[ { "id": 204716, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER \n\nengaged in the lucrative trade drew out of the country large amounts of silver. Lin Tse-hsu, Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan wholeheartedly threw his support to those who memorialized the throne requesting stringent measures to prevent the use of opium within the country, and to cure addicts. Moreover, Lin took direct action and seized caches of opium, 12,000 ounces and 5,000 pipes. As a result of his success in combating opium addiction and forceful condemnation of the sale of the drug he was called to Peking by Emperor Tao-kuang and appointed Imperial Commissioner to examine the opium traffic at Canton. He arrived at the provincial capital in early March, 1839. For several years prior to 1839 nearly 30,000 chests had been imported annually there.\n\nFateful events immediately took form. Lin warned the western merchants of dire results if the iniquitous trade did not cease. His threat was followed by the demand that within three days they offer a bond that no opium would be imported. A counter proposal was made to turn over to Commissioner Lin about 1000 chests of the drug which he summarily rejected. On March 22, he demanded that Lancelot Dent, one of the principal importers be given to Chinese officials as a hostage until all opium was given up. The western merchants insisted that Dent could be surrendered only on condition that his personal safety was guaranteed. The Chinese merchants doing business with foreigners were frightened by the action of their own government. Some of them were deprived of their buttons of rank and two appeared in public with chains around their necks. Under these circumstances the Hong (the association of Chinese merchants trading with the western merchants at Canton) pressed the foreign community to comply with the ultimatum of Lin and deliver up Dent.\n\nIn the midst of this seething situation, on March 24, Captain Charles Elliot, British naval officer and Chief Superintendent and Plenipotentiary of the China Commission arrived from Macao. He entered the foreign compound with great difficulty inasmuch as the river had been blockaded and the streets leading to the foreign section had been barricaded. The predicament of approximately 300 western people seemed most serious since food and water were in short supply and a large encampment of Chinese troops was close at hand. Canton was cut off from formal communications from Macao which was nearly sixty miles distant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205709, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nAs things turned out, Gibb did not return to Hong Kong, and Ng Choy was therefore appointed on a three-year term. This appointment was unfortunately interpreted by some members of the British community as an attempt to create an anti-English party feeling in Hong Kong.\n\nIn May 1880 when one of the magistrates went on leave, the Governor replaced him temporarily by Ng Choy who thus became the first Chinese to hold a senior appointment in the Hong Kong Government. This led to a question in the House of Commons as to why Ng Choy should combine a paid official post with an unofficial seat in the Legislative Council; but by the time these explanations were required the original holder of the post had returned to the Colony.\n\nThe attitude of the British community towards him and the Governor as a result of his appointment to the Legislative Council as well as this parliamentary question must have embarrassed Ng Choy very much. During this time, China having suffered repeated defeats from the hands of foreign powers, there was a movement in China to promote western technology and to modernize China, and any Chinese who had been trained or educated abroad would be welcome back to China. Thus when an invitation came from China for him to serve China, Ng Choy accepted it gladly. He left Hong Kong in 1882 before the expiry of the 3-year term in the Legislative Council, and later sent in his resignation from Tientsin.\n\nNg Choy became Secretary and Legal Adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang, one of the most important Chinese political figures of the time. Now known as Wu Ting-fang, he soon rose to become Chief Director of Railways and later Ambassador to the U.S.A. After the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, he held important appointments respectively as Minister of Judicial Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Financial Affairs. In 1917, when China entered the First World War, he was for a short time nominated as Premier. In 1922 he became Governor of Kwangtung and died the same year in office, soon after General Chan Kwing-ming's revolt in Canton.*\n\n* In his The Chinese (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1909) p. 196, John Stuart Thomson praises Wu and styles him \"the Chesterfield of China in all the graces of speech and manners.\" Ed.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206098, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n173\n\nthe Chinese took place. Where was the island which the Portuguese called Ilha da Veniaga or \"island of trade\" and which was the centre of the foreign trading community? It has been very plausibly argued that it was at Ling Ting the Solitary Island in the estuary, but there is no local tradition or Chinese text confirming it. My own impression of the events is that the Portuguese built their fort in the neighbourhood of Castle Peak Bay and with their superior ships and artillery tried to dominate the foreign trade by controlling the entrance to the Canton estuary and by compelling the ships which put in at any of the natural harbours between Fat T'ong Mun, or at any rate K'ap Shui Mun and T'un Mun, to recognize their suzerainty.\n\nAnother text says: \"T'un Mun had long been the collecting place of foreign trading ships. In the reign of Ching Tê the Feringhis of the west under pretext of sending tribute infested our shores. Their actions were beastly and poisonous. They kidnapped children and ate them etc.\n\nThese two texts are from inscriptions on a temple to a famous civil officer named Wang Hung who organised the attack on the Portuguese fleet and fortress. He was remembered with such gratitude by the local people he protected that he has received minor canonisation and is worshipped in our region. After describing the outrages of the Portuguese the inscription goes on: “All this came to the ears of Wang Hung who was enraged. He raised an army which he commanded personally, risking his life and exerting himself to the utmost. His efforts in conceiving the winning strategy in recruiting local craft and in teaching them to fight were crowned with success. He saw that the foreign boats were big and relied solely on their sails to move about. At that time the south wind was strong and he ordered the wrecks of some foreign ships to be filled with firewood and combustive oil and sent them on fire towards the Portuguese who were burnt or drowned. The people then attacked with a loud shout and gained the victory, totally exterminating their enemies.\" The Topography places the site of this final onslaught at Kau King Shan just above Castle Peak Bay.\n\nThe Portuguese present at this battle were in some eight or ten ships and included Jorge Alvares, the discoverer of T'un Mun,\n\n29 J. M. Braga in Tien Hsia of May 1939,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206208, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO\n\n19\n\nIf the foreigners were surprised at the speed and smooth success of the Taiping operation, they were equally surprised and gratified at the behavior of the revolutionaries as they established themselves in the city. The initial favorable impression created by the Taipings was almost universal, for even those who were most ill-disposed toward the Taiping movement commented charitably at the outset. The principal critic of the Taipings, British Consul Harvey noted initially that the occupying force conducted themselves with \"wonderful moderation.\"4 Harry Parkes, long a detractor of the Taipings, corroborated this evaluation with an account of their entry into the city, noting that:\n\nThe Ningpo rebels have shown the utmost desire to be on friendly terms with foreigners. Outside the south gate, which formed the point of attack, stands the establishment of the Sisters of Charity, which if occupied, would form excellent cover for an assaulting force, as its upper windows command the city walls; yet, although they crouched underneath its enclosure, as they collected for their rush on the gate, they did not trespass for a moment within the premises. Another large Roman Catholic establishment was one of the first buildings they had to pass, as they poured into the city, flushed and excited with their success; but they only stopped to welcome a small knot of foreigners who were standing underneath the porch, and to charge their people to offer them no harm. Roman Catholics and Protestants they hailed indiscriminately as being the same religion and fraternity as themselves....5\n\nParkes also reported that the Taipings invited men of influence in the Chinese community to come forward and serve as magistrates, a policy they had already instituted elsewhere in the province. S. Wells Williams, the historian, also known for his personal animosity toward the Taipings, wrote of the experience of a colleague at Ningpo, a Presbyterian missionary by the name of Rankin, who spoke of \"great interest in the Gospel among some of the villages not far from the city, and (who) says that the rebels have put no hindrance in the way of his work.”\n\nThere seems to have been a great deal of sympathy generated on the part of the foreign community toward the Taipings, at least initially, in response to their positive policies. Taiping", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206283, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nChinese society, were eager customers. Purchased degrees was an easy way to acquire a social status which had previously been reserved for the scholars, government officials and gentry. The account of the Governor's visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878 published in The Hongkong Government Gazette states that \"there were present nearly three hundred influential Chinese residents from all classes of the community. Of those present some fifty or sixty were in their mandarin costumes.\"\n\n**\n\nWhen the second Sino-British War broke out in the late 1850s, the foreign firms at Canton moved down to Hong Kong bringing with them their compradores. This influx was an impetus to the already significant role compradores were assuming as leaders in the Chinese community. The compradores of the old-established Hong Kong firms formed the core of this leadership.\n\nIn the early days of the Colony the two leading foreign firms were Jardine, Matheson and Company and Dent and Company. One would expect, of course, that their compradores would be among the elite of the Chinese community. The earliest compradore of Jardine's that I can definitely identify is Ng Chook alias Ng Choong Foong alias Sooi Tong. At the time of the opening of the Tung Wah Hospital the newspaper account states that he was the oldest man on the committee, although his name does not appear on the official list of committee members. He died some months after the opening. His estate was administered by his son Ng Seng Kee (A), who was living in Shanghai. The first date I find for Ng Chook in Hong Kong is his purchase of the lease of the Central Market in 1848. I do not know if he is connected with Ng Sow and Ng Lok, both compradores originating from Macao, who bought and sold a great deal of real estate from 1842 to 1847. Nor if Ng Wei alias Ng Wing Fui (**) alias Ng Ping Un (e), who was a compradore for Jardines at Foochow in the 1860s and subsequently at Hong Kong, was a near relative of Ng Chook. Ng Wei was a member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee in 1883 and died in 1897 at Canton.\n\nIn 1861, two of the compradores of Dent and Company, the rival of Jardines, provided capital for a significant real estate development in Hong Kong. The large property where Dent and Company had their stables and residences for their Taipans was bought up by Chiu Wing Chuen and Yeong Lan Ko along with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206290, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\nTHE GOVERNMENT SERVANTS GROUP\n\n101\n\nA life-long career by a Chinese in Government service usually would not have provided opportunity for the accumulation of sufficient capital to enable one to enter the élite group. The highest paid positions were the interpreterships, but a Chinese who had sufficient competency in English to be appointed to this position could earn more in the employment of the foreign firms. However, many of the young men who received an English language education, at first in the Mission schools or the Morrison Education Society School and after 1860 at the Government Central School (now Queens College), upon leaving school became interpreters and clerks in Government for several years. But normally they did not make a life career of Government service.\n\nThere were, however, two individuals who appear on our lists who had been employed by the British Government even before its removal to Hong Kong and who continued as Government employees until their retirement. These were Tso Aon and Cheong Assow.\n\nWhen the British established their Government offices in Hong Kong the man who became responsible for all the Chinese staff in Government offices, as well as serving as compradore to the Treasury, was Tso Aon alias Cho Yune Choong alias Cho Wing Chow. His family had lived in Macao for several generations, and in 1834 he entered the service of the British in the office of the Superintendent of Trade. By the time of his removal to Hong Kong he had accumulated enough capital to invest in real estate. When he retired from Government service in 1857 without pension, he lived off the income from real estate, pawn shops and other business ventures. He died in 1874 at Macao, survived by several sons. One of his grandsons was the Rev. Tso See Kai (**) 曹思楷) Vicar of St. Paul's (born 1895, died 1928). Tso Aon's brother, Chow Yik Chong (5) alias Chow Yin Yin alias Chow Yau () alias Chow Kam Ming (alias Chow Wai Chun (R), was a large land owner and capitalist in Macao. He was knighted by the Portuguese Government, made a member of the Macao Legislative Council, and was a leader of the Chinese community in Macao. He died in 1896. His son Tso Seen Wan came", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207344, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "104\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nrecommend that the remedy for Hong Kong destitution be left in the main to private charity and to private effort, but that the Government should do everything in its power to organize by law private charity which may then be supplemented by State aid.25\n\nThe government's main contribution was the burial of defunct paupers and the shipping home of destitute British seamen. As Dr. Eitel concluded in 1880, all that the law offered European destitutes was 'fine or imprisonment, with or without hard labour'.26\n\nThe Europeans who worked as overseers in the dockyards, factories and other industrial enterprises, the ships' captains, mates and engineers, all led more circumspect lives in their Kowloon terraced homes than the soldiers, sailors, and merchant seamen. They looked down on the destitute, improvident, or wandering portion of the European community with all the fierce contempt of the British lower middle classes. Their values were those of the skilled mechanics and clerks of Greenwich, Woolwich, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. Their wives entertained other wives and their families to high tea, the table set with fish-paste sandwiches, jellies, custards and cakes; they attended religious services regularly, though usually at a nonconformist chapel, and if Scots, at the Presbyterian Union Church. Their children went to the Kowloon British School (for foreign children only).27 They looked forward to retirement, a pension, and return to the homeland, having bettered themselves in the colonies. They formed the elite of the European lower classes in Hong Kong; but they were excluded, nonetheless, from the grander world of Taipan, administrator, and professional man.\n\nThe question why lower class Europeans came to, or remained in, Hong Kong is not difficult to answer. Some, such as beachcombers, were at the end of the line, at the end of their tether; they were trapped there (temporarily at least) by poverty, circumstance, and character. Soldiers, sailors and merchant seamen were transients or temporary sojourners; and the decision to come to Hong Kong was made not by them but by their superiors. Inspectors, supervisors and overseers stayed in Hong Kong primarily because most experienced a degree of upward mobility. They formed an intermediary class—an amorphous middling class—between the Chinese masses and the Taipans and officials. In Hong Kong, they were no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. Some, of course,", "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": 207903, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 291, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "276\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIncidentally, the furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon, whose fortunes had fallen on bad times. The Chinese government had seized their property for debt and sold it at public auction.\n\nThe transfer of the proceedings of the Chinese community from the Kung Soh to the Hospital Hall confirmed the suspicion of portions of the foreign community that the Committee of the Hospital was arrogating to itself too much power and was functioning as an unofficial government for the Chinese community. Even before the Hospital building was ready for occupancy, one of the newspapers reporting on a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States, stated that the Board of the Hospital \"appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the Hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some future date\". (Daily Advertiser, 7 Oct. 1871). And indeed there was much more said in the Hong Kong English language press in the ensuing years about these quasi-government functions of the Hospital Committee.\n\nWith the rising tide of criticism against the alleged usurpation of government authority by the Committee of the Hospital, the views and practices of the Magistrates changed regarding the propriety of recognizing any judicial power exercised by the leaders of the Chinese community. In a case heard at Magistrate's Court in 1875, a witness said that when the prisoner beat him, he threatened the prisoner that he would go to Tung Wah Hospital and complain about being duped and beaten. To this the Magistrate asked the witness, \n\nwhy he should go to Tung Wah Hospital to complain, explaining to him that this was a British Colony, and the Tung Wah had no powers. This was a British Colony and the police station was the place to complain to. If he had been badly injured he would understand his going to the Tung Wah for cure, but to go there for the redress of a wrong was preposterous. (Daily Press, Oct. 22, 1875).\n\nIt might seem preposterous to a European Magistrate for Chinese to first turn to their own countrymen for justice but to the Chinese it apparently was a most natural procedure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "88\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nit were triggered initially by a lockout at a plastic flowers factory in Kowloon and fanned by some arbitrary police action taken against demonstrating workers and students. Anti-colonial demonstrations occurred and anti-British sentiment ran high, fueled by stepped up anti-imperialist propaganda radiating from the mainland then in the midst of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. While most carved wood furniture factory and shop proprietors were unlikely targets for anti-imperialist attack, the Woodwork Carvers' Union seems to have taken advantage of the widespread unrest to extract a wage increase from the Merchants' Association at the time.\n\nOne school of thought (with its locus in the Far Eastern Economic Review) maintains that the Peking government was dissatisfied with its compatriots' handling of the 1967 disturbances and called a halt thereafter to revolutionary activity in the Crown Colony. While these claims are difficult to substantiate with any certainty, it is widely admitted in the Hong Kong pro-communist community that Peking was desirous of a stable situation in post-1967 Hong Kong so that it could actively pursue, from its viewpoint, more pressing diplomatic questions like its entry into the United Nations and the liberation of Taiwan.\n\n\"Hong Kong is a historical problem that will be solved at the appropriate time\" goes the refrain. The Hong Kong \"problem\" does not have the status of a \"principle contradiction\" for the People's Republic. Hong Kong continues to remain valuable to the Communist government in terms of the significant amounts of foreign exchange which China earns by marketing its products in and through the port, and also as a place in which trade and diplomatic contacts are still pursued. While such functions may decline as China continues to open up diplomatically and economically, they are still a factor in Hong Kong's historical viability as a colony.\n\nIn any event, in the post-1967 period, industrial peace in Hong Kong was the common desire of the British colonial government and the communist government in Peking. This led to the assumption on the part of the communist Federation of Trade Unions of some rather odd poses in the local adaptation of Mao Tse-tung thought to the Hong Kong scene.\n\nThis was particularly so in so far as the implementation of Mao's thought has entailed a disciplined adherence to a policy of delayed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208679, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 \n\n109\n\n20- Another community meeting but no further developments on repatriation. At 11 o'clock this morning we were agreeably surprised to learn that Sister Paul and Sister Corazon were on \"The Hill\" and that we could go up and see them. Again Sister Paul moved the adamant hearts of the Japanese and secured permission to enter the Camp to say goodbye to her departing Sisters. We learn that our own names have been handed in to the Foreign Office in Hong Kong for release from the Camp, and our hopes are high. We also learn that Father Tennien is in Chungking, and that Father Briggs and Father Hater are both quite ill. Since Sister Paul and her Sisters have been in Hong Kong, we have been enabled to receive weekly parcels of foodstuffs, and this has helped a great deal. For some weeks a league of softball has been in progress, and today the last game of the season was played between the British and Americans, the score being 15 to 6 in favor of the latter. A Stanley Cup was fabricated by Camp artisans and presented to the winners.\n\n22-The first anniversary of our newly ordained Maryknollers, and they enjoy a Camp lunch at the Maryknoll Sisters' apartments at 7:00 p.m. The repatriation ship, the Asama Maru has been further delayed. Due to some circumstance or other, our rice ration on the 23rd and 24th was very meager, but Father Meyer came to the rescue with his toasted rice which he has been saving for such a rainy day.\n\n25-Rumor hath it that our papers or forms are now on “The Hill,” and that we may get final word any day now to pack up and leave for Hong Kong. Mr. Gunn, an American, and seven others, British and Portuguese, are advised they may leave Camp tomorrow.\n\n26-We were delighted today to receive a visit from His Excellency, Bishop Valtorta, who asked permission to come out and say goodbye to the repatriates. He could remain but a short time, and bade the rest of us to have hope, as he felt we would be released in due time. He is also trying to secure the release of the Canadian Sisters. The Asama Maru is now scheduled to leave on the 30th, the repatriates going on board the 29th. The British are still incredulous about repatriation of the Americans. There is now some talk about possible repatriation of British women and children and old men, but nothing definite.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208926, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "56\n\nLEWIS M. CHERE\n\nevents of 1884. In this category would be Chinese language newspapers, the records of the court proceedings against the native newspapers and rioters, and whatever private records, diaries or papers which might have survived from that time. Because these materials are not available outside Hong Kong it is the purpose of this article to raise the question of what did happen in the Colony in 1884 in the hopes that those scholars who do have access to the winds of materials necessary to answer the question will be made aware of the importance of having those answers. Because a study of the question cannot help but advance understanding of Chinese history in the 1880's—not to mention the illumination it could provide for the history of Hong Kong itself—I have attempted to provide an outline here of what the question entails, and what little is known about it.\n\nHong Kong occupied a position in the events of the Sino-French War which was unique even for the ports of the China Coast. Unlike Treaty Ports such as Canton or Shanghai, Hong Kong was not even technically Chinese territory. Though Shanghai may have been effectively controlled by the representatives of the foreign community sitting on the city council, the city was still Chinese territory and the problems it experienced during the Sino-French War were largely due to that fact. Hong Kong was formally a possession of a neutral power. As such, most of its problems arising from the war were those which resulted from differing French, Chinese and British positions on the obligations of a neutral in an undeclared war. However, Hong Kong's overwhelming majority of Chinese residents, most of them adult male workers whose families were still living in their home villages in the Southern Provinces of China, presented a problem even more complex than those arising from the city's neutrality.\n\nThe reactions of those Chinese residents to the Sino-French conflict could be vital to an understanding of the development of nationalism in China. In Hong Kong the legendary influence of anti-foreign mandarins, which was so frequently blamed for anti-foreign feeling among the Chinese populations in the Treaty Ports, could only be indirectly applied—if at all. Even then many of the European accounts of what happened in the Colony in 1884 attempted to find outside influences, meaning the mandarins, to hold responsible for Hong Kong's troubles.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209256, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "JUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826\n\n# 1\n\n145\n\nsupport the militia and educational institutions, and make all manners of presents and contributions to the authorities far and near\". Although leadership of the foreign merchants resided in the Select Committee of the British East India Company, each foreign firm licensed to transact business in Canton, as well as each of its ships coming into the port, had to be secured by a hong merchant, who had to guarantee the good conduct of officers and crew of the ship while in port, and to assure the Chinese authorities that the ship was not carrying contraband. Under this system, the security merchant also served the important role as intermediary between Chinese officials and foreigners.\n\n# 2\n\nDespite accusations by the Chia-ch'ing and the Tao-kuang Emperors that Juan Yuan was expending more time and energy on compiling books and founding academies than on affairs of state, a sentiment echoed by the twentieth-century historian John K. Fairbank, both British and Chinese historical records show that Juan Yuan had taken the conduct of foreign affairs at Canton very seriously. He adhered strictly to the protocol established under the Canton system, handling negotiations with foreigners through the hong merchants and the Select Committee, refusing \"to establish direct communications between the local government and [the foreign community]\". Although contemporary foreigners at Canton complained about Juan Yuan's “inflexibility”, they remembered him later with respect. \"His conduct... was both firm and conciliatory, and his memorials were admired by foreigners for their polite and dignified style...\"\n\n+6\n\n# 3\n\nJuan Yuan saw the British as a serious threat to Chinese security, and considered them the most difficult among foreigners at Canton to keep under control. This was consistent with the general attitude of the Ch'ing court that the British were pressuring for further expansion of trade with China beyond Canton, thus challenging traditional Chinese policy. In 1818, however, his proposal for a repressive policy towards the British, outlined in a secret memorial to the Chia-ch'ing Emperor, was not accepted by the Emperor, who exhorted moderation. The Emperor restrained Juan Yuan with this rescript: “Adopt a policy showing both strength and kindness simultaneously. Do not over-react under any circumstances and avoid rash actions.” \"Appointed to Canton in the wake of the Amherst crisis, only four days after his arrival at Canton, Juan Yuan embarked on an inspection tour of the Pearl estuary outside Boca Tigris in the company of the provincial commander-in-chief of the Kwangtung marine force. They visited fortifications and gun batteries along the shores and on the islands, and paid a visit to Macau.7", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209260, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "JUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 149\n\nably developed. Only rarely, if ever, were foreign merchants involved in such a criminal case. Sailors from foreign vessels, both merchant ships and war ships, therefore, were the chief offenders in these instances. \"The most undesirable consequences may result from the rash and improper conduct of seamen\",21 the Chinese Repository was to pronounce more than a decade later. Since the 1810's, there had been a standing order from the British that \"no boat's crew are to stop overnight at Canton\".22 thus cutting down the number of such incidents considerably. A spokesman for the British East India Company at Canton had implied that by bribing Chinese officials at the scene, matters could be silenced at the onset, but, once higher authorities in Canton became aware of the situation, there would be serious consequences, especially when loss of life was involved.23 Perhaps this explains why only a handful of such cases were recorded in history. When a case involving foreigners did occur, the Governor-General, the Governor of Kwangtung, the security merchant, the supercargo (headman) of the particular country whose national had committed the crime, and the Select Committee, as spokesmen for the foreign community, would all become embroiled in the crisis.\n\nBefore the Treaty of Nanking (1842) established the practice of extraterritoriality in China, and in the absence of any consular agreement, the Chinese policy had been that foreigners who committed crimes in China or Chinese waters were to be handed over to Chinese authorities and punished in accordance with the Chinese concept of law and justice. This would have been a universally accepted policy except for the fact that the Chinese concept of justice was quite alien, and therefore, absolutely unacceptable to those of the Anglo-American tradition. The traditional Chinese doctrine of responsibility made the governor-general in the province answerable to the Emperor for all activities, including crimes within his jurisdiction. There was also the doctrine of collective responsibility upon which the pao-chia system was based. If the lawbreaker had managed to evade justice before he could be apprehended, another person of his pao-chia unit could take the punishment in his place. Although it is doubtful that temporary foreign residents in their factories at Canton or on their vessels moored offshore had been incorporated into a pao-chia system of their own, the doctrine of collective responsibility would still apply. On the other hand, in theory at least, in the tradition of Anglo-American law and justice, punishment could be meted out only to the actual offender in person, and only after his guilt had been established by a jury of his peers in open trial at a court of law. These two systems of justice clashed at Canton.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209262, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "JUAN YUAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 151\n\nplundering a foreign vessel in Chinese waters, resulting in loss of life, but that the plundered goods consisted of a contraband commodity, Juan Yuan offered a reward of 3,000 dollars for the apprehension of the perpetrators of the crime. He refused, on the other hand, to compensate for the plundered property. The sycee silver would also be contraband had it been exported from China, but, as the ship had not yet entered a Chinese port, he could not argue this point. After two weeks of negotiations, the captain of the ship received from the Chinese authorities 824.50 dollars which had been recovered from the culprits, 2,000 dollars from Puiqua, and another 4,000 dollars from Juan Yuan's own funds, in compensation for the specie taken. Nothing was paid for the opium, but no immediate action was taken against the ship's having contraband goods on board in Chinese waters either. Immediately thereafter, Puiqua adroitly arranged for the ship to leave Taipa in order to avoid further complications on the opium issue.\n\nMeanwhile, the Chinese concerned faced the full force of the law. Five men were arrested for looting the Wabash and for murdering the American. They were beheaded or put to death by the slow process of slicing off the limbs before being decapitated. This was the traditional Chinese punishment meted out to captured pirates who had raided ships. For his failure in ensuring that foreign ships desist from bringing in opium, Juan Yuan directed Puiqua to subscribe to certain public service projects to the tune of 160,000 taels. Punkhequa had wanted other hong merchants to contribute 5,000 taels each towards this amount, but Conseequa bargained for 4,000. As a result, Puiqua had to pay the amount himself, while three other hong merchants were directed to contribute to other projects. Thus, Juan Yuan made it clear to the hong merchants how their purses were to suffer should they continue to condone the importation of opium, and, even more so, should they choose to haggle over the amount of the fine decided by the authorities. As a result, the hong merchants announced to the foreign traders that they would no longer \"secure any ship whose commander has not signed a Bond, engaging that he will not smuggle Opium....\" The hong merchants also relayed to the foreigners Juan Yuan's message that Chinese authorities would search the ships for possible cargoes of opium. While various elements of the foreign community debated, the intended search was dropped by Juan Yuan. Perhaps one reason for his decision not to insist upon the search was the presence of an armed British frigate, H.M.S. Orlando, at Chuenpi. He was not to take a strong stand on the opium issue until 1821.26\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210258, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "208\n\nJ.H. HAAN\n\nThese were the following:\n\nI.\n\nII.\n\nA Committee (the Defence Committee) \"to consider any propositions laid before them for the defence, draining, lighting and general improvement of the Settlement\", appointed on January 3, 1862.\n\nA Committee (the Assessment Committee) \"to assess the value of foreign property in concert with the Municipal Council\", appointed September 8, 1862.\n\nIII. A subcommittee of members from the Defence Committee and the Assessment Committee \"to consider the modifications (of the Land Regulations which had been proposed by the foreign consuls — JH) and to report upon them to the community\", appointed September 8, 1862.\n\nIV. A Committee \"to confer with the Treaty Consuls, and recast the Land Regulations in some such form as may meet the support of the foreign and Chinese authorities\", appointed March 31, 1863.\n\nV.\n\nThe \"Hongque Provisional Committee of Roads and Sanitary matters\", appointed May 29, 1863 (Hongque, or Hongkew, was what was briefly called the American Settlement until it was merged with the British Settlement in 1863).\n\nVI. The \"Hongque Provisional Committee of Ways and Means\", appointed May 29, 1863.\n\nVII. The \"Hongque Committee of Assessment\", appointed September 21, 1863.\n\nVIII. A Committee to study the possibilities of a Charter of Incorporation; appointed June 29, 1864.\n\nIX. A Committee \"to consider the method of government best adapted to the requirements of the community and that the interests of all classes be taken into consideration\", appointed...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210693, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "27\n\nsaid that no man loved Ireland more dearly, and there was no warmer heart in Ireland than his. He asked why Irishmen loved their country more than the English, who were daily getting more cosmopolitan, and the Scots who were daily getting more English, loved theirs. He suggested that the reason was that the Irish were a little less selfish and a little more generous, and gave preference to strangers over their own. They loved Ireland as their mother because over the last thousand years they had suffered and laboured much. That had made them patient, enduring, witty, generous, self-reliant, hospitable, brave and reckless. They had great learning to be proud of. Before St. Patrick came, and their Saxon friends were still going about painted, Ireland had laws and a recognised society. St. Patrick had little to do but introduce the spirit of Christianity. Irish immigrants were the backbone of countries where they lived and had succeeded everywhere. One fault that the Irish were gravely charged with was that they drank too much and were too fond of whiskey. He exhorted all present to resolve not to bring discredit on their country by excessive drinking, and to give up drink for six months to help the Duchess of Marlborough's Famine Relief Fund. After that he recited a poem entitled “Dear Ireland\".\n\nAs to Queen Victoria, in 1893 speaking at a meeting of the General Chamber of Commerce called to discuss the coining of a British dollar, he expressed opposition to anything bearing the Queen's head being made in a foreign country. At a meeting of the judiciary and legal profession in 1901 to pay respects to her memory he began his speech, which was twice as long as those of the Chief Justice and Attorney General combined, by describing himself as \"the senior member and actual, although not official, leader of the local Bar, and the solitary representative among the higher members of the profession of the Irish race and Roman Catholic community.\" He said “Loyalty to the throne is a duty most strenuously enforced on every member of the Catholic Church. The personal loyalty of Irishmen to the sovereign has always been conspicuous, the few contemptible exceptions only making the loyalty of the vast majority the more conspicuous\".\n\nHe was a public person, interested in most things that went on and ever ready to express his view about them. His talent for oratory ensured that his views were often heard. He was connected with many societies and clubs and because of his legal training was much in demand to sit in committees. He was ambitious and a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210694, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "28 \n\nWALTER GREENWOOD \n\nfervent supporter of representative government. He was ever an outspoken critic of the Government. The Hong Kong Telegraph in its obituary described him as “an entertaining and instructive companion and full of anecdote. At public functions he joined in heart and soul, ever ready with a cheery word for all. Many were helped by him financially and with advice. He never made a parade of charity but anyone who went to him in trouble seldom left without help. He was a staunch friend and a generous enemy\". The Daily Press said of him that he had a genial breezy presence, a ready eloquence and a cheerful willingness to assist in the promotion of any public measure or social institution. He met with many rebuffs and suffered many reverses but always met them manfully and never bore malice\". The China Mail observed that true to the instincts of his race he was always best in opposition. \n\nA coincidence which affected his life and career was that Hennessy, a fellow Irish Roman Catholic, arrived to take up his appointment as Governor shortly after he was admitted to the Hong Kong Bar. He admired Hennessy describing him as “probably the most eloquent of Irishmen\" and supported him. The Daily Press said in its obituary that Francis \"obtained his acting appointments through the influence of Hennessy whose side he consistently espoused in his long quarrel with the British and Foreign Community, and that on the whole his friendship with Hennessy cost him more than he gained by it, and there was little reason to impute to him self-interest as a motive for his advocacy of the Hennessian regime”. In May 1877 Francis was presented to Hennessy at a General Levee at Government House (though his wife was not presented to Mrs. Hennessy) and that may have marked his arrival in society. He took Hennessy's part at the public meeting held in October 1878 to consider the existing state of insecurity of life and property and in effect to censure Hennessy. Francis was against putting the blame on Hennessy's policies. He said his present house had been burgled three times but the remedy was to amend the law and reorganise the police force. He caused much offence by saying that there was opposition to Hennessy even before he arrived in Hong Kong. His support for Hennessy on this occasion was remembered against him for many years. (In 1880, appearing for a man charged with libel in that he had carried on a bitter, active and ceaseless opposition to the \n\n! \n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "190\n\nto him.\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nAnother account of the court proceedings stated that one of the complainants \"spoke English, and with a singular purity of accent and grammatical accuracy. His countenance was intelligent, and his dress and manners most decidedly genteel,\" a contrast to the vast majority of Chinese in California whose dress and action reflected their peasant origin.\n\nTong A-chick, of course, was from a similar background, but his years of training under foreign teachers and his experience in the British Consulate in Shanghai had given him another air. The news article said: \"The individual under notice exhibited indisputable proofs of education and good breeding. His English, which he spoke with almost elegance, had, as it fell from his lips, a softness and sweetness rarely heard even among ourselves, and excited the admiration of all present.\"\n\nFrom all the evidence, both from the press and from churchmen, we may conclude that A-chick had been well trained in English, had a bearing which set him apart from the ordinary person, and had qualities of leadership. These qualities were to be of service to him when he became spokesman for the Chinese community in combating the first attempts at anti-Chinese legislation in California.\n\nHOW A-CHICK FOUGHT FOR CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA\n\nSoon after Tong A-chick arrived in California in the spring of 1852, he became the spokesman for the Chinese community. Just at this time, illness forced the recognised leader of the community to curtail his activities. A-chick was obviously qualified to fill the vacant position.\n\nThe former leader, Norman A-sing, was a colourful figure. Most contemporary accounts do not portray him in a favourable light. His chief qualification was a rudimentary command of English and some knowledge of American ways. These he had acquired while he was purser of a boat which ran between different ports on the Atlantic coast. He claimed to be a naturalised citizen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210886, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "220 \n\nCARL SMITH \n\nFollowing the religious rites, Ho A-mei gave a short talk on the development of mines in Kwangtung. \n\nThe European contribution to the programme was an impromptu rendering of \"For he's a jolly good fellow.\" A sentiment not necessarily shared by the European community in Hongkong at all times, as we shall see. \n\nHOW A-MEI PIONEERED A MODERN CANTON \n\nIn addition to promoting modern mining in Kwangtung, Ho A-mei was also connected with other projects to introduce Western technological improvements into the province. \n\nIn 1882 he was a principal in the formation of the Wa Hop Telegraph Company floated as a public company to build a line between Kowloon and Canton. Most of the shareholders were wealthy Canton and Hongkong Chinese merchants. Kwangtung officials aided the company in overcoming opposition aroused by fears that the wires and poles would disturb the fung shui of the neighbourhoods through which they passed. \n\nAfter the line was built to Shamshuipo, just on the other side of the British-Chinese boundary, the company was refused permission to extend the line to Hongkong Island. \n\nThere were various reasons for the refusal. One was the connection the project had with the Danish-Russian backed Great Northern Telegraph Company. Its engineers had been employed to supervise the construction and certain rights had been granted to the foreign company in the use of the line. \n\nPreviously the Great Northern had tried to get monopolistic rights over all telegraph lines in China. This effort had been vigorously opposed by Britain which feared the expansion of Russia's power and influence. \n\nIn this light a Hongkong editor thought, \"the refusal to permit the line to land on British soil is an act of self-defence and the promoters of the Canton-Kowloon line ought, we think, to have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210903, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "237\n\nChinaman living in his Colony who has become quite an Anglo-Chinese, it should be said to him, 'No', because you are a Chinaman, no matter how well you know English, you must take service under the Chinese Government... It was your misfortune to be born a Chinese.”\n\nThese sentiments were not welcomed by the majority of the foreign community. \"Truth,\" in replying to the letter written by “Chinese,” reminded the community that the Government was being paid by British taxpayers \"to represent British Imperial interest, not as your correspondent truly remarks, as a Chinese representative or to look at affairs from a Chinese point of view.”\n\nFrom the distance of years and changed attitudes, the Governor's remarks seem eminently fair and appropriate. But before they could be regarded as such the Chinese had to play a careful game, and the European community generally resisted any accommodation.\n\nThe European, though at the top of the heap, felt insecure and frightened. He was always suspecting some nefarious conspiracy was at work to topple him.\n\n“Truth” reflects this when he remarks on “the lengths to which a Chinaman will go, the stratagems to which he will resort, to cause injury to his opponents and the sleuth-hound like pertinacity with which he watches his every business and concern in order that he may cause him loss of name or money.”\n\nThere was always the fear the Chinese resident in Hongkong would be “got at\" by someone who would prod or intimidate him to challenge the position the foreigner had carved out for himself in China.\n\nWith this brief review of some of the tensions between the Chinese and foreign population in Hongkong, we can better understand the events of the public meeting of October 1878, and the activity of Ho A-mei as a public figure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210907, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "real meaning and vote according to their firm convictions.\n\n241\n\n\"And yet when we asked that the resolutions be explained in Chinese, so that we might judge for ourselves and vote conscientiously, it was unceremoniously refused. I leave to the impartial public what to think of this.\"\n\nHe signed his letter \"Ho Kwan-sun, Late Haikwan (Customs) Banker, Swatow\".\n\nThere were few in the community of that day who could be called impartial. The Chinese were only in the first stages of an awareness of their importance for the general welfare of Hongkong. This, in turn, produced a feeling that they should have a voice in matters of general public concern. The foreign community for its part could not believe the Chinese had a fundamental loyalty to the interest of Hongkong. They feared that the Chinese in Hongkong would join forces with corrupt officials in China and block what foreigners considered the proper expansion of commerce and undercut British prestige and power in the East.\n\nThis first attempt of Chinese and foreigners to unite in an open meeting on a public issue served to drive the two groups farther apart, at least for a time.\n\nHOW THE CHINESE WERE\n\nKEPT OUT OF THE MEETING\n\nThe public meeting called for October 7, 1878, to discuss “public insecurity\" was the first held in Hongkong at which there was a large Chinese delegation. From the standpoint of promoting better relations between the various sections of the community it was not a success. Ho A-mei told the Chinese side in the letter he wrote to the Daily Press. In it he related how the Chinese had had no opportunity to express their views.\n\nThe Europeans, however, who were able to speak out at the meeting, made it lively. Much of the interchange occurred after the Chinese had left; however, the remarks made point to the reason the Chinese were treated as they were.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210998, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "35 \n\npirates carried out a vicious attack on the s.s. Namoa. Some suspects were arrested in Hong Kong and two of them were committed for trial, but they were released for lack of evidence. Those arrested in Kowloon were less fortunate, for they were convicted and beheaded on the beach in front of the City, with British officials invited to witness the execution.\" The Chinese were of course also interested in keeping Chinese waters free of pirates and joint efforts were made to this end.\n\n18 \n\nOfficials at Kowloon performed more than their strictly official duties. Numerous temple inscriptions testify to their active involvement with the community activities of the territory, on both sides of the border.\" The stone tablet over the entrance of the Pei-ti Temple at Wanchai, with the temple's name inscribed in Chang Yu-t'ang's calligraphy is particularly significant.\n\n29 \n\n30 \n\nThe Chinese community in British Hong Kong were obviously very aware of the Chinese official presence across the harbour. Sometimes they looked to it for protection. For instance in 1886 when it was rumoured that 500 children would be required to consecrate the Tytam Water Works, children were sent to Kowloon City for protection, to the extent that hardly any child was to be seen anywhere for two days.\"\n\n31 \n\nThe Chinese in Hong Kong also looked to Kowloon as a source of authority and patronage, and this was most clearly seen in 1896 when the first Chinese Chamber of Commerce opened in Hong Kong. As was customary, rites were performed before the Kuan-ti M, or martial god. The Kowloon Commodore, Ch’en Kun-shan 120!!, officiated, as the dragon flag of Ch’ing China fluttered above,32 as if to establish the Chineseness of the occasion. Not surprisingly this display of loyalty to Chinese officialdom incurred the resentment of the local English press. The Daily Press leader lamented that the Hong Kong Governor had not been invited to officiate instead, and saw this as a move \"to insult the established order of the colony\".\" This, in fact, suggests that to some of the foreign community at least, Kowloon, as a Chinese base, was too close for comfort.\n\nThere were other problems. Gambling, prohibited in Hong\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211031, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n67\n\n1\n\nThe South China Morning Post, 20th August, 1904, p. 3.\n\nSee, for example, Mark Bray, Peter B. Clarke, and David Stephens, Education and Society (London: Edward Arnold, 1986); Mark Bray, with Kevin Lillis (eds.), Community Financing of Education: Issues and Policy Implications in Less Developed Countries (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988); Ingemar Fagerlind and Lawrence J. Saba, Education and National Development: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983); Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); George Psacharopoulos and Maureen Woodhall, Education for Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); R. Murray Thomas (ed.), Politics and Education: Cases from Eleven Nations (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983).\n\nMartin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York: McKay, 1974), Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly (eds.), Education and the Colonial Experience, (2nd Revised Edition New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984).\n\nStephen J. Ball, 'Imperialism, Social Control and the Colonial Curriculum in Africa', in Ivor F. Goodson and Stephen J. Ball (eds.), Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (London: The Falmer Press, 1984).\n\nProsser Gifford and Timothy Weiskel, “African Education in a Colonial Context: French and British Styles,” in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).\n\nClive Whitehead, “British Colonial Education Policy: A Synonym for Cultural Imperialism?\", in J. A. Mangan (ed.), Imperialism, Socialization and Education (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).\n\nIt is not implied that all the works cited above suffer from this defect.\n\n10\n\nThe term \"compradore\" is an Anglicized version of the Portuguese comprador, which literally meant \"provider\" or \"provisioner\". The historical significance of the compradore class has been summarized by Carl Smith in the following terms: \"The compradores were influential in proposing, capitalizing, and managing the modernization and industrialization of China in the latter half of the century. They had received their business training and acquired their capital by functioning as 'middlemen' between the European merchant and the Chinese employees and business contacts of the foreign firm. It was a strategic position which called for a foot in two worlds. A background of ability in the language and an understanding of European thought and manners usually ensured a rapid rise as a compradore.' Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 63. It may be worth noting that several, but by no means all, of the early compradores in Hong Kong were \"middlemen\" also in the sense that they were of Eurasian birth.\n\n15\n\nSee, for example, Particulars of the Offices of three Assistant Mistresses, Education Department, now vacant in the Colony of Hong Kong, August 1913, in Colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211109, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "145\n\nThe question arose again in 1897. At that time the pass requirement was abolished, except when invoked under special order by the Governor in Council, but the light requirement remained. This gave rise to confusion among the Chinese, for many thought both requirements had been abolished.\n\nIn commenting on the misunderstanding the Daily Press suggested that all regulations should be done away with. The abolition would be a gracious act in the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. The editor felt that ‘if this were done as a concession to the Chinese on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, it would afford extreme pleasure to the native community, in fact it would not be easy to find any form of Jubilee Memorial that would afford the Chinese more genuine satisfaction than the repeal of a law which they regard as obnoxious.”\n\nImmediately after, the requirements were repealed. This long delayed move could only serve to improve relations between the various sections of the Hongkong community.\n\nWHY EARLY EXPATS FEARED CONSUL MOVE\n\nAnother issue on which Ho A-mei expressed his opinion publicly was the appointment of a Chinese consul for Hongkong.\n\nIn July 1891, when the matter was under discussion, he wrote a letter to a Chinese paper published in Hongkong advocating the appointment. A translation of his letter was published for English readers in the China Mail.\n\nIt was a long-standing issue, having first been raised by the Chinese in 1868. The request became involved in negotiations for the revision of the Tientsin Treaty between Britain and China. The treaty was signed in 1858, but it provided for a review after ten years.\n\nAt times the Chinese request for a consul in Hongkong was given favourable consideration by the British Foreign Office, but it was consistently opposed by the Hongkong Government and the foreign merchants trading with China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211118, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "154\n\nin Britain and China to submit their views on the document. The Hongkong Chamber of Commerce responded with a memorial in 1870.\n\nOne of the items the chamber found objectionable was Article II. It stipulated that China might appoint consuls in all ports in British dominions.\n\nThe chamber admitted that for ports distant from China the provision was fair, but it should not apply to Hongkong. The port was peculiar and existed in a special relation to China. Nothing should be done that might endanger the dreams of its founders and the hopes of the memorialists.\n\nThey submitted that, \"this Colony was originally established as an experiment, and the views of its founders have been fully realised by its progress and growth. . . Its geographical situation, and its magnificent harbour mark it as admirably adapted to become the emporium of foreign commerce in this part of the world, and the headquarters from which the large financial and commercial transactions of British and Foreign Merchants in China could best be carried out.\" Its location ensured its prosperity.\n\nSuccess, however, may produce envy. The chamber believed that Hongkong's prosperity and its status as a free port “have long been regarded with jealous displeasure by the Chinese Government which has done all in its power to interfere with its trade, especially that carried on by native merchants settled in Hongkong.\"\n\nThe memorialists contended that China could not claim the diplomatic privileges of other nations because it did not qualify as a civilised country. China's capricious legal system disqualified it from acceptance within the community of nations.\n\nIn the opinion of the Hongkong merchants, all governments worthy of being recognised \"find a common unity in their provisions for securing the life, the liberty and the property of all foreigners as well as natives.” This security is rooted in a dependable", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211121, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "157\n\nthat the cruisers might become involved in some incident which would impinge on British sovereignty,\n\nA consul in Hongkong could supervise the collection of duties less expensively and more efficiently, but their request was consistently opposed by the Hongkong Government and foreign merchants.\n\nWHEN A BLOCKADE HITS OPIUM SMUGGLING\n\nIn 1874 a petition signed by eighteen Chinese merchants and the resolutions of a public meeting held by the European community in Hongkong were sent to England.\n\nBoth protested against what was termed \"the blockade of Hongkong.\" They pleaded with Her Majesty's Government to take decisive action to stop what they believed to be the deliberate harassment of Hongkong by China.\n\nThe Chinese petition, drawn up with the assistance of Messrs. Caldwell and Brereton, solicitors, was originally handled in a hush-hush manner. It received no publicity and copies were not given to the press, though it was sent to a few influential residents.\n\nWhen, about a month after the petition had been submitted, the editor of the China Mail saw a copy, he immediately drew the public's attention to it.\n\nHe questioned the secrecy which had surrounded it.\n\nIn that day suspicion was the usual reaction to activities within the Chinese community. The editor laid it down thus: \"Either the Chinese are working with us or they are not. If they are, they must learn that the surest way of bringing their complaints to the notice of the executive is to make them as public as possible.”\n\nThe reason for avoiding publicity may simply have been to prevent the Chinese authorities from learning of it.\n\nIt was later stated that when they did hear, two mandarins were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211136, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "172\n\nspeaking as a diplomat and not a merchant.\n\nIn the instructions Wade had sent to Robertson, he had strongly urged the establishment of a branch of the Chinese Imperial Customs in Hongkong.\n\nThe Governor of Hongkong, Sir Arthur Kennedy, endorsed this proposal as a possible solution to the problem. In a despatch to London he stated that he was “convinced that the shortest, best and only remedy for disputes and differences which have existed for years, endangering our good relations with the Canton Government is the recognised establishment of a branch of the Chinese foreign inspectorate in Hongkong itself.\"\n\nIt was not until 1886 that provisions were made for establishing a Maritime Customs collecting station at Kowloon and the Hong-kong Government allowed its Commissioner, a British national, to reside in Hongkong.\n\nWAR OF WORDS OVER CHINESE CONSUL CONTINUES\n\nThe manner in which the appointment of a Chinese consul for Hongkong was announced in 1891 provoked a demand from the expatriate merchants that they be allowed a greater voice in determining policies that affected Hongkong.\n\nThey resented that they had not had an opportunity to express their opinion before the decision regarding the appointment had been made.\n\nThe Colonial Office had informed the local government of its intended decision and had received in reply the opinion of concerned government officials in Hongkong, but the mercantile community had not been consulted.\n\nIn November 1890, the Governor was asked if he had any objections to the proposal. This was followed by a telegram in January 1891 informing him that the Chinese had proposed that Mr. Tso Ping-lung, consul at Singapore, be transferred to the new office in Hongkong.", "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": 211154, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "190\n\nOne foreign resident who knew Loo King said his presence had much to do with keeping people of better character from settling or even visiting Hongkong.\n\nThe Rev. George Smith, later to be the first Bishop of Hong-kong, after his visit to the family house of A-king in 1844, claimed that his host \"is said to encourage disreputable characters by the loan of money, and in various ways to reap the proceeds of profligacy and crime.\"\n\nIt was alleged that he had interests in pirate vessels, financing their operations and disposing of their stolen goods. The charge was never proved, but it was generally believed.\n\nAs the original conditions of the settlement changed, the power of Loo King waned and a leadership emerged that was not based on vice and criminal connections.\n\nA-king was still an important figure in 1847, for in that year he and Tam A-tsoi were the principals in the erection of the Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road.\n\nTam A-tsoi's fortune was initially based on his construction business, though he soon branched out into numerous other profitable enterprises.\n\nWhile his fortunes were on the rise, those of Loo King were headed for decline. The one-time \"king\" of the Lower Bazaar was declared bankrupt in 1855. Respectability was winning the battle for control of community affairs.\n\nA new type of leadership based on solid business activities was emerging out of the rag-bag elements making up the first Chinese settlers in British Hongkong.\n\nThe fact that Loo King not long after his arrival in Hongkong had built a small temple in the Lower Bazaar, and in 1847 joined Tam A-tsoi in building the much more impressive Man Mo Temple, suggests that he wished to establish respectability for himself as a patron of the people.", "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": 211257, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 318, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "293\n\nPamela Atwell had taken it for granted that her readers had not needed any such historical background information. The story of Weihaiwei under British administration during this highly turbulent era as well as its return to Chinese rule was the focus of her research, embracing hundreds of documents in the Public Records Office in London, a number of unpublished private papers in England and Scotland, as well as sources in Japanese and Chinese but not Chinese archival documents.\n\nA meticulous researcher and skilful writer who also provided the readers with clear and interesting photographs, Dr. Atwell has produced a book that is a joy to behold indeed, both for the specialist reader and the non-specialist. She has shown admirable understanding of Chinese institutions and British thinking, and thus has recreated an area that had needed a thorough examination by historians looking at imperialism in China. Dr. Atwell has found, for instance, that the leasing of Weihaiwei was not a simple and straightforward matter. The Chinese had first proposed the leasing through Robert Hart of the Imperial Customs Service and Ambassador MacDonald at Peking to a reluctant British cabinet. Then, even as the British cabinet were being convinced of the value of leasing Weihaiwei, the Chinese had second thoughts. Together with other diplomatic and political complications, it was not until 24 May 1898, after the Japanese forces withdrew, that the British ensign was finally hoisted over the port.\n\nResearching as a political scientist, Dr. Atwell's major interests resided in the juxtaposition of government authorities. She had observed that the British administration at Weihaiwei was noteworthy in several ways. The British never claimed sovereignty over the port. They had maintained that Weihaiwei \"remained part of a foreign country within which Britain exercised legal jurisdiction, but it was not a colony and the Chinese living there were not British citizens.\" (p. 12). British administrators were simply superimposed over traditional Chinese rural community elders and magistrates who represented the central government in these localities.\n\nEarly conflicts over such issues as taxes and militia were resolved when Britain began to send civilian commissioners experienced...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211258, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 319, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "294\n\nenced in colonial administration. They were also blessed with long tenures. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, who had advised the Hong Kong Government on the administration of the New Territories, was British Commissioner at Weihaiwei for nineteen years, and R. F. Johnston for sixteen.\n\nWeihaiwei was not a major port boasting access to other areas of China. Despite efforts at cultivation, except for ground-nuts, its lack of a marketable product meant the absence of a powerful foreign business community like those that challenged authority and policies of British officials at the treaty ports. The British administrators, therefore, could establish and carry out policies without having to consider other vested interests. As a rule, they were free to work within the framework of traditional Chinese institutions.\n\nConservatism of the local gentry and absence of a strong Chinese middle class meant that there was no pressure on British administrators to bow to forces that clamoured for reform and modernization. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Chinese institutions were undergoing changes. Certain constitutional features were being introduced to the Chinese government, and, with the abolition of the civil service examination system in 1905, education based on Confucian classics was being replaced by a more modern, westernized curriculum. At Weihaiwei, however, neither the local elders nor the British administration sought to change the status quo.\n\nWith the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912, demands for ending foreign privileges increased. Subsequent civil war among various warlord factions meant hardship for the people of Weihaiwei, but, until the formation of the National Government under Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Britain did not have to give serious thought to returning Weihaiwei to Chinese rule. Meanwhile, administrators kept expenditures below revenue, partly because they wanted to make sure \"that sufficient funds were available for staff pensions and other expenses when the British withdrew.\" (p. 168)\n\nThe actual transfer of administration to the Chinese took place", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "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": 211496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "188\n\nLet everyone bear in mind that nothing is to be rejected - a pamphlet, a newspaper, nay a handbill, which to the ordinary reader is no more than a valueless scrap of paper, may become, in the hands of the searcher, the means of an important discovery.\"\n\nUntil his departure from China in 1876, Cordier worked hard to build up the society's collection. He arranged exchanges of publications with other societies around the world and he regularly canvassed local foreign residents and members for donations. He was able to get, at no cost to the society, the British Parliamentary papers concerning China, Customs Service reports and other governmental publications, and a full run of the Shanghai Evening Courier. But in spite of his obvious successes, his last annual report revealed some frustration:\n\nDuring the last five years, the Society has endeavoured to enlist public sympathy and patronage to a greater extent, pointing out the wants of the Library in its annual reports; but the various appeals made have not fully realized the looked-for result. Unremitting attention and care have been bestowed upon the Library of the Asiatic Society; but the time thus spent, if not responded to on the part of the community, by a show of interest in its only literary and scientific institution, is uphill work, and naturally becomes disheartening.\n\nThat the Library meets a real want is proved by the great increase in the number of works consulted or lent out, as shown by the register kept for the purpose.\"\n\nHowever, when looking back thirty years later, Cordier spoke of \"the pleasant feelings I have in my heart in speaking of these days of yore\", and he acknowledged that his work with the society's library laid the groundwork for his career as a sinologist.2\n\nCordier was replaced by a German named Joseph Haas, who seemed to have been more concerned with keeping books than acquiring them. His annual reports were filled with items such as:\n\n \n \n :\n ¦", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211498, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "190\n\nof Mr. Bolton of the Atheneum of Boston, U.S.A.\". This catalogue was dictionary in format and it included 2,125 catalogued items, grouped as follows:\n\nGeneral Works 324\n\nPhilosophy 278\n\nReligion 54\n\nSociology 65\n\nPhilology 120\n\nNatural Sciences 52\n\nUseful Arts 133\n\nFine Arts 84\n\nLiterature 340\n\nHistory 675\n\n(13) on Chinese languages)20\n\nThe need for a new and larger building became a regular topic of discussion, and the Shanghai Municipal Council became a frequent, if unpredictable, supporter of its causes, including the funding of the renovation of its building in 1909.2\n\nIn a guidebook written about this time, the Rev. C. E. Darwent wrote:\n\nThe building in which the society is housed is situated in the Museum Road, just behind the British Post Office. There is a good library of books, on Oriental subjects mainly; a good supply of the proceedings of learned societies and learned magazines is kept. There is an exceedingly comfortable lecture hall; upstairs is a museum. The fathers of the settlement did well for it; their successors do nothing.2\n\nBy 1910 the library was open seven days a week, and no longer closed for tiffin as it had in earlier times. Donations were increasing, thanks largely to its new honorary librarian, Florence Wheelock Ayscough. A **suggestion book** was put out. A Chinese “assistant librarian” was engaged, first a \"Mr. Woo\" and later a \"Mr. Wong\", the latter described as “hard-working and attentive”. These people presumably did the routine checking out of materials, shelving, and record keeping. The library remained essentially an institution serving the foreign community although there was some Chinese membership in later years.\n\nA bequest from Thomas Kingsmill, a long-time society member, enriched the library. Duplicate works were sold and the funds used to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211621, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "1} \n\nAmerican missionary, the Reverend Elijah Bridgman,1 merely noted the formal possession of the island in its journal of occurrences; it gave no precise date nor any details.24 Another reference in the same journal in a historical review of events in China was only marginally fuller.25 The Canton Press, published at this point from Macao, expressed itself slightly puzzled by the lack of information about the event: 'On Tuesday last, the 26th January, the Island of Hongkong, the new settlement ceded by the Chinese to the English, was taken possession of in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The English colours were hoisted, and saluted from the ships; we have not yet heard any further particulars of the ceremony.' Two weeks later the incident was mentioned again, but no further details were forthcoming.26 The Canton Register made no mention of the possession of Hong Kong except in the context of Elliot's treaty with Ch'i-shan; it seemed unimpressed by the terms and referred to 'the paltry island of Hong Kong'.\n\n› 28\n\nThe two groups with the most immediate interest in the acquisition of Hong Kong for the British were the merchants and missionaries. Unlike the troops, for whom the possession of the island was just one part of a long and arduous expedition in a foreign and unhealthy part of the world, the merchants and missionaries were already operating from the area and found Chinese restrictions on their movements irksome. And unlike the British government and its officials, the traders and propagators of salvation were most cognizant of the advantages that a piece of British territory in South China would afford them. They were not politically or ideologically committed to punishing China for the 'disrespect' it had shown to Britain. It is not known whether any missionaries attended the ceremony on 26 January, but some merchants who were late to have their fortunes inextricably bound up with the colony turned up to witness its official birth. According to a study of the Indian community of Hong Kong, at least four Indian merchants were present in Hong Kong at the flag-hoisting: Cawasjee Pallanjee, the representative of Cursetjee Bomanjee and Co. of Bombay; F. M. Talati; Albert Sassoon;29 and Rustomjee Dhunjee Shaw of P. F. Cama and Co. of Bombay. James Matheson of Jardine Matheson and Co.30 went from Macao to Hong Kong precisely in order to witness the hoisting of the British flag, and afterwards, as he wrote to William Jardine in a postscript to a letter of 30 January, he circumnavigated the island.32 Thus the future character of the colony can be gauged from the type of person with most to gain from its possession by the British.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211623, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\nThe first was a Muslim who had been with the British army, and who may have been one of those who deserted in large numbers after the founding of the colony and who later formed the basis of an Indian community in Kowloon,\" The China Mail of 28 March 1878 printed: 'The man, known by the name of Mohammed Arab, died here yesterday. We understand that his residence in the Colony dates with the cession of the Island to Her Majesty, and it was he who planted the British standard on the Island, being with the expeditionary Force. He was a very charitably disposed person, and always stretched a helping hand to the needy and poor irrespective of nationality. He was well-known to many of the foreign community, and held in no little estimation for his uprightness and charities. His funeral, which took place yesterday, was largely attended by persons of various nationalities'.\n\n43\n\n44\n\nIf indeed Mohammed Arab had been in the British army, he must have been in either the Bengal Volunteers or the Madras 37th Native Infantry which were two of the regiments serving in the Chinese expedition.\" Both of these regiments contained Muslims and so Mohammed Arab could have been in either of them. The first Bengal Volunteers were raised in 1799 and in time the Volunteers became the 36th, 37th, 38th and 39th regiments of the Bengal Native Infantry.42 The usual sepoys of the Bengal army were mainly high-caste Hindus who because of dietary restrictions could not travel overseas, and so the Bengal Volunteers raised in the spring of 1840 were low-caste Hindus and Muslims lured from regular regiments by the promise of extra money. As for the Madras Native Infantry, it is known that some Muslim Lascars from Madras deserted during or after the Chinese expedition.\" This war was the first in which Indian troops were deployed in a non-Indian operation.\" Unfortunately the only members of the Bengal Volunteers named in official records of the Chinese expedition are firstly those who died, and secondly the officers,\" and no more information is yet forthcoming about the members of the Madras Native Infantry. The question whether Mohammed Arab may or may not have hoisted the flag on Hong Kong on 26 January 1841 hinges on whether a contingent of the Bengal Volunteers or of the Madras Native Infantry was landed for the ceremony - the only regiment which was definitely ashore at the time was that of the Marines and on which rank would have been called upon to perform the task. The senior native officer in the regiment was the Subadar-Major upon whom the duty could have devolved (in January 1841 this position in the Bengal Volunteers was held by Shaick Hedait Alie) but it would have been more likely", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "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": 211675, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "65\n\nthe better equipped but uninspired troops of the War Lords, had rapidly moved north and reached the Yangtze river at Kiu Kiang. Trouble immediately broke out in the Concession. Violent many-hued anti-foreign posters were pasted onto walls both inside and outside the foreign area. A variety of slogans appeared on these posters such as \"Beat down the British Imperialists”, or “Kill the running dogs of the new War Lords”. Others showed pictures of poor Chinese peasants and students being slaughtered by the aforesaid imperialists, and yet other pictures were too obscene to describe. Every artifice was bent to the inflammation of the feelings of a normally gentle and law-abiding population.\n\nThe threat to the security of the small foreign population was so manifest that armed piquets were put ashore from the British destroyer anchored off the Bund. Guards were mounted on the Concession gates, and rudimentary precautions were taken for the safety of the civilians. Soon the Revolutionary Army reached Hankow, the large treaty port further up the Yangtze, and there the situation repeated itself in an even more acute form.\n\nThe tension was relieved once or twice by incidents which were not without humour. One day a respected member of the British community was going along the Bund to call on his Consul, when he saw, standing outside the gate of the Consulate, two Chinese soldiers, one of whom carried a large kerosene tin full of paste and the other a bundle of pink and green posters. The soldiers with deliberation commenced to cover the Consul's gateposts with a colour-scheme, which on inspection invited the public to \"beat down\" all sorts of fairly innocent parties. This was too much for that particular \"Imperialist”, who seized the can of paste and poured it over the head of one of the soldiers. That put him temporarily hors-de-combat, but the other soldier grasping the paste-brush daubed the \"Imperialist's\" face with a particularly adhesive mixture. The situation had in it all the beginnings of a riot. Chinese coolies and others passing-by ran up, when fortunately the hasty, if innocent, cause of the commotion remembered that he carried a whistle for just such an occasion. He looked towards the destroyer, anchored some two hundred yards away, and blew three shrill blasts. There was no obvious reaction on board the warship, but the street cleared like magic. The member of the community, no longer looking so respectable, thus had an additional subject to discuss when he went in to see his Consul.\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211692, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "82\n\nand left copies with the Swiss Consul-General in Shanghai for his own information and for that of the Red Cross representative. In their original form I showed them to three responsible British subjects who left the Camp at the same time as I did, and they agreed that the notes gave a fairly accurate picture of the situation, though perhaps the colours were not dark enough. A copy of these notes, somewhat amended, is attached. A point which perhaps ought to have been made is that prior to internment at Stanley most of the \"enemy nationals\" in Hongkong and Kowloon had already been interned in Chinese hotels for periods varying from two weeks to six weeks in conditions of great discomfort and hardship and that they were seriously debilitated when they reached the Camp. They, and all the other \"enemy nationals\" who had so far escaped internment, were then thrown into the camp without adequate preparations having been made for their reception. In the Science Block of St. Stephen's College men, women and children found themselves herded together in large class rooms without beds, mattresses or furniture; there was only one lavatory for the block and no arrangements had been made for cooking food. Though the Japanese never actively ill-treated the civilian internees their whole attitude was unhelpful and unsympathetic. Consequently conditions were very bad during the first 2½ or 3 months. Then the Japanese began to realise the seriousness of the situation and conditions improved considerably, as I have indicated in my notes. Conditions were about at their worst in the middle of April, and when I was taken to the French Hospital on April 21st to have my leg X-rayed Dr. Selwyn Clark and Dr. Court both impressed on me that the food situation, not only in the camp but in the Colony generally was extremely serious since the Japanese were shipping all foodstuffs to Japan and were bringing nothing in. They said they expected the crisis to come at the end of July and they urged me to represent to the Foreign Office that if no relief was forthcoming the whole of the foreign community ought to be removed before the end of the Summer. I accordingly wrote a short message on these lines to H.M. Consul at Macao, which Dr. Selwyn Clark said he would be able to send through.\n\nI did all I could to get the Japanese to admit my diplomatic status and to include the whole of the Embassy and Consulate group in any exchange arrangements but, except for Mr. Yano's original assurance, they took the attitude that, as we had not been at our posts we had no special status, and beyond that there was a blank wall; we were not allowed to know even what had become of the Embassy and Consular establishments in occupied China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211768, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "158\n\nTHALIA AND TERPSICHORE ON THE YANGTZE A SURVEY OF FOREIGN THEATRE AND MUSIC IN SHANGHAI 1850-1865\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\n\"Thanks for the merry laugh that cheered our hearts\n\nFor loud applause that bade us top our parts. For mirth, that taking all things for the best\n\nMade even a blunder seem a clever jest'.\"*\n\nThus an epilogue to an evening of theatrical entertainment in 1852 that was given for the foreign community of Shanghai, and it sums up nicely the attitude with which generally speaking the efforts of the local amateurs were greeted. What happened on the stage in this outpost of Western civilisation may not have been very exciting or very daring but still it seems interesting enough to go into in more detail than has been done before now.2\n\n1. Some notes on foreign life in Shanghai\n\nUntil the first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842, foreigners were severely limited in China. In fact only one port, Canton, was open for external trade and merchants had to reside part of the year in the so-called foreign factories. After the war several treaties were concluded with Western nations (England, France, United States) in which the right of foreigners to settle themselves in a number of cities on the China Coast was granted.\n\nAmong these cities was Shanghai, and it was not long before a predominantly British community came into being. A Foreign Settlement was delimited, Land Regulations (a kind of constitution) were issued in 1845 and 1854, a Municipal Council of foreign merchants was formed as early as 1846,3 houses in colonial style were built, roads and a race course laid out, a drainage scheme begun and a home-like church erected. To the south of the Settlement the French had their own Concession, while to the north an American settlement gradually developed. Problems abounded, sometimes caused by the obstructions of foreign residents;\n\nOrdinary reference notes are indicated thus: (1); notes in which additional information is supplied thus: (1x).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "187\n\nless than sixteen of his farces were staged during the years 1850-1865, including of course the maligned Box and Cox which is, ironically, nearly his only piece that is still occasionally seen today. Closely following were the burlesques of Henry James Byron, written in quite a different style from Morton's farces, with many more puns in the text which makes them sometimes awkward reading, although one can feel amazement about the author's inventiveness. Yet, to see well-established works like Verdi's Il Trovatore, with its beautiful music, mangled into !!! Treated Il Trovatore, or Shakespeare's Macbeth and King John into The Babes in the Wood makes one feel a little bit queasy. Of especial interest to the Shanghai residents must have been his Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp for he had built the entire action **around puns on China tea and he invented widow Twankay as a pun on one of the ports central to the China trade\" [Shanghai presumably — JHJ]. Byron was of course not \n\nthe only one who made himself into a debaser of tragedy. What is one to think of Robert Bough's Medea or the Best of Mothers with a Brute of a Husband, the title alone of which causes one to shudder.\n\nBut then, this was obviously what an overwhelming majority of the public asked for, both in Britain and overseas. The British capital teemed with small, and not so small, theatres that catered for the wishes of the low and lower middle classes and their first demand was to be entertained after a hard day's work: who cared for a complex five-act Shakespearean tragedy people referred to laugh their heads off with Slasher and Crasher and Cool as a Cucumber.\n\nIn British outposts abroad the attitude of the public was not very different, as is shown in this article for Shanghai. A comparison with Singapore and Hong Kong shows that tastes there were also exclusively in the direction of farce and comedy and it is not to be wondered that sometimes the same pieces were chosen, like William Rhodes' Bombastes Furioso (Sh.: 28.1.1851 and 5.5.1858; Hong Kong: 1.12.1848; Singapore: May 1844 and 25.5.1846) and Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep (Sh.: 23.4.1857; 15.3.1860; H.K.: 3.1.1861; Sp.: 1862).\n\nThat not all plays were to the liking of the local paper's critics has already been discussed. Apparently, no efforts were made from among the foreign community to write original comedies, a fact which was deplored by the Herald when it thought that there are certainly men capable of such mental exercise as the writing of burlesque.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "194\n\n6.5.1852 (Thur)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: \"Attic Story\" (1842)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nR.B. PEAKS: \"The Haunted Inn\" (1828)\n\nT: Farce (2 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Music, i.a. selections from Mozart's “Le Nozze di Figaro\" and other operas. Epilogue.\n\nTh: New Theatre Royal (A)\n\nN: Last performance of the season\n\nR: Again there was a new drop scene. \"A View near Palermo, a very pleasing view of an Italian villa with the bay and hills in the background\". The pieces were \"well performed and excited much merriment, especially the mistakes of the Attic Story\" (NCH 8.5.1852).\n\n27.1.1853 (Thur)\n\nD. BOUCICAULT & C. MATHEWS: \"Used Up\" (1846)\n\nT: Comedietta (2 acts)\n\nG.A.A. BECKETT: \"The Turned Head\" (1834)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nTh: Imperial Theatre (B)\n\nN: First performance of the season\n\nR: After not a little uncertainty about the state of affairs respecting the theatre, finally the management for the new season was laid in the hands of Horatio BUSKIN (a compound pseudonym: Horatio, from Hamlet; Buskin, the boot worn by Greek actors) who succeeded \"Doldrum\".\n\nFor a \"very good attendance graced by many of the beau sexe\" the evening \"came off with great éclat\" (NCH 22, 29.1.1853).\n\n23.3.1853 (Wedn)\n\nJ.M. MORTON: \"Betsey Baker\" (1851)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nW. BROUGH: \"Apartments\" (1851)\n\nT: Farce (1 act)\n\nC: Amateurs\n\nF: Prologue; comic songs\n\nTh: Imperial Theatre (B)\n\nR: In the presence of the British Superintendent of Trade and Governor of Hong Kong, Sir George Bonham, Betsey Baker turned out to be \"a most decided and palpable hit, received throughout with shouts of laughter and applause\". Bonham was in Shanghai on his way to Nanking which had been taken by the Taipings on March 19. The Rebellion had a profound effect on the foreign community and although the Taipings enjoyed for some time a lot of sympathy, on this occasion they were satirised in a **most original and witty Prologue**: \"The Manager appeared before the curtain, in a state of intense excitement, informing the audience of mutiny in the corps! Dreadful consequences!! No performance!!! What could be done!? Then arose such a \"Row and Bobbery\" [Bobbery: an Anglo-Indian word meaning 'noise, disturbance' - JH] led by those who were in the secret and poor Horatio BUSKIN could scarcely be heard amidst the crash of broken glass and was almost unable to face the shower of oranges aimed at his devoted head. An amiable conspirator elevating himself on a bench expressed most loudly and eloquently his indignation at this state of affairs; however, after a parley with the Manager, he proposed a compromise, and the curtain was drawn up exposing the corps evidently in a state of 'Rebellion'. Fortunately they would listen to reason and the 'refractory members' agreed to 'go on' for this occasion, and the Manager retired with...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212025, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 440, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "415\n\ncommunity elders and magistrates who represented the central government in these localities.\n\nEarly conflicts over such issues as taxes and militia were resolved when Britain began to send civilian commissioners experienced in colonial administration. They were also blessed with long tenures — J. H. Stewart Lockhart, who had advised the Hong Kong Government on administration of the New Territories, was British Commissioner at Weihaiwei for nineteen years, and R. F. Johnston for sixteen.\n\nWeihaiwei was not a major port boasting access to other areas of China. Despite efforts at cultivation - ineffective except for ground nuts — its lack of a marketable product meant the absence of a powerful foreign business community like those that challenged the authority and policies of British officials at the treaty ports. The British administrators, therefore, could establish and carry out policies without having to consider other vested interests. As a rule, they were free to work within the framework of traditional Chinese institutions.\n\nThe conservatism of the local gentry and the absence of a strong Chinese middle class meant that there was no pressure on British administrators to bow to forces that clamoured for reform and modernization. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Chinese institutions were undergoing changes. Certain constitutional features were being introduced into the Chinese government, and, with the abolition of the civil service examination system in 1905, education based on Confucian classics was being replaced by a more modern, westernized curriculum. At Weihaiwei, however, neither the local elders nor the British administration sought to change the status quo.\n\nWith the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912 demands for ending foreign privileges increased. Subsequent civil war among various warlord factions meant hardship for the people of Weihaiwei, but, until the formation of the National Government under Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Britain did not have to give serious thought to returning Weihaiwei to Chinese rule. Meanwhile, administrators kept expenditures below revenue, partly because they wanted to make sure that sufficient funds were available for staff pensions and other expenses when the British withdrew, (p. 168).\n\nThe actual transfer of administration to the Chinese took place on 1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212185, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "104\n\nPetroleum Co., and a timber ship of the Import and Export Lumber Co. Together with the large \"Ewo\" hulk we were all anchored a few miles above Nanking in a stretch of the river, designated as a \"Safe Harbour\" of which the Japanese authorities had been duly notified. The American gunboat \"Panay\" was anchored two miles lower down off the creek at the top end of Nanking, whence communication with the few foreigners in the city could still be maintained through a 'phone situated in a godown on the bank.\n\n\"The Flag Captain, Commanding Officer, and Ward Room officers of H.M.S. \"Scarab\" request the pleasure of the company of the British community, now afloat in the \"safe\" anchorage, on board H.M.S. \"Scarab\" at 11.30 tomorrow, Saturday, 11th December, on the occasion of the anniversary of His Majesty's accession.\"\n\nIt was a lively party. As you may imagine there was plenty to talk about, and the bountiful hospitality dispensed by the Navy - I naturally do not refer merely to its liquid aspect - set all in a pleasant frame of mind for a latish lunch when the gathering broke up and the participants returned to their respective ships. I have no doubt that the ensuing sense of somnolence was fairly general when, with a crash, a shell burst on the river bank not 100 yards from the nearest ship. The noise disturbed the lethargy of that Saturday afternoon. Ears pricked to discover whether there was more to come. The doubt whether that first shell was a stray or not was soon settled as two more straddled the nearest ship. Captains leapt to their bridges and called for steam. Clouds of smoke belched from the assembled funnels, marking well the whereabouts of the target. Shells began to fall regularly in the anchorage, but it was not more than fifteen minutes before the merchant flotilla, festooned with attendant small craft, was underway heading upriver. The two gunboats remained to stand-by the hulk, which was full of foreign and Chinese refugees and, having slipped its anchors, endeavoured to tow it in the wake of the other vessels. By good luck there were no direct hits on any of the ships, though some vessels were holed by splinters, and two unfortunate Chinese boatmen were killed and some others wounded.\n\nThe shelling resumed when the ships were under way a mile or two above the \"safe harbour\", the guns then appearing to be of heavier calibre. The shells came over in pairs and were very well", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212202, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "121\n\nday to Changsha. The capital of Hunan, the province with a long history of anti-foreign fanaticism, is situated on the Siang river, which flows down to the Yangtze above Hankow. In summer the middle-river steamers come up as far as Changsha, but in winter the level over the sand flats where the river passes through the Tung Ting lake, near its mouth, is so shallow that even the specially designed river gunboats cannot pass. One British gunboat generally wintered at Changsha.\n\nThere was no concession, and in the course of time the foreign community had congregated on a long sand bar, which made an island in the river, opposite the city. The few bungalows were grouped round the Club. It was a simple life with tennis and walks for relaxation. Normally Changsha connected with the outer world by ship through Shanghai, but now for over a year that channel had been closed by the war and the number of the foreign community, usually not more than a couple of dozen, was reduced. It did, however, include two British tank officers, loaned to the Chinese army, whom I had last seen in Nanking. They now depended for their supplies on the new railway to Hongkong. I left my car here and went on to Hankow by train.\n\nIt was nearly twenty years since I had last been in Hankow, years crowded with change, not only material but also intellectual. Hither junks from the far north-west of China, in Shensi Province, came down the Han river. From here they could sail a leg up the Yangtze, and proceed along the Siang river, until their mast-tops showed a view towards Kweilin. To the west, through the famous gorges, the small steamers fought the current to Chungking 700 miles distant; and 600 miles downriver, past Kiu Kiang, Wuhu, and Nanking, lay Shanghai and the sea. The railway in normal times ran north-east to Peking and south to Canton and Hongkong. On the opposite bank, a kilometre away, the provincial capital, Wuchang, showed; larger than Hankow and, across the Han, where that river made an angle with the Yangtze, the industrial town of Hanyang belched its smoke. Of the Concessions along the water front, only the French retained its status. The British Concession had been returned at the time of the Chen-O'Malley negotiations ten years previously; the German and Russian Concessions had reverted to China after the Great War, and the Japanese Concession had been evacuated soon after the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) incident.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212212, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "―\n\n131\n\nEast. Thirty-five million tons of shipping entered the port each year, carrying twenty-five per cent of the trade of China. The vast town was controlled by three independent authorities: the International Settlement, where British and American influence predominated; the French Concession, mostly residential; and the Chinese Municipality. A polyglot population of between four and five million Chinese, and fifty thousand foreigners, thronged the streets. The war had brought about a great shift of population from the Chinese area, where residents were exposed to Japanese oppression, to the comparative safety of the two foreign areas, whose Chinese inhabitants increased from 1½ millions to 4 millions, resulting in a heavy congestion.\n\nIt was a far cry back to those days in 1845, when in the British Concession, before it was amalgamated with the American district to form the International Settlement, the British Consul appointed \"three upright merchants\" to act as a Committee of Roads and Jetties to supervise the inconsiderable municipal needs of a small community living on a mud bank. From those simple beginnings had grown the proficient machine required to cope with the extensive complexities of a unique metropolis.\n\nH.G.W. Woodhead, the talented editor of \"Oriental Affairs\", described the functions of the Municipal Council of the International Settlement, and I cannot do better than quote his words:\n\n\"Owing to its peculiar status as a sort of 'imperium in imperio', the Shanghai Municipality has had to shoulder various responsibilities that in other countries would be assumed wholly or in part by the State. For example, it maintains its own Defence Force, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, and a highly efficient professional Russian unit. It maintains, what, for the average daily number of prisoners, is the largest gaol in the world. It maintains or makes substantial grants in aid to many hospitals. It started subsidizing Foreign education in 1880, and Chinese education in 1900, and now operates, or makes grants in aid, to numerous Foreign and Chinese schools. It has an Industrial Section, which concerns itself with labour problems, and also controls the rickshaw business to the extent of limiting hire charges, and providing for welfare work among the pullers. It maintains a public library and a municipal orchestra and an up-to-date Public Health Department. And it finances these and other important activities such as Policing, the Fire Brigade, Public Works, etc., mainly from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212217, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "136\n\nAmerican films were flown over quickly from Hollywood, and pictures would often be released earlier in Shanghai than in London. When the newsreels of the war began to come along, they led to disturbances; the Germans got nasty and wanted to break things up. Cinema owners did not wish to see their cinemas wrecked and in the end the showing of newsreels was discontinued. Unfortunately, they also did not dare show pictures, like \"The Great Dictator\", which were critical of Fascist methods. The French were, however, determined to see \"The Confessions of a Nazi Spy\", an anti-Nazi picture which was doing much in the States to open the eyes of the population to the methods of the German 'Bund'. They stationed two armoured cars outside the cinema, while inside armed police, with drawn automatics, stood along the gangways. The picture had a very popular run for two weeks, without incident.\n\nSince the disturbances of 1927 the leading Treaty Powers had maintained garrisons at Shanghai. The Japanese forces were quartered in the section of the International Settlement north of the Soochow creek, where the majority of the Japanese population lived; the British, American, and Italian contingents guarded sectors of the perimeter south of the creek; and the French garrisoned their own Concession. There was a local understanding of live and let live, and even after the Italians came into the war, the Grenadiers of Savoy, decked out in patches of red on collar and sleeve, and the baggiest of plus-fours, continued to man their sector: but to avoid argument with Thomas Atkins and Jack Tar they were confined to their own particular taverns. Blood Alley remained an Anglo-Saxon preserve, where Johnnie Doughboy sometimes threw his weight about.\n\nIt was in January, 1940, that the Royal Navy stopped the Asama Maru, within a few hours steaming of the Japanese Coast, and removed 21 Germans from on board. The Japanese, of course, went up in the air at this alleged insult to the Imperial flag, and the British community in Shanghai questioned the expediency of the action. The incident was settled by negotiation, 9 of the captives being returned, and the Japanese undertaking not to convey in their ships military personnel of the belligerents. It is interesting to remember that, when the S.S. \"President Hoover\" ran aground on the East Coast of Formosa, in Japanese territorial water, closed to foreign shipping, the Japanese refused to allow the Americans to salvage her, but insisted on the work being done by Japanese firms. Soon after, the Asama", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212504, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "38\n\n1981 The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists. He Qia and Hu Liyuan In Modern China 7/2- 191-225\n\n1993 Hong Kong in Chinese History A Study of Community and Social Unrest from 1842 to 1913 New York, Columbia University Press\n\nWang, Gungwu 1990 The Culture of Chinese Merchants Working Paper Series No 57 Ontario: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, University of Toronto-York University Also adopted in Wang (1991) 181-90\n\n1991 China and the Chinese Overseas Singapore, Academic Press\n\nWang, Jingyu 1965 Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The activities of Chinese merchants to buy capital-shares from the foreign aggressive enterprises in China during the late nineteenth century) In Lishi Yanjiu 1965/4\n\n1983a Tang Tingshu yanjiu (A study of Tang Tingshu) Beijing, Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe\n\n1983b. Shijiu shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The economic invasion of western capitalism on China in nineteenth century) Beijing, Renmin Chubanshe\n\n1990 Shilun Jindai Zhongguo de maiban jieji (A preliminary discussion on modern Chinese compradors) In Lishi Yanjiu 1990/3, 89-108\n\nWang, Shui 1983. Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An assessment of compradors' income and its spending ways in Qing dynasty). In Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo Jikan 5 298-324\n\n1984. Maiban de jingji diwei he zhengzhi qingxiang (The economic achievement and political tendency of compradors) In Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo Jikan 7 255-93\n\nWilmott, William E 1966 The Chinese in Southeast Asia. In Australian Outlook 20. 252-62\n\n1972 edited Economic Organization in Chinese Society Stanford. Stanford University Press\n\nWong, Bernard 1988 Patronage, Brokerage, Entrepreneurship, and the Chinese Community of New York New York. AMS Press\n\nWong, Siu-lun 1983 Business Ideology of Chinese Industrialists in Hong Kong In Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 23 137-71\n\n1984 The Migration of Shanghainese Entrepreneurs to Hong Kong In From Village to City. Studies in the Traditional Roots of Hong Kong Society 206-27 Edited by David Faure, James Hayes and Alan Birch Hong Kong, Center of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong\n\n1985 The Chinese Family Firm: A Model In British Journal of Sociology 36/1 58-72\n\n1986 Modernization and Chinese Culture in Hong Kong. In China Quarterly. 106. 306-25\n\n1988a Emigrant Entrepreneurs Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong Hong Kong, Oxford University Press\n\n1988b The Applicability of Asian Family Values to Other Sociocultural Settings In In Search of an East Asian Development Model. 134-52 Edited by Peter Berger and Michael Hsiao New Brunswick and Oxford, Transaction Publishers\n\n1990 Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Trust In University of Hong Kong Supplement to the Gazette 37/1 25-34\n\n1991 Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Trust In Gary Hamilton (edited) 13-29\n\n1993 Business Networks, Cultural Values and the State in Hong Kong and Singapore Unpublished paper presented at the Workshop on Chinese Business Houses in Southeast Asia since 1870 School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London\n\nWoon, Yuen-fong 1984 Social Organization in South China, 1911-1949 the Case of...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213203, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "4\n\nincluded (CO129/414, p. 177).\n\nThe three German females in the 1921 census are mentioned in a report Canon Bannister sent to the Church Missionary Society in 1914. The Berlin Foundling House had 150 children and the two Blind Homes had 120 children. \"The Government has allowed three German ladies to remain in each home and the writer was asked to take general oversight”, (Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham, England, CH1/P/4 No. 149, Bannister, 5 Nov. 1914).\n\nThe German community gradually reestablished itself in Hong Kong, but in 1931 it was less than half of what it had been in 1911.\n\nHong Kong being a British colony, the British were the largest non-Chinese community. Next was the Macanese-Portuguese. The third were the Germans. They were followed by the Americans,\n\nGermans in the Canton trade\n\nGerman-speaking merchants participated in the China trade in the eighteenth century. The trade was confined to Canton. In 1729, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Austria, chartered the Imperial East India Company to trade in the East using the port of Ostend in the Netherlands as its home base. At that time Netherlands was a part of the Austrian Empire. This company did not use German ships, but chartered British vessels which were principally manned by British crews. This was a stratagem to get around the efforts of the British chartered East India Company to control the European trade with China. Over the years there were usually two or three ships each season from Bremen or Hamburg arriving at Canton.\n\nBritish free traders used the protection of the office of Consul for foreign states to acquire the privilege of permanent residence in China. These free traders were large importers of opium of India, a trade the British East India Company ships did not engage in as it was prescribed by Chinese Imperial Edict and the company wished to maintain a good relation with the Dragon Throne. It feared that if it was too closely identified with the opium trade the Chinese authorities would curtail the company's lucrative and traditional trade in tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214201, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "22\n\nconsider the first character to be partly made up of the character for ghost.' This was thus seen by many as a ghost knocking at the door of Hong Kong. It was certainly not auspicious. The second 'Ngai' can be seen by wary Chinese as representing the Chinese character for 'danger' Consequently, on his return in 1987, to solve the problem Sir David's name was changed to Wai Yik-shun. This means, 'to defend and protect with faith and trust.' All this changing of names, although generally regarded with some amusement by many Westerners, is taken very seriously by most Chinese. Changing given names is by no means uncommon among Chinese although they do not normally change surnames (Jones, 1997;73).\n\nMore of humour\n\nIt has been said, if you want to educate a person in the culture and customs of a country you must start with his or her grandmother. Yet Raybon Kan, an ethnic Chinese who performs under the title of Comedy Fu, was born and grew up north of Wellington, New Zealand (Green, 1998). He works as a stand-up, Chinese 'Kiwi' comedian. This lawyer turned funnyman speaks fluent, colloquial Cantonese, but only with his parents who understand limited English and run a take-away. It is something to come on stage in a White community, with a Chinese face in a classic, rural white-bloke tradition, with an act where about one-quarter focuses on his native origins, racial stereotypes, and being an 'underdog' and a 'victim' (Little, 1998). Humour can of course be 'learned.' In fact in one month, in rugby-loving New Zealand, more went to see Comedy Fu perform than watched the Auckland Warriors in action.\n\nAnother act was put on by Pui-fan Lee (note surname and given names reversed in western fashion), a stand-up comic in Short, Fat, Ugly and Chinese, at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong, in 1994. As a Chinese girl born in Birmingham, her performance consisted of immigrant Chinese culture and indigenous British values intertwined, interlarded with farcical growing-up encounters in England. And when she lapsed into a broad Brum accent the Birmingham folk who were there loved it. The key is pronunciation. He or she who speaks with a foreign accent is a foreigner. The audience did not care what colour their peer was. The important point was that she spoke broad Brum. Accent conveys acceptance. She was one of them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214510, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 368, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "337\n\nis good and allows for reasonably fast travel; the journey took about three hours. I had suggested to the guide beforehand that perhaps a stop along the way for \"refreshment\" would be in order. The bus pulled into an establishment that looked for all the world like a desert caravanserai, or some hostelry from the Wild West. The only commodity of any sort on sale was a type of large black mushroom, and a tea-like drink made from it. Our main interest, however, was with the toilet facilities - until we saw them, that is. A few of us were in enough need to make the considerable effort to go inside. Others decided to cross their legs for another couple of hours. I can only presume that German influence had not spread this far north.\n\nOn the way into the city of Yantai a large street-side sign was spotted saying \"No Whistling within the City Boundary\". Nobody could explain the purpose of this, unless it was a reaction to endless British tourists whistling Colonel Bogey.\n\nThe first point of interest in Yantai was the Fujian Hall. This was not in keeping with the colonial flavour of the trip, but was relevant to us southerners as being an outpost built in the north by the Fujian community that had been very active in business in the early days of Chefoo.\n\nMost of the old British remains are concentrated in a fairly small area - from the promontory of Yantai Hill east along the sea front to the former Chefoo School.\n\nYantai Hill is the place that once housed the British and other foreign consulates. It is very pleasant to walk the narrow roads and paths in this small area. A number of buildings remain, although very few are still used. Some are boarded up, and some remain only in the form of their foundations. It is not clear which was which, even with the benefit of old maps from the last century. However, a clear impression can be had of the peace and tranquility that still reign here, and of the commanding position that the residents must have had. I could almost hear a scratchy wind-up gramophone playing and the chink of ice in glasses of G&T.\n\nTo the west of the hill is the port, and there are still a number of small dock-side buildings that might date from the 19th century, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215283, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 60, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "preferences granted to British goods, to increase the margin of preference on a few specific items and to review the level of existing tariffs which protected dominion manufactures against British goods. The dominions approved tariff preferences on specified colonial goods, mostly tropical agricultural products, asphalt, rum and cigars. Each dominion offered a different list of concessions to the colonies and not all were equally generous. South Africa granted preferences only on raw coffee and asphalt. Canada gave little more than the preferences already embodied in the 1920 trade agreement with the West Indian colonies.\" New Zealand was the only dominion which agreed to grant preferences at the same rates as were accorded to Britain to all the colonies and protectorates. The agreements with the dominions provided that the preferences accorded to British goods might be extended to the colonies, protectorates and mandated territories ‘if His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom so request'. All these preferences were for British manufactured goods. The development of manufacturing industry in the colonies was not anticipated by the governments represented at Ottawa. If it had been foreseen it is probable that the dominion governments would have raised strong objections to admitting goods manufactured under oriental conditions to their markets under a tariff designed to benefit British manufacturers.28\n\nAfter the Ottawa conference a circular despatch was sent to all colonies and dependent territories setting out the tariff preferences which would be granted by the dominions to colonial exports of foodstuffs and raw materials.\" These preferences would give the dependencies a reasonable prospect of replacing foreign imports by imports from empire sources in the dominion markets concerned. In return the dependent territories were 'invited' to grant to the dominions the preferences which the colonial secretary had negotiated at Ottawa. Cunliffe-Lister made clear that it was a matter of the highest importance that the Ottawa settlement should be put into effect as an integral whole.\n\nI should feel that I had been guilty of a breach of faith if the legislature concerned refused to grant the preference in question, unless I could put to the dominion government concerned clear evidence that there were really substantial reasons for not granting the proposed preference. It would not be an adequate ground of objection to say that the desired preference might increase the local cost of living, so long as the increase was only moderate and did not cause hardship to a particularly poor class of the community.\n\nGovernors prepared the necessary legislation for introduction into the colonial legislatures, but a number warned the Colonial Office that they\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215514, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 291, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "241\n\nA REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT OF CEMETERIES IN HONG KONG: 1841-1950\n\nKO TIM-KEUNG\n\nHong Kong had been claimed for the British Crown even before the First Opium War (1839-42) was formally brought to an end. A naval party under Sir Gordon Bremer landed on the island on 26th January 1841. A form of government was organized and a chief magistrate and a harbour-master appointed, and in June the first land sale took place to create the impression of permanency. The port was declared a free port, and merchants, both foreign and Chinese, were encouraged to settle and trade there. However, little significant building followed, the main deterrent being the island's insalubrity and a high death rate from 'Hong Kong Fever.' Hong Kong, quite unexpectedly, became the last resting place of many of these early settlers and troops.\n\nThe Burial Ground in Wan Chai\n\nThe first years in Hong Kong had a distressing aspect for the British, particularly its army, because of disease. The setting up of the first barrack areas along the north coast of the island led to severe epidemics of fever among the troops. 183 of them had died in 1841. Consequently, a burial ground for the dead was urgently needed. A notice was proclaimed in August 1841:\n\nA piece of land to the eastward of Cantonment Hill having been allocated by Government as the ground for the burial of the dead of Europeans and others, Notice is hereby given that persons burying their dead in any other unauthorised place will be treated as trespassers.\n\nJno. F. Mylius, Land Officer, Hong Kong 30th August 1841.\n\nA 19th-century publication also records: \"Deaths now [1841] became frequent occurrences also among the European community; hospitals had to be hastily constructed, and the first cemetery (near the present St. Francis' Chapel, above Queen's Road East) began to fill...\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215519, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 296, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "246\n\ncould be traced in regard to this burial ground, though the noted Scottish botanist and traveller Robert Fortune, who visited Hong Kong between 1843 and 1846, recorded:\n\nBefore leaving China [1846], I had occasion to visit this spot of ground (the old barrack area in West Point), the grave of many a brave soldier. A fine road31 leading round the island…passed through the place where they had been buried. Many of their coffins were exposed to vulgar gaze, and the bones of the poor fellows lay scattered about on the public highway no one could find fault with the road having been made there, but if it was necessary to uncover the coffins, common decency required that they should be buried again…38\n\nOther Early Cemeteries\n\nHong Kong's initial progress as an entrepôt was slow, nevertheless, by the 1850s, Hong Kong's position as a trading centre had gradually been consolidated. Before the emergence of a recognizable Chinese merchant class in the later half of the 19th century, foreign merchants, the bulk of whom were British, dominated the local political and economic scene. Nevertheless, some of the most prominent and best remembered foreign traders came neither from Europe nor North America, but from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. These included the Parsees, the Indians and the Jews.\n\n39\n\n40\n\nA Parsee (or Zoroastrian) cemetery in Happy Valley was granted as early as 1852, and the first grave was erected there in 1858. The Jewish Cemetery, located south-east of Wong Nai Chung Village and near some paddy fields, was first laid out in 1855 when the first of the Jewish merchants from Guangzhou settled in Hong Kong. The lease for land for a cemetery was granted in 1857, the year of the first burial.42 As the community was not large, the number of burials was small. By the end of the 19th century, burials were limited to about sixty. The cemetery was described as 'neglected' in an 1890's tourist guide.44\n\nThe Muslim cemetery in Happy Valley had been deeded to the community in 1870, and a mosque with rooms for burial preparations was added. Prior to this, a Mohammedan cemetery, located at roughly the present site of St. Stephen's Girls College along Park Road, can be found in an 1863 map.46\n\nHowever, no further information on this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215942, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 241, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "175\n\nHong Kong shipyards to do marine engineering could also be used to make armour cladding for ships and vehicles. Hong Kong was also the base from which British aircraft manufacturers wanted to penetrate the Chinese market - the Far East Flying School wanted to train Chinese to fly so they would buy British rather than American or German planes. Hong Kong was also a centre for financial transactions both within and outside the banking system, a source for remittances and money transfers, more secure than Shanghai after the Japanese conquest. A large KMT community operated out of and lived in Hong Kong: almost a parallel government. While there was sympathy for the Nationalists, the colonial administration was uncertain how to maintain a balance between the Japanese and the Chinese Government. Riots against Japanese living in Hong Kong had been suppressed, and no protests made against Japanese attacks on the junk fleet. When the St Johns Ambulance wanted to send an ambulance to bombed Canton, the Colonial Office refused permission. Groups of Chinese 'terrorists' were arrested and deported from time to time. As late as May 1941 the colony's police force raided premises at 98 Robinson Road and destroyed a wireless transmitting station which had been operating for three years. The leader of this group was Chan So, an agent of General Wu Te Ching. When Governor Northcote sought guidance, the Colonial Office was advised by the Foreign Office that British policy had to vary according to circumstances, and support for China should be rendered 'compatible with the safety of Empire and avoidance of actual hostilities with the Japanese.'xix Nonetheless, there was a significant understanding between the Goumindang and the British when it came to matters of mutual benefit. When war officially broke out, their clandestine relationship could come out into the open. When Phyllis Harrop,\n\na civilian consultant working with the police reported for duty right after the outbreak of hostilities, she was assigned to work with the KMT who had already started to occupy offices with the police.\n\nThe Japanese were all too aware of the importance of Hong Kong to the KMT. The Japanese Foreign Minister had softly but firmly reminded the British Ambassador to keep the KMT under control. Even before their push to the south, the Japanese had identified KMT activists and targeted educated, articulate overseas Chinese as a threat and source of resistance. In Malaya and Singapore, they were to massacre thousands of Chinese in the wake of their advance, a fact obscured by the emphasis on the sufferings of Europeans interned in camps. In Hong Kong, on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216047, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 346, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "280\n\nfood and shelter with money he collected from foreigners. He always wore straw sandals, Chinese clothes and cap, and had a strong Chinese complex. The local Chinese adored him, but not so the missionaries; they detested him, even refusing him food and shelter, or any assistance whatsoever - consoling themselves with the reflection that he was a 'disgrace to the cloth'.\n\nDr. James Hayes has reminded me that he produced a note for Volume 23 of this JHKBRAS[1983] in which he provided extracts from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader21 describing the westerner's community shooting bungalow in about 1905. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Zhenjiang, a small, lonely British concession. When first posted there he had been assured by others that Zhenjiang was a very nice and clean Concession, with a good club and excellent shooting. He found this to be a good description of the Concession but not of the native town. 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. After several years with the Imperial Maritime Customs he was offered a job representing a foreign firm still in Zhenjiang and found himself now one of the upper set. No longer could he walk down the crowded streets of the Concession but must ride in state in his sedan chair, borne by his four chair bearers garbed in his firm's colours. Rasmussen's sanity was saved by the presence of a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near by, looked after by a caretaker. It was about eight miles away on a hill called Wu Chow where he would stay during his off-duty hours either reading or hunting wild boar. Though it was relatively expensive in ammunition and tips for the beaters he was able to lessen the latter by sharing expenses with shooting companions. Rasmussen spent many happy hours scanning the visitors' book finding out more about previous hunting successes and failures. He describes how he relieved his boredom by walking up and down the Bund, three hundred yards there and three hundred back, and for a change he walked along the only cross street to the south gate of the Concession, two hundred yards there and two hundred yards back.\n\nOne of the most lucrative trades around Shanghai and Zhenjiang used to be that of being shot. Foreign merchants often went up creeks in house-boat parties, or wander about the fields in the outskirts, looking for snipe. There were no hedges or game laws and innumerable", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216128, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 427, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "361\n\nTHE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nJ. L.Y. CHAN\n\nIn the early days of Empire, when western institutions permeated around the world as a result of colonisation in the nineteenth century, libraries were among the first community organisations established wherever foreign settlements developed. Some of the libraries began as informal shared collections of reading materials, but a few developed a specialty of publications providing sources of information about the host country and its culture. This paper traces the development of the Library of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, its progress and growth since inception, and addresses some of the concerns faced by the Library.\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society\n\nThe establishment of the Asiatic Society dates back to 1784 when a group of interested traders, missionaries, diplomats and administrators founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. This provided the impetus for the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society in London (now known as the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland) in March 1823 which again gave rise to the founding of other branches, in Bombay and Madras in 1838, in Ceylon in 1845, in Japan in 1875, in Malaya in 1878, and in Korea in 1900. In China, two branches were established, the Hong Kong Branch (formerly named the China Branch) started in 1847 followed by the North China Branch in Shanghai in 1857/58. The aim of the Royal Asiatic Society and its branches is \"... investigation of the subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts, in relation to Asia.\" As such, they serve as fora for discussion and greater understanding of Asian culture.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had actually grown out of a Medico-Chirurgical Society which was founded in 1845, initially constituted as the China Branch in January 1847 with the effort of Sir John F. Davis, the then Governor, himself a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Due to dissent and feuds within the trading community in Hong Kong, the China Branch collapsed in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]