For the moment they may be subsumed under two general questions. How were these militia forces organized? Can they be related to what is known of other, enduring aspects of social organization in rural Kwangtung? These questions are central to this article, as they are to Wakeman's study of the militia movement in Kwangtung province between 1839–1861. His analysis will be discussed in conjunction with the smaller, but in some respects similar, resistance movement which sought to prevent the British occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899. However, before turning to these events, it is necessary to consider two other recent contributions to the study of Chinese society.\n\nTheoretical Considerations\n\nSkinner has suggested that \"anthropological work on Chinese society, by focussing attention almost exclusively on the village, has with few exceptions distorted the reality of the rural social structure. Insofar as the Chinese peasant can be said to live in a self-contained world, that world is not the village but the standard marketing community. The effective social field of the peasant... is delimited not by the narrow horizons of his village but rather by the boundaries of his standard marketing area.”\n\nFor present purposes the central elements of Skinner's thesis are: (i) that the patterned economic activities of a predominantly peasant and agrarian society are discernible in the spatial distribution of its markets; (ii) that the markets, in terms of their different functions, can be conceptually ordered in a hierarchy; and (iii) that the overall system of differentiated marketing activities is integrated by a series of co-ordinated periodic market schedules. The resulting typology is: minor market, standard market, intermediate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205738, "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "38\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nMany of the points mentioned above can be further developed. What interaction was there between gentry leadership, she-hsüeh, and kinship? How were the 'catchment areas' of she-hsüeh established? Is there a relationship between these elements and marketing communities? What was the pattern of consultation which preceded the mobilization of militia? What sorts of relationships were invoked and in what order? How effective were militia as fighting units? How was logistic support provided? Such questions are relevant, not only to moments of opposition to the British, but also to a more complete understanding of social structure and organization in rural Kwangtung at this time. The resistance to the occupation of the New Territories constitutes a 'case-study' which, in conjunction with Wakeman's analysis, provides a further opportunity to attempt at least partial answers to these questions.\n\nDescription of the New Territory.\n\nThe New Territory, it was originally styled in the singular, though currently used in the plural, is an irregularly shaped peninsula jutting down from the coast of Kwangtung toward Hong Kong Island.37 The extremity of the peninsula had been ceded to Britain by the Convention of Peking, 1860. In 1898 an additional 356 square miles were added to the Colony's land (see map at rear of volume).* The territory is surrounded by water on all but its northern boundary and 33 islands account for about one-quarter of its area. Rugged hills and mountains range across the peninsula from northeast to southwest. The eastern section is, therefore, an area of hills and small valleys, while the western and northern sections comprise a large and fertile plain which extends across the Sham Chun river to the mountains in the north of the district.38\n\nJ. H. Stewart Lockhart, Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong at the time of the lease, estimated the population of the territory to be 100,000, living in 423 villages.39 This population was not evenly distributed. For instance, the western plain supported 23,020 people, living in 59 villages. The much larger eastern section of the territory is said to have had a population of only 20,870 living in 182 villages.40\n\n* Plate 21.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205742, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "42\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\ncoterminous with the standard marketing areas mentioned above, each taking its name from the appropriate market town. The fourth tung, Sheung U, was larger. It included much of the eastern section of the territory, from San Tin and Sheung Shui in the north to Sai Kung in the southeast. Within it were the markets of Shek Wu Hui, Tai Po, and Sai Kung. The extent to which these divisions were the units of organization for the resistance movement will be discussed in the conclusion.\n\nThe Occupation of the New Territory in 1899.\n\nThe resistance to the occupation of the New Territory is one of the forgotten episodes in the Colony's history. Present-day government publications dismiss it with a line: \"the British take-over in April 1899 met with some initial ill-organized armed opposition...\"5 Major-General W. J. Gascoigne, who commanded the British forces in Hong Kong at the time, took a different view: \"I am confident that if this rising had not been so promptly met from all sides as it was, it would have assumed very formidable proportions, as it is now discovered that it had been most carefully planned beforehand.\"52 In the paragraphs below an attempt is made to reconstruct the development of the resistance movement, the sequences of events being divided, for purposes of exposition, into three phases: Prelude to Resistance; the Resistance Movement; and the Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath.\n\nPrelude to Resistance — August 1898 to 27th March, 1899,53\n\nAlthough the Convention of Peking was concluded in June 1898, the take-over of the New Territory did not occur until April of the following year. In the interval there were various portents of impending British rule which can have done little to reassure the inhabitants of the territory. In August of 1898 Stewart Lockhart toured the territory and made enquiries about many aspects of social life. At about the same time agents of a Hong Kong land syndicate began to operate in the area. Their object was to acquire land which might appreciate in value as a result of either government purchase, or, the expansion of commercial activities. Unscrupulous methods were used to persuade reluctant owners to sell their land. For example, the syndicate's agents were the authors of a rumour that the Hong Kong government intended to expropriate all privately owned land. It was believed that the syndicate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "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": 205747, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n47\n\nWhen the party regained their boat May sent the civilians back to Hong Kong. He took the remainder of his men to the matshed hill, where he intended to spend the night. As May deployed his men on the hillside, men from Fan Leng took the card of Man Cham-tsun—leader of the Man lineage of Tai Hang—to villages throughout the area, asking for help in an assault on his position.\n\nWhen darkness fell, May could see lights in the five villages nearest the hill and more lights moving along the footpaths to the rear of his position. Bombs were exploded in the adjacent valley and parties whistled and signalled as they moved forward. Realising that he could not hold the hill, May withdrew to an adjacent one and from there watched the attack. A signal drum sounded and there was a concerted rush from all sides to the crest of the hill. The matsheds were fired and a search begun for the British party. May and his men hid in a thicket of rushes and cactus until early the next morning, when they were able to escape unobserved.\n\n+\n\n-\n\n+\n\nEnquiries made the next day, by Stewart Lockhart and General Gascoigne, showed that the assault had been made by villages from within the Ts'at Yeuk. Of the seven yeuk, only one—Ting Kok Yeuk—appears not to have participated. In retrospect, May estimated that between 100 and 200 men had been involved. He concluded: \"what struck me most was the evidently organized manner in which members from the surrounding villages concentrated to take part in the attack... This is no doubt a method... adopted both for offence and defence.\"60 The Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Henry Blake, took a detached view of the affair. “I am not disposed to attach much importance to this attack upon Mr. May and his party. Such a sudden access of militant irritability is not uncommon in Ireland, and subsides as rapidly as it rises.\"61\n\nThe next ten days were busy ones for the resistance leaders, particularly those of Ha Tsuen and Kam Tin. They visited villages throughout the area and exhorted people to oppose the occupation. Ammunition was purchased in bulk. Captured account books, associated with an ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen, show that gunpowder, ball, and percussion caps were being ordered throughout the earlier part of April. For example, the section for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205752, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "52\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nthe configuration of the country favoured cover and our casualties were few.\" But, \"had this advance not been conducted with great care the loss to our troops must have been heavy.\"69 After fierce fighting the militia withdrew from the valley, leaving it by way of the saddle which gives access to the Pat Heung district. The soldiers followed and, having lost touch with the Chinese, bivouacked for the night at Sheung Tsuen, on the foothills overlooking the Pat Heung valley.\n\nThe next afternoon a large force (subsequently estimated at 2,600 men), was seen approaching from a distance. It consisted of men from Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Castle Peak and from four villages in adjacent Chinese territory, including Pan Tin. The British force took up positions and stood watching the militia, deployed in three lines, \"advance across the open in excellent skirmishing order.70 The British Officer Commanding later conceded that it was \"distinctly a determined advance for Chinamen.”71 The militia began firing at long range and their rifle and jingal fire shortly became almost continuous. When the distance had been reduced to 500 yards the British tried a few ranging shots, moved forward under cover of a dry water course, and advanced into the open toward the on-coming militia. In the face of such a determined response, which now became a general advance accompanied by heavy fire, the militia broke and ran.\n\nThis battle marked the end of organized resistance within the New Territory. The next weeks were spent in establishing the civil administration and in persuading villagers to return to their normal occupations. The Governor, in attempting to explain what had happened to a remote Colonial Office, drew upon another Celtic parallel. The resistance, he said, revealed \"a state of clan feeling and power of combination not unlike that of the Scottish Highlands two centuries ago . . .\"72\n\nThe Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath-- May to September, 1899.\n\nThus far, operations had been confined to the newly leased territory. Early in May, however, reports reached the Hong Kong Government of an impending attack from across the Sham Chun river. Police informers said that 140 ‘bare-sticks' from Tung-kuan Hsien had assembled in secrecy at Sha Tau, on Deep Bay. They were to form the nucleus of a force which was to be augmented by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205753, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n53\n\nlocal recruits. The venture was rumoured to be the work of the Ming Lan Tong, a literary society of Tung-kuan city. Additional credence was given to the reports when it was learned that some officers of the Tong were members of the Hsin-an Tang clan. Police on patrol in the New Territory also noted that women were leaving their villages. By 10th May the exodus had reached major proportions.\n\nIt was evident that the Sham Chun river was not a defensible frontier and that the best way to forestall attack was to occupy the area from which it was to be launched. On 16th May two columns, numbering 1500 men in all, landed from Deep Bay and Mirs Bay and marched on Sham Chun. That evening the Union Jack was hoisted over Sham Chun market, to the accompaniment of a 21-gun salute. A proclamation was issued declaring that Sham Chun was British territory and that the Viceroy had no further jurisdiction in the district. There had been no resistance and no sign of forces massing to attack the New Territory.\n\nThe occupation of Sham Chun was confined to an area within five miles of the Sham Chun river, including Sha Tau, Sham Chun, and the road between them. Neither civil nor military jurisdiction were extended further. However, in the hinterland the occupation of Sham Chun and the proclamation which accompanied it were interpreted as a prelude to the occupation of the entire district. In particular, the Tangs of Pan T'in feared a punitive expedition against themselves.\n\nMuch of the information about subsequent events comes from one source. The Rev. Martin Schaub* of the Basel Mission had a station at Li Long, near Pan T'in, in the north of the district. Rev. Schaub wrote periodically to the officer commanding at Sham Chun and his letters convey a vivid impression of the activity precipitated by the occupation. Late in May he wrote that the leaders of Pan T'in had asked the larger villages to help in resisting the British. He said money was being collected and that armed men were making their way toward Pan T'in.\n\n* The printed documents call him \"Hart\", but this must be in error for Rev. Martin Schaub of the Basel Mission. A photograph and brief biography are given at pp. 16, 438 of Marshall Broomhall, The Chinese Empire: a General and Missionary Survey, London, [1907]. Perhaps hand-writing was responsible for the wrong transcription into the printed documents, Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205754, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "54 \n\nR. G. GROVES \n\nOn 2nd June Rev. Schaub wrote that the \"literati of Pan T'in had a meeting with the headmen of the six large market places in their neighbourhood.\" He continued, \"most of the collected elders of the various villages were very reluctantly promising some help, but after all they came to an agreement that they would send 500 men from each market place when the Indian troops should really come to Pan Tin.\"3 Meanwhile, the villagers of Pan T'in were constructing trenches between their village and Li Long. \n\nOn 5th June Rev. Schaub reported that fortification work was still in progress. He had heard that \"members of the rich and prosperous clan Tang in the city of Tung Kun ... are behind the scenes, that soldiers and weapons are coming up from there.\" Rev. Schaub continued, \"last Saturday a messenger came from one of our out-stations, 15 miles from here... to bring us the news that the various market places in that region had also a gathering to discuss their plans.\"74 \n\nRev. Schaub enclosed his own translation of a gentry placard posted in a nearby market town. It begins with a denunciation of the barbarians, and continues: \n\n44 \n\nTo fight the barbarians, I propose in a rough way: (1) to get the funds. It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is also not right that the various confederations should pay the costs. Some of these places have a large population, and many fields... but for instance Thonglak (alias market of peace) could not do this. It is a small place and there is not a large population... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together to ask our Government for help \n\n**75 \n\nBy the end of June it was clear that the British did not intend an expedition against the villages of the interior. The occupation had, however, become involved in larger diplomatic issues between Britain and China. It dragged on throughout the summer until 13th September, when the last of the British forces withdrew behind the frontiers of the Colony. In the interim much of the Sham Chun valley was left without any form of Chinese government. On the day the British forces finally quitted the valley \n\nPage 60\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205766, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "66\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nsmall plateau averaging some 10 to 12 metres above sea level. This is a plane of marine denudation dating from a time when the sea level stood 12 metres higher than now, perhaps during the last great inter-glacial period (Riss-Würm), some 100,000 years ago. From this lower area much less clay could be washed than from the higher and steeper hill to the north; and the gentler wave-action on the west beach, normally on the lee of the island, made it about five times as long as that on the east of the isthmus, with very few large boulders. Somewhere on the west side of the 12 metres terrace, between about 1100 and 1500 A.D., there was at one or more times a small settlement, perhaps no more than one or two fishermen's huts; for at this point on the west beach are found pieces of Sung and even Ming pottery lying on the beach and in the cliff, which here is largely built up of coarse rainwash from the hill behind. There is, however, no modern settlement and no cultivation, and the island appears to be used only by boat-people, either for fishing or for burial of their dead; for on one visit Prof. Shellshear, who was with me, discovered a human skeleton of recent date two feet below the top of the sand cliff.\n\nMETHOD OF INVESTIGATION\n\nThe site was first discovered and investigated by Dr. Heanley and Prof. Shellshear, who worked together from about 1925 in looking for sites showing early human occupation. Much of what they found lay on the surface of the beaches, but wherever possible they noted the depth from the soil surface of objects found in the sand cliffs. Part of their material was presented later to the British Museum, and some to Mr. Eumorfopoulos and others, but the rest seems to have disappeared during the war in 1941 when the Hong Kong University was wrecked. Their code number for the site was 123, which points to a comparatively later discovery: the Tai Wan site on Lamma, for example, is numbered 83.\n\nThe technique employed by the writer at Tung Kwu was as follows. Objects not found in situ were collected and the initials of the site were painted on them in Chinese ink. If a single object was found in situ, its depth from the surface was measured in inches or centimetres; it was extracted; the depth and initials of the site were written on it or its wrapping paper, and later were recorded in Chinese ink on the specimen. In 1935, by which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205871, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n171\n\ntung. On the military side these events included two assaults on Canton itself, nearly four years of military occupation of the city (5.1.1858 - 21.10.1861) and various punitive expeditions on the Canton river and inside the province. On the civil and diplomatic side were the sequence of events connected with the question of entry to Canton, which the British held to have been promised them under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. This culminated in the triumph of the Canton Viceroy in 1849 who was able to defer entry still further on the grounds of the rooted opposition of the gentry and people of the province to this step by their officials — though deferment was also due to Bonham's conviction that the real key to Canton lay not by warlike action there as in the North. These years also saw economic crises at Canton occasioned, among other factors, by the opening of four other treaty ports under the Nanking Treaty, and a wave of growing lawlessness across the province culminating in the great disorders of the 1850s in the wake of the Taiping rebellion.\n\nMr. Wakeman's theme is the re-emergence of local militia in the early 1840's to assist in repelling the British forces and their continuance through the later years of the entry question (1846-49); the part they played in local defence against the Red Turban and other rebels, pirates and banditti in the early 1850s; their efforts against the British attack in 1857-58 and, under secret orders from Peking, in the guerilla struggle against the British in Canton in the first period of the occupation, until diplomatic agreement in the North led to their being told to desist.\n\nHe traces the ebb and flow in official attitudes to the local militia from encouragement to discouragement, from enthusiasm to apprehension. He describes, too, the methods by which the militia were raised and financed and shows how they were a two-edged weapon to Government and people alike. Mr. Wakeman also traces the rise and wane of anti-foreign attitudes in Kwantung during this period and the paradoxical change from bitter enmity to a realisation, at least in Canton and its surrounds, that British troops were a guarantee against a multitude of threats from lawless elements. The treatment is masterly and authoritative, being based on a wide variety of sources in English and Chinese; the book is compelling and the narrative moves smoothly.\n\nIn this review I shall confine my remarks mainly to the militia. First of all I wish to comment briefly on the use of the English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205872, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "172\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nterm “militia” to translate tuan lien (). Wakeman uses this term and, to my mind, strays further from its real meaning when he differentiates between tuan lien and \"genuine tuan lien\". I would prefer to use Siang-tseh Chiang's term \"local corps\" for all \"tuan lien”, whether \"genuine\" or not. In English this is a more accurate, because more loose-fitting, term, and it does not abuse the word \"militia” which in Britain at least has a precise meaning. Militia were auxiliary troops not on full-time service except when embodied in time of war for home or overseas service. These forces were totally under government control, and indeed were an integral part of the military forces of the English Crown and as such subject to considerable constitutional constraint. This led Cardwell, the 19th-century Army reformer, to describe the militia as \"the constitutional force of England.. a force ever dear to the people of England from constitutional antecedents\".* Thus the circumstances of the existence and mode of use of the British militia after the establishment of the Standing Army in 1660 were quite different from those obtaining in China during the Ching dynasty; which surely strengthens the case for selecting another term to describe \"local forces\" that were not financed by government and might never have had official blessing.\n\nThat the appearance of tuan lien might be deceptive is, however, certain. The Kwangtung Viceroy commented as follows on Hong Kong Governor Sir Henry Blake's theory that Chinese regular troops might have taken part in the disturbances that followed the occupation of the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1899:\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon, and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety.\n\nThis quotation is borrowed from Mr. Groves' article, printed elsewhere in this number of the Journal, in which he uses Wakeman's book to put together an interesting essay on the interaction of market, lineage and militia (local forces) during the opposition to the British occupation of the New Territories in 1899.\n\nSecondly, this reviewer found the discussion of \"local schools\"\n\n* Quoted in The Spectator, 14th March, 1969, p. 331.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205875, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n175 \n\nof conflict and contradiction, between different strands of the population which would have had comparative value, whether explicit or implicit has been missed. Had it been taken, it would have provided a justification for publishing these papers in one volume. As it is, the papers are uneven in content and in quality, and there is little here that might not have been more suitably published in separate journals (this, and Far Eastern Economic Review, for example.). \n\nThat said, the volume does contain papers which provide major contributions to the study of Hong Kong as a total society. The best of these is, without question, Henry J. Lethbridge's study of the changes brought about by the Japanese Occupation in the relationship between Government and the Chinese and the British business communities; research into the Japanese Occupation from the point of view of the Chinese population is in any event long overdue. The feeling of release, and the outburst of racial antagonism, which immediately followed the Japanese takeover, revealed the extent of the grievances felt by the Chinese community — grievances arising from years of remote, paternalistic, and sometimes racially discriminatory government. The Japanese successfully exploited these feelings until it became evident that their regime was to be no less imperialistic, and considerably less benevolent and efficient than that of the British had been. But they did draft larger numbers of Chinese into the administration than the British had ever done; and it is significant that at the end of the war, the Chinese appeared to have forgotten all about their former rulers. British authority was reestablished but in a chastened, placatory, and more cooperative form: there was little recrimination for the events of the Occupation, and the move towards greater Chinese participation in government was continued. Lethbridge points out most significantly, however, that there was very little internal change in the personalities at the head of the Chinese business community during or after the Occupation, or in the procedures by which individuals rose to prominence: what changed was the Government. In the event, relations between Government and the business community, Chinese and British, were considerably improved by the experience of the Japanese Occupation. Far from being destroyed, the pre-war social and economic order was strengthened by the elimination of conflicts of interest which had previously existed, and by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205961, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862-1941\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE*\n\nThe British Civil Service contains administrative, executive and clerical classes. The administrative class in Britain and the colonies was an elite generally recruited directly from the universities. The term 'cadet officer' denotes the administrative grade of officer in the Hong Kong Government Service in the period under review. It remained in official use for almost a century, until 1960.\n\nAltogether 85 cadets were appointed in the period 1862-1941. 9 died in office, 12 transferred or were seconded, and four resigned or retired on medical grounds. Three became governors of Hong Kong - Sir Francis Henry May (1912-18), Sir Cecil Clementi (1925-30), and Sir Alexander Grantham (1947-1957); and five became Governors or High Commissioners of other territories - Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (Straits Settlements), Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (Weihaiwei), Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (Weihaiwei), Sir George Murchison Fletcher (Fiji, Western Pacific, Trinidad) and Sir Alexander Grantham (Fiji, Western Pacific). Two became Chief Justices of Hong Kong - Sir James Russell (1888-92) and Sir Joseph Horsford Kemp (1930-33). Four others attained the rank of Colonial Secretary, Hong Kong before retirement - Norman Lockhart Smith (1936-41), David Mercer MacDougall (1946-49), Claude Bramall Burgess (1958-63) and Edmund Brinsley Teesdale (1963-66).\n\nThe number of cadets on the establishment in any one year was never large: only 7 in 1880, 13 in 1900, 31 in 1920, and 37 in 1941. Even these figures are deceptive: they report the strength on the books but not the strength in the field. We must deduct from such totals the number of 'unpassed' cadets2 (cadets engaged in the full-time study of the Chinese language)\n\n* Mr. Lethbridge is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Hong Kong. He is the author of several articles on Hong Kong subjects. His \"Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation: Changes in Social Structure\" appeared in I. C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, Hong Kong, A Society in Transition — contributions to the study of Hong Kong Society (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) pp. 77-127. Another article, on the Tung Wah Hospitals 1870-1970, will appear in a second volume edited by I. C. Jarvie and Marjorie Topley to be published soon. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205962, "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n37\n\nand those on leave, in order to discover, at any moment in time, the actual number of cadets administering the affairs of the colony. However, they formed an administrative corps d'élite: a minuscule band of officials with the same values and from the same social background. They were always in short supply: but in time they changed the style of government in 19th century Hong Kong and routinised its operations. The object of this paper is to examine some changes brought about by the introduction of Sir Hercules Robinson's cadet scheme in 1861,3 and to explore the lives of a few expatriate officials, those who formed the apex of a colonial society with its complicated gradations of race, caste, class, occupation and office.\n\nSuch a research task is not a supererogatory one: Sir Ralph Furse, Director of Recruitment, Colonial Service 1931 - 48, affirms that 'in most colonies the Civil Servant is the Government, and not the servant of Government'24 Sir Ralph's obiter dictum is particularly applicable to Hong Kong in the late nineteenth century. At that time it was a small territory with a population squeezed into a few urban enclaves, where everyone lived cheek by jowl and officials were highly visible and often met in the street. In such a constricted society the quirks of an official, given the system of government, often influenced important administrative decisions, over which the general public could exercise little control. The inclusion of the New Territories in 1899 within the administrative framework of Hong Kong did not substantially alter these facts of life; for a long time, certainly until the re-establishment of British rule in 1945, the New Territories remained curiously peripheral to the older, established areas of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula.\n\nThe cadet scheme instituted by Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of Hong Kong from 1859 - 1865, grew out of a pressing need for correct interpretation and translation in government, especially in the courts. For the first twenty years of its existence, the Colony had very few officials apart from the notorious and devious D. R. Caldwell (at one time General Interpreter to the Government and Registrar-General) who had adequate command of Cantonese and were able to communicate with the mass of the immigrant Chinese population, most of whom were Punti and Hakka. The actions of government were stultified by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205979, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "54 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nSt. Andrews 2, Aberdeen 2, Glasgow 1). Sir Joseph Kemp attended Cape University, South Africa and Edward Wynne-Jones the University of Wales. \n\nThese university-educated gentlemen represent a social stratum lying somewhere between Mathew Arnold's Barbarians and the Philistines. A large number of them had been educated in schools animated by the ideas and ideals of Arnold's father, Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby. \n\n28 Alexander Macdonald Thomson (1863-1924), Educated at Aberdeen University. Lecturer in Mathematics, Naini Tal College, India, 1884-5; Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Aberdeen, 1887; entered the Hong Kong Civil Service, and attached for one year to the Colonial Office, 1887; Treasurer 1898-1918. Retired in 1918. He is the only cadet who retired to live in the United States (San Mateo, California); most cadets, including the Scots, settled in the Home Counties on retirement. \n\n29 Norman Lockhart Smith (1887-1968) was the son of Hugh Crawford Smith, M.P., Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Lewis Audley Marsh Johnston (1865-1908) the son of William Johnston, M.P., Ballykilbeg, Ireland. \n\n30 Robert Huessler Yesterday's Rulers, Syracuse, New York, 1963, p. 98. \n\n31 In H. R. Wells and Lam Tong Chinese Documents and Petitions, Hong Kong, 1931, some examples are given in Chinese, with English translations. There are also some interesting specimens of petitions received by the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs from Chinese in Hong Kong. In the section on the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs in the General Orders of the Hong Kong Government, 1924, we read: \"Before taking action affecting bodies or classes of people, the Chinese Government is in the habit of issuing proclamations explaining the action to be taken and the reason for it and the Chinese in Hong Kong expect the same notice to be given. It is desirable that whenever the Head of a Department finds it necessary to take notice of any slackness in complying with the law, or to put a stop to gradual encroachments on the part of individuals, or to bring some new regulation into force, he should first consult the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and ask him to notify the people affected in the same way\". \n\n32 Margery Perham Lugard, vol. 2, London 1960, p. 302. \n\n33 Ibid., p. 367. \n\n34 Geoffrey Robley Sayer (1887-1962), Educated at Highgate School, London, and Queen's College, Oxford. Hong Kong Civil Service 1910; Director of Education 1934-6; retired 1938. \n\n35 Stephen Francis Balfour (1905-1945). Educated at King's College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1929; died in internment during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. \n\n36 Walter Schofield (1888-1968). Educated at the University of Liverpool. Hong Kong Civil Service 1911. First Police Magistrate 1934-1937; retired 1938. Schofield was noted for his work pre-war on the geology and archaeology of Hong Kong, in which fields he was a pioneer scholar. \n\n37 Roger Soame Jenyns (born 1904). Educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1926; resigned in 1931 to join the British Museum. He is a noted expert on the arts of the Far East and has written extensively in that field. \n\n38 Robert Andrew Dermod Forrest (born 1893). Educated at Aberdeen University. Hong Kong Civil Service 1919; Inspector of Vernacular Schools; Immigration Officer 1940. Lecturer in Tibeto-Burman Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206005, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "80\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\ndifficult problems to the governments concerned, and cruel, drastic, but ineffectual attempts were made to halt immigration. The massacres of thousands of Chinese in the Philippines in 1603, 1639, and again after the British occupation of 1763, are the most celebrated of many such occurrences, the last being caused by the Chinese having shown a marked preference for British rather than Spanish rule. In Indonesia the worst massacre took place at Batavia in 1740. Similar pogroms, but on a much smaller scale, continued in the Philippines down to 1820, and post-war Indonesia has shown a disquieting tendency to put the clock back two centuries in their treatment of their Chinese. But although victims of periodic bouts of xenophobia from the local peoples, in most countries of South-east Asia and at most times the Chinese were protected by the colonial governments which recognised the value of Chinese labour for their economies.\n\nBy the early decades of the 19th century the coolie trade between China and South-east Asia had attained substantial proportions -- although still nothing like so great as it was to become later -- and most of the trade was in the hands of Chinese junks of from 300 to 400 tons. Such craft could only sail before the wind and carried crews of up to ninety sailors, enough to man five European ships of the same size. They took anything from twenty to thirty days between south China and the Straits or Bangkok, and the coolies had a very uncomfortable time on the passage. No charts were carried, the only navigational instrument being a very rude compass, and they kept as close to land as possible. In the 1830s up to eighty such junks sailed to Bangkok every year, usually from Swatow, and by the mid 1840s, by which time European steamships were entering the trade, it was estimated that about 15,000 coolies were emigrating to Bangkok every year.\n\nA description of these old trading junks is given in S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (London, W. H. Allen & Co. revised edition, 1883) vol. 1, p. 753. It shows inter alia that the number of passengers carried on these junks to the Nanyang could be very great. ... \"The cabins look more like niches in a sepulchre than the accommodations for a live passenger. The crew lie upon deck most of the time, and are usually interested in the trade of the vessel or an adventure of their own. The great number of passengers which have been stowed in these vessels entailed a frightful loss of life when they were wrecked. In February, 1822, Capt. Pearl, of the English ship Indiana, coming through Gaspar Straits, fell in with the cargo and crew of a wrecked junk, and saved one hundred and ninety-eight persons (out of one thousand six hundred with whom she had left Amoy).\" Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206059, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\nBeing a local history of the region of Hong Kong and the New Territories before the British occupation\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\n(Editor's Note. In recent years the Journal has reprinted selected items of enduring interest to those interested in Hong Kong and its past. The following article first appeared in the T'ien Hsia Monthly, published in Shanghai, in vols. 11-12, 1940-41, pp. 330-352, 440-464. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Mr. Balfour's widow, Mrs. William Glock. Stephen Balfour was a Cadet i.e. Administrative Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service*. He served here from 1929 until his tragic death in an air raid on the Stanley Internment Camp during the war-time Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong,\n\nThe article is reprinted as it stands in the original, and no gloss has been attempted or additional references given to books cited or to the source of the illustrations).\n\nI. ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE REGION\n\nLocal history in China has always been considered one of the functions of the officials administering each province or district; it has thus come about that there is not a single corner of the Chinese Empire that has not at least one local history, recounting its antiquities and its aspect at the time of writing, and many places have several of these topographies, as they are called, compiled about them at different dates.\n\nThe region in which Hong Kong and the New Territories lie is described in the Topography of the San On (now Po On) District. This book, which is dated 1820, is a revised version of earlier editions stretching back to the 15th century, and it would have been interesting to consult the earlier versions, were they accessible, not so much for the information about local antiquities and traditions, for that has probably all been reproduced in the last edition, as for the details of contemporary life described by the official in charge of the district at that time. However, the topography in its later edition contains a great many valuable texts, reproduced from inscriptions or other books that have since disappeared, authentic information about the district itself and almost everything in local tradition that was considered worth printing.\n\n*See Mr. Lethbridge's article on Hong Kong Cadets, 1862-1941 elsewhere in this issue. Ed.\n\n新安縣誌", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206062, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n137\n\nsettled in the hills and along the coasts of our region. They themselves acknowledge that they are the latest comers into the region, and that they have migrated from exclusively Hakka-speaking country between Kwangtung, Fukien and Kiangsi provinces. The Hakka of those parts declare that they migrated from North China and this tradition is confirmed in every way by scholars, often Hakka themselves, who have collated separate family histories. From these studies it is possible to know that the Hakka did not migrate south of Kiangsi before the 10th century A.D. and we can infer from this that their appearance in this region was several centuries later.\n\n7\n\nFrom the evidence of their names we can begin to distinguish two kinds of inhabitants--one pure Chinese and one of non-Chinese origin. But on the other hand there is much negative evidence that could be brought forward. In the first place in customs and religion the Tanka and Hoklo seem to follow Chinese tradition; they have the same reverence for ancestors, the same surnames, they marry and bury the dead with the same ceremonies. They have an identical calendar of feast days, and their dialects, Cantonese and Fukienese, have nothing either in place-names, or vocational expressions or any other vocabulary which might contain archaisms to suggest that they ever used another language.\n\nIn the second place there is absolutely no apparent evidence that the Tanka and Hoklo are of the same extraction. They do not look alike physically and they do not intermarry nor mix freely in spite of being in close contact with one another. Indeed, the Tanka are much more akin to the Cantonese in outward appearance, and but for a difference of pronunciation it would be almost impossible to distinguish between them.\n\nIn the third place, the Hakka and Punti differ in their religious customs on one important point. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by the Punti, Tanka and Hoklo on the 5th day of the 5th moon every year. The Hakka do not keep this feast. The importance of the Dragon Boat Festival as a clue to origins of culture will be described in a later section of this article.\n\nHowever there is one broad distinction which can be made. In their differences in occupation and dwellings the population divides\n\n7 For instance, Lo Hsiang Ling (#); K'o Chia Yen Chiu (3 RMX).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206106, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n181\n\nexecutors, clearly thought that his papers were likely to be of interest to others. These papers have recently been donated to the University of Toronto by Mrs. Coombs. The following brief summary will give readers of this note some idea of their scope, though it does not show the range of Bland's correspondence with prominent politicians, diplomats, civil servants, artists, actors, scholars, social scientists and public figures in general on subjects not specifically connected with Chinese affairs.\n\nBrief Summary of Contents\n\n1. Diaries. Those for October 1883 - March 1885 and 1906 - 1910 were kept while he was in China. Bland left China in 1910.\n\n2. Typescript of chapters incorporated into his various books. These include material later discarded, as well as translations from Chinese, handwritten by Backhouse, of material used in their two books. Unfortunately, these translations do not appear to contain any references to the Chinese sources from which they were made. Also included in this section is the original version of Backhouse's translation of Ching-shan's so-called 'Diary', together with correspondence from 1920 until 1945 with various authorities concerning its authenticity. Victor Purcell, in The Boxer Uprising, 1963, devoted an interesting appendix to Ching-shan's 'Diary', stating that Backhouse's papers were burned in Peking during the Japanese occupation, and adding: “I have not, so far, been able to trace the whereabouts of any private papers of J.O.P. Bland”.\n\n3. Manuscript notebooks, essays, etc. E.g., \"In a Peking compound and around it”.\n\n4. Thirteen scrapbooks of clippings and articles by and about Bland.\n\n5. Photographs of Peking, Shanghai, etc.\n\n6. Correspondence. This comprises the most important part of the collection.\n\nOne large group of letters concerns Bland's relations with the British and Chinese Corporation Ltd., and his case against it. Also in this section are letters concerning the Mackay Treaty, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and the British Legation in Peking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206108, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n183\n\n24TH MAY, 1969\n\nVISIT TO OLD SHAU KEI WAN\n\nThe programme notes prepared for the visit are reproduced below.\n\nEd.\n\nThis visit is to an area soon to experience redevelopment. Within a few years, extensive reclamation and clearance of squatter structures will transform the district. Dirty and non-descript, nonetheless it has interesting relics and associations that are worthy of attention.\n\nShau Kei Wan, the name means \"Rice Basket Bay\", clearly so named because of its shape, is an old settlement probably dating back to centuries before the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. Its population was given as 1,200 persons in the first Hong Kong census of May, 1841. Then as now, the population were farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, scattered in various settlements round the shores of the bay, named by the British \"Aldrich Bay\" after a military engineer officer who served in Hong Kong in those first years.\n\nShau Kei Wan has for long been known locally as the 'Bay of Hungry Men'. Writing as long ago as 1858, the Rev. W. Lobscheid noted:\n\n\"This village is called by the natives Ngo-yan-wan (the harbour of the starving men). They relate that, about 150 years ago, a few junks were driven into this harbour by a hurricane. The weather continuing very rough for several days, and being in want of provisions, they went on shore in order to purchase some rice and other necessaries. But nothing could be obtained, and the unfortunate men had to leave almost in a starving condition. From that time, they called the place the harbour of the starving men', which appellation it bears up to this moment.\"\n\n[From A Few Notices on the Extent of Chinese Education and the Government Schools of Hong Kong, etc. Hong Kong, Printed at the \"China Mail\" Office, MDCCCLIX p. 38.]\n\nIn another version of the same story, given in a Chinese publication in 1947, the name is ascribed to the fact that Shau Kei Wan was a base for lawless pirates, the \"hungry people\". This account said that because of the geographical advantages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206110, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n185 \n\nNot far from the main Tin Hau Temple, on rocks formerly in the sea but now built around and beyond by boat squatters' huts, is another smaller temple to the same goddess. This is known locally as the Hoi Shum Temple, or 'Temple in the Midst of the Sea'. It has interestingly decorated pillars and altar slabs, and a half-obliterated inscription shows that it was constructed in 1845, four years after the British occupation of Hong Kong Island. However, the tablet states that, like the Tam Kung Temple, (see below) there was an open air altar to Tin Hau for some time before local people subscribed for the temple building. Nowadays this temple seems neglected and little used, perhaps because it may have been patronised mostly by smaller sampan fishermen who have now been forced into land employment by economic factors. \n\nFurther along the street, is Ah Kung Ngam-Grandfather's (or Ancestor's) Rocky Hill. This used to be a lonely place by the shore. In the 1901 census it had a population of 213 of whom 159 were males-probably mostly quarrymen and land-based fishermen. Here is situated the large temple to Tam Kung. This was built in 1905. At first sight this late date is rather curious, because old residents of Ah Kung Ngam state that Shau Kei Wan people venerate this god above Tin Hau and his festival is the event of the year for local residents, land and sea alike, celebrated both in Shau Kei Wan proper and round the corner in Ah Kung Ngam.* However, this is partly explained by the tablet commemorating the construction of the temple. This states that for an unstated number of years there had been an image of Tam Kung (brought over from Kowloon) but no structure. This temple contains major shrines to two other gods, Wong Tai Sin and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother. There are models of a sailing junk and a dragon boat inside the building, the former apparently dating back to 1905, and the latter to 1961. \n\nAt the far end of Ah Kung Ngam, having passed timber and boat yards on the sea front and squatter and ordinary factories of all kinds on the other side of the road we come eventually to \n\n* This is equally so at the present day. A night visit to the area at this year's festival showed opera performances on land and sea and many dinner parties in progress, whilst the amount of debris at the temple after the day's worshipping had to be seen to be believed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206206, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO:\n\nTHE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FORGOTTEN EVENT\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.*\n\nThe occupation of the important treaty-port city of Ningpo in Chekiang province by Taiping revolutionaries from December 1861 to May 1862 constitutes a fascinating and significant page of history. That it has been by and large overlooked in Western historical memory of the Taiping period by no means detracts from this assertion. Rather, such neglect is merely additional testimony to a faulty historiographical tradition. For a curiosity about the event is natural, and the significance of the occupation is self-evident. There are three main reasons for this. First of all, the occupation enabled the largely land-locked Taipings to realize at last their ambition of gaining access to the sea, an especially urgent matter after they had been denied this objective by the British and French at Shanghai. Secondly, the occasion gave the revolutionaries an opportunity to demonstrate in practice what they had long proclaimed verbally, that foreigners had no reason to fear Taiping political authority in an area where foreign lives and interests were exposed. Finally, despite obvious indications of Taiping success on both of these points the entire experience seems only to have helped galvanize foreign opposition to the Taiping movement. This too would seem to call for a closer look at the event.\n\nThe Taipings had been in possession of much of the Chekiang hinterland for many months. When they finally decided to take Ningpo in late 1861, they did so with surprising swiftness, and painlessly. To the disappointment of the British, who had helped in making plans for the defense of the city against the Taipings, there was in fact no military opposition. British Admiral James\n\n*The author, a former editor of and contributor to this journal, is a Senior Specialist at the East-West Center and Visiting Associate Professor of History in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawaii for 1970-71. This article is based upon a paper delivered at the 28th International Congress of Orientalists in Canberra, Australia on January 9, 1971 and on material from a forthcoming book, Revolutionary Taiping China and the West. The author acknowledges with gratitude the suggestions made by Professor Jen Yu-wen for improving the original paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206210, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The Taipings at Ningpo\n\n21\n\nShanghae, as we consider it quite unsafe to proceed to Ningpo through the pirate fleet, though we shall be quite safe in going to Shanghae, although it will be a long and tedious journey.” The agent and his companions did make their way to Shanghai, with their silk, and were everywhere treated in a friendly manner by the Taipings. Another writer reported to the North China Herald that he had been given a pass in order to conduct trade in the environs of Ningpo, and transmitted the assurances of a Taiping officer in charge of the district through which he passed that \"he would do his best to protect traders and he hoped before long to regain the confidence of the population, and see business again restored...\"13 As it turned out this particular reporter did run into some difficulties in the course of his business trip, but in the end received “adequate apology\", and another pass to travel again later on.\n\nYet despite such a positive record, the Taiping achievement at Ningpo marks a watershed in their relations with the foreign powers. Far from viewing the Taiping occupation as an experiment to determine their governmental capacity, the British only awaited an appropriate opportunity to retake the city on behalf of the Ch'ing government. And except for the initial candidly favorable appraisals of Taiping behavior, most subsequent reports were calculated to portray a negative image of the insurgents. Thus, despite the surprise of the rapid Taiping conquest and signs of Taiping reasonableness in dealing with foreigners and their promotion of the all-important trade, it seems evident that the British very early began to make preparations for the inevitable showdown. But first they were preoccupied elsewhere. A few days after the fall of Ningpo, for example, Admiral Hope again visited the Taiping capital at Nanking where he sought a renewal of the agreement for the Taipings to respect the thirty-mile limit in the environs of Shanghai. The Taipings refused to comply, primarily because of their concern that the Ch'ing forces were using Shanghai as a base of operations in the civil war. The correspondence between the Taipings and the British on the occasion of this visit to Nanking is further evidence that the latter were simply provoking the Taipings. And although the Taipings remained anxious to avoid an armed confrontation or to give rise to any pretext for one, they still firmly sought to protect their interests with dignity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206211, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "22\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nIn Ningpo itself, the preparations were underway. British officials persuaded all missionaries of British nationality to withdraw from the city, a step which Consul Harvey indicated would \"simplify considerably our future relations with the Taipings at Ningpo.\"14 British naval Captain Corbett concurred, reasoning that in the event of any difficulty with the Taipings the missionaries would otherwise \"prove a source of great embarrassment to us.\"15 It is a matter of record that many of the missionaries who did comply and therefore lived apart from the Taipings during the duration of their occupation did come to share the negative or hostile attitude toward the insurgents.16\n\nAs the British intervention policy developed, an anti-Taiping propaganda campaign mounted. One of the most interesting and telling samples of this effort was the reporting of Consul Harvey. His dispatch of March 20, 1862, is perhaps the best example.17 Completely in contradiction to the report of the already noted China Overland Trade Report of less than a month earlier, Harvey declared that although three months had elapsed since the Taiping takeover they had still to take a single step in the direction of good government. Curiously, he repeatedly stressed his lack of bias and dispassionate judgment. He even conceded that “personally I have received every mark of courtesy and proper regard from the Tae-ping Chiefs; and further, I have found in official dealings with them a rough and blunt sort of honesty quite unexpected and surprising, after years of public intercourse with the Imperial mandarins.” But despite such lack of bias, repeatedly emphasized, and such acknowledgment of Taiping honesty and courtesy, Harvey went on to say: \"Nevertheless, the Taepings with their frank demeanour and bluff energy have a fume of blood and a look of carnage about them, from which I, for one, recoil with horror.\" Harvey noted that the occupation of the Taipings, termed an \"experiment\", had produced \"exactly what was expected - ruin, desolation, and the annihilation of every vital principle in all that surrounds the presence, or lies under the bane, of the Taepings.\" Still underlining, undoubtedly, his lack of bias, Harvey noted: \"I now, therefore, take the liberty of declaring, once for all (and for ten years I have fairly adhered to and been consistent in this opinion), that the Taeping rebellion is the greatest delusion, as a political or popular movement, and the Taeping doctrines the most gigantic blasphemous imposition...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206217, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "28\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nand justify their active support of the attack on the city. This then is what happened on the morning of May 10th. According to the Ch'ing official, Hsü Yao-kuang, the provocative shots were fired at a foreign vessel and actually killed two foreigners.36 Dew jumped to the conclusion or feigned to believe that it was the Taipings who had done the firing, and immediately joined in the fight. Dew's own account is nonchalant, noting merely that the Taiping guns were silenced and that he then went to dinner at noon. At 2 p.m. storming parties mounted the walls, and at 5 p.m., after all opposition had ceased, the \"Governor” (probably the tao-t'ai) and Ch'ing soldiers landed from their junks. Dew turned the city over to the Manchu official and withdrew his men.37 The disposition of the Ch'ing troops during this attack is implicit in this report, but another unofficial source was more explicit, reporting that the Chinese allies could not be made to move toward the walls, so that in the end, even the actual breaching of them had to be undertaken by foreign troops.38 Obviously, under the circumstances of such an attack by Ch'ing forces, the Taipings had little alternative but to return fire toward foreign vessels which were interspersed among or in close proximity to the pirate fleet, both as the action began and as it continued.\n\nAfter a determined resistance, and after both of their generals, Huang and Fan, had been badly wounded, the Taipings retired from the city. The contrast between what happened during the retaking of the city at this point and the record of the Taiping seizure of the city several months earlier is interesting. It will be recalled how universal had been the favorable comments regarding the bloodless Taiping takeover. As for this latest occupation, the report of the correspondent for the China Mail speaks eloquently: \"The rebels retreated through the west gate; the pirates then entered the city and began the work of destruction, and in a few hours did more damage than the rebels did in the whole of the five months that they had possession.\" The same account goes on to speak of the executions and the tortures that were perpetrated over the next couple of days, and notes specifically that the British Consul's Chinese servant was \"one of the principal murderers and torturers of the poor fellows found in the city.\"39 Cheng A-fu was subsequently given the status of a petty official in Ningpo, as a reward for his service.40", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206219, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "30\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\ncounter.\"'48 But, of course, this act cannot be laid exclusively to Captain Dew. Another contemporary source charged perhaps more penetratingly that the Taiping possession of Ningpo was \"peculiarly adapted\" to thwart British Minister Frederick Bruce's \"schemes for aiding and abetting\" the Ch'ing side in China's civil war. The source noted that Taiping possession of the seaport would enable them to deprive Shanghai of the greater proportion of the customs duties, which not only might now be diverted into their own exchequer, but would frustrate the object of Mr. Horatio Lay's mission to London where he was seeking to put together an Anglo-Chinese flotilla to be used against the Taipings, and \"destroy the main stay of the Imperial cause.\" The Taipings would also be able to obtain needed war munitions. Finally, they would have the opportunity to dispel \"the illusion of their being inimical to foreign trade.\" This source concluded that from \"such cogent reasons\" Admiral Hope came to agree with the Minister's views, and \"resolved on the recapture of the place by fair means or foul.\"49\n\nSmall wonder that the story of the Taiping occupation of Ningpo has received little subsequent attention in Western historical accounts of the Taiping period. When it has, it has too often been sadly distorted. It is not a happy episode to think about. But however that may be, it is an historical experience that is well worth reflection upon. It was a passing moment of history which, in a telescoped span of time, rather accurately reflected a larger contemporary story. It demonstrated that Chinese revolutionaries of the early 1860s had the capacity to achieve major objectives against a weak established government, including the conquest of much of the territory of the richest provinces in the lower Yangtze River basin and the seizure of a principal seaport. It also demonstrated that the Taipings did treat foreigners respectably well and promoted trade, which was, after all, the matter of greatest importance to foreigners. It also proved that neither the apparent military nor the civil capabilities of the revolutionaries made much difference to those key foreign officials who were determined to assist the weak established government. Finally, it showed that the intervention of foreign powers made a great deal of difference in the ultimate outcome of the civil war in China. At the most, the experience at Ningpo from December 1861 to May 1862 suggests the story in microcosm", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206356, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n157\n\nstatue now in Victoria Park at Causeway Bay which, up to 1941, stood in Statue Square, beside the Hong Kong Club in the centre of the city.\n\nContinuing with our survey, the period from 1893 up to the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914 was one of great activity for the Hong Kong Volunteers. It was one in which a great many important persons in the local community joined the Corps and when, reading between the lines, it was not only the 'done thing' to join the Volunteers but might be remarked upon if one did not. Pressure came from the Governor himself. When the Volunteer Reserve Ordinance of 1910 was in passage, Sir Frederick Lugard ended his statement by saying \"I think that every young Englishman in this Colony ought to join the Volunteers, and every Englishman who is no longer young ought to join the force which I hope will at once be enrolled when this bill has been read a third time.\"14\n\nThe Volunteer Corps' annual inspection reports for the period are available in Hong Kong. They were printed for tabling at Legislative Council, itself an indication of an important activity. They make interesting reading and show the vitality of the Corps and its impact on Hong Kong European polite society and on the Establishment.15 As stated, the Governors of the time took a keen interest in the Corps and it was Sir Mathew Nathan himself (Governor 1902-07 and formerly an officer of the Royal Engineers) who is credited with inspiring the formation in 1906 of the Mounted Troop—known irreverently as \"Mathew's Mounted Mugs\"16—and the institution of the Volunteer Reserve Association which was eventually embodied by Ordinance in 1910. Another, more temporary, inspiration in 1899 had been the calling out of the Volunteers to assist the Regulars in repelling an expected attack on Kowloon by New Territories' villagers in arms against the British take-over, and their part in the occupation of the Kowloon Walled City later in the same year.17\n\nMuch of this resurgence in the popularity of the military—a phenomenon which is usually held to be un-British—\n\n14 Han., 1910, p. 91.\n\n15 See S.P., 1894-1908.\n\n16 Vol, 1954, p. 50.\n\nwas\n\n17 See S.P., 1900, pp. 637-638, Y.B., 1940, p. 23, and Vol, 1954, p. 43.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206404, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nin frames hung on the walls. A portrait of Sir Robert Ho Tung's mother and a photograph of his wife appear in the older of these two memorial halls. \n\nThe Tam Kung Temple at Happy Valley \n\nThis temple, which seems to have been removed here about 1900, was formerly located at Wong Nei Chung Village and was the local village temple. The village of Wong Nei Chung was one of the main villages of Hong Kong Island and its existence pre-dated the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. It was eventually removed in the 1920s to make way for the present development of Wong Nei Chung and Blue Pool Road. The present race course was formerly the paddy fields belonging to this village. \n\nThis temple is in fact dedicated to two gods, Pak Tai, (11) the god of the north and Tam Kung, (342) a Kwangtung worthy. Other gods worshipped in the temple include the Goddess of Mercy (left of the main altar) and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother (right of the altar). Up some steps and behind the main building is another altar in which there is an image of Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven. To the right of this altar are some memorial tablets which have been put there by relatives of dead persons for regular worshipping rites to be carried out in return for a small initial sum. You will note that one of these contains bone ashes in a small porcelain jar. \n\nTin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay \n\nThis is by far the oldest of the three temples we shall visit today. The structure, apart from some later repairs, dates mainly from a last major reconstruction in 1868, and the bell is dated 1747. There are various items of temple furniture inside and outside the temple bearing dates in the Tao Kwong (1821-51) and Tung Chi (1862-74) periods, including a very good pair of large stone lions dated 1845. Inside the temple the major items of interest are the carved granite altars which date from the 1860s and are worthy of close inspection. \n\nThe temple is dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and has long been famous for attracting large numbers of boat people on this goddess' festival in the fourth moon. Unlike most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206405, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "196\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge, old temples in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. it is not under the management of the Chinese Temples Committee but is exempted from the provisions of the Chinese Temples Ordinance No. 7 of 1928. At that time it was allowed to remain in the hands of the private family to eight of whose members a Crown Lease had been issued on 14th May, 1897. This was the Tai (...) clan formerly of Po Kong Village, Kowloon which was demolished during the Japanese occupation to make way for an extension to the Kai Tak airfield. The temple remains in the hands of their descendants to this day.\n\nJust when the Tai clan began the connection and whether they were responsible for the foundation and successive reconstruction cannot now be established for certain, as no written records remain. A document that might have helped, their clan record, (...) was lost during the Japanese occupation, and we are left with oral tradition. Conversations with the present manager and with an old village woman, a Tai, born in 1887 at Po Kong, gives information that the family are Hakkas from Tam Shui district, not far from Hong Kong. When they came to Po Kong to settle is not now known, but it was certainly before the British occupied Hong Kong Island in 1841. The story goes that members of the family used to come over to Hong Kong Island to cut grass. They found an image of Tin Hau among rocks on the sea-shore where the temple now stands—the coast-line has since been altered by reclamation—and built a modest shelter for it. By degrees it became a popular shrine with boat people and others, especially at the goddess' birthday on the 3rd day of the 3rd lunar month. A proper temple building was erected later by the Tai family who are said to have collected subscriptions for the purpose, leading in time to the major reconstruction of 1868.\n\n―\n\nThere is some doubt in my mind whether the bell now in the temple was cast specially for it. The Chinese characters on it do not mention that it was for the Tin Hau Temple. Alternatively, though the bell may have been made for this temple, the Tais may not have been the founders, despite their traditions, as not one of the five persons who presented it, and whose names appear on it, was a Tai.\n\nThe Crown Lease of 1897 was issued to eight persons, and from what the old lady has said it appears that this followed a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206652, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "194\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nin Thailand and at Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The few observed examples of his statue have all been in temples run by Fukienese emigrants, and probably the most famous statue is to be seen in Malacca in a temple run by Fukienese emigrants from An Chi county. (Plate 28)\n\nThere does not appear to be a standard identification characteristic for images of Cheng Ho. The Malacca statue is of sandal wood, carved some 8\" high, in Amoy style, depicting a Mandarin seated on a throne with his right hand clutching his girdle, his left palm cradling a flat elongated plaque of office or sceptre, which rests in the crook of his left arm. He is beardless and has the raised eyebrows so often seen on Chinese opera generals; he is wearing a military hat with one pompom on top, and a tassel hanging from each side of it over his shoulders. He is accompanied by two standing attendants; the one on his left a military attendant is carrying his sheathed sword, and the one on the right a civil attendant is carrying his seal of office wrapped in a red cloth. Alongside, on the same altar, is Kuan Kung, the Chinese god of loyalty and patron of soldiers, who is also the patron of Chinese businessmen. In the temples listed above, Cheng Ho has several birthdays and feast days, the most common of which is the 30th day of the sixth lunar month.\n\nOne of the many images on sale in a Singapore godshop, was another Amoy style carving of Cheng Ho, some 10″ high in wood, now in the possession of an English news correspondent. This image of the Admiral depicts him as an elderly benign man without a beard, dressed in gilt dragon robes, and standing with a fly whisk in his right hand and a scroll in his left. (Plate 29)\n\nCheng Ho in Java and the Philippines\n\nThe Admiral is held in the highest esteem in Semarang in Java as the Chinese patron deity of the town. It is said that he left behind in Java some ten men under his sick navigator, Ong King-hong, who founded the town of Semarang. Before 1724 a statue of Cheng Ho together with four carved wooden attendants was brought from China, and these stand in a cave near the town. During the British occupation of Java in 1945 the commander of the British forces recommended the Chinese of Semarang to evacuate the town for their own safety. After consultation with Cheng Ho, they decided\n\n11 Willmott, D. E., The Chinese of Semarang, (Cornell U. P., 1960).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206669, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n211 \n\nWe shall then walk to the Cemetery, five minutes walk through the grounds. I have not been able to re-visit recently, and you must look for yourselves. Father Caminondo states that there is persistent vandalism against the crosses on the headstones. From 1875 up to now, he writes, four bishops and 94 priests have been buried here.\n\nPokfulam Village. There is nothing attractive about the present village, which mostly consists of small single-storey stone or wooden structures erected in haphazard fashion round the single row of old village houses that constituted the original village. The village is listed in the Chinese district gazetteer of San On (1819 edition) and thus pre-dates the British occupation of Hong Kong in 1841. The Chan (1) clan of Pokfulam, which probably settled the area in the 18th century, is still there today. They are Puntis, from Po On district. The Chans owned most of the agricultural land in the area, and fished by line and stakenet from suitable points on the coast. One of their stakenets is still in use today. Many of the fields above the Hong Kong Waterfall (see below) still belong to them, and up till 1941 were used to cultivate rice. (This was prohibited after the war on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, as part of a government campaign against malaria).\n\nWe shall not enter the village which has now little of interest, but will walk to the point indicated on the sketch map* from which we can see the Red Brick Pagoda erected, according to the date on it, in 1916. Three old residents, born in 1897-1900, say that it was erected by decision of the village leaders with subscriptions from all residents. It was built to counteract the bad influences of a then new culvert constructed under the Aberdeen Road, near the point from which we shall observe. Its wide black mouth faced onto the village, and made the villagers uneasy. An epidemic in which many residents became ill, and a supernatural event in which a goddess appeared to one of the villagers in a dream, decided the issue, and the pagoda was built. It is named Ling Tap (). The image inside it is of the goddess, known as Li Ling Shin Che (4). She is said to be of local origin, but I have not yet been able to check this thoroughly.\n\nWe then walk into Tai Ku Lau. This was the building occupied by Nazareth House between 1885-1891. It was a European house\n\n* Not printed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206771, "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-1973", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "42\n\nPETER WESLEY SMITH\n\nLockhart, A contemporary newspaper, however, revealed the true nature of the explanation: 75 marines and two Maxim guns.7\n\nThe Special Commissioner was appalled by the discourtesy of the villagers. They were reported to the Viceroy at Canton, who was to \"deal with the matter in a proper manner\", and a deputation from Kam Tin was obliged to apologize in Hong Kong.\n\nSuch punishment failed to impress the inhabitants with the error of being disrespectful to British officials, for when occupation of the New Territories commenced in April 1899 the Tangs of Kam Tin were foremost in organization of the resistance movement. Again, therefore, stern reprimands were required, this time by the use of gunpowder. On April 18 a party of sappers from the Hong Kong Regiment blew down the walls flanking the gates of both Kat Hing Wai and Tai Hong Wai, and a few days later the villagers themselves, as an act of submission, carried the two pairs of gates to Flag Staff Hill (Tai Po).10 There they were admired by Governor Sir Henry Blake who, wrote Stewart Lockhart, “instructed me to forward to him a pair of gates from Kam Tin\". This was duly done in May, though the villagers had to be reminded to send in a socket.12\n\nThe two sets of handsome gates were both defective, one wing of each having suffered from the back-scratching of generations of itchy Kam Tin pigs.13 The remaining gates in good condition were combined to make a pair and were appropriated by Blake for \"Myrtle Grove\", his home in the Irish county of Youghal.\n\nIn 1924 the residents of Kam Tin petitioned for the return of the gates. They were supported by the District Officer (North), who referred to the gates as objects \"of pride to the inhabitants on account of their workmanship and antiquity”, and the Assistant Superintendent of Police (New Territories) recalled their whereabouts. His wife had formerly been maid and companion to Blake's daughters, and she remembered seeing the gates at Myrtle Grove in 1902. Stewart Lockhart, then retired after serving for many years at Wei Hai Wei, was asked to approach Lady Blake for their recovery.1 His mission was successful, but when the gates arrived back in Hong Kong the Tai Hong Wai villagers recognised their half and claimed possession. Long negotiations ensued between elders of the two villages, and eventually, reports O'Dwyer, \"the amount of face that would be gained for the whole clan by their erection as a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206862, "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-1973", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nNOTES ON CHINESE TEMPLES IN HONG KONG\n\nE. J. Eitel states in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, published in 1895, that at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong there were four Chinese temples on the island: one at Ap Lei Chau dating from 1770, one at Stanley, one in Spring Gardens (Tai Wong Kung) and one at Causeway Bay (Tung Lo Wan). He states (p. 190) that after the occupation the Chinese \"commenced building their City Temple (Sheng-wong-miu) on the site of the present Queen's College\".\n\nThe land on which the Shing Wong Temple was built was included within Inland Lot 91. The lot was sold by Government at a public land auction in 1852. It was bought by Floriano Antonio Rangel, a Portuguese bookkeeper in the employ of Jardine Matheson and Company. Rangel owned the entire block bounded by Hollywood Road to the north, Staunton Street to the south, Aberdeen Street to the east, and what became known as Wong Shing Street to the west. In the interior of the block he erected some fifty inexpensive Chinese houses. The complex was variously called Rangel's Row, Rangel's Alley, or Kow Kong Lane. Surrounded by these humble Chinese dwellings stood the Shing Wong Temple. It was somewhat more pretentious than the Tai Wong Kung Temple on Queen's Road East. In the 1865 Rates Schedule, the latter is valued at $120. The Shing Wong Temple's assessed value was $240. But it was considerably less impressive in size and value than the nearby Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road which was assessed at $1,320. By 1876, however, the relative assessed value of the three temples had changed. The Queen's Road East temple property was rated at $144, a $24 increase over the 1865 value. The Man Mo Temple was rated at $20 less than its 1865 assessment. The Shing Wong Temple was rated at double its value in 1865. This suggests that sometime between 1865 and 1876 a major renovation of the Temple had been made.\n\nF. A. Rangel retained ownership of the land upon which the Shing Wong Temple was built until his death in 1873. Three years later the Government bought the property as a site for the erection...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206865, "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-1973", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "136\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA few months after the festive opening of the temple, \"The Joss House Committee\" received from Government the grant of a lot adjoining the temple for the erection of a school.\n\nSometime between 1860 and 1865 a small building was built on the rocky hillside just below the Man Mo Temple. It was near Circular Pathway and Ladder Street. In the Hong Kong Rate lists its name is given at one time as \"Sam Young” Miu and at another time as \"Sam Sing\" Miu. The 1878 Rate has the notation \"removed\". This is clearly another temple.\n\nEitel states that the Tai Wong Temple in Spring Gardens was in existence at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong. If so, title to the Queen's Road East property on which it is built was not obtained until 1847. Lee Fun-wei, a compradore, then obtained a Crown Lease for Inland Lot 257. In 1852, Lee Muy, \"carer of Joss House\", was witness to the transfer of a nearby house. He may be the same as Lee Amoy, \"formerly a butcher, but now of no occupation”, who obtained a court order in 1864 prohibiting Lee Fun-wei from selling or further mortgaging the temple property. In the following year the two parties exchanged properties. Lee Amoy conveyed to Lee Fun Wei a lot with five houses and in return received Inland Lot 257 with \"Joss House, dwelling house and building erected thereon\". Lee Amoy immediately mortgaged the temple property to Delfino Noronha, a Portuguese printer, for $1,500. The mortgage remained unpaid, and in 1869 Noronha sold the temple to a committee composed of Tam Achoy, Ho Asik, and Lee Yuk Hang. It thus passed out of the private ownership of the Lee family to the representatives of the Chinese community.\n\nIf Eitel's statement is correct, that the temple on Queen's Road East at Spring Gardens was in existence before the British occupation of the Island, its proprietors the Lee family may have been settled in the Spring Gardens area, now better known as Wanchai, before the occupation. When Crown Leases were issued for land in this area in 1847, several members of the Lee family secured lots.\n\nA notice of the Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau written by Mr. James Hayes appears in Vol. 7 of this Journal. The date of the bell in the temple is given as 1773. As we have noticed Eitel states the temple was built about 1770. Information on when and by whom it was built is given in a court case reported in The China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207044, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n109\n\nplexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article.\n\nIntroduction*\n\nFor present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map).\n\nAt the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4.\n\nIn time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th\n\n1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations.\n\n2 See Groves, pp. 52-55.\n\n3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46.\n\n4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196.\n\n* For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207064, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n129\n\nthe Kam Tin and Ping Shan branches of the Tang lineage, mediated by the Tai Po and Yuen Long branches of the same clan.1\n\nThe chronic warfare inside Hsin-an and other districts of Kwangtung was perhaps not too well known to the Hong Kong authorities, but was all too plain to the mandarins. The Viceroy of Liang-kuang, commenting on representations from the British about the alleged help given by the provincial military forces to the village bands that were opposing the occupation of the New Territories, wrote:\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety.2\n\nThe less populated parts of the district do not seem to have experienced trouble on this scale, probably because pressure on the land was less great and there were no large lineages competing for power and struggling to retain or improve their position. However, disputes did occur and are remembered by older villagers. On Lantau, fighting between Shek Pik people and villagers from Sha Lo Wan over a grave has been mentioned to me; relations between Tong Fuk and its neighbour Shui Hau were never very good; and a fight between Pui O villagers from San Tsuen and adjoining Lo Wai took place pre-war over the mining of kaolin in a spot behind the two villages that the Lo Wai people held was disturbing the local feng shui3 It appears that in days when communications were poor and the officials at a distance, such disputes would not always come to the attention of the authorities, even if deaths occurred. This must often have been the case in the 19th century.\n\nIt was thus not without good reason that the Hsin-an magistrate of 1847, quoted at the beginning of this article, considered that his difficulties were many and real, and that they were not always appreciated as such by his colleagues and superiors.\n\n1 ARDONT, 1921, J2; with some background at J2 of his 1920 Report.\n\n2 Quoted by Groves, p. 63, note 65. Balfour shows 23 Punti villages with outer walls at Plate 16 in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970. Many other villages, including Hakka ones, had lesser defences, as at Pui O (Lo Wai), Lantau, pp. 14-15 above.\n\n* Information secured from local elders.\n\nPage 130 is missing, directly followed by \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207067, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "132\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nIn English\n\nAlabaster, Chaloner Grenville, The Laws of Hong Kong, 3 vols., Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers, 1913.\n\nArlington, L. C., Through the Dragon's Eyes, Fifty Years' Experiences of a Foreigner in the Chinese Government Service, London, Constable, 1931.\n\nBaker, H. D. R., 'The Five Great Clans of the New Territories', in JHKBRAS, 5, 1965: 25-47.\n\nA Chinese Lineage Village, Sheung Shui, London, Frank Cass, 1968.\n\nBalfour, S. F., 'Hong Kong before the British being a local history before the British occupation', Shanghai, T'ien Hsia Monthly, Vols. 11-12, 1940-41; 330-352, 440-464. Reprinted in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970: 134-179.\n\nBarnett, K. M. A., 'The Peoples of the New Territories' in J. M. Braga (compiler), Hong Kong Business Symposium, Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, Ltd., 1957, pp. 261-265.\n\n'Hong Kong before the Chinese', 'Technical Revolution in 900 AD' and 'The Riddle of the Hakka', Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 24-26th April, 1967.\n\nCollingwood, Cuthbert, Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea, London, John Murray, 1868.\n\nCooper, J. T., 'The Mapping of Hong Kong' in JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 131-140.\n\nDes Voeux, Sir G. William, My Colonial Service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland and Hong Kong, London, John Murray, 1903, 2 vols.\n\nEitel, E. J., (revised and enlarged by Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr), A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, 2 vols., Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1910-1911.\n\nFox, Grace, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates 1832-1869, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1940.\n\nFranke, Wolfgang, An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History, Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaysia Press, Singapore 1968.\n\nFu, Lo-shu (Compiler), A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644-1820), 2 vols., Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1966.\n\nGiles, H. A., A Chinese English Dictionary, Second Edition, revised and Enlarged. Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc., Kelly and Walsh, 1912.\n\nGroves, R. G., 'Militia, Market and Lineage: Chinese Resistance to the Occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899', JHKBRAS, 9, 1969: 31-64.\n\nHay, Sir John C. Dalrymple, The Suppression of Piracy in the China Sea, 1849, London, Edward Stanford, 1889.\n\nHayes, J. W., 'Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets', JHKBRAS 3, 1963: 88-99.\n\n'The San On Map of Mgr. Volontieri' in JHKBRAS 10, 1970: 193-196.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207138, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n203\n\nAt this time the population of Ha Wan was 4861 (G.N. 21 of the Government gazette for 5th March 1859).\n\nObservation Point must be the Observation Place shown on the Map accompanying Mr. Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, published by the Colonial Office in 1882. The map shows Ha Wan as District No. 6 and Wanchai as District No. 7. This indicates that Wanchai was taken from it at some date between 1857 and 1882. Observation Place is shown at p. 46 of the Index to the Streets, House Nos., and Lots in the Colony of Hong Kong, 1903, and may be identified with the lower end of the present Tin Lok Lane, near its junction with Hennessy Road, then seashore.\n\nWanchai was one of the first districts to be developed after the British Occupation of the Island in 1841. The Reverend Carl T. Smith has kindly provided an account of this development, based on his original researches into Hong Kong records. This is attached as a separate Note.\n\nThe Itinerary and Places of Interest\n\nThe party will follow a circuitous route among the back streets, steps and terraces of old Wanchai between Monmouth Path in the west and Stone Nullah Lane on the east.\n\nAmong the places of interest to be visited are several Chinese temples and shrines as follows:\n\n1) The Pak Kung Shrine at the side of No. 7, Star Street. This was established before the War, probably upwards of 70 years ago. The shrine is a To Tei Miu (±普普) or altar to the earth god. The main festival of the year falls on the 2nd day of the second lunar month when the management committee of local residents organises a religious and social celebration.\n\n2) Hung Shing Temple, Queen's Road East. This temple is one of the oldest of the area and may even have existed as a shrine before the British Occupation of the Island. According to Carl Smith there was a small settlement nearby which may have provided the body of regular worshippers, along with visiting boat people.\n\nThe present structure dates from Hsien Feng 10th year (1860-61), repaired in T’ung Chih 6th year (1867-68) when the persons responsible are listed as 'the whole body of devout Hong Kong believers'. These dates point to an earlier origin, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207141, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nlarge dwellings and godowns. It was a pleasant area. Two of the properties were especially noted for their gardens. A Parsee merchant, Framjee Jamsetjee, in advertising his property for sale in 1845, stated that it was \"beautifully situated by the water side with a fine view of the Bay, surrounded by a garden, stocked with the choicest plants which have been imported at great expense, and now is in a flourishing condition.\" The other gardened property was called Spring Gardens, and for a number of the years the name was applied to the area. The name is preserved today by Spring Gardens Lane which marks the eastern boundary of the original property. The dwelling was also known as \"Old Government House\" for at one time it had been the residence of Governor Bonham [1848-1854]. Advertisements mention its \"ornamental grounds\" and \"fine well of spring water with powerful iron pump\".\n\nWhen the military gradually bought up and occupied the area between Central District and Wanchai in the 1840s and 1850s, the two sections were separated and Spring Gardens area lost most of its commercial activity. Decline set in, reinforced by a business depression, and a number of godowns and dwellings stood empty. Several of the properties reverted to Government through non-payment of Crown rents. Others were foreclosed by mortgagees. The military took advantage of the empty premises to use them as barracks and officers' quarters.\n\nPoor Chinese settled as squatters both on the west and east fringes of Victoria. To accommodate these on the east the Government put up for sale in 1847 a range of lots at the foot of Hospital Hill along the present Wanchai Road. These were used for small shops, trades, and family residences. The population, however, tended to remain poor and unruly. With the influx of displaced people during the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1850s several of the European properties were redeveloped with Chinese housing.\n\nThe area near Queen's Road East and Ship Street was probably the site of a small settlement before the British occupation of the Island. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong states that the Hung Shing Temple on Queen's Road East existed before the cession. The pattern of the lots also suggests that there may have been previous occupants. When the military rented some vacant properties nearby for barracks, several brothels were established on Ship Street north of Queen's Road East. To the south, up the hill on Ship Street, there were several small dairies operated by Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207146, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n211\n\nNote the offices of the Nam-pak Hong Association on the left-hand side of Bonham Strand; the divided shops of the Chun Lung Sang porcelain business (1878) and the bamboo and rattan ware dealers further along, also the frontage of the Ping Heung Tea-house next to Ching Wah Kok.\n\nDuring this visit Members are advised to look around them, up as well as down, because there are all sorts of interesting little vistas to have had, often revealed by the removal of a house for redevelopment.\n\nFootnote:\n\n1) We will not be going to the Shun Tak District Commercial Association at 67, Queen's Road, West, as hoped, because a terrible blow; the furniture and fittings have already been cleared out prior to demolition of the building.\n\n2) The Tung Kwun District Commercial Association was founded as the Tung Yee Hop Tong in 1893 for charitable, including educational, work among persons of that district resident in Hong Kong. The present premises were purchased about 40 years ago. There is an interesting commemorative board above the window in the main hall presented by four shops in Liu Po New Market, Tung Kwun in 1912 in appreciation of flood relief work and settlement of disputes and of a defamation case by the Hong Kong Chamber. This shows that its influence extended beyond Hong Kong.\n\n3) The Nam-pak Hong Association in Bonham Strand, though in new premises that are of no appeal, is of great interest. This powerful commercial association was established in 1868 by merchants from different parts of China together with Chinese merchants from South-east Asia. This explains the name of the association which, in Chinese, means South-North Firms' Public Office.\n\nAdditional Notes for the Visit to Old Western District Carl T. Smith\n\n(a) The Development of West Point\n\nThe area we are visiting today was formerly dominated by two points of land. After the British occupation of Hong Kong they became known as Possession Point and West Point. Between the two was a steep hillside with a bay at its foot. The present Ko Shing Street approximates the original beach.\n\nDr. Eitel in his history of Hong Kong, Europe in China, pp. 123-124, gives an account of the event which gave Possession Point its name:\n\nOn January 24, 1841, Commodore Bremer, having arrived at Lantao, directed Captain Belcher, in command of H.M.S. Sulphur, to proceed forthwith to Hongkong and commence its occupation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207161, "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": 232, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "226\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthat the premises be used for the Kowloon British School (now King George the Fifth). During the occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese used the School for a military hospital.\n\nThe School has had a succession of able Headmasters. Mr. George Piercy served from 1878 to 1918. He was succeeded by the Rev. W. T. Featherstone who saw through the building of the Kowloon premises and published The Diocesan Boys' School and Orphanage, Hong Kong, The History and Records 1869-1929 (Hong Kong, 1930). In recent years several Old Boys have been heads of the School, the Rev. George (Shee) Zimmern and the present Headmaster, Mr. S. J. Lowcock.\n\nThrough the education the Diocesan Boys' School has provided for the Eurasians of the Port Cities and Hong Kong, it has made a significant contribution to the shaping of the distinctive quality of life in these places over the years. It also has educated students from many other Asian countries. The present student body, which numbers about 1,000, is preponderantly Chinese. In 1952, a Preparatory School was opened. It is now located next to Christ Church on Waterloo Road.\n\nLa Salle College\n\nThe origins of the present La Salle College extend back to 1845, when the Roman Catholic Church had a school for Europeans. It was closed in 1847, but the next year a school for the education of Portuguese boys in the English language was opened, but by 1857 Catholic education in English had almost withered away. A new effort was made in 1860 and the Church opened both an English and a Portuguese school. In 1863 a new school building was built next to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Pottinger Street near Wellington Street. Here the English, Portuguese and Chinese Schools were reorganised in 1865 as St. Saviour's College. The school provided a training in commercial subjects preparing students to serve as interpreters and clerks. The arrangement of the school into three branches was not altogether successful, and in 1875 the Chinese section was eliminated. Portions of the Portuguese community were also dissatisfied with the school.\n\nThe school had been conducted by lay teachers. It was thought that the school would be more satisfactory if it were under the charge of a Religious Order. Both the French Sisters in Wanchai and the Italian Sisters on Caine Road had been providing for some", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207243, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "3\n\nApril he arranged a visit to old Wanchai, one of the oldest districts of British Hong Kong. Under the name of Ha Wan or \"lower bay” it was one of the 5 bays or \"circuits\"-a terms used in the 1850s and 1860s to describe the residential and commercial areas largely developed by the new Chinese population of the island. Places visited included the Pak Kung Shrine in Star Street, established before the war and probably upward of 70 years old; the Hung Shing Temple, one of the oldest of the area, perhaps even existing as a shrine before the British occupation; the Sui Tsing Pak temple housed in several dwellings in a terrace and of the late nineteenth century; the Yuk Hoi Kung Temple to Pak Tai, God of the North and of early origin; and various terraced houses and individual buildings.\n\nIn May Mr. Hayes arranged another excursion to the Diocesan Boys' School-D.B.S.-and La Salle College. D.B.S. originated in 1869 with the Diocesan Home & Orphanage for English, Eurasian Chinese and other scholars, male and female and had links with an earlier body, the Diocesan Native Female Training School of 1860-58. In 1900 the Diocesan Girls' School opened and DBS no longer took girls. The school moved from Bonham Road to its present site in 1926. La Salle dates from 1932 but its connection with Catholic Education in the Colony is much longer. The La Salle brothers had already a record of 42 years work at St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong.\n\nIn June Mr. Hayes organised a visit to old Western District which included tea in a traditional tea-house. The original Chinese tea house was a place where many kinds of tea were served together with tim sham, small tidbits or literally \"to point to the heart\". It is gradually being replaced by new establishments usually combining a Chinese restaurant with tea-house business. Later, in July, a visit to a tea-house was also arranged to hear typical Cantonese music and \"southern songs” traditionally played to clients of such establishments and also sadly disappearing in modernising Hong Kong.\n\nDuring the June visit to Western, many shops for traditional crafts and wares were visited or observed. Many have since been pulled down in this area scheduled for urban renewal. In July, Miss Helga Werle, a member of our Council, arranged with a colleague, a visit to Aplichau the small island-just still an island-off Aberdeen. Members visited the Hung Shing Temple, probably built in 1773; and the Shui Yuet Kung Temple (Shui Yuet is another name for Kuan Yin) probably dating from the early days of Aplichau town developing in the 1850s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207335, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n95\n\nentering the harbour, George Woodcock affirms of seamen in the Far East that they 'provided its nearest equivalent to a European proletariat; out of their ranks emerged its shifting population of poor whites and also a high proportion of its adventurers'. He concludes that 'on shore the status of the seamen remained, as it always had been, anomalous. His occupation was essential to the very existence of British communities in the Far East, and yet he was always an outsider, disturbing and distrusted',10\n\nThe author of a booklet issued in 1891 to commemorate the jubilee of Hong Kong claimed that\n\nthe practice of the handicrafts in Hong Kong appears to be entirely in the hands of the Chinese; there is a considerable European population, but few are mechanics, and the Portuguese decline all forms of labour, the aspirations of both running towards the counting-house and the banker's desk.11 The suggestion that there were few European mechanics in Hong Kong is incorrect if we realise that many European overseers in the dockyards and other industrial undertakings and utilities were expected not only to supervise the labour force but to look after and repair machines. Many overseers in such enterprises were skilled engineers, who had served their apprenticeship in the engine-rooms of the British mercantile marine. The Taikoo Sugar Refinery at Quarry Bay, owned by Butterfield and Swire, gave direct employment to fifty or sixty Europeans as well as many hundreds of Chinese. A journalist, J. S. Thomson, wrote of this refinery that it\n\nwas\n\na marvellous study in Scotch sociology. There is a company reservoir and hospital in the hills; a cable to carry European overseers five hundred feet over the gullies to the fever-free bungalows on the cliffs; Company model tenements at inexpensive rents; a Company loan fund for overseers to bring out Scotch wives...12\n\nThe China Sugar Refinery, owned by Jardine, Matheson, also utilised the services of at least twenty-five European engineers, mechanics and overseers. At the end of the century, the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company employed about 800 Chinese, chiefly natives of Swatow, supervised by European overseers, many of whom were skilled mechanics. Other undertakings, such as the Green Island Cement Company, the Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207391, "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n151\n\nBowen Road. This report was fortunately completed long before the Japanese on 9 June, 1945, burned the original case sheets, operation books and other records from which they were compiled. Also preserved were records of rations provided by the Japanese, of gifts from the British and other Red Cross Societies, of gifts from Local Red Cross sources and local well-wishers, and menus of our meals and special diets. I still have all this material and it provides the basis for the account I now write. I did not, unfortunately, preserve any copies of the propaganda leaflets dropped by the Japanese during hostilities or of the English language Hongkong News, published under Japanese auspices in Hong Kong during their occupation.\n\nThe delay of thirty years in writing this story needs explanation. When I first came home I shared the plight of thousands who returned after years when we were completely out of touch with the changes that had taken place in the world, ignorant of the details of war, of the changes in the country and in the services and of the way people lived. The vocabulary was new, the developments were enormous and we had much ground to make up physically. It was not too difficult to acquire a veneer; it was less easy to take our places with any assurance in the new world of 1945 and 1946. Much work was needed. When I resumed duty in the army, after my release, I was given a chance to play a part in the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank, in the postgraduate medical training of R.A.M.C. officers, and in expanding the training of specialists. I seized this opportunity eagerly for I was well aware of the defects in the training of myself and my contemporaries. My time became fully engaged in this work. Four years later a chance was offered to me to play a similar part in civil life on appointment as a Regional Postgraduate Dean, in the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London. The need for improved training was quite as urgent in civil life as it was in the army, the field was bigger, and it was not until I retired from that appointment many years later that I found time to return to the task I had wanted to tackle for so long. It seemed to me that an account of events in Hong Kong, as known to me, might provide a useful contribution to the history of the Colony, and that the achievements of the staff and the fortitude of the patients deserved to be recorded. I thought also that here and there perhaps, those serving today might discern from the story something of value to themselves and their Corps.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207901, "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-1976", "page_number": 289, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "274\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Wah as a Political-Judicial Institution\n\nThe Tung Wah Hospital Committee is of particular interest in the relation of a Chinese community to a Colonial Government. It performed an important function in providing self-identity to the community during the early years of the Hospital's history.\n\nThis function is related to the development of social control within Chinese society. In general, there are two levels of such control: central, from the top, represented by the Emperor and supported by the gentry and literati, and local control. In the countryside, local control was represented by clan organization and village councils. In mixed communities, such as cities, some market towns, and fishing villages (such as Cheung Chau - see J.W. Hayes, \"Cheung Chau, 1850-1898\", JHKBRAS, 3(1963), pp. 13-23), by Temple Committees and Kai Fongs.\n\nThe local village organization based upon clan could not be operative within urban Hong Kong with a mixed population drawn from various areas and Chinese language groups. Direct central control in the form of Mandarin officialdom was obviously impossible in a place under British control. To fill the vacuum, institutions grew up which were similar to those found in urban and commercial centres in China: commercial and craft guilds, street associations (Kai-fong), and temple committees. The 1872 Hong Kong Directory lists three Chinese organizations, possibly in the order of their importance: the Chinese Hospital Committee (Tung Wah), the Man-Mo Temple Committee (or, as given in the Chinese designation, the Kai-fong), and the U Lan Procession Committee.\n\nA Chinese article published in translation in 1876 (China Review) gives an account of the origin of these institutions. In 1847, only a few years after the establishment of Hong Kong as an urban centre, two wealthy and prominent members of the community, Loo Aking, the alleged leader of the major criminal syndicate in Hong Kong, and Tam Achoy, a respectable businessman who had lived previously in Singapore and acquired his wealth in Hong Kong initially as a contractor, were connected with the Man Mo Temple. Both had been in Hong Kong since shortly after its occupation by the British. Their association in the building of the Man Mo Temple illustrates the thesis set forth by Mr. Lethbridge that during the early years of Hong Kong's history, the presence of strong Triad Society organization served as a buffer against social control by a foreign government which often seemed to the Chinese as \"bizarre, erratic, at times even hostile, aggressive, and cruel\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208039, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "62\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nThat is, the Tangs, as well as the other large landholding clans, first established rights over cultivation-value; their claims to ownership rested primarily on their identity as \"first-cultivators.\"23\n\nThe priority of cultivation-value is best revealed by a brief examination of tax assessment in Hsin-An. Land has traditionally been classified according to its production potential. At the time of British occupation, first class land (甲) yielded two crops of paddy annually, or one crop of sugarcane. Second class land (乙⺕) was capable of producing one crop of rice, or one crop of sugarcane. Third class land (丙) \"was generally devoted to the cultivation of peanuts, sweet potatoes, millet and other hardy crops.\"24 This classification scheme was recognized by the Hsin-An Magistrate in 1582, a mere nine years after the creation of the county. Different rates were fixed according to whether the land was considered to be first, second, or third class land.25\n\nThus, by the time of the great Hakka influx, little cultivatable land was available in the county. The landlords, who often lived miles away from their fields, were eager to take on tenants, and offered the migrants “reasonable rents.” Rent-value was assessed by a simple extension of the tax assessment value; i.e., rent-value was extracted from an already established cultivation-value.26\n\nOnce fixed, tax-rates and rent-rates seldom, if ever, changed. The tax-rates listed for the three classes of land in the Hsin-An Hsien-chih, which had been in force for decades prior to the publication of the gazetteer in 1819, were quoted in the petitions concerning the Tang holdings in Hong Kong, written in 1842. Similarly, there is strong evidence to suggest that landlords were generally powerless to impose greater rent-burdens, and, as we shall see, were occasionally forced to lighten the rent.27 Rent-values were often stated in all bills of sale between landlords.\n\nThe increasing alienation of rent-value from cultivation-value was reflected in the inability of landlords to locate their plots of land when called upon to present evidence to the Land Court. Furthermore, there were often significant disparities between the market-prices of the \"skin\" and the \"bones.\"28 Tenants were occasionally able to manipulate the system to their own advantage:\n\nFor generations, landowners have been content to collect their rents without ever having taken the trouble to enquire into the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208040, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n63\n\nland itself, which has been left entirely under the control of the tenants. These tenants have changed from time to time; sub-leased the land; sold the right of cultivation or mortgaged that right, without consulting the landowners, who were quite satisfied so long as the rent was regularly paid. It has often happened that some crafty tenant has asked his landlord to reduce his rent, giving as an excuse that it was impossible to make the land pay unless the rent were reduced, and that if the reduction were not agreed to the tenant must give up the land. The landlord, who has inherited the land without knowing any particulars concerning it, is practically at the mercy of his tenant, and is constrained to comply since it is impossible for him to take over possession of the land which in many cases is far removed from his own village or district. Besides, tenants generally form a \"ring,\" agreeing among themselves that no other person shall be allowed to take over cultivation from the peasant in occupation. It is easy to see how such farming rings are able to boycott the landlords. In fact, it is not an unusual proceeding for tenants, taking advantage of the ignorance of their landlords, to make an absolute sale of a part of the land, the part retained being sufficient to pay the rent.29\n\nAt the time of the cession of Hong Kong Island, the tenant economy of Hsin-An was in equilibrium. The landlords enjoyed a steady income based on the collection of rent; rent was typically paid in kind, thereby enabling the landlords to capitalize on the rising price of rice.30 The tenants, on the other hand, were free to extend the surface area under cultivation without being liable to extra rent payments. (It must be remembered, of course, that landlords were similarly exempt from extra tax payments on the extended surface area.) When the British occupied Hong Kong Island, they found slightly less than 1500 mow under cultivation, of which 1000 were devoted to paddy cultivation. The Tangs, in petitions to various officials, were able to show claim to slightly more than 1100 mow from which they collected rent-values.31 A more extreme example is offered by the Tsing Yi estate. The Tangs laid claim to the whole island and the surrounding fisheries. In evidence to the Land Court, they cited rent payments of 40 piculs (A) on 36 mow leased to perpetual tenants. The crown rent, levied by the British, would have amounted to $7.50. The sur-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208053, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "76\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nTaxlordism first came to the attention of the British in an intelligent report filed with the Colonial Secretary nearly eight months prior to the occupation of the leased area. The document, essentially an analysis of potential unrest in the neighborhood of Kam Tin and Sham Chun, sheds light on the politics of the lease at the local level. Addressing himself to the question of possible resistance in Un Long Tung (*), the author remarks:\n\n+ + +\n\nenquiries proved that the people of the markets and towns were glad to see England get the place. But the villagers were very much displeased, especially those of Kam Tin village, owing to the fact that, though the owners in the neighborhood of Kam Tin hold deeds, they have to pay tax to the said village. If England got the place, it is feared that the benefit will be deprived of (sic).... It is like the way the (Chinese) Government charges taxes.23\n\nThe report proved to be prophetic, for it was the gentry of Un Long Tung, specifically those of the Tang villages and their dependencies, which mounted the most effective and prolonged resistance to the occupation. The same reasons were invariably set forth in petitions from captured “ringleaders:” Among the wealthy villages, there was considerable apprehension over substantial and drastic changes in the tax structure, while among the smaller villages, leaders cited the coercion and bullying of the larger gentry villages.24\n\nTaxlordism was so widespread that an enterprising land officer suggested, in 1902, that the Colonial Government utilize the taxlords \"to get the taxes for us as they did for the Chinese Government.”25 When existing tensions ruled this out, a plan was formulated to eliminate the institution by granting unclaimed tracts of crown land to those who could establish “taxlord claims.” Initial optimism over a rapid settlement evaporated, however, as taxlords attempted to establish rights over huge tracts of land. The largest claims were unquestionably in Un Long Tung, where the Kam Tin Tangs laid claim to taxlord status over the whole of Pat Heung (A) and Shap Pat Heung (+A+),26\n\nThe \"taxlord claims\" proved to be the thorniest problem faced by British colonial administrators charged with the rationalization of revenue collection. The plan by which taxlords were to be compensated for rights \"not compatible with the principles of British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208057, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "80\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nOne of the earliest petitions received by the British after the occupation relates to the collection of land tax by a group of tax-lords, and illustrates their ability to lobby effectively for the preservation of their \"rights\":\n\nHau Chak Wing (侯澤榮), Liu In Yu (廖延裕), Liu Sut Kam (廖雲錦) and Tang Yui Shan (鄧銳臣) gentry of Sheung Yu Tung, complain that Ho Fung Wing (何鳳榮) of Ki Ling Ha (企嶺下) village, Wong Sin (黃先) of Nai Chung village (坭涌村), Li A Fat (李亞發) of Wong Chuk Yeung (黃竹揚), Tang Shek Tse (鄧錫梓) and Wong Fat Shing (黃佛成), have combined together, and instigated the various villages of Tung Hoi (東海) district to refuse paying the rent in paddy amounting to 2000 stone.\n\nPetitioners have already produced title deeds for the payment of taxes, and the government has already issued notification directing the farmers to pay their rent as hitherto. These farmers have not paid their rent for two years, nor have they been dealt with, although petitioners have brought this matter to the notice of the Government.40\n\nThough considerable confusion initially existed over the issue of whether the sum stated referred to taxes or rents, the matter was eventually resolved with the Land Court's recognition of these gentry as \"taxlords.\"41\n\nExamination of the early history of Britain administration in the New Territories lends final proof to the economic interpretation of the basis of tung. Though the colonial administration attempted to bolster the chu as local judicial bodies, they essentially undermined their power by abolishing taxlordism. As a result, the category tung rapidly dropped out of local usage.42\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Imperial Maritime Customs, Decennial Reports, See Kowloon reports in the volumes for 1882-1891 and 1892-1901.\n\n2 Ibid., 1882-1901: p.682.\n\n3 C. M. Chang, \"Tax Farming in North China,” in Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly 8:4 (1936), pp. 831-836. Chang defines ya shui (牙稅) as \"at first no more than a license fee paid by various brokers for the privilege of doing the business of brokerage, i.e. to bring together prospective...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208177, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "200\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nvided useful suggestions concerning possible lines of enquiry; their assistance promised to complement the substantial resources Government placed at our disposal. Most significant of all was the enthusiasm displayed by the village representatives and elders of Kam Tin. The Kam Tin area, populated chiefly by members of the Tang clan, has a long and rich history; we decided, therefore, to concentrate our efforts in this area. On 25 June, Government hired Chan Sin-wai, a fourth-year history student at Chinese University and longtime resident of Kam Tin, to assist in carrying out the project. Another unpaid co-worker, Chen Ka-won, a graduate of C.U.H.K. and a resident of Ping Shan, joined the project in late July.\n\nAn examination of available knowledge and questions of methodology absorbed the next few days. A field headquarters was established in Ng Ka Tsuen, and the long process of “introduction” was begun. On 11 July, Mr. Paul Wong, liaison officer attached to your Office, arranged a meeting of interested elders from the Tang villages of Kam Tin. During the meeting, we explained the goals of the project, and their warm reception assured us of every cooperation.\n\nThe success of this \"mass meeting\" prompted a series of formal interviews which have been taking place over the last six weeks and will continue into September. We have interviewed nearly twenty-five elders possessing knowledge of Kam Tin's history and traditions. Several have proved to be exceptionally valuable informants, and closer, more \"informal\" relationships have developed.\n\nWe have made a number of tape recordings of important tales ranging over a variety of topics. One collection of stories centers around the resistance by the Tangs to British occupation. We are especially hopeful that these tales and personal remembrances will shed light on the events of 1898-99 and subsequent land disputes, and will lead to the solution of certain perplexing questions regarding land tenure and rural class structure (the 'Sai Man' question).\n\nWe have been granted access to clan and fong genealogies, and have received permission to make photo-copies. Documents, paintings, and plaques dating from Ming and Ch'ing have also come to light. Field trips were undertaken to every village in the Kam Tin area, and we have been guided through the major temples, tsz tong, and graves of historical interest.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208186, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 225, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n209 \n\n20. b. Structure B. An organic/alliance model which stresses relationships of an egalitarian, contractual nature. Power is not usurped, but \"won\" through cooperation/conflict of equals. This structure, represented prior to 1898 by the Tung (董) system [especially the Tai Ping Kuk (太平局) of Sham Chun] has become the dominant polar type of the modern New Territories (examples: The Yuen Long Hop Yick Co. and The Tai Po Yeuk alliances, which dominate local markets to the exclusion of the Tangs; these alliances only become possible with the cooperation of Hakka and Punti, great clan and small clan alike.). \n\n20. c. Both these structures (ideal types) existed as systems of unofficial control in Southern San On prior to British occupation. \n\n21. The period dating from the beginning of Suen Tak (宣德) to the end of Sing Fa (成化) reigns of the Ming Dynasty, roughly from 1426-1487 A.D., was a period of great prosperity and expansion for the Kam Tin Tangs. \n\n21. a. During this period, the Tangs moved out of their \"neighborhood\" of Sham Tin and took over complete dominance of the settlement. We can think of the settlement at this time as being a multi-lineage settlement, with at least three surnames present, Tangs, Lais (黎) and Shams (沈). The Tangs apparently drove out the Lais (turning them into \"sai chuk\") and enslaved the Shams (as \"sai-man\"). How they accomplished this is related in the Lai vs. Tang tale transcribed and appended below.* \n\n21. b. The members of the 2nd fong (descendants of Hung-yi's 2nd son) constructed Ying Lung Wai (應龍圍), and from this wai they controlled the access to the Pat Heung (八鄉) valley and eventually established Yuen Long Old Market. \n\n21. c. The building of Ling Wan Tsz (靈雲寺) at the head of Pat Heung valley can be viewed as part of the general process of expansion by which the Tangs gained control of the entire valley [that area now included in Demarcation Districts nos. 103, 106, 107, 109, 113]. A Tong (堂) was established to finance the upkeep of the temple, to which the Kam Tin Tangs contributed up to the early years of the Republic. The nuns continue to perform important \n\n* Not available. \n\n† Demarcation Districts are survey districts, the sheets and registers pertaining thereto being kept in the District Land Offices of the New Territories Administration. \n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208281, "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "184\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nnée Yau, of Mang Kung Uk is not untypical. She grew up in Tseng Lan Shue, was betrothed at 4 years old, but continued to live in her father's village. At 7 she helped to look after three cows, driving them up the hill early in the morning, returning at approximately 8.00 am or 9.00 am for breakfast, and going back to the hill to drive them home in the early afternoon. At 10, she began to help her mother to carry firewood into Kowloon, carrying approximately 30 catties on each trip. She married at 19, and worked under the supervision of her mother-in-law. Her husband was a seaman, and received only 8 dollars per month. Her mother-in-law looked after the children, and she cooked, farmed, raised pigs, cut firewood and grass, and carried water. She often had to rise at 4.00 in the morning and work till late at night.64\n\nUp to the eve of World War II, daily life in Sai Kung did not change significantly from the description given in this chapter. This background is needed for an understanding of the impact of the War on Sai Kung's residents.\n\nTHE WAR YEARS\n\nThe coming of the Japanese\n\nIt was 3.00 o'clock in the morning, December 10, 1941. Mr. Chung P'oon was awakened by loud banging on his door. Thinking that these might be bandits, he answered the door with knife in hand. He opened the door to find several guns pointing at him. The Japanese army had arrived at Wong Chuk Shan Village. For him and for the rest of the Sai Kung population, the occupation had begun....\n\nThrough an interpreter, the Japanese told him they wanted to be taken to Kowloon. Mr. Chung did not know it then, but we now know that two days earlier, the Japanese army had overrun Tai Po and Sha Tin, and the day before had taken what was known as the \"Shingmun redoubt\". British forces were withdrawing from the New Territories to Hong Kong Island, and a contingent of Sepoy soldiers were covering the retreat at Devil's Peak. The Japanese soldiers in Wong Chuk Shan had probably strayed into the village by mistake. They had come over from Shap Sz Heung, intending to find their way into Kowloon. Now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208584, "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "14\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nrecommendations for ultimate implementation.\" Appearing on the master list was the subject \"Treatment by United States Occupation Forces of Special Areas: Hong Kong.\"59\n\nThe Department of State was first invited to submit a paper, bearing on the political aspects of the question, to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee. After considerable deliberation the department concluded that in view of the political differences between China and Great Britain regarding the future status of Hong Kong, United States forces should not participate in operations for the reconquest or occupation of Hong Kong unless absolutely necessary from a military point of view, and that the United States should make no plans to participate in military government in Hong Kong which, according to the previous agreement of the Combined Civil Affairs Committee, was to be instituted by Britain.60\n\nOn receiving the department's recommendation, and after consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Subcommittee for the Far East submitted a draft report in mid-June. Apart from reiterating the Department of State principle of non-involvement, the report further pointed out that while the Joint Chiefs of Staff had agreed to substantial United States participation in the Canton-Hong Kong operation, it was a Chinese operation under Chiang Kai-shek and not an operation conducted by United States forces under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff therefore should not regard themselves as obligated, in so far as the Canton-Hong Kong operation was concerned, to the civil affairs agreement with the British. Moreover, China was not a signatory to this agreement, and it did not cover the situation in the case of a Japanese withdrawal from Hong Kong. The subcommittee accordingly recommended that the United States Chiefs of Staff inform the British Chiefs of Staff that United States support of the operation was being furnished to attain strictly military ends, and that arrangements with regard to the civil affairs administration of Hong Kong should be worked out between Britain and China.61 This document, with some minor alterations, was accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee by the end of July. The suggestion that Chiang Kai-shek should be consulted with regard to civil affairs in Hong Kong was naturally unpalatable to Britain.62\n\nThe news that Japan would accept defeat in the near future changed the entire picture. Britain now decided to secure the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208603, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\nNOVEMBER\n\n33\n\nPat Wong, an old Maryknoll friend from our first days in Hong Kong, and now visiting the Colony from his new home in Honolulu, took the new men to their first Chinese banquet with no casualties reported.\n\nThe Kongmoon contingent among the new men, with Father O'Melia as guide and teacher, take off for the Tan Chuk Seminary in the Wuchow Mission as the new site for the Language School; a safety precaution in view of the worsening conditions between the Japanese and the British-American bloc. Father Siebert, assigned to Kaying, will leave for there later on.\n\nThe Stanley staff went to the dock to greet the S.S. Van Buren and the other new missioners but they were not on board - a mystery!\n\nBrother William arrived from Shanghai where he has been staying with Father Whitlow for some time. He is unable to return to Korea at present.\n\nFather Don Hessler arrived from Kweilin by plane for a rest after his recent bout with typhoid. Father Barney Meyer goes to the Paris Foreign Mission compound, \"Nazareth,\" for a retreat preparatory to his coming jubilee. Father Feeney and Father Bauer arrive, the latter for treatment at St. Paul's for a bad case of dysentery. The end of the month brought Passionist Bishop Cuthbert O'Gara by plane from Kweilin.\n\nPART II: WAR AND OCCUPATION, DECEMBER 1941 -- AUGUST 1945\n\nWith the proximity of the Japanese across the border, the atmosphere in the Colony was rather tense. When Canton fell to the Japanese, there was a mass flight of refugees to Hong Kong. It was then estimated that some one hundred thousand came in 1939, bringing the population of the Colony at the outbreak of hostilities to approximately one million six hundred thousand, and it was thought that at the height of the influx, some half a million were sleeping on the streets.\n\nThen, on the fateful date of December 8th, the quiet of the Maryknoll House was rudely broken by the events of what was, no...\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208604, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "34 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\ndoubt, the most momentous year of its short history. After months and months of suspense occasioned by the occupation of the mainland, the war struck Hong Kong. Everyone, of course, was hoping against hope that the catastrophe would not affect the British Crown Colony, but such was not to be, and its peace and quiet was rudely shattered by the Japanese guns and ships which began shelling the city. As a precautionary measure our Econome, Father John Troesch, wisely put in a goodly supply of food stuffs in expectation of a long siege, but as a matter of fact, we did not benefit from it, as future events proved.\n\nFrom this point we shall quote from detailed diaries written by Maryknollers stationed at Stanley, eye witnesses of much of the attack and occupation, Fathers Troesch, Feeney and Downs.\n\nThe month of December in Hong Kong was ushered in much the same manner as its companions of 1941, but its exit from the world was in striking contrast. We Maryknollers at Stanley rose to greet it, and at our breakfast table read the news of the day, news of the war in various sectors and rumors of war nearer at hand, but hope was uppermost in our hearts that the fair city of Hong Kong would not be embroiled in the world catastrophe. Due to the unsettled conditions in the Far East our 1941 group of new missioners had been delayed, and now that we had some news of their departure from the Coast, we were anxiously awaiting their arrival. One small group had already reached our shores, three of whom had left for their missions in Kongmoon; the fourth, a Hakkaite, Father Siebert, was waiting for an escort to his adopted land. This year the Hong Kong Language School was to move inland, and our plans, already formulated in our minds, were that as soon as we had definite word of the arrival of the new men, we would book passage on a plane leaving nightly from Hong Kong for Kukong. Because of the \"China Incident\" plane travel was the only means of transportation left with the interior of China, and we were all looking forward to our coming trip. The atmosphere, of course, was tense, and no one could hazard what was to happen, but hope was strong in our hearts that we could get to our inland missions before any storm broke.\n\nAmong our house guests at this time were Bishop O'Gara, C.P., and two of his priests, Fathers Benson, the Passionists' Procurator at Shanghai and Norris, C.P., who had come to meet their Bishop; and they joined us in felicitating Father Meyer on the celebration of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208613, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n43\n\ninto the harbor fairway. Our first thought was that the Japanese were attempting a landing on Hong Kong, especially as soon after the barges left the docks, shells began falling all around them. One or two of the barges were hit and immediately the same kind of smoke came from the burning barge. Shells kept falling all around, but few of the boats were hit or sunk and they continued drifting until they came to a standstill some hundreds of yards away from the docks, and where they remained for several days. Apparently the British were trying to destroy their own supplies lest they fall into the hands of the Japanese.\n\nFriday, bringing the news of the Japanese occupation of Kowloon, was a tense day for the citizens of Hong Kong. Many of the Kowloon residents had already moved over to Hong Kong, others were caught in Hong Kong and now could not return to their homes or families on the other side. From our vantage point in the Bishop's house we could look across the harbor and pick out familiar buildings and spots, but all along the dock area and at the Kowloon Ferry wharf there was not a sign of life, and Kowloon seemed a wholly deserted city. However, at one time, a few British shells from Hong Kong batteries spattered against the buildings near the Star Ferry, but nothing could be seen moving in that area. Later on we learned that the Japanese were setting up big mobile guns in the streets just back from the Ferry. We also learned later that when British lorries tried to move through the streets of Kowloon, Fifth Columnists often obstructed their passage, and as soon as the Japanese began to infiltrate into the city, looting began. It was also said, but we cannot vouch for the truth of the statement, that a number of British and Chinese police remained in Kowloon to attempt to maintain order, even when the Japanese had arrived. The regular troops, of course, had all crossed to Hong Kong. During all this time the daily papers were printing communications from the Governor's Office that the situation was well in hand and that there need be no anxiety for the future.\n\nThe next day, Saturday, there was a lull in fighting, and out of the silence and gloom which had settled over Kowloon a lone ferry or tug boat could be seen slowly leaving the Star Ferry Wharf and heading for Hong Kong. At its mast was a white flag, and it bore a peace mission, consisting of a few Japanese officers, who had with them as hostages, two British women. They were met at Blake Pier", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208891, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n25\n\nSeveral temples have large stone lions outside the entrance or just inside the main doors to guard the temple from demons.\n\nBoat Peoples' land temples used to have a pair of masts more than twice as high as the temple with a small red wooden crow's nest on each, some six feet from the top24. These are said to be the repository of the spirit of the dragon of the nearby hill or island peak which protects the local inhabitants from the depredations of evil spirits. Nowadays, only one temple seems to have them, the Hong Sheng temple at the old landing stage on Ap Lei Chau.\n\nLarge triangular and colourful flags flown outside temples tend to identify the temple as a Chaozhou community temple. These flags bear the title of the main deity, the name of the temple and a spirit medium operates there, another flag in grey and black is flown, bearing an Eight Trigram diagram together with magical signs and symbols.\n\nDating of temples\n\nAbout the only way that temples can be dated with any reasonable accuracy is from the plaque near the entrance listing the subscribers to the initial construction, from the temple bell inscription25 or from the dates on the ancestral tablets of the founders of the temple on the temple altar.\n\nFrom a very general examination of bells and chimes, several dozen bear dates between 1700 and 1840, that is post-Ming dynasty but pre-British occupation. One or two bells date back to the period immediately post-Ming and a further couple are dated within this century. The older traditional temples were probably rededicated post-Ming, or were built and dedicated post-Ming, mainly in the period following the rescinding by the Kang Xi Emperor of the order enforcing the removal of all who lived within 50 li (18.3 miles) from the coast during the period of intense pirate and anti-government activity along the China coast in the 1660s.26\n\nProbably the earliest recorded date for the construction of a temple is the stone carving dated AD 1274 behind the Tian Hou temple in Joss House Bay. In AD 1012 Lin Daoyi, a trader from Fujian province, wrecked during a storm, was washed up on Tung Lung Island and built a temple dedicated to Tian Fei (as Tian Hou was then called) in thanksgiving. The temple was destroyed by a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209183, "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-1981", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "72\n\nAJ DIAMOND\n\nofficial publications and of United Kingdom and other publications bearing on Hong Kong. The P.R.O. receives copies of all local official publications and has acquired an extensive microfilm coverage of Colonial Office and other records relating to Hong Kong.\n\nThe scope of the library's holdings has been adjusted mainly to the needs of those engaged in research among primary sources and policy in the matter of acquisition has been influenced by the nearness and adequacy of other local libraries.\n\nThe library includes large collections of photographs, maps and press cuttings as well as files of thirteen local English language newspapers the earliest of which dates from 1842.\n\nThe P.R.O. is equipped at present with an office copying machine, two planetary and two hand-fed rotary microfilm cameras. Two microfilm readers are available for public use. The cameras are employed mainly in the production of security back-up film for government departments, the filming of selected classes of records held by the P.R.O. to enable destruction of the originals and the copying of out-of-print back issues of official publications and other items for the library. However the facility is also available at a fee for the copying of documents on behalf of individual research workers and non-government institutions.\n\nRecords\n\nOfficial records transferred to the P.R.O. at present occupy 17,080 linear feet of shelving and comprise 363 series received from over 100 government offices. The earliest documents held by the P.R.O. date from 1831, but due to the extensive loss of government records resulting from the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong during the Second World War the bulk of the P.R.O.'s holdings date from the post-war resumption of British administration.\n\nThe loss occasioned by the war has been in some measure redeemed by the acquisition of the wide coverage of pre-war Colonial Office records relating to Hong Kong, already mentioned above. The most important of these record series, CO 129 Original Correspondence, consists of despatches exchanged between the Governors of Hong Kong and the Secretaries of State for the Colonies during the period 1841 -- 1943, together with their enclosures, Colonial Office minutes and memoranda and correspondence between the C.O. and other ministries and private individuals and institutions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209232, "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-1981", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n121\n\nHow does it come about that this pleasing mixture of American Youth camp and English public-school sports day should come to represent the emotional high point of the year for these fifteen schools which cater for the Shui-sheung-yan (water-folk), traditionally the lowest of all Hong Kong's social strata. Organised quite separately from the normal Education Department schools, the F.M.O. school cater for less than 0.4 percent of the territory's school population.\n\nSeparate educational systems for religious and ethnic minorities, often assisted by the state, are not uncommon; wholly state-run separate school systems for occupational minorities, apart from members of the armed forces posted overseas, are extremely rare. The nearest parallel that comes to mind is that of the special education projects for European Gypsies, developed to cater for children whose schooling is often prevented by frequent moves and social prejudice, just as that of the Hong Kong people used to be. Indeed, it was experience with Gypsies since running the first caravan summer school in 1967, which led me to what seemed, from the European end, a remarkable parallel with projects started for the boat people of southern China, and Hong Kong.\n\nThe Development of the F.M.O. and its schools\n\nIt can be argued that the Hong Kong Government, despite its ever-reiterated ideological commitment to laissez-faire economics, began to intervene to ensure the future of the fishing industry as early as the building of the Yaumatei typhoon shelter in 1911-15. During the Second World War the Japanese government began the building of regulated fish markets, such as that at Shaukeiwan, guaranteeing a better deal for the fishermen from the buyers. Since we are assured on all sides that all sections of the population suffered grievously under the Japanese occupation, the returning British government could hardly do less for the fishing population than had the Japanese. After 1945 a scheme was introduced under the old Defence Regulations of 1940 to provide \"orderly and efficient Fish Marketing facilities\", developing the industry, and protecting the interests of consumers. That is to say both fishermen and public were to be protected from the entrepreneurial wholesale fish merchants or middlemen. There are now seven publicly owned and regulated wholesale fish markets, and three other collecting depots. Underlying the economic goals, there was also a stated objective of improving \"the socio-economic status of the fishing community.\" Of course, to state this too publicly would be self-defeating, but in\n\n7\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209673, "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": 330, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nTwo views of internment: Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire by Jean Gittens (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1982) and A Yen For My Thoughts by G. A. Leiper, (South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1982)\n\nHappy coincidence has brought two excellent accounts of war-time internment in Hong Kong onto the bookshelves at the same time. Written from personal experience, they are a poignant testimony to the courage of all who endured hardship and deprivation at Stanley and fill a gap which has long needed filling in our knowledge of conditions during the Japanese occupation.\n\nAs a Eurasian, Jean Gittens need not have been interned, but the chance, however faint, of reunion with either her children in Australia, or her already imprisoned husband led her to enter Stanley voluntarily. The opening chapters of \"Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire\" are a revealing social commentary. She relates how her parents, the late Sir Robert and Lady Clara Hotung, were the first non-Europeans to gain permission to live on the Peak and the resulting snide remarks they had to endure from neighbours and their children. The \"difference\" was brought home with unbelievable callousness when the Eurasian wives and children of government employees, advised to leave Hong Kong prior to the invasion, were turned back on reaching Manila because of Australia's insistence that only those of \"pure British\" descent could be given refuge.\n\nThe same chapters convey the impression of a spoiled little rich girl: \"In spite of the fresh air and exclusiveness, living facilities on the Peak were understandably primitive. Braving these conditions would have tried the spirit of anyone, but for a woman with a large family of young children it needed true courage,\" and again: \"The summers were long and trying and, especially during our early years, Mother would take us away to one of the seaside resorts in the North to escape the heat.”\n\nI am not sure whether the prissiness is deliberate, but it serves to heighten the contrast with the degrading and dehumanising conditions of the camp detailed in the remainder of the book.\n\nPage 330\n\nPage 331", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209677, "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": 334, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "312\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nto a halt and where the physical past remains frozen or fossilized by political currents.\n\nALAN BIRCH\n\nFujiwara Iwaichi, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in S.E. Asia, 1983. Heinemann's Asia.\n\nProfessor H. J. Benda, authority on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago, once remarked \"Japan's war-time aims were never as clearly defined as in South-east Asia”.\n\nRecognizing this significance of Japanese plans and preparations for the war waged against the imperialism of the West, Heinemann's have published a number of studies illuminating in depth several aspects of this important programme, notably Joyce Lebra's Japanese trained Armies in South-east Asia. It is she who writes the introduction to this present volume Lt. General Fujiwara's account of the operations of F. Kikan in Malaya in this critical area of World War II in the Far East. (Actually, this is a translation by the noted Japanese scholar Professor Akashi Yoji, biographer of Loi Tak, the notorious and typical middleman figure in these entanglements of the contending forces of imperialism).\n\nLebra claims for the author of this war-time account of the activities of this Japanese propaganda intelligence group stood for Fujiwara, Freedom and Friendship that he developed a vision of Japan's military role in Asia at its most idealistic, Seeing himself as the Japanese 'Lawrence of Arabia' he took the war-time propaganda slogan ‘Asia for the Asians' most seriously.\n\nFujiwara's relatively short-term, but significant, role in furthering the formation of the Indian National Army, which, of course, was to attempt the removal of the colonial bondage of the British rule of India and further to demonstrate the self-proclaimed role of Japan as the instrument of liberation, is therefore of more than passing interest to historians of that critical period in the shifting of political power in the East.\n\nFujiwara's part in this crusade, and particularly his relations with the least ambiguous of Indian nationalists, Chandra Bose,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209704, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n339\n\nand arrogant views of Rajah James Brooke toward Chinese in Sarawak (a better interpretation would be his suspicion of “Triads” among the kongsi as well as of “bad elements” among other ethnic groups).\n\nAnd the book contains a few glaring errors: \"Ferdinand Magellan's call at Brunei in 1521\" (p. 7); the infusion of Chinese blood into the Brunei royal house (p. 4) (It is not at all a historical certainty how this occurred.)\n\nThe author, a one-time civil servant in the Ministry of Welfare Services in Sarawak, is more certain of his facts and hence more convincing in his description of political developments in the state since World War II (Chs. 8-9). These chapters cover the period of direct British colonial rule, 1946-63, and the recent experience of Sarawak as a member state of the Federation of Malaysia, 1963 to present.\n\nThis section is valuable as an outline of the positions and stances of the conglomeration of political parties which proliferated upon the Sarawak (and Malaysian) political landscape during the last two decades. The development of ethnically mixed parties of the left, right and center has been vigorous; the role of Chinese citizens, energetic. But once again the lack of detail gives it a cursory flavor perhaps sufficient for the outside observer but hardly meat for the student of politics.\n\nThe book is skimpy on sources; the reader who is looking for the \"blood and guts\" of Sarawak's dynamic political and social scene will be disappointed. This is a primer on the success and general stability of a multiracial society. As such it is just adequate.\n\nThe Name of Brooke: An entirely different experience awaits the reader of this meticulously documented study of Sarawak's politics from the 1920s to the imposition of direct British rule in 1946. It covers the eventful years which saw the weakening of the Brooke raj, through the Japanese occupation, to the final denouement of this \"medieval\" fiefdom as it gave way to the modern depersonalized rule of British colonial bureaucrats.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "218\n\n• There are four in the year, but the principal one falls on the nineteenth day of the second moon.\n\n* See my \"Secular Non-Gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organisations in Urban Hong Kong\" pp 113 to 136 of this Journal.\n\n* See my article \"The Japanese Occupation and the New Territories\", South China Morning Post, 15 December 1967.\n\nA COMMUNITY SHOOTING BUNGALOW NEAR CHINKIANG, KIANGSU, AND ITS LIBRARY ABOUT 1905\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThe following extracts are taken from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader, published by Constable of London in 1954. Mr. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Customs Service at Chinkiang, where there was a small, lonely British concession. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. At this time, as he relates, he was lucky enough to find relaxation and renewal of spirits brought low by the conditions of life and work in shooting wild pig, and in finding a library and visitors' books in a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near the Chinkiang concession. Let him speak for himself.\n\n\"When the Concession really got me down I 'lifted up mine eyes unto the hills' and got new strength from them. A ride of about eight miles took me to a hill called Wu Chow where for many years there had been a community shooting bungalow for those who were keen on wild boar-shooting.\n\nIt was rather an expensive sport as it required about fifteen beaters at fifty cents (or one shilling) each a day. Moreover, a rifle had to be bought and fortunately I came across an ancient Lee-Metford single-shot carbine used in the Boer War. I bought it for fifteen dollars.\n\nIn view of the daily cost it was important to get shooting companions to share in the beating expenses. No serious shooting had been done out there for several years, and no one in the port seemed to know the ropes. I went out one week-end to investigate and to get away from everybody, most of all from my old bored self.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210156, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "106\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nNor did he mince his words. “You have disobeyed and neglected your instructions” he told Elliot. \"You seem to have considered that my instructions were waste paper which you might treat with entire disregard, and that you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy.\" The Foreign Secretary accused Elliot of having settled with the Chinese for much less than he had been told to demand “without the full employment of that force which was sent to you expressly for the purpose of enabling you to use compulsion, if persuasion should fail”. He was not impressed by the cession of Hong Kong “a barren island with hardly a house on it” and clogged by conditions which made it doubtful if it was a cession in full sovereignty.\"\n\n196\n\nThis myth, for myth it was, has died hard. Indeed, I fear it is not yet dead. It has always been more striking to compare the glowing present with such an insignificant past, and this has been the case at all times in Hong Kong's later history. Over forty years after the British occupation of Hong Kong, Governor Sir G.F. Bowen, addressing the Legislative Council at the opening of the 1884-85 Session, stated that \"... the Island of Hong Kong... when annexed to the British Empire in 1843 (sic) was merely a barren rock, inhabited only by a few fishermen and pirates.” This view was expressed another forty years on by the American Consul-General, George E. Anderson, writing on the Hong Kong Consular District in an official publication of the American Department of Commerce. \"The island of Hong Kong consists of a broken ridge of lofty hills, the highest, Victoria Peak, being approximately 1,800 feet in height. There are few valleys of any extent and scarcely any ground for cultivation... In general, the hills and mountains are bare and the soil is poor.\" He added usefully, \"The island of Hong Kong, 28 square miles in extent, is about 11 miles long and from 2 to 5 miles broad; its circumference is 27 miles\".*\n\nIs this a justifiable description? Was Hong Kong ‘a barren island with hardly a house on it\"? Were its people, such as they were, \"a handful of fishermen and pirates\"? The answer is NO, on both counts. There were several villages of some size, as well as hamlets, and a few larger coastal villages which served as market towns for the villages and as home ports for a permanent boat population and visiting craft. The land people were settled, and as we shall", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210163, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "113\n\nproduce from the sea near the present Aberdeen Country Club. Some villagers operated stake nets lowered by windlass into the sea from a rocky headland, and others used lines catching fish like nai mang (鯺鏝) to make a sweet congee. The old lady's mother, born about 1860, planted hemp and made it into string used for tying and mending clothes until she was sixty years of age. The village people also grew a kind of rush (cheung po) (菖蒲) when she was young, using it as a charm to hang over their doorways, especially in the fifth moon, in the manner reported in old works on China.2\n\n25\n\n-\n\nThe stake nets were an especially favoured form of fishing in local waters. One can see a few surviving sites round the southern coast of Hong Kong island to this day. In the Tangs' time as sub-soil owners\n\nsee below they may have leased sites to local persons, as they were doing in the New Territories in 1899. It is also of interest that no less than 13 sites on the south side of Hong Kong island were leased out by another absentee landlord family of scholar gentry, the Wongs (王) of Nam Tau (南頭) and Cheung Chau, as shown in maps in their printed genealogy issued in the 1860s. People walked far to secure a livelihood in those days. One of the persons interviewed in the investigations into the murder of two British officers near Stanley in 1849, was a villager of Little Hong Kong who had a hut and operated a stakenet on the point where Stanley Fort now stands.\n\n26\n\n27\n\nHowever, farming was the principal occupation. The Little Hong Kong fields can be seen on the Hong Kong Government's first survey sheet for the area, whilst the extent of the Wong Nai Chung fields can be gauged by the race course at Happy Valley which was built over them.28 Rice was favoured because there was a plentiful supply of stream water available that only required damming, leading and terracing, albeit by dint of hard labour, to provide fertile land that would support two crops of rice yearly. An account of harvest time in one of the Hong Kong villages appeared in one of the numbers of the Illustrated London News for 1858.\n\n\"On the 1st of November (1857) I took a walk with a friend into the interior of Hong Kong and saw the process of rice-harvesting, beneath a bright, hot sun, the entire village popu-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210166, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "116\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis did not mean, however, that local villagers were not averse to minor piracy and smuggling, and generally to taking advantage of opportunities for gain. There are too many accounts of villainy from the surrounding waters for us to rule out the occasional initiative. In this connection, the remarks of a Chinese brigade general ordered by his superiors to cooperate with two young British naval officers against pirates thought to belong to villages in the present day Yuen Long area of the New Territories, has to my ears the ring of truth to it:\n\n\"Having seen these eighteen villages we have, becomingly and properly, together admonished the people thereof, and I think that they will be compliant and obey our orders. But this is merely an affair of vagabonds who rob with violence and make forays, who are not in the same category with confirmed rebels and pirates.”37\n\nThe English officer in charge commented:\n\n\"It must clearly be borne in mind that piracy in China differs from piracy elsewhere in this respect that there the pirates live on the land and only put to sea occasionally to carry on their depredations... Nor is this state of things confined in this vicinity to the neighbourhood of Deep Bay. Piratical villages exist along the whole coast wherever the native traffic is sufficient to render such an occupation remunerative.\"38\n\n+39\n\nWriting specifically of Hong Kong itself on 11th April 1846 to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in his annual despatch on the state of the Colony, Sir John Davis observed that “A principal obstacle to the Chinese commerce of the place is the system of piracy which infests the approaches from the east and west. In another despatch dated 26 February 1848, Davis commented on the subject as follows: \"The former prevalence of piracy has been checked (as appears best proved by the increase of native trade) through the active exertions of Captain Loring of HM's ship 'Scout', by whom nearly 300 pirates were captured in the last year, and delivered over to the Chinese government.\n\n1540\n\nWhether the Hong Kong villagers joined in such behaviour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210170, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "120\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nthere to support the dried fish trade in their native places and also to provision the merchant boats which followed the fishing fleets. Their presence is recorded for Shau Kei Wan before 1841,46 which is in line with their presence on Cheung Chau from the eighteenth century.” At Stanley, village tradition ascribes the foundation of the Pak Tai temple there in 1803 to them. This widespread presence of outsider merchants is clear evidence of a substantial trade not limited merely to the immediate marketing area.\n\n48\n\nI come now to a particular feature of the Hong Kong scene before 1841 that was to be encountered again in Kowloon in 1860 and in the New Territories in 1899. According to a near contemporary account compiled by three knowledgeable British officers in the 1860s:\n\n“Hong Kong so far back as the Ming dynasty was owned by a respectable family of the name of Tang. When Kanghi ordered the Coast to be cleared of its inhabitants [1662] the possession of Hong Kong was abandoned. But when the Emperor revoked his decree [1668], the occupation of it was again resumed and title deeds granted, authenticated records of which remain to this day in the offices of the chief magistrates of Sin Ngan [ ] and Tungkwan [ ]. The land tax for two centuries and upwards had been regularly paid by this family, its members being considered by the government as its true and lawful landlords.”49\n\nThe authors continue that, when ceding the Island to Britain:\n\n“No provision seems to have been made by the Chinese Government for the original proprietors of the soil, who made suit to the British Government humbly praying for remuneration. It was said that some eight or ten thousand dollars were paid for certain fields in Wong-nei-chong and Su-kon-pu not to the members of the Tang family, however, but to the persons occupying the soil and claiming to be its true and rightful owners. Whether they were so or not does not appear.\n\n150\n\nThe Tang family to whose claims to land ownership of Hong Kong Island I shall return presently continued to suffer from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "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": 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": 210321, "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": 292, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "271\n\nAt the present time there is a tea plantation on Lantau at the Ngong Ping plateau next to the Po Lin Monastery. Mr. Brook Bernacchi, for long a leading barrister here, established this plantation at his home there in the 1950s. His plantation is not operated along the traditional village lines, but more on the commercial lines of plantations in other parts of China. However, commercial tea-growing on Lantau peak is nothing new, it seems. In 1971 I interviewed a very old village woman, born in one of the Tung Chung villages in 1879, who had accompanied her mother to pluck tea at plantations in that area which were apparently run by Chinese persons from outside the island. This was in the late 1880s and 1890s, some time before the lease of the N.T.\n\nThese notes, gathered from visits and interviews, are sufficient to show that tea cultivation and tea drinking from local bushes was common in some parts of the New Territories, and together with Dr. Hase's account, that it still lingers today.\n\nHowever, there is also evidence which suggests that tea cultivation was probably a major enterprise at one stage in the Hong Kong region. The 1688 district gazetteer refers to tea growing on Tai Mo Shan where there are what appear to be tea terraces on many of its slopes, especially on the north side. There are also terraces to be seen in the Ma On Shan Country Park and on the hills south west of Crooked Harbour and other places in the north-east New Territories. From the wide extent of the terracing work presumably done for this purpose in various parts of the New Territories, it would seem that a commercial crop was intended, and perhaps realized for a period. The Hong Kong Government's Botanical Report for 1906, commenting on one of these areas, states, \"Tea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill ... There is a tradition tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone account for it.\" It is interesting that this early official reference is mainly to the area in which Mau Tso", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210739, "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-1986", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "73\n\nassistant, Mr. S.T. Dunn, who was in turn succeeded by his assistant, Mr. W.T. Tutcher in 1910. Both Dunn and Tutcher carried out extensive botanical work and were co-authors of \"The Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong\". Tutcher wrote \"Gardening for Hong Kong\" which served as a useful manual for horticulturists unfamiliar with the peculiar seasonal conditions of Hong Kong. They also organized repair and maintenance work to the buildings of the Botanic Gardens and Tutcher introduced electric lighting into the Gardens in 1913 for evening functions.\n\nMr. H. Green succeeded Mr. Tutcher in 1919. He arranged the layout of some of the flower-beds and relaid the old paths and channels with cement granite. A granite memorial in the shape of a 'Pai Lau' was erected in 1928 at the top of the main entrance steps on the old Garden in memory of the Chinese in the service of the British Government who died during the Great War 1914-1918. Then in 1931 the lower portion of the Gardens was taken over by the Public Works Department for the construction of a service reservoir. Work was completed in 1933 and the area was recovered with black soil, turfed and reopened to the public.\n\nMr. Green retired in 1937 and the vacant post was taken up by Mr. F. Flippance after a series of quick changes of appointments. By this time the activities of the Department had expanded so much that forestry in fact accounted for 65 to 70% of its work, the rest being botanical, gardening, and agricultural. In fact, afforestation work on the hills was carried out by the Gardens Department as early as 1876 but it was not until 1880 that planting on any large scale was undertaken and the Department had since been renamed the Botanic and Afforestation Department. The Botanic Gardens remained in good condition until the Second World War broke out.\n\nDuring the Second World War the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong resulted in extensive structural damage to the Botanic Gardens the site of which was badly cut up to provide earthworks for gun emplacements and defensive trenches. Much of the shrubbery was destroyed as were a number of the larger trees; additionally the surrounding railings and gates were removed to provide ease of access to military personnel and equipment. There are no\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210895, "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-1986", "page_number": 246, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "229\n\nsought out by a reporter of the Hongkong Telegraph for an interview on the housing to be built on the land of the Fuk Tin Co in Cheungshawan.\n\nThis was not the first plan to develop the area. In 1864, an enterprising member of the Tang family arranged with certain other clan members to develop their holdings along the foreshore. The documents relating to the proposal state: \"The lessors' intentions are to invite people to settle thereon, and erect boatbuilding sheds, houses and shops thereon, in order to open up the place for trade, so that some income may be derived therefrom by them to turn it to account.\"\n\nThe owners did not have the capital to develop the area so as to attract those who had been dislocated by events in China or by the clearance from the Tsimshatsui area of Kowloon after British occupation. The owners of the land were happy to make terms with one who was ready \"to superintend the work as first founder of the place.\"\n\nThe income from the family houses, boatbuilding sheds, rope works and the use of the shore for breaming junks was to be managed by the lessee. The kaifong of the place was to be allowed a certain part of the income for hiring watchmen and meeting other public expenses. The balance was to be divided into two equal shares, one for the descendants of the ancestor Tang Shek-cho, the other for the developer, Tang Fu-kowk, alias Tang Chi-nam. The agreement concluded with the pious hope that after the making of the lease \"may the inhabitants be in prosperity and make good profit! May the source of the wealth be multiplied!\"\n\nIn 1876, Tang Fu-kowk, the promoter, acquired title to improvements members of the clan had made at Laichikok. These consisted of a flour mill with two water dams, an improved stream called Tit Lo Hang (Blacksmith's creek) and a vegetable plantation.\n\nAt the time of the interview with Ho A-mei in 1895 there was a severe shortage of Chinese housing in Hongkong. Even before the plague of 1894 struck it had been in short supply. To control", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210932, "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-1986", "page_number": 282, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "265\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMORE ABOUT THE KOWLOON WALLED CITY\n\nThe Kowloon Walled City, situated to the north of the present Kai Tak Airport, was the most important military base in the Hong Kong region during the later Ch'ing Dynasty. It was built in the 27th year of Tao Kuang (1847) to strengthen the fortification of Kowloon.1\n\nThe first invasion that it faced was not of British troops but of Chinese bandits. On the 26th day of the Seventh Moon in the 4th year of Hsien Feng (1854), bandits under Lo Ah-tim2 took possession of the Walled City. Seven days later, on the 4th day of the leap Seventh Moon of the same year, imperial forces under Cheung Yu-tang recaptured the Walled City. The fighting lasted for only one day, over thirty bandits were killed, and only two soldiers, Liu Tat-bong and Lam Yu-ping*T, died. Since then, the Walled City remained under the rule of the Ch'ing Government.\n\n3\n\nThen in the 24th year of Kuang Hsu (1898), the New Territories was leased to the British. The following terms were stipulated by treaty: \"The Chinese officials stationed there (i.e. the Kowloon City) shall continue to exercise jurisdiction, except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong. Within the remainder of the newly-leased territory, Great Britain shall have sole jurisdiction. Chinese officials and people shall be allowed as heretofore to use the road from Kowloon to Hsinan. It is further agreed that the existing landing place near Kowloon City shall be reserved for the convenience of Chinese men-of-war, merchant and passenger vessels, which may come and go and lie there at their pleasure; and for the convenience of movement of the officials and people within the city.”\n\nHowever, in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899), when the British encountered strong resistance to the occupation of the New Territories,\" according to Chinese sources, they asked for the help of the Ch'ing Government. Six hundred soldiers were then sent to assist the Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion to suppress the upris-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210933, "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-1986", "page_number": 283, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "266\n\ning in the New Territories. Unfortunately, the British misunderstood that the soldiers were sent there to assist the uprising.\n\nWith this as an excuse, the British invaded the Walled City on the 8th day of the Fourth Moon (i.e. 19th May) and drove away the Imperial officials and the three hundred soldiers.\n\nThis ended the Ch'ing rule over the Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, June 1987\n\nAnthony K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n2\n\nSee JHKBRAS 20(1980): 139-141.\n\nThey were said to be Hakka stone workers and Triad members.\n\nCheung Yu-tang E, a native of Wai Chau H, was a Fu-cheung #or Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion in 1854. He was stationed in the Walled City for thirteen years. Then he retired in the 5th year of Tung Chih (1866) and died four years later in the 9th year of Tung Chih (1870) at the age of 76.\n\nSee Chapter 82 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsu edition 廣州府志卷八十二,\n\n5 See the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong, 1898 (signed at Peking, 9th June, 1898): Treaties between China and Foreign States Vol. 1, P. 539-540. Shang-hai, 1917.\n\n6 See Despatches and other Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the Lease of Kowloon Customs and her territory on the 9th day of the 4th moon in the 25th year of the Kuang Hsu Reign (1899).\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the British Occupation of the Kowloon City and the French Occupation of Ng Chuen and Shui Kai Prefectures 奧督撫譚鈺麟鹿傳霖泰英人佔據九龍城法人圖佔吳川遂溪兩縣請飭籌 on the 15th day of the 5th moon in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210972, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "During the hostilities, I believe he was the first to spot the Japanese crossing the Lei Yue Mun passage to land on Hong Kong Island; unfortunately, his report of the landing went unheeded.\n\nIn the PoW camp he and I often played chess. He was a very good player, yet another one of his achievements. I recall those surprise roll calls which the Japanese always called at night; Ken and I contrived to stand next to each other and passed the time by playing mental chess. I could seldom get beyond eight or 10 moves, after which Ken would continue making moves for both of us.\n\nIt was in camp, later on, when he spoke up to the visiting Swiss Red Cross officials about a shortage of food and medicine, an act of great courage for which he was severely beaten by his captors.\n\nAfter the war, when Hong Kong had begun to recover from the ravages of occupation, a fresh spirit of idealism and cultural aspirations started to grow. Ken Barnett embraced the new mood with enthusiasm and dedication.\n\nHe became the moving spirit behind and the first chairman of the newly-established Sino-British Club, whose noble object was to bring together Chinese and British people in a mutual spirit of tolerance and understanding. Alas, the idealism did not last long in our all-too-materialistic Hong Kong. The Sino-British Club today is but a memory, but at least one of its seeds has thrived and grown to maturity.\n\nI knew him less well in his capacity as a senior administrative officer in government service and have not touched on his achievements there, but perhaps one of his former colleagues might do this.\n\nA big and jovial man, he was kind and considerate; a brilliant raconteur with a marvellous sense of humour. He visited Hong Kong regularly to stay with his daughter and son-in-law, Sai Chan and David Roseveare, and renew old friendships.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211067, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "103\n\n5.55 acres) for a Cemetery for Protestant foreigners and the right to construct a Cemetery was confirmed by the Spanish Government by a further Superior Decreto of August 30th, 1864. The lease was for a period of 90 years from May 2nd, 1863 at an annual rental of one hundred Philippine pesos (P), (presently Stg. 2.50).\n\nIn 1907 the area of the Cemetery was reduced to allow for the construction of an electric street car line from Pasig to Manila and the rent for the remaining 16,811 sq metres (4.15 acres) was reduced to P85.00. Road widening took another 469 sq metres in June 1941, shortly before the Japanese occupation during which the destruction of the boundary wall added to the inevitable neglect. Nevertheless, P429.30 back rental for the period of the war had to be paid in January 1946. In 1947 the lease was extended until December 31st, 1987.\n\nThe five hundred odd burials give an interesting insight into the variety of life amongst foreigners who took up living halfway across the world in these lovely islands.\n\nMostly British, with Germans the second largest national group, they included master mariners from Liverpool and Plymouth, seamen from Nova Scotia, Belfast and Hamburg; businessmen from London and Lancashire, a Parisian shopkeeper, an operatic impressario from Milan, engineers on the British owned Manila Railroad, a diplomat who had served in the American Consular Service for forty-five years, and many children. Jews were also buried in the Cemetery, as were Japanese, although all these remains were removed to Japan during the occupation in 1942. Perhaps the most interesting burial was Prince Ludwig Zu Lowenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg who went to Manila as a military observer during the revolution against American occupation and was killed by a stray bullet during fighting in Battangas in March 1899.\n\nThere were 93 recorded British deaths in the Philippines during the Second World War, mostly priests and civilians, from natural causes, privation, enemy action and execution by Japanese and by Filipino collaborators. These people were buried in many different places including Baguio Cathedral, Cebu, Davao, La Loma,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211152, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "188\n\nclude the Chamber of Commerce in this?” \n\nIn its opinion Hongkong need not fear that a spy was needed to discover these soft spots they were so obvious anyone could see them. \n\nAfter the appointment was withdrawn, the anxieties of those who had so strongly opposed it were alleviated. Four years later, in 1895, the fear of undue influence of Chinese officialdom on Hong-kong affairs was again aroused at the inauguration of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce under the leadership of Ho A-mei. \n\nA CHAMBER TO GIVE CHINESE AN IDENTITY \n\nIn 1895 a building for a Chinese Chamber of Commerce was opened. Ho A-mei was chairman of the organising committee. The opening was the fulfilment of a long-felt need within the Chinese community. \n\nThere had been a need for a proper meeting place for the leaders of the community. Previous centres had not been altogether satisfactory and there had been agitation for something like a Chinese Town Hall for a number of years. The new building of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce was expected to meet this need. \n\nThe demand for a public meeting place attested to the fact that through the years there had emerged out of the heterogeneous collection of Chinese who had settled in Hongkong from various villages and districts recognised leaders, community organisations and a distinct identity. \n\nBoth the leaders and the organisations were an important part of the history of the Chinese in Hongkong and the struggle for visible signs of self-identity. \n\nThe Chinese who came to Hongkong after the British occupation were, on the whole, an unruly lot. \n\nThe officer in charge of Census and Registration describes the state of affairs: \"The arrival of the British fleet in the harbour", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211153, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "189\n\nspeedily attracted a considerable boat population and the profits accruing from the supply of provisions and necessaries at once raised many from poverty and infamy to considerable wealth. The shelter and protection afforded by the presence of the fleet soon made our shores the resort of outlaws, opium smugglers, and indeed of all persons, who having rendered themselves obnoxious to the Chinese laws, had the means of escaping hither.\n\nIt was not to be expected that Hongkong would attract at that time the best elements of the Chinese people. Hongkong was occupied by the British at a time it was at war with China.\n\nThe Chinese, who flocked to Hongkong to take advantage of opportunities to trade, sell produce, construct roads, level sites, erect buildings or find employment in foreign residences and business firms, were regarded as collaborators and traitors by Chinese with a national pride.\n\nThe majority were people who had no established place within the approved Chinese social system. Many were boat people who were traditionally regarded as an inferior class.\n\nOthers were those who could find no employment in their native place. Still others were renegades escaping from Chinese justice.\n\nThere were, of course, also the honest shopkeeper, tradesman and labourer, but the community was dominated by the less respectable class.\n\nThe chief personage in the Chinese community during the years immediately after the British occupation of the island was a man known familiarly as A-king, or more formally as Loo King. He came into possession of a substantial section of the Chinese part of town known as the Lower Bazaar (Sheung Wan).\n\nAlong with other business interests, he operated a gambling establishment, a theatre and brothels. Beside the wharf adjoining his main business premises he had erected a small temple.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211185, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "221\n\nBy the summer of 1845, the work was almost finished.\n\nFor each acre the villagers received a sum which amounted to the profit they would have made from ten years' labour on it. In many cases the cash in hand resulted in idleness and eventual impoverishment. Their traditional occupation and source of income was gone forever.\n\nWhat proved to be a disaster for the village was a boon to the expatriate sportsman.\n\nThe foreign community in China had a tradition of avid interest in racing. When the centre of trade was Canton and Macau was the place to go during the off-trade period, a race course had been set up in the Portuguese settlement, not, however, without strong protest from the Chinese who objected to graves being removed or desecrated when the track was laid out.\n\nFor the first few years after the British moved to Hong Kong, the merchants went annually to the Macau races. Though it was a pleasant excursion, it had many drawbacks and there was increasing pressure for Hong Kong to have its own track.\n\nWhere else but the Wong Nei Chong Valley? Here, alone, there was sufficient level open space.\n\nFrom a notice to be quoted, it appears that the community took advantage of the improvements to the valley to hold a meeting in the autumn of 1845.\n\nThe following announcement which appears in the China Mail in October 1846, suggests conditions were not entirely satisfactory and additional improvements needed to be made: \"Meeting of members of the Hong Kong Club and of Naval and Military Gentlemen at the Hong Kong Club to make arrangements for Races to come off about a month hence at Wong Nei Chung Valley, for which, no doubt, permission will be at once obtained.\n\n\"In order to render the course safer and better than on the previous occasion, it is proposed, besides constructing drains, to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211324, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "16\n\nNOT SO CALM AN ADMINISTRATION:\n\nTHE ANGLO-FRENCH OCCUPATION OF CANTON,\n\n1858-1861\n\nSTEVEN A. LEIBO*\n\nOne of the more persistent myths of early Sino-European relations is the calm which is said to have prevailed during the three year long Anglo-French occupation of Canton, 1858-1861. As described by one of the best recent histories of modern China:\n\nA few years later when Canton was occupied by the British in 1857, the Cantonese showed no sign of unruliness and foreigners could walk about unmolested, without the slightest sign of resistance or animosity.\n\nThe reality, though, was far different. The Cantonese, long resistant to British demands that they allow foreigners within the walls of their city, continued for quite some time to make life very difficult for the occupying forces. In fact, very considerable resistance was carried out against the foreign military establishment and the mixed units of Sino-European police which worked with them.\n\nThe purpose of this essay is to illustrate elements of the allied occupation, the administrative structure established for the city's governance and the various issues, among them the occupation itself, and the coolie trade, which at times made Allied control of Canton considerably more precarious than we have been led to believe.\n\nThe initial occupation\n\nThe origins of the Second Opium War, or Arrow War as it is often called, are well known and need no more than adumbration here. Certainly, the allied sense that the Opium War treaties, signed more than a decade before, needed revision, as well as long running difficulties between the British and the Cantonese over the right of the former to\n\n* Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Russell Sage College, New York.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211327, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "19\n\nAgreement reached, Po-Kuei was formally installed on the ninth of January 1858. Unfortunately, he arrived a bit late for the ceremony having been somewhat tardily released from the allied stockade. For the allied commanders, the real goal now was to ensure that the new allied commission they had planned would be able to supervise Po-Kuei's administration of the city.\n\n \n\n12\n\nHaving decided, despite reservations, to rely on the local mandarins to administer Canton, the military commanders, Sir Charles van Straubenzee and M. D'Abouville, the French commander, decided to appoint a mixed commission of military and consular officials to supervise the city's Chinese administration. The proposed commission was to have three members, two of whom would be military. They were to be assisted by an English language secretary and another proficient in Chinese. Additionally, the French commissioner was expected to be aided as well by at least one, perhaps two, French language secretaries. Provisions were made to hire a treasurer as well as various coolies, cooks, and jailers. They also hoped to hire three Chinese translators, though it would actually be some months before competent linguists, men like Robert Hart, later known for his leadership of the Chinese Customs, arrived to help. Salaries were set by the occupation council made up of the military commanders as well as the expedition's political leadership, Lord Elgin and Baron Gros. Moving to implement their plans, they went on to name three individuals to serve as commissioners. For the British, Harry Parkes, of the consular service, and Colonel Holloway were selected, while Captain Martineau de Chesnez was selected by the French. Parkes, although ostensibly equal in official duties, was the only one of the commissioners who actually spoke Chinese and thus had a clear advantage over his colleagues. The French, concerned as well that Captain de Chesnez's relatively low rank vis-à-vis his colleagues could be a problem, soon moved to have him promoted. The commission, as the next months would reveal, was to serve primarily as an intermediary between the local Chinese leadership and the allied military commanders who held the real power over the occupied city.\n\n \n\n15\n\nIt should not be assumed, however, as some writers have, that the Chinese served as mere puppets under the foreigners. It is obvious from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211329, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "21\n\nassault. As far as their own soldiers were involved, a dramatic and severe flogging by the allies of the offenders is said to have aroused Chinese admiration.” But most importantly, beyond the immediate necessity of restoring order, a regular system of patrolling the streets had to be devised. Unfortunately, the initial efforts proved counterproductive.\n\n26\n\nAt first, the Allies had sent out groups of soldiers on an ad hoc basis to patrol the streets. But the regular European troops proved to be much less effective than they had been in the city's capture only a few days before. In fact, their mere presence marching through the city's winding streets caused such a stir among the local population that bands of Chinese thieves, following close behind, found their passing to be an excellent opportunity to shoplift from the market stalls. It was obvious that a less conspicuous method of patrolling was needed. Thus the decision was made to establish mixed units of Western and Chinese troops. By late January, several hundred such units had been organized to patrol both the city and the suburbs. They were told not to dress in uniform and included British, French, Chinese, and Manchu troops. About half a dozen police stations were established around the city, and from them, both night and day, the new units emerged to carry out their duties.27 Happily, the units co-operated well and were apparently less disruptive than the formal military units had been. According to some observers, the sight of the double files of Europeans and Chinese, each led respectively by a sergeant and a petty mandarin, was not as well worth contemplating.** When criminals were apprehended, the procedure of having the Europeans dealt with by the allied tribunal, while Po-Kuei took responsibility for the Chinese, seemed to work quite well.\n\nBy the early spring, the occupation seemed to be settling into a routine. Many of the shops were opening again despite the considerable damage caused by the bombardment, and commerce was active.\" Nevertheless, if open hostilities had ended, the Cantonese, who had so long resisted the foreign demands, were hardly co-operative. In fact, so unco-operative was the general population that there was, in early January, talk of lobbing a few more shells into the city just to make sure the inhabitants were sufficiently cowed. However, both Gros and Elgin, the chief diplomats of the mission, were against the idea, and nothing came of it.\n\n30\n\nMonths later, the situation had only slightly improved. By March, the\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211331, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "23\n\npast patriotism and encouraging them in their resistance to the occupation.\n\nThe developing resistance clearly required a military response. Thus, in early June General van Straubenzee led an expedition beyond Canton’s walls to disperse 1500 to 2000 braves gathered to the northwest of the city. Little was accomplished. Most of the braves had already dispersed when the Europeans arrived and unfortunately several of the soldiers died during the expedition, some of wounds and others from the heat.\n\nWithin the occupation government the situation was beginning to appear more and more dangerous. The initial decision to rely on the mandarins to run the city now appeared to have been a tactical error. Some of the foreign officers claimed it had given a false impression of allied weakness. The Cantonese themselves, reasonably passive during the initial assault, were now increasingly attacking the foreigners. In mid-June a Dr. Turnbull, chief surgeon of the expeditionary force, was decapitated having been captured as he attempted to aid two soldiers wounded in an earlier assault. The surgeon’s death further highlighted the increasing precariousness of the occupation. Each night, under cover of darkness, the situation became much worse. The walls of the city were assaulted by unknown assailants. The foreigners sat through each night as various bombs and fuses were thrown at their positions by the locals. Such attacks were answered by daylight Allied reprisals against the various settlements beyond the walls located in the directions from which the shots had been fired.\n\nBy late June the acting British consul Winchester put out a circular warning British merchants to be wary of the warlike tones of the imperial commissioner’s proclamations and warning them to “secure themselves against the treacherous and stealthy attacks so consistent to the ideas of the Chinese …”. They were also told to expect a reduction of ship traffic in front of the city walls as the allied commanders moved to deal with the growing military threat. Eventually all river traffic by Chinese junks was forbidden in the area near the city.*2\n\n42\n\nThroughout the summer the situation continued to escalate. After the Chinese tried to burn a ship which housed the French vice-consul the French retaliated by torching homes to the west of the city walls.* The\n\n47", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211332, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "24\n\nlife of the city was clearly grinding to a halt. Moreover the British, French and American consuls had withdrawn from the city. The French, seeking to demonstrate strength, had gone on the offensive, burning nearby suburbs. Undeterred, the Chinese forces continued to lob bombs at allied positions during the hours of darkness.\n\n44\n\nAs the summer proceeded the attacks became ever commonplace. Real antagonism had developed between the allied forces and the local population. Attacks on foreigners by armed braves were occurring daily, often in broad daylight, so brazen had the population become. Especially at risk were the British sepoys whom the Chinese had taken to carrying off at the rate of one or two a day,\n\n45\n\nIt was becoming an open state of siege. Many of the local Chinese, no doubt seeking to save themselves, had begun to abandon the city. In early July word came to Baron Gros that the Governor-General had put out a circular calling for the complete annihilation of the foreigners.\" It now seemed likely that a full-scale attack against the allied positions might soon take place. The allied leaders had certainly come to regret their decision to have the Chinese administer the city for them. Elgin was convinced that the arrangement had given a false impression of allied weakness and furthermore discouraged those who might have been willing to co-operate. It was clear in the opinion of Elgin and Gros that martial law needed to be proclaimed and the Chinese administrators removed from power. However, for reasons that are not clear, it does not seem that such martial law was ever proclaimed even temporarily. Again, language problems may have made such a decision impossible.\n\n49\n\nBy late July a full scale Chinese attack was launched against the city walls. Encouraged by provincial Chinese officials, the Kwangtung Militia even attempted unsuccessfully to retake the city from its captors. A large body of Chinese braves attacked the Eastern Gate, the very area the allies had successfully assaulted the previous winter. Unfortunately for the Chinese they were less successful. They took several hundred casualties and inflicted no allied wounds. In the immediate aftermath of the efforts to retake the city, the assaults diminished and it appears that the Chinese abandoned their effort to challenge the occupation seriously. 50 Nevertheless, harassment of individual foreigners continued to be quite", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "25\n\ncommon as were allied reprisals. The city itself was at a standstill. Large numbers of Chinese had evacuated and the British traders had long since departed.\n\nConsidering the size of the allied force it is amazing they felt they were able to hold the city at all. In mid August the British had only four to five thousand troops in Canton and the French somewhere between 400 and a thousand. The French numbers were especially limited due to preparations, then under way, for an expedition to Indochina. Moreover, the thirty to forty ships of the British overshadowed the mere three ships available to the French members of the occupying force.\n\n5.3\n\nBaron Gros, responsible for the city's occupation, warned Paris that the situation was especially grave and that he had word that the authorities, although aware that a peace treaty had been signed, were nevertheless pressuring the Chinese to continue their opposition to the occupation. To Gros' additional frustration the attacks continued throughout early August and the heat, which was apparently unbearable, made sorties against the braves impossible. Some sections of the city had simply been abandoned. Things were so tense that Po-Kuei, the Chinese Governor, who had been willing the previous winter to co-operate with the allies, tried several times that summer to abandon his post. Apparently the French had to literally force him to return and co-operate.\n\n50\n\nHappily, though, as news of the treaties signed to the north spread more widely, the resistance subsided. By early September the population had begun to return to the city and the allies, feeling more at ease, again allowed junk traffic near the city walls. Although it would be quite some time before things returned to a reasonable semblance of calm, they had, it now seemed, survived the long hot summer of 1858.\n\nThe Occupation and the Coolie Trade\n\nAlthough tensions in the immediate environs of Canton did not again reach the levels of the first summer of the occupation, there nevertheless remained issues which threatened to provoke even worse resistance to allied control. Chief among these concerns were those aroused by the kidnapping of locals by coolie merchants.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "26\n\nThe kidnappers were daring in their raids. By early 1859 Chinese from all walks of life were increasingly being carried off by Chinese gangs working for foreign coolie agents. The Chinese community was so alarmed that it simultaneously petitioned the allied authorities to stop the kidnappings as well as taking matters into its own hands. In April local merchants petitioned the British to take action. That same month local Chinese, having captured several kidnappers, murdered them.\" Consul Alcock described the situation:\n\nThe acts of violence and fraud connected with the coolie trade at this port... have already reached such a pitch of atrocity that a general feeling of alarm spread through the population accompanied by a degree of excitement and popular indignation which rendered it no longer possible or safe for any authority interested in the peace of the place to remain inactive.5\"\n\n5\n\nAlcock's last sentence provides the principal clue to the allied commissioners' dilemma. Somewhere around 60,000 to 70,000 people had been carried off in recent years, but until recently that had principally been a Chinese concern. But since January of the previous year, Canton had been under allied administration and now any agitation caused by the kidnappers would necessarily impact negatively on the European ability to continue the occupation. In short, it was now their problem. And if simple insecurity was not enough to get them to move against the kidnappers, class concerns added an additional incentive, for it was understood that the randomly selected victims were often from the Chinese upper classes, which the British found more “civilized” than many other groups.\n\n60\n\nIf it was imperative that the illegal kidnapping stop, nevertheless, it was true as well that, with the ever-increasing demand for labour in the New World, the Europeans were committed to finding a more acceptable means of recruiting Chinese contract labour. The next months would thus see a two-part effort; on the one hand to suppress the kidnapping while on the other hand to regularize coolie emigration in a fashion that was acceptable to the local Chinese yet which did not compromise the outflow of Chinese labourers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211338, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "30\n\nhad already departed. Of the original allied commissioners, only Harry Parkes was still there for the final ceremony which included a tri-national group of Chinese, French, and British dignitaries.\n\nIf the allied occupation of Canton was not as uneventful as some historical accounts record, it nevertheless had very successful elements to it and may have had an influential impact on future Sino-European relations. At least two employees of the Allied Commission, Robert Hart and Prosper Giquel, both young men at the time, went on to play major roles in future Sino-European co-operative ventures later in the century, Robert Hart as the famous director of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and Prosper Giquel as the future European Director of the Foochow Dockyard and eventually head of several Sino-European Educational Missions of the 1870s and 1880s. That their earlier experiences had been in the somewhat more co-operative world of the Sino-European police forces and the Sino-European coolie emigration inspection teams is certainly likely to have proved significant in the careers of these two men who were later so much more able than most of their countrymen to work with the Chinese on an equal basis.\n\nNOTES\n\nAbbreviations\n\nAE Archives de la Ministère des Affaires Etrangères\n\nCCC Correspondence consulaire et commerciale\n\nCP Correspondence politique, Chine\n\nArmee Les Archives de l'Armee de Terre, Vincennes\n\nFO British Foreign Office\n\nPRO British Public Record Office\n\nSHM Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes\n\nAN Archives Nationales\n\nRanbir Vohra, China's Path To Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present (New Jersey, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1987) citing Christopher Hibbert, The Dragon Awakes. China and the West 1793-1911 (N.Y., Harper and Row, 1970), p. 229.\n\n2 Douglas Hurd, The Arrow War, Anglo-Chinese Confusion 1856-1860 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967), pp. 121-125 and Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 121-125.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211359, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "51\n\nOfficer, Dr. Hickling, replied that the matter needed a full investigation, and for a beginning certain broad lines might be laid down. She suggested as such (1) the conditions which would constitute overcrowding in work places, (2) the ages at which children be admitted to factories, and (3) regulation of the hours children worked.\n\nAt a meeting of the Sanitary Board on 2 April 1919 Mr. Bowley said that though previous to the meeting he had submitted his intention to place before the Board resolutions concerning overcrowding in factories and child labour, he thought it would be better if the Board first appointed a sub-committee to investigate conditions and thresh the problem out before definite suggestions were placed before the full Board.\n\nMr. Bowley was the natural Chairman for the committee as he had shown special interest in the problem and was acquainted with the corresponding legislation on the subject in England, America and the British Colonies, and as the Chinese section of the community would be chiefly affected by such regulations, Mr. Chan Kai-ming and Mr. S. W. Tso were appointed along with the Sanitary Department's Medical Officer, Dr. A. D. Hickling. As the regulations would be dealing with the working conditions of women and children, it was appropriate that Dr. Hickling, a woman, be on the committee.\n\n―\n\n―\n\nAt a meeting on 27 May, the sub-committee submitted its recommendations. An amendment was proposed to Section 16 of the Public Health and Building Ordinance of 1903 that children under the age of fourteen be prohibited from working in any factory for more than ten hours a day exclusive of meal times and that children under thirteen not be employed in any occupation likely to be injurious to their “life, limb or health, regard being had to his or her physical condition”. The committee also proposed an addition to Bylaw sub-section 13 of Section 16, that factories be regarded as overcrowded and therefore a danger to health if there was less than 250 cubic feet for every person employed, or during overtime after six p.m., 400 cubic feet per person.\n\nThe Sanitary Board had the power to require factories to provide adequate ventilation, cleanliness and latrine accommodation. There was no statutory definition of what constituted overcrowding hence the resolution included such a definition.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76\n\n52", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211672, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "62\n\nthe British Concession at Kiu Kiang. The mud, waist-deep and soft in the autumn, when first exposed by the receding waters of the snow-fed river, was now dried firm, and streaked with gutters, where the drainage from the houses along the Bund had cut out little evil-smelling runnels.\n\nA broad gravel walk reached the full length of the Concession, half a mile or so along the river front to a small creek at the western boundary. Plank gangways led from the bund across the mud to each hulk. A thoughtful municipality had provided benches, where on a warm day you could sit under the shade of the large trees planted by an earlier generation, rest your feet on the iron railings erected along the Bund edge, and watch the junks go by; or listen to the coolies chanting as they carried cargo between godown and ship. At the eastern end of the Bund and at the back, gates gave access to the narrow teeming lanes of the Chinese walled city and the congested suburbs, that hedged in the Concession on the two landward sides.\n\nWithin this small space lived a mixed community. There were several dozen British, a few Americans and some Japanese, with the odd Frenchman, Italian or Portuguese; also a small Russian group, who kept much to themselves and were mainly concerned with compressing and exporting brick tea, stamped in designs calculated to appeal to Muscovite taste. For a long time Chinese had not been allowed to live in the Concession, as they would soon have crowded out the limited space set apart for foreign occupation, but at this time exceptions had been made. The odium of owning the Concession, as was not infrequently pointed out by their kind friends, lay with the British; but all shared in its benefits alike under the \"most favoured nation\" clauses included in the treaties with China.\n\nThese benefits in retrospect did not appear small. Here within the Concession, in contrast to what went on without, law, order, and security prevailed. The law was known, the administration was honest, the small police force of Chinese constables under a British superintendent was reasonably efficient, taxation was equal for all, and the expression of opinion was free.\n\nSocial activity centred round the Club where the times were often good. In 1927 it was housed in the unrequired portion of an ancient godown, in the other half of which amidst an aroma of tar reclined large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211684, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "74\n\nConcession\". We even opened offices on board and transacted business, which for the most part was concerned with collecting monies due against outstanding accounts. A large proportion of the foreign import trade with China was done on a basis whereby credit was allowed to the Chinese merchant, until he in his turn had time to collect the proceeds of the sale from the final customer or consumer. The foreigner thus injected into the stream of Chinese trade a stimulant, which was certainly not without advantage to the recipient.\n\nThe disturbances at Kiu Kiang and Hankow received world-wide publicity, and led to the Chen-O'Malley negotiations under which it was agreed to return these two Concessions to China. Photographs had been taken of the looted interiors of the houses in Kiu Kiang, providing evidence, which could not be refuted, of the damage; and the new Chinese government of General Chiang Kai Shek agreed to pay compensation of 40,000 dollars, Chinese currency,\n\nOn March 24th part of the Revolutionary Army under General Cheng Chien entered Nanking, and there looted and committed excesses, which included the murder of several American and British subjects, the violating of women, and the wounding of the British consul. To cover the escape of the remaining foreigners, who were being attacked in a house on Socony ridge, British and American cruisers, from the river, put down a barrage round the hill. These demonstrations of uncivilised behaviour, coming on top of the incidents at Kiu Kiang and Hankow, caused the Revolutionary Government a severe loss of face.\n\nA few days after, a split occurred between the conservative wing of the Kuo Min Tang party, led by Chiang Kai Shek, and the Russian influenced Communist elements. In Shanghai some thousands of Communists, who had provided the spearhead for the almost bloodless occupation of the Chinese city, were executed or murdered through the agency of two powerful secret societies, the Green \"tong\" and the Red \"tong\", with whom Chiang Kai Shek appears to have had a close affiliation.\n\nOther members of the Kuo Min Tang, who had remained with the seat of government at Hankow, where Russian influence was strongest, declared their wing of the Kuo Min Tang to be the only legitimate one, and they proceeded to expel Chiang Kai Shek from its ranks. They were, however, unable to carry the army with them, and by July the situation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211690, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "80 \n\nand get permission for us to move into the War Memorial Nursing Home, where the British staff were still functioning under the wing of a Japanese Doctor-Colonel and a gendarmerie post. He was able to arrange this for us, and we were fetched in a car and installed in the Nursing Home next day, January 6th. Dr. Talbot, an ear specialist attached to the hospital, looked at my ear and said the postponed operation should be performed without delay as the earhole had become completely blocked with scar tissue and pus was accumulating dangerously inside. On January 10th I was sent down to Queen Mary Hospital for X-ray photos to be taken both of the ear and the knee. The Martins were still there, and this was the last time I saw them. The expedition was of great interest to me since it was the first time I had visited the town since the Japanese occupation. The streets were crowded with Chinese, most of them in mile long queues trying to get cooked rice from \"co-prosperity\" congee kitchens. All the shops were shut and barricaded but the pavements in Queen's Road and the central district generally were lined with hawkers selling bread ($4 a loaf) and other foodstuffs, and large quantities of looted articles; bedding, silverware, cutlery, etc: one could have got almost anything one wanted, and all this without any apparent interference from the Japanese.\n\nAs the X-rays confirmed Dr. Talbot's diagnosis I let him operate on January 13th. He found it necessary to do a radical mastoid operation and make me a new earhole. At the time we expected to be left in peace for a month or so as there were a number of severely wounded British soldiers in the Nursing Home and we thought the Japanese would not insist on them and us being moved until they were fit to be moved. Eight days later, however, they announced that they needed the hospital and that it would have to be evacuated next morning. The military patients were sent to the military hospital at Bowen Road, and the rest of us to Stanley. I was told I need not go to Stanley Camp unless I wished, and I was given my choice of two other hospitals but I said I must go where my doctor went; so I was put on a long chair which was put on a lorry, and with my wife and our few belongings and half a dozen lorry loads of doctors, sisters and patients we went off to Stanley. That was on January 22nd. The place was in a turmoil as lorry loads and boat loads of people were arriving from all the Chinese hotels in Hongkong and Kowloon where the Japanese had congregated them and they were all scrambling for billets. The British personnel from Queen Mary Hospital (from which they and all the British wounded had been moved the previous day) were busy trying to get a hospital organised in a block\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211695, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "85\n\nuse in soldiers' brothels. Stories regarding these events are in the highest degree contradictory.\n\nAs regards the post-occupation period, the main Japanese objective seemed to be to impress the Chinese population with the advantages which the Japanese regime was going to bring them but they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem presented by the teeming Chinese population who, with the disappearance of the British food services, were on the edge of starvation. Though congee centres were opened, these were on a quite inadequate scale and it soon became obvious that the Japanese were going drastically to reduce the numbers of Chinese in the Colony, by the threat of starvation if necessary. Dr. Selwyn Clark told me, during my one excursion from the camp on April 22nd that his office was besieged from morning to night by the Chinese employees of the Hong Kong Government and by the relatives and dependents of Chinese volunteers all completely destitute. The Japanese would do nothing for them and he could do very little. The French hospital was full of malnutrition cases who were doomed to death as they could get neither appropriate food nor drugs. The Japanese had also forbidden the admission of any more civilian patients. Many Chinese actually died of starvation, and tens of thousands voluntarily returned to China. One large party of alleged destitutes and vagabonds (about 600) were brought to Stanley by motorbus and put in the prison. After a few days they were put aboard junks at Stanley and the junks went off somewhere. Within a very short time a number of bodies of men and women were washed up on shore where they were left to putrefy for several days. There were rumours of a “noyade”, but I think a more reasonable explanation is that the Japanese were deporting these people and that the more desperate committed suicide.\n\nI have already referred in these notes to the looting of the Peak area by Chinese. This looting was general all over Hong Kong and Kowloon except, I believe, in the Central District. In the space of a few hours Government rice stocks, hospitals and private houses would be picked clean. To a great extent the looting was done in the short interval between the withdrawal of the British forces from any point and the arrival of the Japanese but in many cases, as on the Peak where we were, the looting went on after the occupation and almost under the noses of the Japanese gendarmerie. There is hardly a house on the Peak, I am told, that has not been reduced to a mere shell, all woodwork including floors and staircases being removed and plumbing and electrical fittings,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211703, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "93\n\nas a whole was bitterly critical of the Hongkong Government, and it strongly opposed any suggestion that Government officials should dominate the camp. Mr. Gimson, however, took the view that the Hongkong Government had not ceased to exist, that its authority continued in so far as circumstances permitted, and that, as a matter of practical politics, it was essential that this position be maintained for disciplinary and other purposes unless Japanese intervention was to be constantly invoked. He realised, however, that it was neither possible nor desirable to take a high hand in the matter, and decided to work in with the Communal Councils and trust to time to calm feelings and produce a modus vivendi. He was so far successful that a day or two before we left the camp a resolution asking him to accept the Chairmanship of a reconstituted Council was signed by 1,300 British internees, and the existing British Council tendered its resignation to enable the change to take place. It was clear from this that there was no hostility to Mr. Gimson personally, but the stubborn determination to prevent the \"old gang\" from getting in and \"bossing\" things remained undiminished, and it was tacitly agreed that Mr. Gimson's assumption of the Chairmanship would not involve the placing in executive positions in the camp of the senior Cadet officers.\n\nOne of the rather curious consequences of the \"continuing jurisdiction\" theory is that the Police Courts continued to function, though of course on a very limited scale. Persons were tried and sentenced by the Magistrate for theft. The Chief Justice even declared his readiness to hear certain classes of civil actions, and he did in fact make a decree nisi in divorce proceedings begun before the Japanese occupation,\n\nIt will be noticed that the Japanese interfered actively very little in the internal affairs of the camp. However, they interfered negatively to a great extent, by insisting that nothing was to be changed without their consent, and by refusing to give their consent even in quite trivial matters. They themselves kept aloof. I made repeated written representations about the status of myself and the rest of our Embassy and Consular party and asked for interviews, but received no replies, and it was not until July 20th, when I was about to leave the camp, that I was able to exchange a few words with Mr. Nakazawa, the camp superintendent. Mr. Ohda, the Chief of the Foreign Affairs Section of the Hongkong Military Government, remained quite unapproachable.\n\ns.s. \"Narkunda\"\n\nSeptember 19th, 1942.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211934, "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": 349, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "324\n\nC. Scramble over land in Kowloon\n\nAlthough scrambles over land was not new to this region, it was in the context of the British occupation of Hong Kong and Kowloon that the last major disputes over land holdings in the Kowloon peninsula took place. In 1860, when south Kowloon passed into British hands, the Dangs of Kam Tin, with another branch of the larger clan, were held to possess 276 acres of the 452 acres of land for which registered land documents were produced to the Anglo-Chinese Land Commission (Hayes 1983:87-88). The re-registration of land is a likely occasion for disputes. Besides, as a result of the development of the port of Hong Kong, the land in Kowloon doubtlessly appreciated sharply in value.\n\nIt is from an anecdote about Dang Ting-sam that we learn about the dispute between the Kam Tin Dangs and the Ping Shan Dangs over the rents from Kowloon Tsai. In the words of the informant, they scrambled for the rent. There was fighting between them. In the fighting a ha-yan of the Kam Tin Dangs killed a mou-geui-yan of Ping Shan. The ha-yan, whose name was Ah Chiu, had been sent to Kowloon Tsai to take care of the rent collecting. He was staying at a house his master kept for this purpose. The military degree holder of Ping Shan wanted to infringe upon the rent. He came to the house to make a claim that the land had belonged to him. Soon the fighting began. He was killed by Ah Chiu, who was not as strong as the mou-geui-yan but was very clever. The Ping Shan Dangs sued the Kam Tin Dangs for this. Chi-Naam made use of his skill [and connections?] to get Kam Tin out of the trouble. He was allowed to see the written complaint from the Ping Shan people. After reading it he offered 500 taels of silver to the official to let him add three strokes to the document. The original complaint said yung fu seung yan (\"caused injury by using an axe\"). Chi-Naam added one stroke to the character yung, and altered it to lat, \"[an object] fell off\". So the accusation had become \"an axe fell and injured a person\". Because of the alteration, the Kam Tin Dangs did not have to pay compensation for the killed man's life, they only had to pay a fine.\n\nD. The land re-registration of the New Territories\n\nMuch of the land of the Kam Tin Dangs was lost when the British government started the re-registration of land holdings.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212027, "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": 442, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "417\n\ninterested in modern China or who are interested in the British in Asia. Dr. Atwell has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of how the British administered one small locality and coped with the demands of modern forces. Her work can be used as a guide or spring board for comparison of British colonial policy in other East Asian places, such as Brunei and the Straits Settlements, Hankow, Tientsin and Shanghai, say, with Hong Kong tossed in for good measure.\n\nWEI PEH T'I, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong\n\nSteven A. Leibo, Transferring Technology to China, Prosper Giquel and the Self-strengthening Movement, China Research Monograph 28, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, 1985.\n\nProsper Giquel, edited by Steven A. Leibo, A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985.\n\nThese two works, one of compilation and assessment based on a doctoral dissertation, the other of translation (with the help of Debbie Weston) and annotation with a lengthy introduction, have a considerable intrinsic interest because they deal with a rather extraordinary man. They have also a degree of relevance, over a century later, for the West's involvement with present day China's modernizing programme.\n\nThey are to be read in conjunction with other modern works on this period of China's self-strengthening efforts, including those listed in Dr. Leibo's introduction to Transferring Technology.\n\nProsper Giquel, a French naval officer, came to China during the Second China War. After service with the Joint Commission that guided the administration of the city of Canton during its four year occupation by the Allies, during which he laid the foundations of his knowledge of written and spoken Chinese, he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Ningpo. When that city was captured by the Taiping Army, he assisted the Sino-French \"Ever Triumphant Army” to recapture it, and later commanded it in the operations that led to the recapture of Hangzhou, for which he received high rank and honours from the appreciative Ch'ing government. Contacts made during this time led to employment after the Rebellion, in and outside China, that lasted until his death in France in 1886. His principal achievement was the construction and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212168, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "87\n\nseven died unnatural or early deaths, though the other six would appear to have died peacefully at a reasonable age in their beds. Three would seem to have appeared in human dreams after they had died, and all are prayed to for boons and blessings, protection or guidance,\n\nOut of the twelve examples six have had privately run temples erected in their honour, whilst images of the other six have been placed on secondary or side altars in local community temples.\n\nIt is worth considering the difference between the deified total nonentity and the deified virtual nonentity. The former would be the unnamed immigrant who died several hundred years ago but who is now regarded as the local protective spirit, whilst the latter is the villager, perhaps even a former headman, whose name, though little else, is remembered. He too is now regarded as a local protective spirit.\n\nAlthough we have been examining such deities mainly in the context of Taiwanese and South East Asian Chinese they appear to have existed China-wide. One such virtual nonentity was deified several hundred or more years ago on an island off the northern coast of Shantung Province, with the rural temple altar bearing the images of both the nonentity, Mr Liu, and his wife. R.F. Johnston describes the temple, formerly on the island of Liu-chia Tao, the Island of Mr Liu, off Wei Hai Wei, the former British possession where he was the last Governor, in his book Lion and Dragon in Northern China.\n\nHe explains that no one appears to know who Mr Liu was nor why his image appears on the altar. Liu Kung and Liu Mu Father Liu and Mother Liu were regularly worshipped, especially by sailors. Johnston notes that the curious thing is that the deification of the old couple has taken place without any apparent justification from legend or myth'.\n\nThe images were moved to a new temple built on the mainland during the occupation after the British acquired the island and began to make preparations for the construction of naval works and forts.\n\nThe images of Mr and Mrs Liu portray them as an elderly couple dressed in luxurious robes, he with a long white beard and the cap of the wealthy land owner.", "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": 212388, "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": 330, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "307\n\nrecovering them and their stubborness in this belief undoubtedly saved the lives of 21 British seamen.\n\nH.J.W. CHETWYND-CHATWIN\n\nREPORT ON VISIT TO TAI HANG FIRE DRAGON DANCE, MID AUTUMN FESTIVAL 1992\n\nOn the 11th September, 1992, a party of Society members, family and children visited the Tai Hang Tsuen Fire Dragon Dance at the invitation of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association.*\n\nThe Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance started in 1880 when Tai Hang was a small Hakka village of farmers and fishermen on the waterfront of Causeway Bay.\n\nAccording to local legend, on a stormy night that year, just prior to the Mid-Autumn Festival, some villagers killed a serpent at a stone house in Sun Chun Street. They placed the body of the serpent in a bamboo cage, intending to hand it over to the local police station the next morning. However, by then the body had disappeared. A few days later a plague broke out in Tai Hang and over ten persons died.\n\nOne night a village elder in his sleep was told by Buddha (one version says that the message came through Kwun Yum, the Goddess of Mercy) to make a grass dragon and burn firecrackers and incense sticks during the Mid-Autumn Festival. This advice was followed and the sulphur in the firecrackers drove away the disease and the villagers were saved.\n\nIt then became customary to hold a fire dragon dance every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival in order to drive away infectious diseases and to bring good fortune. This custom has been followed every year since 1880, with the exception of the Japanese Occupation and during the 1967 disturbances. The arrangements are in the hands of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association, and the event is very much a community function which continues a long-standing village tradition in the heart of modern, urban Hong Kong.\n\n* See Plates 14-15.\n\nPage 330\n\nPage 331", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212608, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "142\n\nChinese troops in India was no new one. Sir Henry Wade, who was British Minister to the Imperial Court at Peking in the 1870's had the same idea, frequently pressed, but without success.\n\nSun Yat Sen, if one is to judge from what he writes in the \"Three Principles\", claimed that Burma should belong to China. For several centuries, it is true, though maybe spasmodically, the Court of Ava sent a decennial tribute mission to Peking, and this continued even after the British occupation, until 1896, in much the same way as Siam, for instance, sent a mission every four years; but there seems little doubt that the Burmese considered the mission more in the nature of a cultural courtesy than as a token of submission. Any reassertion by China to a claim to tribute would undoubtedly be resented.\n\nThe Burmese, like the Indians, take religion seriously. Every Burmese young man spends a period, even if only a few days, in a Buddhist temple. The monks, or pongyis, as they are called, number about 1% of the Buddhist population. Their shaven heads and yellow robes are a common sight, particularly in the morning hours when they go around with the wooden bowl, begging for the day's share of rice. In recent years they have taken an active part in politics, and there was some evidence that the Japanese were using them as a fifth column. The Chinese troops, during the fighting, were so convinced of this that they shot any they caught. The political activities of the pongyis are not approved of by many true Buddhists, and opinion should be reserved on this aspect, until more is known about the facts.\n\nThe Burmese enjoyed a large measure of self-government. Unfortunately the sense of responsibility in their politicians was insufficient to overcome the native propensity for intrigue and corruption. The graft in the administration stank to high heaven: it was a situation in which Japanese money could talk. The Prime Minister himself, U Saw, slipped up and had to be arrested for high treason; as it happened, while passing through Honolulu, only a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbour.\n\nMeanwhile, Germany had invaded Russia, the British entered Syria, the Japanese entered Indo-China, General Tojo formed a new government, the U.S.A. decided to arm her merchant ships, and the Bush Warfare School staged a demonstration for Mr. Duff Cooper and the Governor of Burma. On the edge of the jungle a small fort had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212619, "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "153\n\nEve dinner. We parted the next day as our ways lay in different directions.\n\nAfter completion of the reconnaissance I returned to Shangjao, where General Ku Chu Tung again very kindly accommodated me at his personal headquarters. Michael and I and the Chinese officers attached to us had our own little mess, and General Ku sent his own cook to prepare our meals, a signal courtesy which was much appreciated. Soon after my return I was delighted to hear that the two British Army Liaison Officers, had also escaped from Shanghai, with a third companion. They passed through shortly after on their way to Chungking. On December 7th they had had to go to earth, as the Japanese had raised a hue and cry after them: however, with the assistance of Chinese friends they finally made their way out past the wire. I hope one day the account of their adventures will appear in print,\n\nThe Japanese in Shanghai did not commence to round up Allied civilian foreigners for concentration in camps until the autumn of 1942, and the concentration was not completed until the spring of 1943. The foreigners were permitted to continue in occupation of their houses and to keep servants, though the limited funds released from the banks did not allow of living at the same standards as previously. To economise there was a tendency for households, or messes of bachelors, to amalgamate. Quite a few foreigners lived in houses outside the barbed-wire barrier and for the first few weeks one could pass in and out of the gates on the few roads which led through the barrier by claiming that one lived outside. During this period, Jim, an English missionary who spoke the Shanghai dialect well got out. He was waiting with Mac at Chin Ya when we returned there in March. In the course of time the Japanese brought a system of passes into use, and the issue of special passes to persons wishing to visit friends outside was restricted. Nevertheless, the arrangements were such as to provide plenty of opportunity for those who wished to pass through the barrier. At the worst one could crawl under the wire at night, when the sentries were mostly withdrawn to their main posts. But few young Britons seized the opportunity to escape while they could. In the upshot more Americans got away than British, though American residents only numbered about one third as many as the British, of whom some 5,000 were interned, including of course a considerable proportion of women and children.\n\nA small party of three American journalists escaped at about this time through Hangchow. I did not meet them. The next escape to be reported", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212624, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "158\n\nit responsibilities of adjudication, or what by Chinese custom is better described as arbitration, in the small affairs of the village; and, more important, of tax collection. By his own account Mr. Hsiao was renowned as a catcher of robbers. He had once caught two, and frequently in his cups, for Mr. Hsiao was the soul of charity and was always inviting us to feasts, he would relate how he had been visited by the two miscreants, had recognised them and made them drunk while he sent round for the police. They had been tried, sentenced, and executed on yonder hill. Mr. Hsiao did not drink the mild yellow rice wine, known as Shaoshing wine, with a taste rather like thick sherry; he plied us with a raw white spirit, also distilled from rice, a spirit of great potency, and what is more he did not only drink it neat of course, Chinese wine is not mixed with water - out of the little thimble cups commonly used, but would challenge us to empty it out of rice bowls, three bowls at a time. The Chief was the only one who could compete, and by the time Mr. Hsiao had finished with him they would be telling each other stories of interminable length in a language which the ignorance of each of the other's mother-tongue confined to gesticulation.\n\nWhile still in Kinhwa I had been concerned at the delay of the Chinese in finding interpreters for us, for work in class; and as, with the Japanese occupation of the Settlement in Shanghai, many young Chinese men were moving into the interior to avoid having to study under Japanese auspices, I took the opportunity of a Y.M.C.A. relief organisation there to enquire for suitable candidates. We found three lads of about twenty, who spoke good English, and took them on at what by Chinese standards were really high salaries. They were nice lads, but infected with the Kuo Min Tang teaching which made them very touchy about their dignity. Soon after our arrival at Chin Ya there was an unfortunate development. It had been my hope that we could all eat in mess together, but in practice we found the limits imposed by scattered accommodation, small kitchen facilities, and the scarcity of foreign table utensils, knives, forks, spoons, plates, and so on, made it impossible to eat all together at one time. When we travelled we all ate Chinese food, and very good it was too as a rule; but British stomachs are not used to a rice diet, and from my own experience I knew I kept fitter if I had an occasional change to our own type of cooking. So I was anxious that the British members of our party, while at Chin Ya, and it must be remembered that the various members were often absent for long periods, should have the comfort of eating their own kind of food, and so it seemed to be going rather far to go to the trouble of providing them with food to which they were", "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": 212667, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "202\n\ndisappear so quickly.\n\nHalsey would have no truck with the second-in-command who was then escorted back to the waiting plane. The Japanese commander eventually appeared whereupon the surrender was signed later in the presence of the British admiral aboard HMS King George V.\n\nAt dawn the following day the whole fleet was placed in ‘line ahead' and we sailed up the Lei Yue Mun Channel, between Hong Kong and Kowloon. As we approached a gun emplacement set high in the rocks was spotted with the Japanese flag flying. The Japanese could be seen quite clearly on the ramparts of the fort. The order relayed to the King George V battleship was 'range broadside!' I never saw a flag come down so fast.\n\nWe anchored in an orderly fashion off the City of Victoria and in no time at all found ourselves surrounded by sampans and all sorts of other small boats. Royal marines armed with machine guns were stationed round the sides of the ship. After all, we just didn't know what to expect.\n\nWhile preparations were being made for the first landing party to go ashore naval officers selected the men. They questioned ratings how they felt about the task. One or two were rather brash in their manner and replies. They were rejected. Asked if I felt afraid I answered that I was a bit scared. 'Good,' said one of the officers, ‘A frightened man is a careful man!'\n\nIn the early afternoon I and nine other men, armed to the teeth, went ashore in a motorised cutter. The landing stage was free of booby traps and obstacles. We came ashore near the Star Ferry. All was very quiet. Even the sometimes boisterous Chinese were not self-evident. The Japanese had destroyed all the dwellings and buildings along the waterfront so they had an uninterrupted view of the sea lane.\n\nI was on shore patrol when we came across a mob of Chinese and, on investigation, we discovered a Japanese soldier had been strangled by a Chinese. I was told the Japanese had molested and raped the man's wife during the occupation. The man was later arrested, charged and, I believe, subsequently let off.\n\nOn another occasion I noticed two bodies in the harbour being swept down the straits. Who they were or what was going on I didn't know.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213142, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "192\n\nensure that the saltfields there were in the same County as the rest of the salt commission Yin Tin (Yantian, 鹽田, \"The Salt Fields\") almost certainly got its name somewhen in this period However, areas under the control of a Salt Commissioner were often merely the salt-pans, and the adjacent village of the salt-workers, in pockets scattered along the coast, and the presence of a salt commission could co-exist with a totally undeveloped hinterland See Luo Hsiang-lin (羅香林), 香港前代史 一八四二年以前之香港及其對外交通, Xianggang Qiandaishi Yiqian Ernian Zhi Xianggang Ji Qi Duiwai Jiaotong, Hong Kong, 1959, translated as Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1841, but without the footnotes. Hong Kong, 1963], ch 1, n 5, 13, 12, ch 4, n 14 See also ch In 13 See also S Y Lin, \"Salt Manufacture in Hong Kong\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol 7, 1967, pp 138-151 (reprinted from The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol X, No. 1, January 1940)\n\n4 See Luo Hsiang-lin, op cit, ch 3; SF Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British Being a Local History of the Region of Hong Kong and the New Territories Before the British Occupation”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol 10. 1970, pp 134-179 (printed from Tien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, Vols Hand 12, 1940, 1941), K M.A. Barnett, \"Hong Kong Before the Chinese, the Frame, the Puzzle, and the Missing Pieces\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 4, 1964, pp. 42-67; Sung Hok-p'ang, \"Legends and Stories of the New Territories Tai Po, Part I”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 28, 1988, pp 70-76 (reprinted from The Hong Kong Naturalist, May, 1935)\n\n+\n\n6 The Gazetteer mentions pirates in the Mirs Bay area in 1571, 1590, 1641, 1647, 1648, 1664, and 1672, 1688 Gazetteer, ch 12, 1819 Gazetteer, ch 12, Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, pp. 119-120, and see also 1819 Gazetteer ch 7, and ch 19, Chung Lap Pao edition, pp 80-81, and 154\n\n* The 1688 Gazetteer gives a list of villages in existence in the area in and before 1662 (1688 Gazetteer, ch 3) See the note at ff 13-15, which makes it clear that the villages are those of the period before the Coastal Evacuation of 1662-1668, and not those contemporary with the Gazetteer\n\nThe Provincial Governor and Magistrate urged on the returning families the need to get tenants or purchasers to take over land which could no longer be tilled by the descendants of the previous owners (see Luo Hsiang-lin, op cit pp. 145-149, n. 15, 19, 23 relating to dates on the 1710s and 1720s) Within the Mirs Bay area, at least the Lees of Wo Hang settled there in 1692 \"on the [official] order to reclaim land\", see D Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p 217, n 22 There is at least one case where a lineage abandoned land east of the mountains, to concentrate themselves in the more sheltered west The name of the village of Man Uk Pin, \"The Houses of the Man Family\") makes it clear that it was once lived in by the Man family That family, however, is now found only in Ta Kwu Ling, to the west, at Ping Che, Tong Fong, and Heung Yuen villages When the present inhabitants of Man Uk Pin, the Chung (鍾) lineage settled there in about 1700, it was deserted - clearly in his case a lineage had concentrated on its best lands to the west, and abandoned the marginal Mirs Bay land to newcomers\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213205, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "6\n\nMissionaries and religious institutions\n\nThe Rev. Karl Friedrich August Gutslaff - or as he became known in his later life Rev. Charles Gutzlaff was a colourful and significant figure in the introduction of Protestant Christianity among both the overseas Chinese and those who lived in China. He was born in Pomerania in 1803 and came to the Dutch East Indies as an agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1827. He severed his relationship with the society and became an independent missionary agent. To secure funds for his work he successfully publicised the missionary cause in Europe and America. His books, articles and letters aroused much interest and some controversy. Critics regarded his assessment of the prospects for the easy and immediate conversion of China as too visionary, but this did not prevent a large number of sympathetic supporters from forming societies to undergird his work,\n\nBefore settling in Macao in 1830, Gutzlaff was in Singapore and Bangkok. He was an able linguist and mastered a number of Chinese dialects. When hostilities broke out between Britain and China in 1838, the English employed him as an interpreter. During the British occupation of Chusan he was appointed a magistrate, and on the untimely death in Hong Kong of John Morrison the son of the Rev. Robert Morrison, Gutzlaff succeeded him as the Chinese Secretary of the British Superintendent of Trade in China and the Hong Kong Government. He remained in this well-paid post until his death in 1851. His official duties did not prevent him from continuing his missionary activities.\n\nGutzlaff was convinced that China should be converted by Chinese. To further this he organised the Chinese Union in 1844. Its members were converts who were given a somewhat brief course of instruction and then, carrying bundles of tracts and scriptures, were sent to spread the Christian message in the interior of China. The scheme was imaginative, but Gutzlaff did not have the time nor practicability to supervise it closely; consequently, some of his trainees used it for their own enrichment. They pocketed the travel allowance, while sheltering in Kowloon or their home village, and then resold the Christian literature back to the publisher, and submitted false reports of their evangelistic achievements in China. Nonetheless, the Union made its impact on China, particularly providing Christian elements for the ideology of the Tai Ping rebellion in China in the 1850s.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213361, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "166\n\nHai Journal, no 12 | August 1981, pp 191-201)\n\n1\n\nLo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842 The History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival (Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963)\n\nBarbara Ward, \"Rediscovering our social and cultural heritage\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (JHKBRAS) 20, pp 116-124, p 124\n\nSee Jack Potter Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant. Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley, Calif University of California Press, 1968) He contradicts the theory that the industry and commerce of the treaty ports were the principal reasons for the bankruptcy of the Chinese countryside by showing how in Ping Shan, the effects of capitalism were beneficial to peasants.\n\nJames Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut Archon Books, 1972), The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983), Tsuen Wan Growth of a New Town and Its People (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1993)\n\n7 For the special nature of the District Officer's duties, see Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin Memoirs of a Special Magistrate (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1975)\n\nSelina Ching Chan, \"Tradition Inherited, Traditional Reinterpreted. A Chinese Lineage in the 1990s\", (Unpublished Ph D thesis, Oxford University, 1995)\n\nAlan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years the Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45 (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1982) and Captive Christmas (Hong Kong. Heinemann, 1979)\n\n10 Most of the Rev Smith's work was published in articles in various, often obscure, journals, but more recently they have been collected in anthologies - Chinese Christians, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co, 1995)\n\nSee especially, DJ Dwyer (ed) The Changing Face of Hong Kong. Proceedings of a Weekend Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1971)\n\n12 Editorial, JHKBRAS, vol 7(1967)pp 1-3,p 2\n\n13 PH Hase and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Beyond the Metropolis Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd, 1995)\n\n14 Marjorie Topley, (comp) \"Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars\" Proceedings of a Symposium, February 8-9, 1969 (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969)\n\nSee Ian Diamond, \"The Paper Chase - Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213473, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "36\n\nHong Kong Sessional Papers, 1900, pp 26-269 This Report was forwarded to London under cover of Sir Henry A. Blake's despatch to Mr Chamberlain of 19th February 1900 and this Memorandum of Land was subsequently published as Command Paper 403 in November 1900 (vide Committee Report, 1953, Chap III para 39 and Appendix 10 at p 207, where only two extracts appear) Mr Lockhart stated that the Memorandum was prepared with the assistance of Mr. Messer and Mr Ts'oi, Cader and First Clerk respectively\n\nA later, verbose but less informative source is \"Some Notes on Land Tenure in the New Territories\" attached to the Report, dated 4th March 1901, on the Land Court for 1900 by Mr HHJ Gompertz (who in 1909 was elevated to a puisne judgeship), a Member of that Court - Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1901 p 371 at p. 374\n\n17\n\nThe Emperor of China\n\nre the Chinese Government and Imperial Rent\n\nReport, DCNT, 1959-60, para. 171. The District Commissioner's Report for 1947-48 records (at para 29) that it was discovered in that year that one hamlet had never paid Crown rent since the British occupation of the New Territories This was remedied by the grant of a Block Crown Lease\n\n90 8. New Territories Ordinance (Cap 97)\n\n\"Report, DCNT, 1959-60, para 171\n\nTA\n\ne The Chinese Government\n\nby Bruce Shepherd, Deputy Land Officer, dated 17th January 1900, being Appendix VIII to Lockhart's Report, para. 12 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1900, p 277 at p 279)\n\n44\n\nReport dated 18th February 1905 of Mr C. Mcl Messer, member of the Land Court (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1905, p. 149)\n\nReport dated 7th March 1905 of Mr JR Wood, Member of the Land Court (Hong Kong Sessional Papers 1905 p. 147)\n\nIbid, and see also Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, para 21(1), (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1912, p 46)\n\n7\n\nTregear, op cit, p 62\n\nDA\n\nReport, DCNT, 1959-60, para 177 and Tregear, loc cit\n\n44 Wilson's Notes\n\nalso sometimes termed \"Ching Sheung\" according to Wilson's Notes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213496, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "60\n\nThe second hypothesis, on the other hand, is held by a few western historians. Writing in the 1930s, H.G. Jarrett claimed that:\n\n\"The Army was hard put to it finding suitable quarters for some time after the occupation of Hong Kong and the move from West Point was not made until some three or four years after the founding of the Colony in 1841. As the arrival of large numbers of soldiers and their quartering in matshed barracks (which the chronicles tell us were erected in the western part of the town) would naturally impress the Chinese and we easily see the connection between this encampment and the vernacular name, which, if any indication were needed, definitely established the area where the first barracks went up.\" (Jarrett, 1933-5, P.23)\n\nG. R. Sayer also said that:\n\n\"The latter (barrack) is known for obvious reasons as West Point and is destined to provide the name Sai Ying Pun, the Western Encampment to a large district of the town.\" (Sayer, 1937, P.99)\n\nOne way or the other, one thing is sure that the place name Sai Ying Pun was not provided by the British when they first arrived at Hong Kong in 1841. The reasons are not difficult to furnish.\n\nFirst, when the British first came to Hong Kong, they were not accustomed to naming the places in Chinese terms. For example, the British gave out names like Queenstown, East Point, Belcher's Bay. The British even cared to rename places like Shek Pai Wan as Aberdeen and Chek Chu as Stanley. There was no reason why the British had to name an area with only a few establishments as Sai Ying Pun. As a matter of fact, the British named the place West Point Barrack since the place was situated at the western extreme point of the British occupation at that time.\n\nSecondly, there are too many variations in the name Sai Ying Pun used by the British themselves to make us believe that the place was named by the British. If Sai Ying Pun is an original English place name, variation in the spelling of the words would not have existed. In early Government Gazettes, the place was called Sy-ing-poon. In an early city plan of Victoria, the district was named Sei Ying Poon. In G. R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213497, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "61\n\nSayer's Map of Hong Kong 1841-1855, the place was marked with the words Sai Yang Pun. Even in Sheet 19 of the 1957 edition 1 to 25,000 official maps, the place was named Sai Ying Poon.\n\nThen, was the place named by the Chinese in the early twenty years of the nineteenth century or by the Chinese in the early years of the British occupation? I cannot provide the exact answer to this question but I prefer the first hypothesis i.e. Chang Po Tsai the pirate did establish a fortification in Sai Ying Pun around 1806. The reasons to support this argument are again not difficult to find.\n\nFirst, according to the Chinese folklore, at the beginning of the present century (1800 - 1810), the present Victoria Peak formed the look-out and fortified headquarters of a pirate named Chang Pao. Moreover, the name Chang Pao Tsai is frequently mentioned by the indigenous population of Hong Kong. Even the early Chinese of the island were frequently being looked upon as pirates and robbers.\n\nSecondly, there are many historic relics left behind by the pirates. Apart from the famous Chang Pao Tsai treasure caves in Cheung Chau and Lamma Island, there is the Chang Pao Tsai relic path (or the old road of Chang Pao Tsai) which is about half way up Mount Gough and starts between May Road and Kotewall Road. Chang Po Tsai was claimed to have erected forts there and old inhabitants of Hong Kong can still point out the sites of the forts. It is also said that Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road was first built by Chang Pao Tsai.\n\nIt is not easy to tell why Chang the pirate had to build fortifications on Hong Kong Island and why the pirates chose the place Sai Ying Pun. I have worked out three probabilities.\n\nFirstly, the pirates chose it because the place was located in the northern part of the island. The pirates used the island as a sort of naval base. They had to build fortresses to accommodate themselves. According to Miss K. Y. Woo, during the early years of Chia-ching period, Chang and his followers occupied the area around Chek Chu (Lo, 1963, P. 108). They were afraid that the Ching army would attack them from the Kowloon side. So they had to build two fortifications on the northern side of the Island. So some pirates could station there and try to hold back any attacks by the Ching army. A more detailed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213499, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "63\n\nwaters.\n\nSai Ying Pun During the Early Years of British Colonization\n\nOn 20 January 1841, Captain Elliot announced the conclusion of preliminary arrangements with the Chinese Imperial Commissioner involving the cession of the Hong Kong Island and harbour to the British Government. Lord Palmerston in April 1841, hearing of Captain Elliot's restoration of Chusan to the Chinese government in return for the cession of Hong Kong, relieved him of his post and contemptuously remarked that Captain Elliot had obtained a barren island with hardly a house upon it.\n\nLord Palmerston was right in describing Hong Kong as a barren island. It was then almost entirely grass-covered, as the fine drawing of Collinson in 1845 showed. When on 26 January 1841, a party of marines landed and raised the British flag, Hong Kong was virtually unoccupied, apart from the little villages and hamlets, like Chek Chu, Shek Pai Wan, and Shau Kei Wan, which were inhabited by a few fishermen, stonecutters, and farmers.\n\nAt that time, the area of Sai Ying Pun was mere rugged slopes of rocks with a narrow, hard-trodded pathway winding along the cliffs, to which the fanciful name of Kwantailou was given by the fishermen and villagers. It was said that the path was used by the local inhabitants to go up to the hillside to cut the grasses and wood for fuel. E.J. Eitel, in his book \"Europe in China\", gave a rather detailed description of the path. He said:\n\n“Along the northern shore of the Island, there used to be, previous to the British occupation, a narrow bridle-path leading, high above the beach, across rocks and boulders, all the way from Westpoint to a hamlet near Eastpoint called Kwantalou, described in the first census (May 15, 1841) as a fishing village with 50 inhabitants. This path was used by the crews of trading junks in cases of wind and tide being unfavourable to track the junks along by a towing line attached to the peak of the foremast. Now, this hard-trodden path standing, to an observer from the opposite shore, clear out from the grass-grown hillside, like a fringe or border along the skirts of the hill, was by the natives called Kwantailou (petticoat string road), and the hamlet...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213501, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "65\n\nactually a few wretched huts or matsheds built on shelves cut out on the acclivity of a ridge. They were filled with Indian sepoys, the Bengal Volunteers. A supplement of a survey of Hong Kong in the Canton Press dated February 1842 gave us information about the Sai Ying Pun Barracks in 1842.\n\n\"A half-moon battery or platform which is to mount some half-dozen heavy guns on carriages is constructing at the extreme west of the town to protect the barracks there and at which are stationed the Bengal Volunteers\" (Sayer, 1937, P. 209).\n\nThe sanitary conditions of the barracks in those days were largely neglected. The water closet system that existed in the barracks was unfortunately unsuited to a tropical climate. Epidemics of fever spread through Hong Kong every summer in those early years of British occupation. In 1842, the Indian troops, stationed in Hong Kong lost nearly half their number. The death rate for the army in Hong Kong for that year was 25%.\n\nIn 1843, the sanitary condition of Hong Kong was most alarming. In the summer of 1843 an extraordinary outbreak of malaria fever occurred which during the six months from May to October carried off by death 24% of the troops and 10% of the European civilians. It was noticed that this virulent fever ravaged chiefly the extreme west and east ends of the British settlement. (It was due to the opening up of the ground by the troops in making roads or new buildings created marshy conditions that helped to breed mosquitoes). At the West Point Barracks in Sai Ying Pun where the left wing of the 55th regiment quartered, sickness was so universal that the regiment lost 100 men between June and the middle of August. On 20 July 1843, the troops stationed there were hastily removed on board ships in the harbour and the Barracks were abandoned and ordered to be razed to the ground. At the recommendation of the Committee of Public Health and Cleanliness, the ground in the neighbourhood was ordered to be levelled and well-drained.\n\nSince Sai Ying Pun had proved to be one of the most unhealthy spots in the Island, the main forces of the army began to move out of the place. The Royal Navy also found the naval base east of Belcher's Bay unhealthy and lay fully exposed to the fury of a typhoon and moved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213578, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "144\n\nseen largely as protection forests. Most of these plantations were approaching maturity, although they were totally destroyed for fuelwood during the Japanese occupation when supplies of fuel wood from China were cut off.\n\nAn interesting account of village forestry is given in the Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 1905. \"When the New Territory was taken over by the British in 1899 there were about as many large pine trees growing in the district as there are small ones now. The Chinese, being afraid that their new masters would confiscate the trees, began to cut them down wholesale. From the accounts which have been collected there must have been something like eight million disposed of in this way, a course which has been ere now, no doubt, bitterly repented; for as a matter of fact the only restrictions enforced by the Police was with regard to the cutting down of large wild trees and Fung Shui trees round the villages. The confidence of the tree farmers towards English rule having become gradually re-established and safety from encroachments by neighbouring owners being further secured by the presence of the Police, re-afforestation soon began. The scheme of defining and registering the plantation was therefore received in general with great readiness by the farmers who came forward when called on and paid their licence fees. The scheme was designed to encourage the farmers to re-afforest by giving them secure tenure of the trees, to secure re-sowing of felled areas and to provide a proper demarkation of the ground in case of disputes\". About 57,000 acres (23,750 ha.) were licenced for planting in 1905.\n\nEarly in the British occupation of the New Territories the conservation of the remaining natural woodlands was considered. “It is evident to the most casual observer that primeval forest has almost ceased to exist in this part of China. There can be little doubt that our valleys and probably the greater part of our mountains were once plentifully clothed with luxuriant virgin forest. Patches of such forest can still be seen at Little Hong Kong, in this island and in the more inaccessible parts of the New Territories. The Committee appointed to report on the forestry possibilities of the New Territories in 1904 recommended that certain of these areas should be reserved and protected by Government. During 1905 the areas of natural forest in the greater part of the New Territories were carefully examined and mapped by this department. The total extent of that mapped is about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213646, "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "218\n\nThe book is a remarkably accurate and sensitive account of life as a public servant in the Colony of Hong Kong (this term with its perceived pejorative overtones was de-emphasised in the eighties in favour of Territory; Now, of course, we have become a Region) in the decades after the Second World War. Hong Kong in the fifties, when James arrived, was far from what we know it to be today: still recovering from the ravages and privations of the Japanese occupation; swamped with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war and subsequent revolution in China; tuberculosis and other diseases rampant; people living from hand to mouth; the squatter areas - the list of maladies could go on. Amongst other things which come out vividly in this book is how well Hong Kong has done. There has always been a tendency amongst Westerners to compare the worst in Hong Kong with the best elsewhere, which is unfair. Hong Kong has had more than its share of problems but now has the money to minimise them. In the fifties and sixties, the wealth was simply not there.\n\nThe author came to Hong Kong as a “Cadet”, the rather noisome name given to members of the Administrative Service. As such, in James' words, he “…belonged to a grade of the civil service that was generalist in nature, whose members were moved around, filling middle and upper level posts in key departments and in the Government Secretariat.’ The Administrative Service is a proud, elite force which produces most of Hong Kong's public sector leaders but it is often criticised for this 'Jack of all trades, master of none' mentality; its members being likened by its more vocal critics to 'lighthouses in the desert' (brilliant but useless). This is going altogether too far. Like all organs of Government, the Service has had its share of incompetents, but James was demonstrably not one of them.\n\nJames also accurately describes the ethos in post-war Hong Kong and how it has evolved. Many, if not most, expatriates existed in small, enclosed, expatriate ‘rings’, almost completely cut off from the real Hong Kong. It was rather like living in a cocoon. To the modern-day observer, this lack of contact, other than professional, between the main ethnic groups seems amazing. But when you get down to it, have things changed that much? There was also, at any rate below the surface, a fair amount of racism, parochialism and delusions of grandeur around. It has been said more than once that many allegedly competent and successful, and certainly senior, British Hong Kong civil servants", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213680, "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-1996", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "4\n\n+\n\nparticular was expected to make in increasing contact between the city and the eastern New Territories: \"The railway will bring the Territory into closer contact with Hong Kong and western ideas ... Country folk who used to require a full day to reach Hongkong can now go in and out and do their shopping in the day.\" It is, however, clear that the district officer considered that this development had not yet begun in any significant way at the date when he was writing.\n\nIn these circumstances, it is not surprising that the district officer felt that the broader picture in 1912 was of a generally unchanged traditional life: \"A visitor to the Territory of 1899, upon returning in 1912, would find changes to remark in the outward appearance of the country, but he would not find the life or character of its inhabitants greatly altered... The domestic life of the villager does not differ much from that of Chinese in other parts of China, nor has it altered much during the few years of British occupation: if anything, it falls rather behind the general standard of freedom and enlightenment in the Canton Province.. even now the customs and habits of the people are probably little changed from what they were a hundred years ago.” The district officer feared that modernisation, when it came, would cause the inhabitants \"to lose their simple old-fashioned virtues,\" But clearly he felt that this unwelcome development had yet to begin.\n\nIn summary, therefore, the district officer's view was that the New Territories in 1912 were ripe for modernisation, but that this process had only just begun.\"\n\nBy 1921 it is interesting to note that another well-informed European - the Census Officer - could still make very similar remarks: \"The opening of the railway seems, contrary to expectations, to have produced little change\", and the effect of the Government schools “is just becoming apparent\n\n*12\n\nThus, by 1911, the village society of the New Territories, while more prosperous than a decade or two earlier, and aware of, and at least partially receptive to, modern ideas, was still (other than for New Kowloon, the southern strip immediately around Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po) almost entirely traditional. The 1911 Census, therefore, took place in one of the last years in which the old, traditional society survived more or less unchanged. By 1921 that society was beginning", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213826, "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-1996", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "151\n\nTHE HOUWANG CULT AND\n\nTUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE\n\nHON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO'\n\nWhile the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded.\n\nTung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages\n\nSituated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on\n\nPl", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214307, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "129\n\na few wavered in the face of student rioting they all stood firm and Sowerby's tense moment passed.\n\nIn 1935 he was elected president of the North China Branch of the RAS until illness forced him to resign in late 1940. He was also elected honorary director of the Shanghai Museum, one of the major activities of the RAS, an office he held until 1946. The RAS had a new building in the early 1930s and the China Society of Science and Art of which he was president was incorporated into the RAS with all its funds and interests passing to the RAS.\n\nLife in Shanghai was quite busy what with his business company directorships and his membership of several councils including the Foreign Residents' Association and the British Residents' Association of Shanghai.\n\nHe and Clarice lived in comfort in Shanghai with their collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain and all their books on China until her death in May 1944. These were all donated to the Heude Museum in Shanghai before he left China in 1946 and placed into a large room named \"The Sowerby Hall.\" During the first part of the Japanese occupation he and Clarice were granted exemption from internment and were allowed to remain at home categorised as sick and elderly. However, after Clarice's death he was taken into an internment camp where he became so ill that he spent the last eight months of the war in hospital. He was fortunate in that his belongings were safely stored with friends.\n\nHe remained on in Shanghai for a further year, enjoying his garden and studying animals, insects and flowers. Then, in the autumn of 1946 he brought Alice Cowens, the nurse who had cared for his brother in France, out to Shanghai where they were married and left for England. They stayed in London for some months, through the bad winter of 1946-7 and after a short trip around parts of England they decided to retire to Washington DC, partly because so much of the material he had collected during his expeditions in China was kept there but mainly because he thought that it would be better for his health.\n\nThen a problem arose. Though his wife as a British citizen could stay, he had been born in China and the quota for that category to settle in the States was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214444, "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": 302, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "269\n\nare formed in stepped voussoirs. The first floor verandah is divided into bays by rusticated granite pillars which support the entablature and parapet wall to the roof. Ground and first floor verandah balustrades consist of heavy moulded copings on pierced and mortised infill panels with heavy plinths supported on moulded horizontal cornices emphasizing the storey heights. Flights of entrance steps lead up to the ground floor verandahs on both sides. The 1935 addition comprising the front entrance, dining room, and anteroom is built in similar style but is three storeys in height due to the sloping ground. There is a five-centred elliptical arch and a panel with the Royal coat of arms over the main entrance. On the parapet wall above there is a plaque engraved '1935.' Internally there are several interesting fireplace surrounds and period joinery but little else of architectural interest. Evidence in the P.R.O. indicates that the present infill panels to the verandahs may not be original and that the roof originally was pitched with gable ends and had several large chimney stacks projecting above the ridge. Part of the original roof still remains. The Officers' Mess is a Grade 2 historical building.\n\nThe last British Army Units at the barracks were 28 Squadron, the Gurkha Transport Regiment, also 247 Gurkha Signal Squadron. The United Services Recreation Club occupied part of the site, and 10 Intelligence and Security Company occupied the old Colony Club building, having moved in on the handover of their former site, Number 3 Camp, Argyle Street, to the Hong Kong Government in 1977. Prior to occupation by the Gurkhas, the barracks were usually occupied by British infantry battalions. In recent years occupying British units have included the First Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers (1967), First Battalion The Royal Welch Fusiliers (1969/71), First Battalion The Black Watch (1971/73), and the First Battalion The Royal Hampshire Regiment (1974/76). The 25th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, is also recorded at Gun Club in 1948. Some of the earliest troops to be stationed in Kowloon were the 99th Regiment (now the Second Wiltshires) and the Second Royal Welch Fusiliers, some of whom were quartered at Gun Club upon their arrival on January 13, 1899. Other Kowloon based units included the 91st Argylls (1888), First Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry (1892) and the First Battalion the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214453, "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": 311, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "278\n\n1914\n\nGun Club.\n\nHong Kong - Singapore Bttn. RGA at Gun Club with D & E Coys quartered at Whitefield Bks. Four 10 pdr BL mountain guns at Gun Club,\n\n1914-18 First World War. Armed Forces in Hong Kong mobilised.\n\n1920s\n\nc.1925\n\n1935\n\nHong Kong - Singapore Artillery still at Gun Club where these Indian troops trained their mule handlers. Gun Club still unfenced at this time.\n\nSt. Mary's Canossian College built in Austin Road opposite Gun Club.\n\nOfficers' Mess addition built.\n\n1942-45 Japanese Occupation. Equipment abandoned on withdrawal to Hong Kong island. Japanese artillery silenced by British guns on the island.\n\n1947\n\n25 Field Regt. RA at Gun Club.\n\n1949\n\n58 Medium Regt. RA at Gun Club.\n\n1957\n\n32 Medium Regt. RA at Gun Club.\n\n1960-61 Remodelling of some buildings by Leigh & Orange.\n\n1961\n\n34 Light Anti-Aircraft Regt, at Gun Club.\n\n1963\n\n1967\n\n1969\n\n34 LAA Regt. leave Gun Club. Replaced by infantry battalion.\n\n1st Bttn. Lancashire Fusiliers at Gun Club.\n\n4th Bttn. The Regt. of Fusiliers at Gun Club.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214454, "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": 312, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "279\n\n1970\n\n1971\n\n1973\n\n1974\n\n1977\n\n1978\n\n1986\n\n1989\n\n1994\n\n1995\n\n1997\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Welch Fusiliers at Gun Club.\n\nDeath of \"Billy\" Regimental Goat on 8 June. Buried behind Church. (The \"gravestone\" was salvaged, prior to excavation work for the new PLA Hospital, & removed to ASD Property Services Branch Antiquities Store at APB Centre in Cheung Sha Wan. No remains of \"Billy\" were found.)\n\n1st Bttn. The Black Watch at Gun Club.\n\n1st Bttn. The Royal Hampshire Regt. at Gun Club,\n\nAlanbrooke Block (British MQs) & Infants' School (Block 27) demolished. New Gurkha MQs, Temple, Clinic & School build started. 10 Int & Sec Coy moved into Colony Club (Block 36) from Argyle Street Camp.\n\nGurkha Transport Regt. & Gurkha Signals moved into Gun Club from Shamshuipo Camp. Victoria Junior School moved over from Victoria Barracks.\n\nNew Classroom built at Gun Club Primary School. Skeleton said to date from Japanese occupation unearthed during excavations.\n\nSevere flooding on May 2 to MT compound causing considerable damage to vehicles, buildings and equipment. Compound again flooded on May 20 during Typhoon Brenda.\n\nColony Club (Block 36), St. Eligius' Church, and the old gun shed (Block 29) demolished to make way for the new military hospital. Banyan trees transplanted to elsewhere in the barracks also to the new Kowloon Walled City Park.\n\nBarracks vacated by the British Army and handed over to Hong Kong Government.\n\nBarracks occupied by People's Liberation Army following handover of Hong Kong to China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214515, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "342\n\noccupation, from 1889 to 1930. I found the exhibits and many photographs more appealing than some of the captions (memories of the \"years of pain\" etc).\n\nMost of the rest of the interesting parts of the island are to the left of the ferry pier. The first attraction is the Ching naval barracks, beautifully restored and now looking as splendid as it must have done when it was first built. It is reputed to be the best (or only) example of its kind in China. Looking rather familiar in its design - it is built around three consecutive courtyards stretching back from the main entrance - one would be forgiven for thinking it was in fact a large temple, with its colonnades and red painted columns. But the naval barracks it certainly was, even though it was relegated to be the naval canteen during the period of British occupation. The whole complex is now open to the public as a museum; exhibits include a number of guns and a large model of a battle between the Chinese and Japanese navies. This latter is rather a generous gesture, given that the entire western-built Chinese navy was destroyed by the Japanese in 1894/95. Resurgence is evident, however, as plastic construction kits of today's Chinese navy can be purchased throughout the museum.\n\nLeaving the waterfront after the Chinese barracks one finds a dusty road on which stand a number of houses, again in good repair and apparently used. Standing proudly by itself is the Masonic Hall, now emblazoned with a red star in place of the masons' square and compasses. In the museum there was for sale a fat (324 pages!) little book in Chinese all about the British occupation. I bought a copy for RMB 10, not so that I could read it, unfortunately, but because it contained three contemporary maps of the island in English. These showed that the other houses around might have included the Surgeon Commander's Residence, the Coal Contractor's Residence and the Accountant Clerk's Residence. Exact identification proved difficult as some of the roads and paths had moved from their original positions.\n\nMoving towards the west we found what must have been the cemetery, but it was clear that nobody was welcome to enter - the gates were well locked and the walls were high. Peering through the cracks did not reveal any remains of gravestones. Perhaps these had fallen victim to the enthusiasm of the Cultural Revolution, along with the two churches, of which there was no trace either.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214556, "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": 414, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "383\n\nMONUMENT\n\nTO THE WESTMORELAND REGIMENT THE 55TH REGIMENT OF FOOT\n\nIN\n\nDINGHAI CITY ON ZHOUSHAN ISLAND\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nIn October 1998 the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society organised a visit for members to Ningbo [Ningpo] and Zhoushan Island [Chusan Island] off the East coast of China in the archipelago of the same name. The object of the visit to Dinghai, the county capital of the archipelago, was to try and follow the course of the British military campaign there during the First and Second China Wars, the First being the so-called Opium War of 1840-1842 and the Second, the Arrow War of 1856-1860, and see if any monuments to the British victory and subsequent occupation remained. In particular we were looking for the military cemetery and tombstones.\n\nThe Chinese guide who met us in Ningbo and who was to accompany us to Dinghai was most doubtful about our mission. We did not think she was even aware that the British Army had been on Zhoushan 150 years ago. However by the time our ferry docked at Dinghai, maps relating to the campaign, which had been brought along with us, had been studied in detail, together with an account by the Reverend Wright.\n\nIn Dinghai our first call was at the local museum where we collected the Curator. We were most fortunate in that he was interested in the China Wars, and not only knew the accounts - albeit from the Chinese point of view - but was able to lead us to the sites of action, and to the one remaining monument to the British.\n\nDuring the two China Wars Zhoushan had its moments of glory in history after which both conflicts gradually faded from both British national and Chinese local memories. Between the 5th of July 1840 when the city of Dinghai fell before a British attack for the first time, and the 5th of June 1846 when the British restored Zhoushan to the Chinese, the island was ruled twice by the British with its claim to fame as the first Chinese territory ever to be occupied and controlled", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214557, "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": 415, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "384\n\nby the British. By the turn of the century folk memory in Zhoushan itself of the battles and occupation by the British had disappeared much as it has today in Weihai in Shandong province, which had been a British naval base, with a colonial governor, leased at the same time as the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1898 and held until handed back to China in 1931,\n\nThe British captured and occupied Zhoushan on two separate occasions during the First Opium War. The first occupation was short and brutal, ending with an agreement ceding Hong Kong to the British, the reopening of Guangzhou (Canton) to foreigners for trade and an indemnity in exchange for the restoration to the Chinese of Zhoushan. Both sides promptly repudiated the agreement but not before Zhoushan had been handed back. The Chinese commissioner, Qi Shan was recalled to Beijing (Peking) in chains and charged with treason having surrendered Chinese soil.\n\nThe War restarted some six months after the first retrocession by the British and the city of Dinghai was once more taken. The second occupation of nearly four years was longer but much more amicable on both the British and Chinese sides. The British appear to have failed, intentionally or otherwise, to extend their control far beyond the city of Dinghai and were at the mercy of the local Chinese tradesmen who controlled the victuals required to maintain the British occupation forces. This, however, does not appear to have led to trouble as doubtless the local Chinese were comparatively well paid for their provisions.\n\nOnce the third and final British occupation ended, that is after the Second China War in 1860, there would appear to have been neither routine British consular presence on Zhoushan nor representatives of the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs on Zhoushan. These were stationed in Ningbo, the city on the mainland a mere couple of hours sailing away. However, there was a lighthouse on Zhoushan run by westerners of the Chinese Maritime Customs though this would seem again to have been directed from Ningbo, and at one stage there was a small American Christian missionary presence contrary to official agreements between the Chinese and Western nations, as well as a Lazarus Mission of Roman Catholics; in practice no Christian missionary presence on the archipelago had been authorised by official agreements.", "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": 214559, "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": 417, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "386\n\nshould have taken Zhoushan Island rather than, to quote Palmerston's scathing words, 'the barren rock' of Hong Kong which would have undoubtedly altered the course of history and British relations with China in the 20th century.\n\nThe Westmoreland Regiment,\" part of a larger British expeditionary force, therefore returned to Zhoushan Island after the Treaty had been signed and remained on until 1844. A monument was raised in Dinghai dedicated to the few from the ranks who had been killed in action and the many who during the occupation had died of diseases so prevalent there. An annex to a report written probably in the 1880s provides us with the wording on the monument as well as a second annex describes the wording on a separate monument dedicated to Captain Colin Campbell of the Westmoreland Regiment who died at Zhoushan on the 29th May 1842 of a wound received in action at Zhapu [Chapu].vii\n\nThe wording on the main monument read:\n\nSacred\n\nto The Memory of\n\n11 Sergeants, 13 Corporals, 4 Drummers,\n\nand 403 Privates\n\nof H.M. 55th Regt\n\nwho were killed in action\n\nor died from disease\n\nwhile serving in China\n\nfrom the 14th July 1841\n\nto the 22nd February 1844", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214562, "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": 420, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "389\n\nI append a copy of the inscriptions on the two monuments in question with a list of the other headstones in the same locality which may possibly prove useful for future reference.\n\nAppended to the report was a copy of a list of gravestones within the British cemetery in Dinghai also recorded during the visit of the individual who wrote the report. It came as somewhat of a surprise to us to note the number of graves of wives and children of British soldiers as we had assumed that during the two short assaults on Zhoushan in 1842 and 1857, and the several years of occupation British soldiers were without their dependants, because of the remoteness of China from the more permanent British bases.\n\nList of Monuments in British Graveyard\n\nat Chusan\n\n1. Monument to 55th Regt.\n\n2. Captain Colin Campbell\n\n3. Commander Harmer, H.M.S. Driver\n\n4. Eliza Woods and infant son wife of Sergeant Woods.\n\n5. Captain Hopton Steward of\n\nix Regt. Madras Native Infantry.\n\n6. Wife of Quarter Master Perl Royal Irish Regiment.\n\n7. Corporal M. Gleeson 98th Regt.\n\n8. Sergt. Blake, 98th Regt.\n\n9. Infant daughter of Sergt. Cobden\n\n10. Mrs. Gregory, wife of Lieut Colonel Gregory 98th Regt.\n\nPage 420\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214570, "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": 428, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "397\n\nas, post 1945.\n\nOne would expect, bearing in mind that many of Hong Kong's records were destroyed during the Japanese occupation (1941-1945), that these last two would be the easiest of the seven to trace. The help of the staff of the Urban Services Department was again sought. They searched the registers of the Jewish and Muslim Cemeteries, and further searches were again made in the Hong Kong Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery. But still we were unable to locate the two missing graves. A search was also made by Mr Derek Cheng, cemetery attendant at the Stanley Cemetery, but without success.\n\nIn addition a search was made in the Government Public Records Office, at Kwun Tong, for the birth certificates of Knox and Moss. Again we were unsuccessful. A discussion was also held with an Immigration Department Officer in the Government Births and Deaths Registry. He informed me that unless more information could be obtained, including places of death (for example a hospital), it was extremely unlikely that the death certificates of the two could be traced. Search fees of HK$140.00 for the first and HK$680.00 for a second more general search would be charged for each person. This information has been passed back through BACSA to the relatives.\n\nThe seven dead persons were all British and it is therefore unlikely that they would have been buried in the delightful little Chiu Yuen (meaning bright and faraway) Eurasian Cemetery, on Hong Kong Island, or in one of the many Chinese cemeteries. Although cremation was rare until more recently (in 1958/59 only 1.65 per cent of corpses in Hong Kong were cremated1), it is just possible these two dead persons' bodies were disposed of in this way. Their ashes could have been scattered (very few are in Hong Kong) or placed in an urn, in a niche, in a columbarium. It is even more unlikely that the bones of these persons, being Europeans, would be placed in an ossuary. Again, it is unlikely that either of the two would have been buried on the China Mainland (although Moss, having died 'post 1945, could have been) after the People's Republic Government came to power in 1949.\n\nIt should be mentioned that all four graves that we found were located in pleasant surroundings close to, or under trees. Again the two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214623, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "2\n\nof the lower Pearl River Estuary. By AD 331, when the County of Tung Kuan was established, the then Salt Intendant certainly had his yamen (official residence and office) at Nam Tau. Nam Tau became the new county seat in that year, and the then Salt Intendant was promoted to County Magistrate, and the old Salt Monopoly yamen was upgraded to become the new County Magistrate's yamen, with a new yamen thereafter built for the incoming Salt Intendant. These early references also do not speak of Kowloon City specifically, but it is very likely that, with the Salt Intendancy headquarters so close, the salt-fields at Kowloon City were already then in full operation, probably with a Sub-Intendant in charge there, and it is likely that this was so from Nanyueh times.\n\nAt some date between 331 and 1163 the Tung Kuan Salt Intendancy at Nam Tau was split into four, with one of the new Salt Intendants stationed at Kowloon City (then called Kwun Fu Cheung, \"Rich Official Salt-fields\"). The most likely period for this development (which was associated with an attempt to increase revenue from the Salt Monopoly in Kwangtung) is the tenth century, when again Kwangtung formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanhan (907-979); considerable amounts of Nanhan pottery have been found in the general Kowloon City area, suggesting that this was a place of some significance then. By the date of this split of the Salt Intendancy there can be no doubt that Kowloon City was an important Salt Monopoly centre. In 1163 the Kwun Fu Cheung Salt Intendancy yamen was moved to Tip Fuk (Tiefu) on Mirs Bay, where it stayed for a few decades — perhaps a hundred years — before returning to Kowloon City.\n\nIn or shortly before 1293, the Kwun Fu Salt Intendancy was amalgamated with the Salt Intendancy headquartered at Wong Tin outside Sai Heung (Xixiang), a little to the north of Nam Tau, and the old Kowloon City Salt Intendant's yamen (which was a walled compound) became the yamen for a new County Sub-Magistracy then formed. This Sub-Magistracy was upgraded in 1370, and moved to Chek Mei Village outside Sham Chun (Shenzhen) in that year; it was moved back to Kowloon City in 1841, together with the yamen of the local Military Commander, which had previously been at Tai Pang (Dapeng) on Mirs Bay, to bring the Sub-Magistrate and Commander closer to the anticipated problems arising from the British occupation of Hong Kong. The walls of Kowloon City, which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214741, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "120\n\nexception was the Chinese translation of Walter Easey's Hong Kong Today published in 1977 (Easey, 1977).\n\nThe last seven years of the so-called \"transition period,\" i.e. the 13 years from the 1984 Sino-British Agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 witnessed another boom in literary output related to the fall of the Colony to the Japanese and its aftermath. The first work was Bruce's Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers of 1991 (Bruce, 1991). The second work was Rollo's The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong (Rollo, 1992). Next came a Chinese work on the communist guerrillas that operated in occupied Hong Kong, Tsui's Partisan Activities in Hong Kong (Tsui, 1993), published in 1993. The following year saw the work of Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: the Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese (Wright-Nooth, 1994). In 1995, two more Chinese works appeared, Ko and Tong's Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period (Ko and Tong, 1995) and Tse's The Fall of Hong Kong (Tse, 1995). Ruins of War; a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, written by Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996), was the major last work of this period. The publications in this period are generally less restrictive than earlier works in that they (a) give due credit to the Chinese defenders in the Battle and communist partisans, with their base in Sai Kung, New Territories, during the occupation; (b) spell out the potential and actual contribution of Chinese soldiers in the Colony; and (c) give sympathetic consideration to the Chinese civilians. The same is true of general history books on Hong Kong such as Cameron (Cameron 1991), Welsh (1997), Morris (1997) and Chan (1990).\n\nChurchill's Wisdom of Defending Hong Kong in Retrospect\n\nThe recurrent theme of unofficial publications is that the fall of Hong Kong was inevitable and its belated reinforcement by the two Canadian battalions was pointless. I would suggest that in this regard a more comprehensive view of the battle requires an appreciation of the post-war history of British Hong Kong. The books referred to above have not discussed the political consequence of not fighting an impossible battle.\n\nOne may speculate that had the British Administration given up the Colony without a fight, it would have lost the Colony forever. The", "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": 214756, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "135\n\nSupplement, 29 January 1948; A Record of the Actions of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps in the Battle of Hong Kong December, 1941 (1953). For the official Hong Kong account of the surrender, see Hong Kong Government (1948).\n\n3 The literature referred to in this section is not exhaustive and focuses on books and reports only. English and Chinese newspapers and periodicals from time to time carry articles on the Battle. Post-war annals of universities, university halls and secondary schools in Hong Kong are also a good source of materials about the Battle. There are also a number of novels on war events,\n\n+ The emphasis is placed on attacking the enemies' \"line of least resistance\" or \"line of least expectation\".\n\n5 As quoted in Ko and Wordie (1996), p.18.\n\n\"They were influenced by the views of Air Chief Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British Commander-in-Chief in the Far East.\n\n7 During the initial stage of the Battle, BBC broadcasts (Orwell, 1987) placed high hopes on the availability of Chinese forces in the vicinity of Hong Kong. Such forces were never to come.\n\nLiddell Hart (1999): footnote at 219.\n\n\"Colonel Hewitt is the author of a number of books on the Battle and Japanese occupation of the Colony.\n\n10 The title of the book is a misnomer as the police force obtained the royal title only in the late 1960s.\n\nBlackburn gave an account of the anarchic situation of Hong Kong shortly before the surrender (Blackburn 1989).\n\n12 On 23 October 1937, the Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee considered re-fortification or demilitarisation of Hong Kong, assuming that it took 90 days for the British fleet to relieve Hong Kong. Rollo (1992): 113. According to Aldrich, the British Chiefs of Staff considered the abandonment of Shanghai and demilitarisation of Hong Kong to avoid confrontation with Japan. Aldrich (1993): 261.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214836, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "218\n\nof personal behaviour. One such was Brigadier Colin Campbell of the 98th Regiment, afterwards Field-Marshal Lord Clyde. He had been present at the capture of Chin-Kiang-Foo in 1842, but as he explained in a letter sent to a female enquirer had not taken any loot - the Indian word for plunder - \"so that I have nothing of that kind, to which so many in the expedition helped themselves so bountifully at Chin-Kiang-Foo and near Nanking.”27\n\n27 Admitting to an equally strong desire, he said he had foreseen what he called \"the certainty of having to punish others for it if the War had continued,\" and this had dissuaded him from helping himself to private property. However, he added, he would have had no such scruples were he been able to loot an imperial palace.\n\n28\n\nCampbell had military and civil charge of Chusan during the final years of its occupation after the Peace, and the Chinese Commissioners who came to take it back from the British in 1846 lauded his administration of the island. Their words, in Gutzlaff's translation, are worthy of repetition here, as showing the calibre of the man and his lofty spirit:\n\nWhilst observing and maintaining the treaty, you behaved with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality towards our own people, and restrained by laws and regulations the military of your honourable country. The sepoys, to the number of several hundreds, who were quartered in the city and mixed with the Chinese, lived with them on the best understanding, and no instance of insult or aggression ever received. The European soldiers stayed with you, the Honourable Brigadier, outside the walls; and you, the Honourable Brigadier, kept them under such strict control, that they never ill-treated or annoyed the inhabitants.29\n\nCampbell's biographer writes: \"His principle was to leave the inhabitants as much as possible to themselves. He never interfered with their concerns or customs, unless called upon to arbitrate in matters which the headmen of the district were unable to settle.\" Campbell was equally zealous in keeping away the Chinese mandarins from the mainland who sometimes sought to exercise their authority there and were arrested when they crossed over.\n\n30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214999, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "51\n\nyoung for demobilisation, he volunteered to join the HQ of the CLC instead of serving with the Army of Occupation of the Rhine, and served with them until being demobilised. In February 1920 he volunteered for repatriation duty and from Le Havre assisted to escort 1000 labourers on the S.S. Melita to St John's, Newfoundland, a voyage lasting five days. Seven days journey by Canadian Pacific Railways took them to Vancouver City and then by ferry to the quarantine station at William Head on Vancouver Island, where they were joined by another 5000 coolies who were also awaiting repatriation. After quarantine, with 12 British officers and other ranks, 4730 coolies sailed on the M. S. Dollar to Qingdao, a crossing of twenty-one days, where the coolies were demobilised. Mellor then sailed via Shanghai, Hong Kong [staying two months], the Suez Canal to London, where he was demobilised in late 1921.\n\nAgain, a further confusion in these figures of those who died arises, as, according to a list of names provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, of those labourers who have graves, world-wide, the number buried is 1952. Their list also includes, separately, names and graves of non-nationals [i.e. Brits, etc.] who were either serving with or were attached to the CLC from other regiments and these totalled 58. A total of 191 Chinese from the Corps served later with the Slavo-British Legion in Northern Russia in 1920. Between March and December 1919, 50,861 labourers were repatriated with shipments continuing for several more years. About 60 men remained behind in France to carve inscriptions on the tombstones of their dead fellow workers, and this may explain why some of the characters on the stones are unusual, if not incorrect. We understand that headstones are today replaced at fairly frequent intervals providing an enduring picture of well-cared for military cemeteries. The stones are produced nowadays in France by a team working for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission [CWGC] using automatic laser guided tools. This means that the Chinese characters are taken from identical templates which may explain why the character that we saw for the surname Liu has two different forms, each of which is identically turned out on headstones but without any apparent reason for the use of the popular version on some and the obscure version on many more. According to the CWGC a typical headstone would bear one of five phrases engraved both in Chinese and English, the name of the corps, number and date of death in English and the name and province of the casualty in Chinese. We only", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215198, "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": 294, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "258\n\nFrom 1964, she has been a full-time writer of autobiography/history, fiction, and sociopolitical essays/written testimonies. She once said: 'I write as an Asian, with all the pent-up emotions of my people. What I say will annoy many people who prefer the more conventional myths brought back by writers on the Orient. All I can say is that I try to tell the truth. Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.' She was acquainted with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. She presently lives with Vincent in Lausanne, Switzerland and is also known as Elizabeth C.K. Comber.\n\nHan Suyin and her husband with Zhou Enlai, 19708\n\nJan Morrison was born in May 1913 and was the son of the well-known Australian doctor and journalist (first Peking correspondent for The Times of London, 1897-1912) George Ernest Morrison (1862-1920). He was schooled at Winchester, England and was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. After going down from Cambridge, he became Professor of English at the Imperial University of Hokkaido, Sapporo.\n\nHe visited China in 1937, for the first time, to 'watch the Japanese occupation of Tientsin and the invasion of north China.' Later that year he became private secretary to the newly appointed British Ambassador to Japan, in Kyoto. In 1939, he went to Shanghai and became the representative in China of The British and Chinese Corporation, a London financial house. He traveled extensively throughout China for the next two years.\n\nHe arrived in Singapore in October 1941 and became deputy director of the Far Eastern Bureau of the (U.K.) Ministry of Information.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215277, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "2\n\nThere is one exception to these generalisations, a deviant case which has never been analysed by the economists who deplore the underdevelopment of the colonial empire. The amazing economic growth of Hong Kong since its liberation from the Japanese occupation in 1945 is well known, but it is widely assumed that before the war the Hong Kong economy was almost entirely based upon the entrepôt trade transporting goods to and from China and that its transformation from a trading mart to a manufacturing centre began with the post-war arrival of industrialists from Shanghai fleeing from the chaos of China's civil war. In fact, the development of industry had begun in the nineteenth century and by 1939 Hong Kong had built up a flourishing export trade in manufactured goods to China and neighbouring Asian countries and was even successfully competing with British firms in a few items in the British home market.\n\nThe growth of Hong Kong industry was accelerated in the 1930s by decisions taken at the Imperial Economic Conference which met at Ottawa in August 1932. The conference was called to find ways of combating the worldwide economic depression by stimulating trade between the countries of the empire after the British government had decided to abandon its long-standing commitment to free trade and to impose a ten per cent tariff on foreign imports. The conference was mainly occupied with bargaining between Britain and the dominions over the terms on which agricultural products from the dominions would enter the British market and the access of British manufactured goods to the dominions.\n\nThe ministers meeting at Ottawa also decided to impose stringent restrictions by tariffs and specific duties on imports of textiles and other goods from Japan which were beginning to penetrate empire markets, displacing British and Canadian manufactures. Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong took advantage of this attempt to exclude Japanese goods from dominion and colonial markets to export large quantities of cheap footwear and textiles to the empire. This provoked indignant complaints from industrialists in Britain and Canada who demanded that restrictions should be placed on the supercompetitive Hong Kong manufactures.\n\nHong Kong's successful penetration of empire markets forced the British government for the first time to consider what its policy should be towards the industrial development of the colonial empire. Two interdepartmental committees of civil servants were set up in 1933 and 1937, but no authoritative decision was reached by the cabinet before the outbreak of war in 1939. Officials at the Colonial Office defended the right of the colonies to diversify their economies by moving into manufacturing, but the Board of Trade and the Treasury were generally unenthusiastic about such schemes where they might result in a reduction of British exports.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215518, "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": 295, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "245\n\nVictoria is increasing rapidly in size, and the Happy Valley will soon be within the municipal boundaries. The time must come when the existing Cemeteries will be closed, and the dead taken elsewhere for burial. The Protestant Cemetery is now nearly full, and every little corner is being made use of...29\n\nA soldier also wrote home about the cemetery:\n\n[Happy Valley] is crammed with the graves of Europeans who have succumbed to the diseases of the unhealthiest country in the world. The graves of the soldiers are numbered. And when the last one was buried on his grave was 5373, showing that that number had died since the city was garrisoned by the British...30\n\nDespite what had been written in the mid 19th century, new burials were and still are carried out in the cemetery till this day - almost one and a half century later.\n\nEarly Burial Grounds in Stanley and West Point\n\nThe cemetery in Stanley,31 renamed Stanley Military Cemetery after the Second World War, was another burial ground erected in the early days of British rule. The area was the site of early military barracks. Although burials can be traced back to 1843, no mention of the cemetery has been found in any of the examined records, nor is it depicted on Lieutenant T.B. Collinson's map and sketch prepared in 1846. One source suggests that the cemetery was opened on 21st July 1843.33 It may be possible that servicemen and families were buried in that area, but the cemetery was not designated until later.34 The use of this cemetery was apparently discontinued after 1870, but it was re-opened during the Japanese occupation period for the burial of civilian internees. After the war, many of the servicemen who died in the battle were re-buried in the cemetery. No new burials have taken place there since the war.\n\nSimilarly, West Point, another barrack area3 in the early days, was also the site of a burial ground in the early 1840s. It is recorded that the Pro-Prefect Father Navarro forwarded on 26th February 1843 a petition for another burial site at West Point for the troops, which was granted on 3rd March the same year.36 However, no further information", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215575, "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": 352, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "302\n\nDepartment opined - sincerely - to the author that lighthouse keepership had become a kind of Eurasian tradition. They had developed the expertise and took pride in this. One can see, looking in Government staff lists, that lighthouse keepers in the 1950s and '60s usually had English names. But they were generally Eurasians.\n\nThey are still talked about by those who remember them. In fact the eccentricities (if they may be called that) of some of the old timers are recalled with affection (Rull; 1999). When on shore leave the Brown Brothers (Henry and Richard) would go fishing. Marine Department staff used to laugh and say it was because they found, after working in an isolated lighthouse for so long, that the \"hubbub\" at home was just too much to bear.\n\nTheir grandfather was a Danish mariner named Bruhn, although the family was of German stock with the spelling Braune (commonly spelt Braun). It is not known when the family changed its name to the English Brown. Grandfather travelled in and around China and lived for a time at the old treaty port of Amoy (now called Xiamen). It was a large family, generally tall, and several of the children were educated at Diocesan Boys or Diocesan Girls schools in Hong Kong. Most family members have now emigrated to Britain, Canada or Australia.\n\nHenry (born in 1898) was a big man in more ways than one. He liked double-breasted suits and bow ties. He enjoyed parties, telling jokes and drinking with friends - although not to excess. He made up for his time at Waglan when on shore leave. Both brothers liked fishing and shooting. Richard (born in 1896), who had lost fingers in an accident, was the quiet one. Both used to talk to family members about Waglan and of having to be hauled up in a basket in bad weather. One of the Brown brothers acted for a time, in the mid-1950s, managing the Lighthouse Section until the post of Superintendent of Lights was filled in March 1957 by Terrence Coughtney who was posted from Sarawak (Lack; 1999). Because the Brown family was of Danish nationality, and Denmark was not technically at war with Japan, the Brown brothers were not interned during the Japanese occupation.\n\nAnother colourful character, who served as a lighthouse keeper starting in 1937, was Charles Beatty Allenby Haig Thirlwell. With three of his four given names taken from surnames of two famous British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215713, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "FROM THE HON. EDITOR\n\nI have been receiving a relatively large amount of material over the last couple of years and Council has therefore authorised me to continue producing Journals which significantly exceed the '200 page' rule, in order that publication of accepted submissions is not overly delayed. At 532 pages, therefore, this Volume, No. 42 is another bumper effort.\n\nThere are 11 contributions in the ARTICLES section, which must be something of a record.\n\nAndrew Abraham has provided a most scholarly paper on the pros and cons of the transfer of the Straits Settlements from the jurisdiction of the Indian Government to the Colonial Office in 1867.\n\nContinuing our review of the Battle of Hong Kong during World War II, there are contributions from Chohong Choi and Anne Ozorio. The former rehearses Allied thinking on an invasion of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong and possibly the Chinese hinterland behind it, which area might then have been used as a base from which to bomb Japan. Chohong then discusses, somewhat novelly, the challenges to such an invasion from the weather. Anne Ozorio's paper shows that, contrary to popular belief, the British military were very much prepared for an attack on Hong Kong by the Japanese - in terms of continuing intelligence gathering and covert resistance during the occupation - and that they were very active in China until the end of hostilities.\n\nOur man in Bondi, former President, James Hayes, shares with us his experiences of Chinese ceremonial occasions and the considerable etiquette and pomp that go with them.\n\nLawrence Lai et al. reports on a survey of the World War II military installations on Devil's Peak, Hong Kong.\n\nI have reproduced a very pleasant piece from Eve Lam of TVB On HKBRAS which centres on the 40th Anniversary Celebration Conference held in December, 2000 at the University of Hong Kong.\n\nLauren Pfister's account of the life of Ch'ëa Kam-kwong (1800-\n\niii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215881, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "113\n\nto be shown in government survey plans, were surveyed and shown in Figure 4:\n\n(a) a circular pill box (a British \"tett turret\" or a 1.3mm light Japanese AA gun position (United States War Department 1944: pp. 110-116) in the proper of the battery site [and there is another similar structure to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, to the north of (d) below];\n\n(b) two iron rings fixed to the ground of the battery site;\n\n(c) a pennant holder behind a rock of the battery site;\n\n(d) a pillbox built of stones on a rock to the east of Lord Wilson Trail, which is annotated as a rock outcrop in a 1964 1:600 government survey plan (Figure 7). The ruins of a two-storey communication centre can still be found to the southeast of Gough Battery; and\n\n(e) a number of foxholes dug into the slopes below the pillbox (and above the ruins of the communication centre referred to in (d) above) were exposed after a hill fire in autumn 2002. Like the tunnels found elsewhere in the area, it is possible that these foxholes were also constructed during the Japanese occupation. (Figure 8).\n\nRemarks\n\nThe key structures on Devil's Peak have a history of one century or nearly so, and are, by urban Hong Kong standards, extremely old. Wild vegetation has colonised large tracts of the sites since their abandonment by the military. The humid climate of Hong Kong has added to the weathering and erosion process that compromises the integrity of the ruins. Systematic removal of the roofs of disused military structures for internal security and squatter control purposes as well as scavenging have also contributed to the demise of the sites.\n\nHowever, it is careless and deliberate human action facilitated by the good system of footpaths left behind intact and upgraded from time to time that has ruined the sites the most. Littering, the careless filming gang fighting movies, and mosquitoes that breed in water containers used by unauthorised gardeners may be regarded as mere nuisances.\n\nof\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215929, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "162\n\nquite early on to professional military strategists. War, when it came to Hong Kong, would have to be waged by means other than conventional warfare. Realistically, occupation would be a foregone conclusion: the challenge was to struggle on by covert means and to develop some resistance mechanism. In short, a new concept of waging war, based on intelligence and action behind enemy lines.\n\nMilitary intelligence\n\nThree years after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, [Hon. Ed. - I find it difficult to see how Japan's unprovoked occupation of large parts of China and the atrocities committed by its army can be termed a 'war.'] the British Army, Navy and Air Force created a 'Far East Combined Bureau.' It operated openly, employed no agents and depended on information volunteered by customs officials, commercial travellers and the like. Its offices, based within the Naval Dockyard compound, discouraged visits from casual informants, and much of its work involved monitoring personal reports from China sent by courier, rather than proactive intelligence gathering. Naval Intelligence provided support and maintained a signals station on Stonecutters Island for transmitting information to Singapore. GE Grimsdale, later to become Major General, joined the FECB in its early days. One of his earliest recommendations on curbing Japanese espionage in Hong Kong was to suggest that tourists be banned from using cameras! Later he was to acknowledge that espionage was harmless in a place like Hong Kong where defences were open and unsophisticated - one snatched photo of a ship leaving the naval dockyard revealed less than its official description in Jane's Fighting Ships.\" In any case, Japanese had been known to go to Kelly and Walsh, the booksellers in Central District, to find maps better than their standard issue 1:20,000 series.\n\nIn January 1937, Capt. Charles Ralph Boxer, of the Lincolnshire Regiment arrived in Hong Kong. Everything about Boxer contrasted strongly with the stereotype of a colonial in the Far East. Although he came from a family of military men, he was an unconventional individualist. Moreover, he was a scholar, who spoke fluent, literary Japanese, studying Japanese history and culture to the extent that he was welcomed in some of the most influential Japanese social circles. After the war, these values would pit him against bigots for whom any sympathy for the Japanese was anathema. But pre-war, he represented", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215940, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "173\n\nHong Kong had symbolic meaning: he could not be seen to desert until the last minute. The drama of his escape with such a show of force and British aid was a clear and explicit political statement. The KMT had their own escape network but this particular escape was a means of showing that the British, too, had a credible system for dealing with the exigencies of occupation.\n\n+ XY\n\nMany reasons were circulated at the time to explain the escape. A smokescreen had to be concocted to disguise whatever the true purpose of the mission might have been. Much has been made of the story of a plot by the triads to massacre thousands of Europeans in Hong Kong during the Battle. The source of this story was GS Shaftain, head of Criminal Intelligence in the Police Force. He said an informant told him of the plot on 11th December to activate two days later. He then claimed that he assembled hundreds of triads leaders in a hotel, where, through the intervention of a senior Shanghai triads leader, they were persuaded to desist, in the nick of time, on payment of a large bribe. This story passed unquestioned and lauded by the kind of European whose racial stereotypes assumed that Chinese were basically untrustworthy criminals, motivated only for money. (Shaftain claimed the triads leaders stole the silverware from the hotel). However, it is, as even Shaftain himself was to admit 'an implausible and fantastic story'. As a police officer, he would have known that the idea of hundreds of triads leaders meekly turning up for a mass meeting in the middle of an invasion was bizarre. The triads were originally political secret societies as well as criminal, and many had strong links and loyalties to the KMT. Indeed, the Nationalists had long been working with the triads sympathetic to themselves against the Wang Ching Wei faction and the triads who supported them. A pragmatic police officer would also have understood the sheer logistics of preparing and indeed calling off such a huge plot in the midst of battle. Certainly there were fifth columnists, but violence towards foreigners was minimal, particularly considering the intensity of anti-foreign feeling and riots during the 1920's and 30's. In any case, the triads rank and file were gainfully employed looting and extorting in the wake of the Japanese advance. The idea seems to have developed because some of the Japanese propaganda leaflets advocated killing white people, but there does not seem to be any evidence that this was taken seriously, except perhaps by the Europeans, aware of being defeated by an enemy who believed in Asia for the Asiatics. Shaftain must have been delighted at the ease with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215945, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "178\n\nClarke resistance circle during the occupation. Another member of the group was Emily Hahn, later the wife of Charles Boxer. Relationships between this left-wing branch of the Guomindang, with their strong Communist connections, and key figures in the British establishment may shed more light on the relations between the British and the Communists.\n\nWhen the War Office authorised the creation of a Chinese Machine Gun Unit, it pondered where the men for this group would come from. Who did they call on for advice? None other than Rewi Alley, the journalist who had lived in Yenan and knew the Chinese Communists well.xxii He even went so far as to suggest that the War Office consult a Communist guerrilla leader from the north on setting up the unit, and recruiting men from China. This was tantamount to establishing, in Hong Kong, a unit of left-influenced fighters. Even more significantly, the unit was designed specifically to be a Chinese unit with minimal British input. The first batch of trainees were supposed to form an elite officer corps in what eventually might be an all-Chinese unit. The War Office was prepared to go along with this idea and detailed Chauvin, who had set up the wireless network, to organise the unit. This was in line with SOE's record of training and arming local men for a resistance and sabotage role, although the details of the training these men received is unknown, and officially they were a 'machine gun company.' By this stage, SOE had two separate guerrilla training units in China itself: the Danish Commando Company staffed by Danish businessmen under cover of Danish neutrality, and another force known as Mission 204, a much larger-scale and better-established organisation created to assist specifically in the Chinese war effort and operate in the hinterland of Shanghai. Chauvin was able to recruit and train fifty men for this Chinese battalion. Whether he used men with Communist leanings or men recruited through his contacts with KMT guerrillas is unknown. Photographs of the passing-out parade of the unit show that they were unusually tall men, possibly northerners. Unfortunately, they graduated from their training barely a week before the Japanese attacked.\n\nJust as war is an extension of politics, so is politics essential for the continuance of war. In a situation like Hong Kong, the political aspects of resistance were even more complex than in other places because of the proximity and the supremacy of China. No amount of intelligence gathering and sabotage skills would have counted without", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215946, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "179\n\npolitical understanding. Boxer's approaches to Chiang Kai Shek came at an opportune time, and might have developed into more, had circumstances so evolved. By spiriting Admiral Chan right from under the noses of the Japanese the British were making a political statement that they, too, could deliver. This was important as the Chinese had perfectly effective escape and intelligence systems of their own: General SK Yee, for example, was able to escape from Apleichau Island, even though the Japanese were almost certainly hot in pursuit and there appeared to be no means of escape for him when he was left behind, believed killed, as the two MTBs flotilla sailed away. Nonetheless to retain their credibility and their claim on Hong Kong, the British had to demonstrate their own ability to create a functional resistance and gain the respect of the Chinese.\n\nBeing realistic about defeat meant that British military strategists could plan pragmatically for occupation and resistance. It was those who clung to colonialist values who could not envisage that there might in fact be quite sophisticated planning behind the scenes. Quietly and unobtrusively, the British developed a comprehensive and effective network ready to activate as soon as the Japanese attacked. They were not \"caught on the hop\" by defeat by any means, nor unprepared. The groundwork was developed and networks in place and in some cases already operating. Support was brokered with the Chinese National Government and also with the Communists, and with the influential left wing faction of the KMT as well. The hinterland behind Hong Kong had been surveyed and alliances were in place to support any resistance in occupied Hong Kong. The British military may have surrendered Hong Kong on Christmas Day, but the next phase, war by other means, was poised and ready to unfold.\n\nChange of direction\n\nJust as refugees had poured into Hong Kong to escape the Japanese conquest of south and central China, refugees began pouring out of Hong Kong within days of the Japanese attack. Throughout January 1942, people were pouring out of Hong Kong by any form of transport they could find: some villagers reported 100 or more passing through each day. At first, the Japanese neither had the inclination to stop them, nor the apparatus in hand to organise an orderly evacuation. Even in POW camps it was easy enough even for men to discreetly remove", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215949, "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": 248, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "182\n\nstatus, since there were 'so many other senior officers working in the area,' and he saw it as ‘axiomatic that all branches of the service will cooperate and pool their information.' The new section was to have 'full authority to control the movements of all Europeans whether military or civil who had escaped.' Having left Hong Kong less than a month earlier, having by his own admission no knowledge of escape and evasion organisations, he was now to command, and to 'have authority to add to his strength such British or Chinese as are available.' The full story of the BAAG is too complex to tell here, but the transition was not seamless. By 16th May 1942, Ride was given the letter he wanted stating 'from the time of escape until they reach Chiyang all escapees of whatever rank and whatever service will come under your command.' This should be made clear to them at first responsibility. xxii This included the men who had spent so long setting up the groundwork, who had met the Ride group and brought them to safety.\n\nAnother even more fundamental change in direction was the change in emphasis from a general resistance function to an organisation primarily for the escape of Prisoners of War, and particularly of Europeans at that. Ride consistently thought in terms of mass escapes from camp, larger scale and more spectacular than the Chan Chak escape. In the summer of 1942, he planned the escape of 500 or more POWs by junk, and as late as September 1943 proposed paying millions to guerrillas to conquer Canton so an airborne assault of paratroopers could descend on Hong Kong to free the POWs.**** The gathering of intelligence and support of other forms of resistance were corollary to this basic function. An analysis of why the escape of POWs became the central focus of British activity in the Hong Kong region when it was not of paramount military strategic value in the overall conduct of war in the theatre is again beyond the scale of this piece. However, it illustrates that the plans British military strategists had developed to challenge Japanese occupation and to continue the struggle by alternative methods had to adapt to new conditions. SOE and SOE related agencies were by no means silenced in China but continued to play a very important role, even around Hong Kong. The chrysalis opened, but what emerged had to shape itself to a new situation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216038, "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": 337, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "271\n\nother smaller temples, some well known, others hardly known at all. These include the conspicuous red-walled Dicang Wang Temple not far from the south-west corner of the city wall; the Doutian Miao and the Xiu Wang Miao, both referred to earlier. All were destroyed during the Taiping occupation, though many were rebuilt during subsequent years only to fall into disuse during the Japanese occupation as well as since 1949. The Jin Shan Temple and the Ganlu Temple today are the premier tourist sites in Zhenjiang, with the Dinghui monastery, though less easily accessible, being a good third.\n\nThere used to be an interesting group of memorial temples on the Ganlu headland [Consular Bluff], a favourite resort for native Chinese picnic parties. One of these shrines was dedicated to Zhu Xi, a Southern Song dynasty neo-Confucian philosopher, born in Anhui in AD 1130, and probably best remembered for his commentary on Confucian classics, with his 'Rituals for Family Life' being influential throughout China as the standard authority consulted by high and low alike. He was the Confucian scholar who, whilst prefect at Zhangzhou in Fujian in 1190, attacked Buddhist and Daoist practices and issued orders laying down punishments for those who disobeyed the rules. Despite this he wrote commentaries on the sacred books of Daoism. He retired in 1196 and after his death four years later was posthumously appointed Chief of the Imperial Tutors with the rank of Lord. He has long been deified, with a portrait installed in a temple in Jiangxi province at an early stage during the twelfth century to encourage sacrifices to him by local scholars and gentlemen.14 He was revered in Confucian temples from about 1250, and during the reign of Kang Xi he was elevated to a position just under the 'Ten Noted Men' [The Ten Disciples of Confucius].\n\n[1824-1890],\n\nAnother shrine was dedicated to Peng Yulin the Chinese admiral in charge of the Yangzi Fleet which operated with success against the Taiping rebels. Peng was remembered by foreigners for his incorruptibility as well as his inability to understand the westerners. During the short French war with China in 1884-5, when in Guangzhou as the Imperial Naval Commissioner sent to organise its defences he proposed sending emissaries to Singapore to poison any French officers who might have been enjoying British hospitality there. Beijing frowned on his plan and he was unable to see why. He was also violently opposed to the introduction of iron-clads into the Chinese navy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216094, "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": 393, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "327\n\nin China. They did not complain. In any case Government did not answer letters written to newspapers but people did not generally criticise Government. That was why, when a column called \"Tiger Talk\" was written by an English solicitor in 1962 and published in the Sunday Tiger Standard, it attracted considerable attention.\n\nThe district of West Point, where legalised brothels for Chinese had been situated up to the mid-1930s, was still an important entertainment district in the mid-1950s, with restaurants with 100 or more Chinese tables capable of seating in excess of 1,200. Sing song girls, the Chinese version of the Japanese geisha, could still be found there.\n\nMy Chinese wife, born in 1936, lived in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. After the War Canadian Sergeant Major John Osborn, who was born in Norfolk, the same county where I was born and raised in England, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. It is the most prestigious British award for gallantry on the field of battle. It was the only such award ever made in the colony.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation my wife recalls seeing arms and legs lying in the streets first thing in the morning. Breakers of the curfew had been mauled by Japanese police dogs. Women did their best to make themselves look old, ugly and undesirable. People wandered the hillsides and seashores as hunters and gatherers looking for anything to eat. Occasionally, human flesh was on sale in butchers' shops, something sometimes denied today. As my wife's family owned a salt-fish shop they were better off than most. They had food and something to barter. My wife and her two sisters survived the occupation although their father never forgave them and his wife for not having a son to \"buy water\" for him at his funeral (Today a symbolic ceremony based on filial piety and the washing of the corpse by the eldest son.).\n\nWhen I arrived in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s conditions had already improved considerably. Although there was rationing still in Britain, you could buy just about anything in Hong Kong - provided you had the money. I stayed together with other government servants in Winner House, a small hotel at North Point, a district sometimes known as Little Shanghai. A number of Fukienese also lived there.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216109, "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": 408, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "342\n\nthey would have provided (had they been left) and for the urban lineage they would have represented. Those wonderful old buildings are no longer with us to provide anchors in times of need.\n\nThey were replaced within a few years by high-rise air-conditioned buildings. Many depend upon artificial lighting and ventilation and have windows which do not open. Today, so many live and work in an artificial atmosphere. This major change led long ago to people discarding shorts and open-necked shirts and wearing two-piece suits and more formal and more uncomfortable clothing. The new lifestyle meant the better off were stepping from their air-conditioned homes, carrying brief cases, into their air-conditioned cars and then being conveyed to their air-conditioned offices.\n\nAt the end of World War Two the Chinese Nationalist Government was waiting in the wings just over the border to take over Hong Kong. But the British beat them to it. If the Americans had had their way, and British rule had been terminated in Hong Kong in 1945 and the place had been returned to China, it is possible to speculate what would have happened. In 1949 Hong Kong, like other big cities in China, would have been taken over by the People's Republic Government. This would have meant that, after 30 or so years of communist rule, Hong Kong would have been as backward economically as the rest of China. There would have been no 'Hong Kong miracle'. After 1978 the Territory would not have been able to form a nucleus for the economic development for the rest of China with its 'Open Door Policy.'\n\nPigeons\n\nUp until 1914 every marine launch of Hong Kong's Water Police (as the Marine Police were known then) took a few pigeons on board. These were used to fly messages back to headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. But in spite of the introduction of radio the pigeons were kept on strength. Members of the force contributed to buy them food. The flock of about 50 birds came to be looked upon much like the Barbary Apes at Gibraltar or the Ravens at the Tower of London. It was said when the pigeons departed from Marine Police Headquarters so would the British from Hong Kong.\n\nThe pigeons disappeared during the Japanese occupation but were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216238, "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": 537, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "471\n\n8 months of their occupation, and their view of their role here, and putting this into a satisfying chronological framework, while at the same time casting light on the internal politics and disputes within the Japanese administration. While not attempting an analysis in depth of the internal bureaucratic structures in place under the Japanese, the book in fact gives a great deal of information on this as well, incidentally showing why the Japanese administration was so grossly ineffective and inefficient in almost everything it undertook. It is also of great value in clarifying the involved and tangled politics among the various parties involved in the restoration of British rule - the Nationalist and Communist Chinese, the British, the Americans, and the Japanese. For the first time, a book puts flesh on the major figures of the Japanese period, especially Governor Isogai, so that they cease to appear as the cardboard cut-outs they have normally been seen as, and can be seen as real people. Much the same goes for the book's excellent delineation of the major Chinese elite figures and the role they played under the Japanese, especially Sir Robert Kotewall and Sir Shouson Chow. Also of the greatest value and interest is the careful discussion of the role and changing attitudes of the Chinese elite to the Japanese and the British (although this could, perhaps, have been still more nuanced than it is), and the detailed, and very satisfying, analysis of exactly how the period of the Japanese Occupation shaped and changed British attitudes to Hong Kong and its citizens in the post-War period. Fascinating stuff, and all of it immensely useful and valuable.\n\nThat is not, however, to say that the book is without flaws. Unfortunately, the first half of the first chapter, and most of the concluding Epilogue chapter, are caricatures. These sections cover Hong Kong in the 1930s, and after 1947. These give a sketch of the British in Hong Kong as lethargic, \"troglodytic,\" stupid, third-rate, racist, status-seeking, arrogant, selfish and self-centred - colonialists in the comic-book tradition, in other words - and assume that, having said so much, little else requires to be said. The account of Governor Grantham and his administration in particular cannot be said to be in any way a well-rounded portrait. Snow seems to have taken the \"Gin and Bridge all day\" description of 1930s Hong Kong at face value, which is a very great pity. There is, of course, some truth in this sketch of the British, as there is in all good caricature, but it is not the truth, but a distortion of the truth. For this reviewer, reading the first Chapter almost led me to give up reading the rest, fearing that the book would be throughout", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216432, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "141\n\nOne such snippet dated 12 May, 1904, described how 'when the Russians withdrew from Wafangtien, contemporaneously with the Japanese advance, bands of Hunhuses throughout Manchuria began to show great activity, especially in the region of Yantai, a station between Mukden and Liaoyang, thus adding enormously to the dangers and preoccupations of the Russians. There were reports that these bands were led by Japanese, which were not improbable, since the Japanese had a perfect right to make use of their hostility to the Russians of the population of Manchuria. At the same time, in all directions, attacks on the railway began, under the direction of officers of the Japanese General Staff. Two such officers had been captured by General Kuropatkin in April and, as there was no doubt as to their mission since they had upon them a large quantity of dynamite, fuses and tools for destroying the line, they were promptly executed.' On the page facing this snippet is a photograph of the decapitation of several Hong Huzi with the caption 'How Russians deal with the Hunhuses who destroy the railway.'\n\nAlthough it does not in any way help clarify the employment of Chinese bandits as irregular troops by the Russians, a British observer writing on the horsemanship of the Cossacks, noted that ‘after a comparatively small force of Japanese cavalry at Sha-ho had acted as a sufficient counter-check to the larger masses of Russian horsemen, the Cossack was deficient in courage and staying power, but was well mounted. There was a long and exposed line of the Manchurian Railway for them to guard, and the Russian cavalry had the Hunhutses [sic] always with them, but these marauders on their diminutive horses should not have been able to ride round the horsemen of the steppes in the manner they seem persistently to have done.'\n\nAlthough captions on photographs of captured Chinese claim they were being executed for espionage, mainly spying for the Japanese, it tended to have been more a matter of individual banditry and any resultant monetary reward rather than prisoners having been 'resistance fighters.'\n\nThere is also a photograph of \"The Head Chief of the Hunhuses.' It shows four Chinese and one Japanese (said to have been an Intelligence Officer, who worked in Newchwang [Niuzhuang] during the Russian occupation as a shoemaker). The central figure is described as 'the chief named Chin, said to be in Japanese employ who is a well-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216486, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "195\n\n-\n\nCornell Plant died at sea shortly before their ship's arrival at Hong Kong. Alice Plant died a day or so later and they were both buried in Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong. This posed the question what happened to the two young Chinese girls? This is partly answered by an extract from a letter written to Cornell's younger brother Charles by J.L. Smith, the British Consul at Ichang, an old friend of Captain and Mrs Plant:\n\nThe reference to the two girls as \"adopted daughters\" is a mistake. The two girls were waifs bought by Mrs Plant a number of years ago and brought up by her as servants in her own house. They were too young to marry and therefore Mrs Plant was taking them home with her, intending to bring them back at the conclusion of her furlough after which she intended to marry them off and give them a small dowry. They are now being sent back from Hong Kong to Miss Moore of the Church of Scotland (Ladies) Mission here: Miss Moore desires to keep them for four or five years in her excellent girls school so that they can get an education after which she will see that they are decently married off or settled down in some occupation in the same way as Mrs Plant would have done. There is a movement on foot amongst friends of Captain and Mrs Plant to raise a sum of money to meet the expenses that will be entailed in connection with the education, etc. of the girls.\n\nIn the event, some $4,000 was raised by the friends and colleagues of Captain and Mrs Plant to educate the two girls and set them up in life. Although the Royal Library of Scotland has some of the letters sent home by Miss Amelia Moore to the Church of Scotland, no mention has yet been found of the two girls and what happened to them.\n\nThe 30 foot granite monument overlooking the gorges put up in memory of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant show the high esteem in which he was held by his friends, his business associates and the Chinese Customs Service. On his death, tributes were received from the representatives of many countries including France, Japan, and the United States of America. More personal were the feelings expressed in \"Plant the Pilot\" a poem written shortly after his death and the inscription on the silver inkwell presented to him by Captain F Scurr, shortly before his final voyage in 1921 as a small memento of many kindnesses while 'dodging the dragon.' It was all summed up in the words of his good friend of over ten years, the British Consul at Ichang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]