[ { "id": 204722, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER\n\n \n Soldiers with matchlocks, bows and arrows, flags and songs moving across the Square to reinforce those stationed on board the Chop and other boats.\n \n \n Tomorrow is Captain Elliot's last day, when I am quite sure the passports required will not be granted11. The heat of the weather is such that much of our provisions is spoiling.\n \n \n New China Street still remains closed with bars of wood nailed across the gates and police stationed to guard them. The Chinese houses in all directions filled with people looking from the roofs and out of the windows but none daring to attempt an entrance into the Square which is perfectly clear, except the police force. Foreigners move across the Square and into each others Hongs without impediment.\n \n \n Captain Elliot received a communication this morning from the Commissioner direct which ordered him to give up all the opium outside.\n \n \n Captain Elliot's secretary and myself went to the cow-yard with a small piece of paper containing a list of a few articles, such as rice, bread and meat which they wanted in the Company Factory. We thought we could bribe the cow-man to buy them and secrete the articles amongst the straw till we could carry them away a little at a time, but we were so closely watched we had no opportunity to speak to the man and finally the police drove him out of the yard.\n \n \n 27 March\n \n \n This morning Elmslie12, Captain Elliot's secretary, came round with a circular to the foreigners in which was requested that all opium owned by British subjects should be surrendered to him for the use of Her British Majesty's government to be delivered to the Commissioner.\n \n \n We made our list and gave up under receipt:\n \n\n \n 980\n chests Malwa\n \n \n 356\n chests Patna\n \n \n 33\n \n 97\n chests Benares\n \n \n 40\n \n 4\n 33\n \n 100\n piculs Turkey\n \n \n 700,000 dollars\n \n \n 1437 chests the cost of which is upwards of all belonging to our constituents in Bombay", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204728, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "22\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nforwarded it let me send a small chit to Mr. Sturgis by the same conveyance.23\n\nWeather very warm.\n\n9 p.m. Houqua came in this evening with a Chop from the Commissioner for Mr. Snow, the Consul, which orders him to give up 1,500 and odd chests of opium which he says he knows are held by American merchants, and does not believe the statement sent him three days since by Mr. Snow wherein was clearly stated that this opium which was held by American merchants had been surrendered to Captain Elliot by his order as it was British property.\n\nA quantity of large Chops left Canton today for Lankeel to receive the opium and bring it to Canton. It appears the vessels outside are to come up to Lankeel and there deliver it, two vessels at a time, so that it may be a month yet before we are released from imprisonment, if so soon. The Chinese do things of this sort very slowly.\n\nAll the vessels at Whampoa remain as before. On the day the Commissioner laid his paw upon us, stopped the trade, surrounded us with soldiers, and deprived us of our cooks, coolies and servants and of all intercourse with the Chinese there were 7 or 8 vessels ready for sea and on the point of sailing, amongst them are three consigned to us, Vancouver, Niantic, and Francis Stanton all loaded except the last and she only wanted a few tons more to complete her cargo.\n\nIt is to be hoped the Chinese government will have to pay all this detention with interest, to say nothing of the violent imprisonment of all foreigners in Canton who are not to be released till opium, not their own, is given up to this scoundrel of a Commissioner. It is nothing more nor less than an act of piracy. Not one of us is allowed to quit Canton, innocent or guilty, till the opium is all in his hands. He has caught us this time in a trap, but please God he may be well thrashed for it yet, and if our lives, as he threatens, are to be the penalty for the non-delivery of the 20,282 chests of opium this place may by and by be made too warm for him,24\n\nSunday 8th*\n\nAchun arrived today from Macao and reports that there are\n\n* A mistake, Sunday was the 7th and the 8th was a Monday,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204980, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n79\n\nwith sufficient knowledge of navigation and engineering for this. When Bias Bay or Mirs Bay was reached one or more of the ship's lifeboats might be used to take the pirates, their loot, and their prisoners ashore. Sometimes junks were used for this, which might be innocent junks which had arrived fortuitously, or pirate junks which had arrived by prior arrangement. Invariably at least one of the ship's officers would be held as a hostage during this operation, being released when it was completed.\n\nIf everything went smoothly in a piracy of this kind, no lives would be lost. But the pirates were ruthless if they encountered any opposition or if a hitch occurred. A few shots were usually fired in the opening exchanges, perhaps causing a few injuries, but this made the rest of the crew and passengers more co-operative. Towards the end of this era of modern piracy, when the Hong Kong Government and the shipping companies had adopted more effective anti-piracy measures, casualties became more common, as the pirates intensified their resentment to these measures.\n\nOne important anti-piracy measure was the isolation of the centre part of the ship—bridge, engine room, and saloon accommodation—from the rest of the ship by steel grilles. Access was by a steel door, locked and under constant guard. The guards were usually Chinese or Sikh policemen, under White Russian officers; but on special occasions, British soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison were employed. In spite of all these precautions, piracy continued to flourish along the South China coast right down to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, there were no attempts on ships with British soldiers as guards.\n\nThere were fifty-one major cases of piracy on the China coast in the years between the two World Wars. The great majority involved British ships, and twenty British Merchant Navy officers were killed. There were also many Chinese casualties, and many Chinese kidnapped and never heard of again. There were also many cases involving Chinese junks which received little publicity in the foreign press. The worst years were 1922, 1927, and 1928, in which there were five, six, and eight piracies respectively. A few of the most famous cases of this period are described below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205306, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n61\n\nhe himself has remitted money back to his family in Plum Grove Village for their support. During his stays in Kowloon he made frequent visits home. The masons in Grass Field Village, who periodically engage in agriculture at home, form another example of oscillation, but with less depth in the movement.\n\nThe Pacific War and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong meant an abrupt interruption to the process of extension. Those who were in the Colony gathered in the villages, which offered social security during a difficult time. They tried to survive by means of traditional production but, as before, the agricultural output was entirely insufficient. For a period of five days a large contingent of Japanese soldiers ravaged the valley destroying the fields, cutting down the supply of wood, and carrying away whatever chickens, pigs, and cows the peasants had. The meat that was not consumed they left to rot in the fields or along the hill sides. Many men and women suffered torture, others perished through starvation and forced labour. Emigrants and sailors lost contact with their home communities; those who were working in occupied areas or ports often ended up in labour camps.\n\nV\n\nThe experiences of the war situation seem to have reinforced the necessity of access to external sources of income over large tracts in the New Territories. But conditions after the end of the war were not too favourable. Peace had still not come to the China mainland, and there was a steadily increasing influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony. These people competed heavily on the labour market in the urban areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Extension now had to go beyond the nearby cities, but emigration abroad at this time was not always so easily arranged. All countries that traditionally had offered scope for Chinese immigration, now imposed strict control on the entry of Chinese, thus drastically limiting the chances for overseas employment. Since 1945 contract labour has been offered mainly in Sabah, Brunei, and Sarawak, where construction and oil industries have a certain demand for workers; and also on Nauru and Ocean Island, tiny islands in the Central Pacific, where the British Phosphate Commissioners since the start of mining have relied mainly on Chinese labour supply.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "166 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\ntions and answers produced an interesting picture of life among the soldiers at the Fort in the few years before they withdrew from it after Lantau and other parts of the present New Territories were leased to the Hong Kong Government in 1898. Put together they amount to this: \n\nI was 24 sui when the British came to take over Lantau. Tung Chung Fort had a permanent garrison of Chinese troops before then. I can't remember exactly how many troops there were or what the rank or title of the officer-in-charge was, but they were none of them local people. Their families lived at Tung Chung too, in several rows of brick houses outside the Fort and some inside the walls also. There was a house nearby in which soldiers or their family members were put when sick, with a burial ground behind. The garrison's provisions were brought in by ship, though they bought fish and vegetables locally at Tung Chung. There were military boats at Ma Wan Chung [where the main stream empties into the sea], about 7 or 8 of them of different kinds, but they were not under the command of the Tung Chung officer and came and went between such places as Canton [the provincial capital], Nam Tau [the district city], Shum Chun etc. \n\nThe soldiers at the Fort had a big parade each year on the 1st day of the seventh moon. It was held on the level ground beside the Hau Wong temple (1) near the beach. Inspecting officers came from Nam Tau, Shum Chun and Canton, I think. There was much drumming and noise on that day, and the troops paraded with all their weapons. The soldiers had uniforms of all sorts, and many kinds of weapons too, but there was no uniformity of clothing or equipment. \n\nThe soldiers were generally well-behaved and gave no trouble to us local people, though they did not have much to do as they didn't cultivate any fields, inside or outside the Fort. They did not ask for money, but kept watch. There was a guard station at Ma Wan Chung, though there were rarely soldiers in it. There were lots of robbers and pirates in this area when I was young. They came from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205746, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "46\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nYee Yuen and donated sums to its resistance fund. The two lineages also comprised two yeuk within the Ts'at Yeuk and, as such, were represented in the fighting at Tai Po.\n\nAt some point after 1st April, leaders from the Yuen Long and Sheung U Divisions went together to the Tung P'ing Kuk at Sham Chun and attempted with little success to enlist wider support for their activities. An agent was sent to Tung-kuan Hsien, where a number of 'bare-sticks' were recruited. In addition, the help of the Tang lineage of Pan T'in, in the northern part of Hsin-an Hsien, was solicited. This lineage appears to have stood in a clan relationship with the Tang higher order lineage within the New Territory. Members of the Pan T'in lineage participated in the fighting within the territory and subsequently felt themselves threatened by the British occupation of Sham Chun.\n\nThe first confrontation between the Ts'at Yeuk and the vanguard of the occupying force occurred at Tai Po. Since late March, contractors had been erecting matsheds for the Hong Kong authorities on a hill near the market. Work had been obstructed by local villagers who claimed that the hill was private land and that the matsheds would disturb the feng shui of the area. On 3rd April Captain-Superintendent May set off for Tai Po, with a mixed party of Sikh policemen from Hong Kong and a detachment of Chinese soldiers, which had been temporarily assigned to him by the Commander of the Chinese military garrison stationed at Kowloon City. He hoped to get work on the matsheds started again and intended to leave the soldiers as a guard for the construction materials, pending assumption of British authority in the Territory.\n\nMay arrived at Tai Po early in the afternoon and went to a nearby temple, almost certainly the Man Mo Miu, where he knew he would meet local leaders. A large crowd gathered, both within the temple and in the narrow street outside. His efforts at persuasion failed and the bystanders \"became very offensive in their language and demeanour.\"59 May thought it wise to leave, but hope of a dignified withdrawal ended as soon as the British party reached the street. They were set upon by an angry crowd, wielding brooms, buckets, and other improvised weapons. An escape was made after the soldiers had threatened the crowd with their rifles and the Sikhs had made a bayonet charge to clear a path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "# MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n49\n\nThe resistance movement had now reached a state of readiness. Further subscriptions of silver were obtained and responsibility for provision of rations allocated. On 13th April Ping Shan supplied pigs as food for the militia. By 14th April an advance force was in position on the hills overlooking Tai Po. It was composed of units from Fan Leng, Kam Tin, the Lam Tsuen valley, and Pat Heung. A British party making preparations for the flag raising saw about 150 men on the hills to the northwest. Four or five standards were seen, and the Chinese \"kept up an incessant yelling, beating of gongs, and firing of crackers, or guns, probably jingals ...\" 64\n\nWhen the Governor heard of these events at Tai Po he decided to station a force there immediately. On the morning of 15th April, two units were dispatched from Hong Kong. Captain Superintendent May, in charge of 22 policemen, left by launch for Tai Po. A company of the Hong Kong Regiment* — comprising 125 officers and men — set off overland from Kowloon, with orders to rendezvous with the police that afternoon.\n\nWhen the police landed near the matshed hill they were fired upon by forces from the Lam Tsuen valley, Tai Hang, Pat Heung, and Kam Tin. The militia of Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan had not been committed, although Ha Tsuen was, on this day, responsible for rations. By this time the infantry company was only a short march from Tai Po. Its commanding officer, Captain E. L. C. Berger, could see that the hills were crowded with several thousand militia, displaying six or seven different banners. As they approached the market he noted that the Chinese were uniformed and that the units nearest him occupied good tactical positions.\n\nThe soldiers joined the police on the matshed hill and found their situation difficult. The hills to the west and northwest were occupied by militia. To the east was Tolo Harbour. Twelve pieces of light artillery — probably jingals and mortars — kept up a steady fire on them from two positions. There was also continuous musketry fire. If the aim of the militia had been better, the casualties would have been heavy. Shortly thereafter the militia began an advance but were driven back by volley fire. This was the situation when H.M.S. \"Fame\" arrived late that afternoon.\n\n* A regiment of the Indian Army, with British officers and Indian (Pathan) other ranks, not to be confused with the volunteer unit of this name in present day Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205751, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n51\n\nA third letter explains the reasons for posting forces to Castle Peak and to Sha Kong, near Deep Bay. \"A strong force must be posted at Tai Po in order to resist with our full force. The two posts at Castle Peak and Sha Kong should have many flags flying in order to mislead the enemy. A force of the stronger men of your district should be detached to take part in the engagement [at Tai Po]. Sixty per cent should be retained for self protection. If troops arrive from Ngan Tin [Pan Tin] they should all be sent to Tai Po.\"66\n\nMonday, 17th April, began quietly for the British at Tai Po. H.M.S. \"Humber\" and H.M.S. \"Peacock\" arrived during the morning and anchored off-shore. A conference was held on the mat-shed hill and General Gascoigne indicated that he hoped to establish a new base camp, in the Lam Tsuen valley, by Tuesday evening. These leisurely plans were not realized. Shortly after three o'clock Chinese forces moved onto a hill some 3,000 yards away and commenced firing. The British artillery returned fire and 250 men from the Hong Kong Regiment moved off in an attempt to dislodge the militia.\n\nThe British force — Indian troops commanded by British officers — entered the Lam Tsuen valley and began to work to the southwest. The valley is about half a mile wide and two miles long. A narrow path ran down its centre and much of the level ground was devoted to rice. The militia of Kam Tin, Pat Heung, and Shap Pat Heung had taken up positions on the higher, wooded slopes. When the British moved into the valley, the militia opened fire. According to one British participant, they had \"chosen their positions well, and if they had fired well, the British troops would have fared badly.\" The Chinese had assumed their opponents would advance along the path down the valley and placed their guns accordingly. But immediately they came under fire, the soldiers abandoned the path for the hillsides and \"drove back the enemy from hill to hill and working admirably, like true Indian Frontier fighting men, took full advantage of cover.\"\n\n68\n\nIn spite of their initial mistake, the militia fought well and vigorously. They \"fired almost incessantly for one and a half hours, pouring in round shot 3.4 inches in diameter from muzzle loaders and dropping musketry fire all about our men. Fortunately", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205752, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "52\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nthe configuration of the country favoured cover and our casualties were few.\" But, \"had this advance not been conducted with great care the loss to our troops must have been heavy.\"69 After fierce fighting the militia withdrew from the valley, leaving it by way of the saddle which gives access to the Pat Heung district. The soldiers followed and, having lost touch with the Chinese, bivouacked for the night at Sheung Tsuen, on the foothills overlooking the Pat Heung valley.\n\nThe next afternoon a large force (subsequently estimated at 2,600 men), was seen approaching from a distance. It consisted of men from Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Castle Peak and from four villages in adjacent Chinese territory, including Pan Tin. The British force took up positions and stood watching the militia, deployed in three lines, \"advance across the open in excellent skirmishing order.70 The British Officer Commanding later conceded that it was \"distinctly a determined advance for Chinamen.”71 The militia began firing at long range and their rifle and jingal fire shortly became almost continuous. When the distance had been reduced to 500 yards the British tried a few ranging shots, moved forward under cover of a dry water course, and advanced into the open toward the on-coming militia. In the face of such a determined response, which now became a general advance accompanied by heavy fire, the militia broke and ran.\n\nThis battle marked the end of organized resistance within the New Territory. The next weeks were spent in establishing the civil administration and in persuading villagers to return to their normal occupations. The Governor, in attempting to explain what had happened to a remote Colonial Office, drew upon another Celtic parallel. The resistance, he said, revealed \"a state of clan feeling and power of combination not unlike that of the Scottish Highlands two centuries ago . . .\"72\n\nThe Occupation of Sham Chun and its Aftermath-- May to September, 1899.\n\nThus far, operations had been confined to the newly leased territory. Early in May, however, reports reached the Hong Kong Government of an impending attack from across the Sham Chun river. Police informers said that 140 ‘bare-sticks' from Tung-kuan Hsien had assembled in secrecy at Sha Tau, on Deep Bay. They were to form the nucleus of a force which was to be augmented by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205754, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "54 \n\nR. G. GROVES \n\nOn 2nd June Rev. Schaub wrote that the \"literati of Pan T'in had a meeting with the headmen of the six large market places in their neighbourhood.\" He continued, \"most of the collected elders of the various villages were very reluctantly promising some help, but after all they came to an agreement that they would send 500 men from each market place when the Indian troops should really come to Pan Tin.\"3 Meanwhile, the villagers of Pan T'in were constructing trenches between their village and Li Long. \n\nOn 5th June Rev. Schaub reported that fortification work was still in progress. He had heard that \"members of the rich and prosperous clan Tang in the city of Tung Kun ... are behind the scenes, that soldiers and weapons are coming up from there.\" Rev. Schaub continued, \"last Saturday a messenger came from one of our out-stations, 15 miles from here... to bring us the news that the various market places in that region had also a gathering to discuss their plans.\"74 \n\nRev. Schaub enclosed his own translation of a gentry placard posted in a nearby market town. It begins with a denunciation of the barbarians, and continues: \n\n44 \n\nTo fight the barbarians, I propose in a rough way: (1) to get the funds. It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is also not right that the various confederations should pay the costs. Some of these places have a large population, and many fields... but for instance Thonglak (alias market of peace) could not do this. It is a small place and there is not a large population... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together to ask our Government for help \n\n**75 \n\nBy the end of June it was clear that the British did not intend an expedition against the villages of the interior. The occupation had, however, become involved in larger diplomatic issues between Britain and China. It dragged on throughout the summer until 13th September, when the last of the British forces withdrew behind the frontiers of the Colony. In the interim much of the Sham Chun valley was left without any form of Chinese government. On the day the British forces finally quitted the valley \n\nPage 60\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206076, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n151\n\nTonkin delta set up an independent kingdom comprising both the Tonkin and Canton estuaries. His capital was Pun Yü, the modern Canton, and was the first walled city to be built in Nan Hai. The connection between North China was kept up and tribute was sent regularly to the Northern capital.\n\nBy this means the routes between Kwangtung and the Yangtze were developed. An important step was the opening of a canal which made a complete water route between the Yangtze via the Tung Ting Lake to the west river at the modern Wu Chow and thence to Canton. The canal exists to this day. When the kingdom of Nan Hai was finally subdued by the Hans in 111 B.C. a Chinese river fleet descended by this route onto Pun Yü and sacked it. After this victory the Han emperors extended their direct rule over the whole of the coast line from Canton to the Tonkin delta and farther south to places in modern Annam.\n\nMin Yüeh, that is the eastern part of Kwangtung, the whole of Fukien and a part of Chekiang, continued to be governed more or less independently. There was no extensive colonization by the Hans probably because their effort was directed towards the west and their ambition to link up through India their vast empire in the North West with the conquests they had made in the South. Not being a maritime people and possessing only a river fleet they were not interested in maritime routes, and the only effort they made on the sea was the conquest of Hainan Island.\n\nFor this reason the earliest settlement of the Chinese spread west, not east, from Pun Yü, across Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces. We can trace it in the walled cities built at that time. There were a group of them round the present site of Canton which have now been abandoned. Wu Chow or Ts'ang Wu was the point of contact on the west river, between it and Chiao Chih or Hanoi was the modern Nanning or Wu Lin. There were other towns built on the littoral such as Lim Chow and Ko Chow.\n\nThe Chinese inhabiting these cities were soldiers, political exiles and traders. There cannot have been much agricultural settlement. In the fortified centres the Han conquerors taught the natives some of their arts, the use of metals, as we have seen, was among them, and in exchange took all the produce and sent it to North China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206078, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH \n\n153\n\nmigrations, keeping only a semi-Chinese culture in the walled cities such as Pun Yü.\n\nEven in the Tang dynasty from the seventh to the tenth centuries it is not possible to trace any record of migration of peasants from the North. The earliest families must have died out or have been cut off so completely that they forgot their kinsmen. The settlement of peasants was accompanied by much fighting with the aborigines. At that time elephants and crocodiles existed in South China. The vegetation was tropical and the work of deforestation for agriculture was tremendous.\n\nHowever, the task was begun by soldiers. At various points garrisons were established by the T'ang emperors to protect the coastal trade and to keep the natives in order. These garrisons were known as T'un (屯) or soldiers who were settled on the land. We shall be able to give an example of the importance of these garrisons in attracting the settlement of peasants when we describe the history of Tun Mun or Castle Peak.\n\nThe colonisation of Fukien by Chinese peasants occurred much more rapidly than that of Kwangtung. There is in fact no record of any conflict between the aborigines and there is reason to believe that the Chinese were even welcomed by the inhabitants, In fact Min Yüeh became during the T'ang dynasty a Chinese colony. The Chinese settlers must have intermarried with the inhabitants. The cause of this may well have been the migration south west into Kwangtung of the early fiercer tattooing and water-fighting aborigines due to the pressure of more civilised peoples. In any case the blending of the Northern Chinese and Min Yüeh cultures had the effect of making the Chinese for the first time a maritime nation. During the Tang dynasty the Chinese began to build boats and to open a new centre of trade, Ch'üan Chow, which began to compete with the older centres of Canton and Chiao Chih.\n\nBut to return to Nan Yüeh. During the T'ang dynasty until almost the 10th century the pure Chinese population of this region must have been comparatively small. It consisted of garrisons, officials appointed to collect dues from the foreign traders, traders and exiles. In addition, there must have been a large semi-Chinese\n\n10 Li Chi-Formation of the Chinese People.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206082, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n157\n\nbegging bowl. However, since the first reference to Buddhist worship on the mountain occurs in 954, when an officer of the garrison called Ch'an carved a figure of Buddha which he put in a cave, we can assume that its Buddhist connotations were created by the Chinese soldiers. Before being a Buddhist hill it was made famous as a sacred spot by the visit of Han Yü, the famous Confucian scholar and one of the greatest names in Chinese literature.\n\nHan Yü was brought up in North China in the same region as Confucius, for whom he had the greatest veneration. He was a particularly intransigent type of philosopher who disliked all signs of mysticism. In 820 he attacked the Emperor for installing a relic of Buddha in the palace. \"I am not so naif as to think Your Majesty is deceived by Buddhism,\" he wrote. \"This ceremony is no more than a pageant got up to please the people, and how could your august wisdom deem it anything else?\" For these scathing remarks he was sent into exile to Chao Chou, which was then one of the most remote outposts of the T'ang Empire. On his way, whether coming or going, he passed by this region, and according to the Topography, \"ascended the mountain of T'un Mun and looked over the vast unfathomable ocean and the forests and waters and felt that it was indeed a sacred spot.” This local tradition is confirmed by a passage from one of his poems which describes a storm at sea with the lines:\n\n\"Tun Mun is a high mountain they say,\n\nBut even the waves swallow it up.\"\n\nHan Yü held an official post at Chao Chou. Although the place is outside our region it is worth while illustrating the conditions then prevailing in South China by quoting from his famous ‘Address to the Crocodiles.\" Han Yü was asked by the aborigines to drive away crocodiles by throwing charms into a river. His address to the crocodiles was thrown into the river by the chief of the garrison. Part of it reads as follows:\n\n\"If the crocodiles have any intelligence they should listen to the words of the prefect of Chao Chou. The great ocean spreads in the South. There live huge whales and monster birds, tiny shrimps and little crabs: all creatures find space and nourishment therein. If the crocodiles start in the morning they will reach the sea by nightfall. I conjure them, if they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206094, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n169\n\nwhich had belonged to the last Emperor and in it the seal of the dynasty which was brought back as a token of the complete extinction of Sung. At Ch'ek Wan on the peninsula called Nam Shan just north-cast of our region there is a tomb which purports to be that of Ti Ping. It bears the inscription \"Grave of the Little Emperor Hsing Hsing24 of Sung\" and it is tended by a family named Chiu which was the surname of the Sung emperors. There are graves of both Tuan Tsung and Ti Ping in other places along the coast of Kwangtung province and it is not certain that this one is genuine. Most likely it was a \"garment grave\" containing some relic of the Emperor and made to deceive his enemies as to his real burial place.\n\nMany Chinese families in the district claim to be descended either from royal blood or from ministers and soldiers of Sung. These claims may be unsubstantiated individually but the fact that they are made in the mass points to a tradition that much of the Sung army settled in South China after their defeat. It may be asked whether the Tang family helped the Emperors whose kins-men they were. Tang Shou Tsu who lived about this time was a minor officer in the Yuan armies and probably fought against Sung. The Tang family nevertheless lost its paramount influence in Tung Kun district after these events, and this may be the reason why members of the elder branch settled more permanently at Kam Tin and in other parts of the region.\n\nVIII. T'UN MUN AND THE PORTUGUESE\n\nMention has been made in a previous section of the prevalence of pirates in the South China Seas in early times. The earliest record of any piratical action within the region is as early as the 10th century when a pirate named Wu Ling Kuang attacked T'un Mun but was defeated. A later event was a revolt of the population of Lantau Island in 1278 when the Yuan government attempted to enforce a monopoly of the salt production and arrested the private salt makers. It is recorded that soldiers tried to land on the island but were prevented by means of wooden stakes placed along the coast, and that the Tanka inhabitants then sailed up the estuary and attacked Canton. The civil population fled, but the sailors defending Canton, by using incendiary arrows\n\n24 The reign title of Ti Ping.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206102, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n177\n\n\"At first the people thought they would soon return and tried to stay together, but when they saw that there was no hope they began to separate. Sons were sold for a bushel of rice, daughters for a hundred cash. Speculators were able to buy people into slavery for practically nothing. Those who were young and strong were made to join the army. The authorities looked on the people as so many ants.\"\n\nThe evacuation had in fact led to more disorder on the coast than there had ever been before.\n\nIn 1663, for instance, the Tanka fishermen who were prevented from earning a living revolted all over the Canton estuary and at one time attacked Canton itself. They were defeated in this neighbourhood and retired to Mirs Bay, where they menaced the town of Tai P'ang. At the same time, a revolt was organised near Sha T'in in our region, which spread as far as Kun Fu Cheung or Kowloon City. It is obvious that these disorders must have prevented the troops from building adequate fortifications.\n\nIn spite of this, however, the evacuation lasted from 1662 to 1669. During this time, enormous numbers perished, and others were forced to go far inland to obtain food. The Topography states that only 2,172 males were allowed to remain (presumably as soldiers), and no women or children during the whole of this period. These figures include the whole of San On district, and they are perhaps exaggerated and give too ideal a picture of the effectiveness of the evacuation, such as local officials would have felt themselves bound to present, and it seems most probable that more of the population may have remained. I have heard from a source that cannot be checked that the area west of the Tai Lam Ch'ung valley was not affected. This would include most of the fertile land held by the Tang family, and it would be natural that this part of our region, which is nearer to the Canton estuary than any other, would have been less suspected than the islands and wilder parts of the mainland of helping the Ming cause. These places, except in so far as they harboured rebels, may have been entirely emptied.\n\nThis fact, if it is a true one, will explain why so many Punti villages in that area were abandoned and later colonised by Hakka. The attached map (see T'ien Hsia Vol. XI, No. 4)* shows\n\n*Plate 16 here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206120, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n193\n\nThe barracks are at present occupied by the 1st Battalion, The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, the old 33rd or 1st Yorkshire West Riding Regiment of Foot, raised in 1702 for the War of the Spanish Succession. It is one of the last surviving regiments of British Infantry to retain its individual identity. The Commanding Officer, Lt.-Col. D. W. Shuttleworth, the well-known Army and England Rugger International, has very kindly allowed us to take tea in the Officers' Mess where the Colours and some of the Regimental Silver will be on display. Some officers of the Regiment will be on hand in civilian clothes to act as hosts, to explain the Silver and to answer visitors' questions.\n\nStanley Military Cemetery\n\nThere are 663 graves in this 2.5 acre cemetery,* some of them dating from the 1840s and 1860s when there was a permanent garrison at Stanley (on the site of the present St. Stephen's Boys School) and others from the 1939-1945 War and the period of civilian internment at Stanley Prison. The cemetery pre-dates even the Colonial Cemetery, having been opened on 21st July, 1843. Note the large grave stones to some soldiers killed by Chinese Pirates in Stanley Bay in the 1840s.\n\nHong Kong, October 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nTHE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI\n\nIn last year's Journal (pp. 141-148) Dr. Ronald C. Y. Ng contributed an interesting article on this subject, reprinted by kind permission from the Geographical Journal Vol. 135, Part 2 (June) 1969.*\n\nNoting the bilingual nature of the map which used English and Chinese characters for place names Dr. Ng concluded that the document 'was intended primarily for English-speaking users' and described it as 'simultaneously a map and a gazetteer of the District'.\n\n* Readers may be interested to learn that the Australian National Library at Canberra has made available for sale Xerox copies of this interesting map from an original copy in their collection. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206212, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO\n\n23\n\nas a creed, or ethics, that the world ever witnessed.\" Warming to his task, Harvey declared: \"The first impression of a sensible and reasoning Englishman, on coming into contact with Taepingdom is one of horror, then of amazement, with contempt and disgust following each other in succession. Taepingdom is a huge mass of 'nothingness'... It is a gigantic bubble, that collapses on being touched, but leaves a mark of blood on the finger.” In such light, Harvey's advice was simple: \"Your Excellency may rest assured that we shall only arrive at a correct appreciation of this movement, and do it thorough justice, when it is treated by us as land piracy on an extensive scale — piracy odious in the eyes of all men — and, as such, to be swept off the face of the earth by every means within the power of the Christian and civilized nations trading with this vast Empire.\"\n\nIn his dispatch to London of April 10, 1862, British Minister Frederick Bruce enclosed Harvey's \"very able report” and added: \"No commerce can co-exist with their presence, and no specific relations are possible with a horde of pirates and brigands, who are allowed to commit every excess, while professing a nominal allegiance to an ignorant and ferocious fanatic.\" In another dispatch eight days later Bruce emphasized this theme saying that the presence of the Taipings in any district is \"accompanied by the utter destruction of the materials of trade.\"19 Thus all evidence to the contrary from Ningpo and elsewhere of Taiping efforts to encourage trade were totally ignored, to be drowned out as a matter of fact, by such sustained propaganda, so that the impression has remained ever since that the Taipings were somehow anathema to commerce.\n\nThus the stage was carefully being set for the climax. The British, with the French, awaited the opportune moment, or more precisely, an opportune pretext. This came on April 22, 1862. The occasion was the triumphant return to Ningpo of General Fan who had been away at Nanking. During a cannon salute, unfortunately aimed in the direction of the foreign settlement, some shots reportedly killed one or two Chinese within the settlement, although the report itself seems questionable. On the same day, some Taiping soldiers fired musket shots toward the H.M.S. Ringdove. The ship's Captain immediately protested, and the very responsive Taiping General Huang replied apologetically, on the very same day, promising punishment for the offenders.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206217, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "28\n\nSTEPHEN UHALLEY, JR.\n\nand justify their active support of the attack on the city. This then is what happened on the morning of May 10th. According to the Ch'ing official, Hsü Yao-kuang, the provocative shots were fired at a foreign vessel and actually killed two foreigners.36 Dew jumped to the conclusion or feigned to believe that it was the Taipings who had done the firing, and immediately joined in the fight. Dew's own account is nonchalant, noting merely that the Taiping guns were silenced and that he then went to dinner at noon. At 2 p.m. storming parties mounted the walls, and at 5 p.m., after all opposition had ceased, the \"Governor” (probably the tao-t'ai) and Ch'ing soldiers landed from their junks. Dew turned the city over to the Manchu official and withdrew his men.37 The disposition of the Ch'ing troops during this attack is implicit in this report, but another unofficial source was more explicit, reporting that the Chinese allies could not be made to move toward the walls, so that in the end, even the actual breaching of them had to be undertaken by foreign troops.38 Obviously, under the circumstances of such an attack by Ch'ing forces, the Taipings had little alternative but to return fire toward foreign vessels which were interspersed among or in close proximity to the pirate fleet, both as the action began and as it continued.\n\nAfter a determined resistance, and after both of their generals, Huang and Fan, had been badly wounded, the Taipings retired from the city. The contrast between what happened during the retaking of the city at this point and the record of the Taiping seizure of the city several months earlier is interesting. It will be recalled how universal had been the favorable comments regarding the bloodless Taiping takeover. As for this latest occupation, the report of the correspondent for the China Mail speaks eloquently: \"The rebels retreated through the west gate; the pirates then entered the city and began the work of destruction, and in a few hours did more damage than the rebels did in the whole of the five months that they had possession.\" The same account goes on to speak of the executions and the tortures that were perpetrated over the next couple of days, and notes specifically that the British Consul's Chinese servant was \"one of the principal murderers and torturers of the poor fellows found in the city.\"39 Cheng A-fu was subsequently given the status of a petty official in Ningpo, as a reward for his service.40", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206227, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "38\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\npower. However, she lacks a capable general to command this gigantic military force. To rely upon a tremendous number of soldiers without a brilliant commander is, in fact, unreliable...\n\n+\n\nThe most authoritative comment on Tseng's article was from Sir Rutherford Alcock, the former British Minister to China. He gave his opinion in the April issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review, that China was not already awake, as Tseng had described in his work. He emphasized that the army and navy built up by Li Hung-chang could hardly be the equal of those of European powers. Alcock suggested that China must launch immediate political and financial reforms before she could quickly build up a strong and efficient army or navy.\n\nAfter the publication of Tseng's article, Charles Denby, United States' Minister to China, in his dispatch to the State Secretary, Thomas F. Bayard, included a copy of Tseng's article together with his personal comments. Denby thought all the points listed in Tseng's article had to wait for quite a long time before they could be smoothly carried out. Denby believed that China had to work very hard for centuries before she could win a decisive battle against any of the European powers. As long as China could not build her own railways, it was beyond her ability to do anything further; for Denby thought that railways were the most important thing, if China wanted to carry out political, economical and military reforms.\n\nOf all the comments and criticisms, none were as constructive and concrete as Ho Kai's. After Ho Kai read Tseng's work, which appeared in the China Mail in Hong Kong on 8 February 1887, he immediately wrote a lengthy article and had it published in the same paper on 16 February 1887. In his letter addressed to the editor, he said:\n\nI read with great interest in your issue of the 8th instant, a remarkable article on ‘China — the Sleep and Awakening' purporting to have been written by the Marquis Tseng, which will (as was there stated) 'appear in the forthcoming number of the Asiatic Quarterly Review.' I do not intend to write exactly a critical review of this truly 'remarkable' article, but I am resolved to take this early opportunity to offer a few humble words in season to the noble Marquis", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206308, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n119\n\npolice were commonly reputed to be corrupt, inefficient, drunken and lazy. The police force, mainly composed of European and Indian policemen with a small contingent of Chinese, was officered by European inspectors and sergeants and controlled at the top by a European Captain Superintendent of Police, often at loggerheads with the Registrar General, the 'Protector of Chinese'. The main duty of the regular police was to protect the central business district of Hong Kong, where most of the great European firms clustered, and the docks and wharves on which the prosperity of commercial Hong Kong depended. Principally, though, the regular police were there to overawe the Chinese lumpenproletariat, composed in European eyes of the sweepings of Kwangtung Province. The Chinese residential and commercial areas on the fringes of the core central district were more arbitrarily policed—and policed of course by aliens, most of whom as ex-Indian sepoys, ex-soldiers or ex-British policemen were unable to speak Cantonese.11 Chinese merchants, therefore, thought there would be advantages in maintaining a force of district watchmen Chinese to a man—selected, vetted, paid for, controlled, and if needs be, dismissed by the Chinese community.\n\nThe establishment of a body of Chinese district watchmen by the Registration Ordinance of 1866 was at first strongly opposed by some officials. In 1866 Sir Richard MacDonnell reported to the Secretary of State that the scheme was 'working admirably'12; but two years later the Chief Justice, Sir John Smale, laid on the table of the Legislative Council a memorandum inveighing against the inefficiency and corruption of the Force and suggesting that, to avoid the constant friction between the Superintendent of Police and the Registrar General, the district watchmen should be embodied in the Police Force under one head13. Soon after the Chief Justice's animadversions were made public in the Legislative Council, MacDonnell was forced to set up a commission to inquire into the working of the regular police as a result of a number of police scandals. In his memorandum setting out the reasons for holding such an inquiry, MacDonnell also asked the members of the commission to 'report as to the expediency of continuing to maintain, with Chinese co-operation and pecuniary aid, an auxiliary force of District Watchmen, and to ascertain whether the latter body has", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206652, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "194\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nin Thailand and at Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The few observed examples of his statue have all been in temples run by Fukienese emigrants, and probably the most famous statue is to be seen in Malacca in a temple run by Fukienese emigrants from An Chi county. (Plate 28)\n\nThere does not appear to be a standard identification characteristic for images of Cheng Ho. The Malacca statue is of sandal wood, carved some 8\" high, in Amoy style, depicting a Mandarin seated on a throne with his right hand clutching his girdle, his left palm cradling a flat elongated plaque of office or sceptre, which rests in the crook of his left arm. He is beardless and has the raised eyebrows so often seen on Chinese opera generals; he is wearing a military hat with one pompom on top, and a tassel hanging from each side of it over his shoulders. He is accompanied by two standing attendants; the one on his left a military attendant is carrying his sheathed sword, and the one on the right a civil attendant is carrying his seal of office wrapped in a red cloth. Alongside, on the same altar, is Kuan Kung, the Chinese god of loyalty and patron of soldiers, who is also the patron of Chinese businessmen. In the temples listed above, Cheng Ho has several birthdays and feast days, the most common of which is the 30th day of the sixth lunar month.\n\nOne of the many images on sale in a Singapore godshop, was another Amoy style carving of Cheng Ho, some 10″ high in wood, now in the possession of an English news correspondent. This image of the Admiral depicts him as an elderly benign man without a beard, dressed in gilt dragon robes, and standing with a fly whisk in his right hand and a scroll in his left. (Plate 29)\n\nCheng Ho in Java and the Philippines\n\nThe Admiral is held in the highest esteem in Semarang in Java as the Chinese patron deity of the town. It is said that he left behind in Java some ten men under his sick navigator, Ong King-hong, who founded the town of Semarang. Before 1724 a statue of Cheng Ho together with four carved wooden attendants was brought from China, and these stand in a cave near the town. During the British occupation of Java in 1945 the commander of the British forces recommended the Chinese of Semarang to evacuate the town for their own safety. After consultation with Cheng Ho, they decided\n\n11 Willmott, D. E., The Chinese of Semarang, (Cornell U. P., 1960).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206850, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 121\n\nis called Lo Foo Ts'z T'ong (老虎祠堂), Tiger Hall. The floor of the cave is quite smooth with a lot of small stones almost like a mosaic. Though the actual site of the school is not known, old tiles have been found from time to time on the hillside, and one of these can be seen in a house called Cheung Ch'un Yuen (祥泉園) of Shui Tau (水頭) village. In the same house is a flower vase of interest that was dug up on Hong Kong island about 30 years before the British settled there.\n\nAs mentioned before, four of the \"five Yuens\" eventually left Kam Tin and founded branches of the Tang family elsewhere, and it has even been said that Yuen Leung, the ancestor of the Kam Tin branch, moved to Mok Ka Tung (莫家洞) near Shek Lung, but this removal is generally attributed to Yuen Leung's daughter-in-law, a princess of Sung dynasty whose story reads almost like a romance. She was a daughter of the Emperor Ko Tsung (高宗) of Sung Dynasty, who before becoming emperor of China was Prince Hong Wong (康王). The Tartars at that time were attacking the North of China, and in the 2nd year of Tsing Hong (靖康) A.D. 1127 they entered the Sung capital, captured the two emperors Fai Tsung (徽宗) and Yam Tsung (欽宗) together with both the mother and wife of Hong Wong, who was himself away in another part of the kingdom fighting the Tartars as he held the appointment of Tin Ha Ping Ma Tai Yuen Sui (天下兵馬大元帥), the commander-in-chief of all the emperor's forces. Hong Wong's little daughter was only ten years old and she was protected by her women servants who fled with her to the South. In the 3rd year of Kin Yim (建炎) A.D. 1129 they arrived in the Kiangsi province where Yuen Leung was district officer of Kung Yuen (贛縣) district. He was very zealous to help the Emperor and had collected together an army of soldiers, with the intention of marching North. Kiangsi was full of the Tartar forces, and the princess found herself surrounded by enemies. One day she saw the Sung flag over the encampment of Yuen Leung's army and she went to him for protection. She stayed with Yuen Leung, moving about with his soldiers, and eventually when he returned to Kam Tin he brought her back with him. He did not know who she was, as the servants had told him only that she was the daughter of a high official in the North. The princess found happiness and security in Kam Tin. She was like a daughter in Yuen Leung's house, helped with the household duties and was quite content. Eventually she revealed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206978, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n43\n\nWhen the King had started upon his homeward passage, the Hong Kong police went from house to house collecting the pinchbeck orders which his Majesty had scattered broadcast among his acquaintances; and these pieces of jewelry they subsequently sold by auction for the benefit of the goldsmith who had fashioned them, for the King, like many of his prototypes in history, had proved himself to be a bad paymaster.40\n\nThe Duel\n\nDid Mayréna and Morès fight a duel in Hong Kong? We do not know for certain; we can only use circumstantial evidence to argue that they probably did. In his memoirs Des Voeux would hardly admit that he allowed a duel to take place in a British colony by his negligence, for under English law duelling was a criminal offence.41 But an encounter between the two adventurers could have easily occurred without attracting public attention—early one morning, say, at Deepwater Bay, then a crescent of lonely sparkling sand, not overlooked by any residence; or in a clearing in the sylvan Glenealy Ravine, a solitary spot frequented only by a few health-conscious walkers.\n\nMayréna and Morès were expert in the use of the foil, épée, and sabre; each, previously, in single combat had killed his man; former soldiers, they were extremely brave men, not likely to slink away from an affront. It should be stressed, however, that duelling was a ritual, designed primarily to remove a public stain from a man's social character: the end of a duel was not copious blood-letting, but rather an affirmation that a gentleman had preserved his social standing and the integrity of his personality.42 To utilise theological concepts again, duelling was a type of sacrament: it was a consecration of the gentleman, and of the core element in this class of person—honour. It seems plausible, then, to suggest that the two duelled but only under certain limiting conditions set out in the procès-verbal. A procès-verbal was the set of rules, established beforehand by the seconds of the duellists, which defined the conditions of the duel—often a single shot fired over the opponent's head or blithely into the distance, a thrust or a parry, would suffice to accomplish the ritual. No doubt Mayréna and Morès did simply that—they flexed their muscles, brandished their spurs in public. Then all was over; honour satisfied; each returned to the Hong Kong Hotel and to loud wassail.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "94 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nemployment; but few stayed with the department. Most took to their gypsy life again, once they had accumulated a few dollars, and left for either Shanghai or Singapore, or simply went to earth in Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai until disinterred by the police, always on the look out for European destitutes. \n\nThere were always some troops on garrison duty in the colony or manning the various fortifications designed to repel a seaborne invasion. The garrison normally was small and numbered usually less than 1,500 men. But numbers fluctuated markedly at times. In March 1860, for example, over 14,000 troops (10,000 British and 4,000 French) were being drilled in a vast tented camp on two square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, leased from the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and awaiting transportation to the theatre of operations in the north. A witness of these events wrote that 'the streets of Victoria were thronged by soldiers and sailors; commissaries and staff officers were to be seen everywhere; all as busy as mortals could be'.7 \n\nIt was a policy of the government and the military to keep troops if possible out of European Victoria—the central commercial district—and to confine their debaucheries to special areas of the colony. Thus five brothels were specially opened at Wan Chai in the 1850s when soldiers at that time were prohibited by their officers from entering the central districts of the city. For soldiers on outpost duties access to Victoria was difficult in any case: \n\nGarrison life at these outposts is usually melancholy; society is impossible, as the fortifications are eight miles by water from the city, and communication over the mountains is arduous. It is not a question of which is the better of the two, but which the worse, to be of the British Garrison Artillery or the Chinese Lighthouse Service.& \n\nThere were usually more sailors than soldiers ashore in Hong Kong, or afloat in the harbour, at certain times of the year. During the three winter months, the British China squadron was stationed in Hong Kong; in summer most naval vessels left Hong Kong for the north and other stations. The large number of sailors, who at times outnumbered the civilian European population, was supplemented by merchant seamen of many nationalities; for by the 1890s Hong Kong had become, after London, Liverpool, and Port Said, the fourth largest port in the world in terms of seagoing tonnage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "100 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nbesides music-halls and lodging-houses, the haunts of vagabonds well known to the police.19 \n\nThe spectacle of Jack Tars, returning from the grog-shops of Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun, tipsily and rowdily weaving their way along Queen's Road, affronted respectable Britons. A Wesleyan missionary complained in 1894 that the colony was always upset by the arrival of a fresh man-of-war whose crew once ashore would behave like wild animals. \"They drink like fishes,\" he complained, \"ride round the town in rickshaws, making night hideous with their shouts, eat over-ripe fruit from street stalls, are stricken with cholera, and die in a few hours.\" He insisted that for soldiers and sailors (and possibly for most others in the East at the present moment) \"total abstinence is a duty\".20 \n\nThe Wesleyan missionary, a fervent supporter of the temperance movement, misunderstood the reasons for excessive drinking among servicemen in Hong Kong. It was not due to innate depravity or irreligion. Soldiers and sailors drank because of the tedium, the hideous boredom they had to endure as pariahs in Hong Kong. They were totally excluded from polite European society; there were no young white women of their own class to walk out with; there were few entertainments, except lugubrious church or mission functions, provided for them. Off duty the only pleasures available, apart from a climb up the Peak, a jaunt in a sampan, or a visit to the Botanical Gardens, were the drinking dens and brothels of the more welcoming Chinese quarters of the town. \n\nSailors, in particular, led almost completely isolated lives in the Far East. News from home could take months to reach their ships. Often they spent over a year without going ashore on leave. Walter White, a ship's painter, joined H.M.S. Scout at Sheerness in 1859, left England in that year and did not return from service on the China Station until 1864.21 His experience was typical. He spent New Year's Day, 1862, in Hong Kong and put up at the European Hotel, a hostelry overlooking Tai Ping Shan. From the verandah of his hotel, he wrote home, \"you can sit and look down upon the teeming, squalid living, jangling and evil smelling Chinese quarters.\"22 But it was in this teeming quarter that White and his naval companions were obliged to spend their evenings of leave, \n\nMajor Henry Knollys epitomises the life of the British gunner in Hong Kong in the 1880s thus:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "102\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nRow in Tai Ping Shan was then known as 'Samshu Corner' because many Europeans resorted to it for cheap topping. The commissioners ascertained that much drinking went on in barracks, troops sending Chinese 'boys' out to buy bottles of samshu or whisky for them. Drunkenness was a direct consequence of boredom and idleness.\n\nThe problem of venereal disease was related to that of drinking, for bars and brothels clustered together. From 1867 to 1887, the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, patterned on the English act of 1866, was in force in the colony to protect the health of British servicemen. Briefly, the 1867 ordinance made all prostitutes working in licensed brothels for Europeans only (Chinese brothels for Chinese only were exempted) subject to compulsory medical inspection at the Lock Hospital. European prostitutes, on the other hand, could undergo examination at home. It was claimed that the repeal of the Hong Kong ordinance in 1889, following the repeal of the English act in 1886, led to an upsurge in the rates for venereal disease. In 1895, admissions into hospital for venereal infection in the home army were 173.8 per 1,000; in India, 522.3; in Hong Kong, about the same figure.\n\nIt follows, then, that the chance of a male member of the European lower orders becoming infected with venereal disease was always high during the period under review here, 1842-1900. The police, for example, were so prone to catching this social disease, almost an occupational disease for them, that at one time they were also subject to compulsory medical inspection. The practice was stopped in 1873, but before that date, there was a monthly examination of all foreign members of the force.\n\nMiddle-class Europeans did not escape entirely from all these afflictions from alcoholism, syphilis, boredom, and loneliness. Both classes Taipans and pong-paan — also fell victim at times to a variety of diseases, such as malaria, typhus, cholera, and bubonic plague, as the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley amply testifies. But the well-to-do could at least escape to the Peak from Hong Kong's enervating summer, or recuperate in cooler latitudes, in Japan or northern China; and since many of the prosperous were respectably married and lived a normal family life, cosseted by a houseful of servants, they were protected to some degree by domestic circumstances from the temptations that soldiers, sailors, seamen, and their kind, had to face day and night in the city.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207343, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n103\n\nThe European lower orders were not, of course, totally neglected by their superiors. The church and the various missionary societies, such as the Mission to Seamen, did their best to elevate the moral tone of the less fortunate. Various institutions were established to cater to their needs—a Sailors' Home at West Point, close to the Seamen's Church, St. Peter's, and a Soldiers and Sailors' Rest at East Point. By the end of the century, there was also a Union Jack Club, a Royal Naval Seamen's Club, a United Services Club, an Institute of Marine Engineers, complete with technical library and librarian, and a branch of the British Mercantile Marine Officers' Association (the last two catered for a merchant navy elite). A Seamen's Hospital had also been opened.\n\nThe military authorities, in turn, strongly backed the work of the Army Temperance Association and the Independent Order of Good Templars, a society of abstainers formed in America in 1851, which had ramified over the Anglo-Saxon world. No doubt all these associations, societies, and clubs did sterling work and restrained some servicemen from seeking the scabrous temptations offered by Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai; but they did not offer enough to the average soldier or sailor, only tea and buns, prayers and uplift, draughts and dominoes, and the ministrations of lay missioners, missionary ladies, and army and naval chaplains.\n\nIn 1889, the Hong Kong Ladies' Benevolent Society was founded 'for the purpose of rendering assistance in cases of sickness, want, poverty, or distress arising from time to time amongst persons other than members of the Portuguese or Chinese communities'. The society helped defray the passage home of destitute Europeans and educated orphaned European children; in some cases, it paid the rents of the hard-up and obtained employment for those stranded in the colony.\n\nWhat the government felt about poor whites is mirrored in the report prepared by Dr. Eitel in 1880 on the treatment of paupers in Hong Kong:\n\nIn the case of British destitutes, anything done by the Government over and above what is now being done in furnishing such destitutes with board and lodgings in the Gaol, would tend to make the condition of a 'beach comber' or destitute here more eligible than the lot of the hardworking seaman or stoker, and consequently put a premium on loafing and idleness... I would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "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": 207397, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n157\n\nIn the Colony trade went on and there was much talk of the value of Hong Kong to Great Britain as a provider of foreign currency through its commerce. The fine young men in civil life in Hong Kong, prevented from travelling to join the forces at home, like many others, found it hard to reconcile the argument in favour of acquiring foreign currency with their knowledge that a large proportion of the goods exported found its way to Japan. They were all keen members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. It may be claimed that our trading policy delayed Japan's entry into the war, but to many it seemed that economic and strategic considerations were at cross purposes.\n\nI came in contact with Indian troops in the Colony mainly in an individual professional capacity when my surgical services were needed, but I imagine they were subject to the same effects of garrison duty as were the British troops. Garrison duty has never in any army provided a satisfactory training for active service, and Hong Kong provided yet another example of the truth of this. Once the arrangements for manning the defences were mastered the Island and the New Territories gave little scope for the most ingenious commander or space in which he could exercise and retain the interest of his troops. This left sports to absorb, by no means completely, the youthful energies of strong young men. Many of these had been received as friends in families in Hong Kong, some had contracted stable relationships with women but many had little to occupy themselves when off duty. I well remember seeing men flushed from their games trying to get into the China Fleet Club on the Victoria waterfront. They were obliged to shoulder their way physically through the crowd of Chinese and Eurasian women seeking them as companions. Not all of these were attractive, but girls of these races are among the most beautifully shaped that, in a wide experience, I have ever met. Co-habitation with a high proportion of these girls led to venereal infection and some men sought satisfaction in their own sex. Alas, this did not safeguard them from infection. Another hazard was malaria. About October 1941 the army manned the defences in an exercise and following this a substantial number of soldiers contracted malaria and needed treatment in hospital. Before many had regained strength after the fever, the army was deployed during the phase which led to open war. I pay high tribute to the spirit and the readiness with which these men met the call. Everyone who was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207508, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 276, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "268\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nNone of the foregoing figures can be taken as more than approximately correct. A figure however for which I can vouch with certainty is the total number of wounded treated in Bowen Road. This figure was 646 and was carefully computed by me in the studies I made of our records during the months and years of captivity before the Japanese finally destroyed them. The Bowen Road figures include all who were seriously wounded during hostilities, because all wounded admitted to other hospitals in the Colony and who were unfit for discharge to P.O.W. camps after our surrender were eventually concentrated in Bowen Road by the end of February 1942. The last patients who suffered war injuries to be admitted came from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon when this closed on 11 August 1942. My record of the total Bowen Road casualties amounting to 646 is likely to be less than the actual total number of wounded, because when other hospitals were closing and evacuating their more seriously wounded patients to Bowen Road it is likely that a number of other patients had by then recovered sufficiently to be able to go to P.O.W. camps and it must be remembered that it was the Japanese who decided where these patients must go.\n\nThe official figures suggest that, excluding Indian casualties, some 855 soldiers were seriously wounded during hostilities. In Bowen Road we treated 646 of these. It is evident therefore that about 75% of seriously wounded other than Indians were evacuated by the medical services to hospitals. This represents a major success having regard to the conditions, and the system of evacuation and the skill and determination with which it was carried out must be judged to have worked well. The Field Ambulance commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ride, which achieved these results was responsible also for recovering Indian casualties, and I have no doubt that these were evacuated with the same degree of success as were the British casualties. Figures however are lacking since the Indian Hospital was overrun during the Japanese advance and records were lost. Readers will recall that early in the hostilities the Chinese ambulance drivers deserted, understandably enough especially to those familiar with the Japanese treatment of captured Chinese opponents. Thereafter ambulance cars were driven by Field Ambulance personnel usually drawn from the medical services. This makes their achievement all the more notable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207795, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "168\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nMeanwhile exploration continued from the south. Between 1866 and 1868 the French under Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier made their famous expedition from Saigon by the Mekong River through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos to Talifu and Kunming in Yunnan. The Panthay Rebellion was then at its height, and the Chinese authorities refused them permission to proceed further up the Mekong. Garnier, who had succeeded to the leadership after Lagrée's death, had to abandon his plan to explore the sources of the Mekong, and turned east across Yunnan to the Upper Yangtze at Iping. Here boats were obtained to take them on the four weeks journey to Hankow. Garnier saw enough of the Mekong to realise that it could never rival the Irawaddy, let alone the Yangtze, as a trade route to West China, and French interest shifted to the Red River route from Haiphong through Tongking. During an enforced delay on the Siamese border, Garnier made the first thorough survey of the ruins of Angkor, and his expedition is important in that it encouraged French ambitions for an Indo-Chinese Empire.\n\nThere was no clear policy on the part of the various British parties concerned with developing trade with West China, nor over the best way to reach this region of supposed inexhaustible wealth. Lack of accurate information is also a constant theme in the history of British relations with West China. However, penetration and exploitation from the West, that is from India and Burma, attracted greater public and official support in Britain than that from the Yangtze by the China traders, though by 1874, a combination of circumstances led to a co-operative effort being made from both East and West, the aforementioned Dual Mission of 1874-75, which I shall now describe.\n\nThe Panthay Rebellion finally came to an end in May 1873 when the Imperial troops captured Momein, this completing the reconquest of Yunnan after eighteen years of civil war. During the ensuing period of rehabilitation the provincial authorities tried to revive the Burma-Yunnan overland route, and caravans reappeared after nearly twenty years' absence, undeterred by disbanded soldiers and lawless hillmen. By May 1874 the British Political Agent at Bhamo reported that more caravans were passing between Burma and Yunnan than for many years, and that British and Chinese merchants were sending such large consignments of goods", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207796, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n169 \n\nto Bhamo that the Irawaddy Flotilla Company doubled its service between Mandalay and Bhamo.* \n\nSimultaneously pressure in Britain from Chambers of Commerce persuaded the government to support the Indian government's plan to resume exploration of the Bhamo-Yunnan overland route, and to request co-operation from China through the British Minister at Peking. The King of Burma was also in favour of resuming trade relations with China, having been advised from Peking that China would like to resume \"the old relationship, and continue the practice of exchanging decennial missions\". \n\nLieutenant Colonel Horace A. Browne, a former Deputy Commissioner in Burma, was chosen as leader of the Burma party, which would go from Mandalay to Bhamo by steamer, and then overland into Yunnan by one of three possible routes. At the same time A.R. Margary of the China Consular Service would start from Hankow—then the limit of steam navigation on the Yangtze—and go by junk to Yochow at the entrance to the Tungting Lake, through the Lake and by the Yuan River to the border of Kweichow, from where he would complete his journey overland. Browne's party arrived at Bhamo on 15th January 1875, and were joined by Margary, who had left Hankow on 4th September 1874, two days later. The latter had had a comparatively uneventful journey, although at some places the population was decidedly hostile. At Yunnanfu, however, the officials were courteous and helpful. All through Yunnan Margary had passed ruined towns and villages, and seen the widespread destruction caused by the recent rebellion. \n\nOn 23rd January the combined party left Bhamo for Yunnan, accompanied by fifteen Sikh guards brought from India by Browne, and an escort of 150 soldiers provided by the King of Burma, who were to go as far as the border. At the last minute Browne decided to go by the Ponlyne instead of by the Sawaddy route, to avoid possible conflict with the Kachin tribesmen on the latter. A few \n\nThe Irawaddy Flotilla Company was formed in 1864 when Todd Findlay & Co. of Glasgow (who had a branch in Rangoon) bought four old river steamers and three 'flats' of the Indian government's Irawaddy Flotilla, which had given good service in the Anglo-Burmese Wars. Hopes of greatly increased trade between Burma and Yunnan were high, and there was keen competition to buy the Flotilla, including an offer from a French company, and one from Mackinnon & Mackenzie, who were then managing agents of the Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company which later became the British India Steam Navigation Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "170 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\ndays later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon.\n\nMargary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze,\n\nSir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.\n\nMore than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "172 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nshe was retained as the headquarters ship of the Royal Navy's Upper Yangtze squadron. \n\nThe Royal Navy had always maintained a strong presence on the river, since British ships commenced to trade on the Yangtze in the early 1860s. So far as the Yangtze was concerned, ‘trade followed the flag\". Naval ships were the first British ships to navigate the lower Yangtze, and continued to lead the way as British shipping extended its operations further up the river. As we have seen, H.M.S. Woodcock reached Chungking and beyond to Suifu a few months before the Pioneer made the first successful commercial passage of the Upper Yangtze. By the mid 1920s, when British shipping had reached its peak there, the Royal Navy's Yangtze Squadron consisted primarily of six general purpose gunboats of the \"Insect\" class based on Hankow. These had been built originally for service against the Turks on the Tigris and Euphrates in World War 1. Each carried fifty-four officers and men, and had two six-inch guns, and they were powerful little ships in flat country. For the Upper River there were several smaller ships of the \"Bird class\", which carried twenty-six or thirty-one men. Two operated on the Tungting Lake and on the Siang River to Changsha, and another two on the Upper Yangtze to Chungking, with occasional trips to Suifu. In the high water season the \"Insect\" class ships could also operate on the Upper River. \n\nThis force was commanded by the Rear-Admiral, Yangtze, at Hankow, who came under the overall command of the Commander-in-Chief of the British naval forces in the Far East at Hong Kong. The Yangtze Squadron, therefore, consisted of about 500 officers and could be quickly reinforced from Shanghai and Hong Kong if necessary. It was also possible for a 10,000 ton cruiser to reach Hankow in the high water season. The Royal Navy was frequently called on to protect British ships and British interests on the Yangtze, sometimes against rebels, pirates, war lords, or threats from other foreign powers. The term 'gunboat diplomacy' probably originated from the operations of the Royal Navy on the China coast and on the Yangtze. \n\nThe most notable naval occasion on the Yangtze, since the First China War of 1839-42, was the Wanhsien Incident of 1926. This originated in the refusal of the captain of the China Navigation Company's Wanliu to carry soldiers of Yung Lin, one of the war", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207803, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "176 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nChinese shipping in these years, and anti-Japanese boycotts led to the virtual disappearance of Japanese shipping for long periods. \n\nNot that these last few years were trouble-free for British ships. There were also anti-British boycotts, brushes with pirates, war lords, and lawless soldiers, and the famous 'Wanhsien Incident' of 1926 which has already been described. Then when Japan gained control of the Lower Yangtze at the end of 1937, the British presence on the Yangtze rapidly declined. Hankow became the capital before Nanking fell to the Japanese in December 1937, and Chungking succeeded Hankow before the latter fell in October 1938. As the Japanese moved up the river the British steamers moved ahead of them as far as possible, maintaining an increasingly restricted service, which by mid 1940 had been reduced to infrequent trips between Chungking and Wanhsien. During this period many Lower River steamers were abandoned. By mid 1940 the situation had become impossible, fuel was unobtainable, and the last few British officers were evacuated from Chungking by the new road to Kunming, then by the French railway to Haiphong, and finally by sea to Hong Kong. \n\nAt this time there were two Royal Navy gunboats still at Chungking, H.M. Ships Falcon and Gannet. The former remained to act as radio link for the British Embassy, while the latter was decommissioned and her crew sent to Hong Kong by the same route. \n\nSoon after this the Japanese occupied Indo-China, and the Haiphong-Kumming-Chungking lifeline was also denied China. The Chungking-Kunming road was then extended to Burma, and became China's most important route to the outside world, fulfilling the dreams of earlier generations of China traders. This was the famous Burma Road, sometimes identified with the whole 1,000 miles from Rangoon to Chungking, but more accurately with the 600 miles from Lashio (the railhead 130 miles above Mandalay) to Kunming. \n\nThus, after decades of neglect and oblivion, the Burma Road into China was restored to international importance. It was again disrupted when the Japanese conquered Burma in early 1943; but re-opened along a new western route when General Stilwell's American and Chinese forces built a road through North Burma to link Assam with the eastern section of the Burma Road. This route played a vital part in the Allied reconquest of Burma, Malaya, and Indo-China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208060, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n83\n\ninto Tung or Divisions. Each council of a Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section, which is practically that portion of the district of San On contained in the map attached to the Convention. This general council is styled the Tung Ping Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its council chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section.\n\nIf the decision of the council of the Tung or of the General Council is not regarded as satisfactory, an appeal lies to the magistrate of the district.\" (pp. 55-56, Extension Papers.).\n\n32 Extension Papers, p. 34.\n\n33 Ibid., p. 174.\n\n34 K'ang Nan-hai Kuan-chih I (***T**), pp. 15-16.\n\n35 Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China, pp. 91-92.\n\n36 K'ang Nan-hai, op. cit., p. 15.\n\n37 Other evidence which supports this hypothesis is drawn from the fact that the production and distribution of agricultural produce within the tung tends to be regulated by specific and unique processes. Hence, the tau chung (#), or local measures for payment of rent in kind, differs from tung to tung. Lockhart, in his Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November, 1900), relates the problems encountered in rationalizing land tenure: \"But even this tau varies in different localities. The Kun Tau, or Chinese official standard measure of 10 shing, is adopted at Tai Po, in the Sheung Yu District, and at Shat'aukok. The Ts'ong Tau, or grain measure of 11 shing, is used throughout the Un Long District. The Ts'in Tau of 8 shing is employed in the Ts'un Wan (ed. previously Kowloon District) and some other Districts. (p. 6). Moreover, the schedules of periodic markets within tung tend to complement each other, while they often clash with the schedules of markets in a neighboring tung.\n\n38 See petition from Tung Wo Kuk (\"i.e., the Committee appointed to deal with the affairs of the Shataukok Division\"). pp. 318-320.\n\n39 In a rough translation of a pamphlet obtained by the German missionary Schaub in Tung-Kuan, local gentry propose a strategy for obtaining funds for fighting the British: \"It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together as we hear. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is not right that the various confederations should pay the costs.... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together and ask our Government for help. Will the soldiers not come to help us, then let us ask the Mandarin for the present not to collect the field tax, that we can use the money to meet the barbarians. This would not be rebellious. Afterwards in peaceful times, we could pay our duties to the Government. (Extension Papers, p. 347.) See also, K'ang Nan-hai, op cit., p. 15.\n\n40 CSO433 in 1899,\n\n41 The British often experienced great difficulty in distinguishing landlords from taxlords, especially since members of large, gentry clans like the Tangs were one and the same. In a memorandum on the work of the Land Court, Lockhart writes: \"The most serious matter of all, however, is the stand taken by the farmers against the clans, their former landlords.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208201, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "224 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nment. Here is also a letter from an army doctor, which is as follows: Dear Sir, my regiment stayed in Pakhoi. The officers and soldiers were not accustomed to this new place, therefore most of them became sick. Fortunately, the doctor has the heart of Jesus and gave us treatment free of charge, so I have the honour to write and thank \n\nyou. \n\nSince Sept. 1938, I have been acting again as Customs Medical officer. I have also been the only doctor for the hospital and Leper Settlement about 3 miles away, and I would like to point out that without the self-sacrificing help of the hospital staff, I could never have been able to fulfil this work. We were most thankful for all the help Bishop Hall gave us through the British Relief Council, and we were also most grateful for all the help and inspiration from Deaconess Vincent, who was with us for 7 months, and are glad to welcome Miss Bradley, who is as eager and successful in the Maternity and Hospital work as Matron and interpreter, as in her pastoral work among the lepers. On March 6th, Bishop Hall paid us a visit on his way to Kunming; we were very glad to see him, and although his visit was short, it proved a great blessing both spiritually & practically. \n\nOur hearts are full of gratitude and thanks to God for the help we have received in so many ways through many people, both Chinese and foreigners. \n\nPakhoi, August 19th, 1939. Po Yan Hospital. \n\nAfter nearly 3 months of relative quietness, with only occasional alarms and machine-gun skirmishes with planes on their way or from the scene of real activity, we began to think that we were safe and quiet again. \n\nOn the 15th of July, some of the hospital's staff went down to the beach for a bathe in the late afternoon. We had not been there long, however, before the alarm signal sounded in the town. Two planes came up over the horizon very quickly, and before we could get ashore, they were flying overhead. Their real object of attack was a group of large fishing junks lying about 200 yards away, but it was unpleasantly near to us, and we were forced to take cover under the wooden frame of the diving board until the worst was over; some of the swimmers had managed to get ashore in time and took refuge in the bathing house. On the 14th of August, we had a \n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "184\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nnée Yau, of Mang Kung Uk is not untypical. She grew up in Tseng Lan Shue, was betrothed at 4 years old, but continued to live in her father's village. At 7 she helped to look after three cows, driving them up the hill early in the morning, returning at approximately 8.00 am or 9.00 am for breakfast, and going back to the hill to drive them home in the early afternoon. At 10, she began to help her mother to carry firewood into Kowloon, carrying approximately 30 catties on each trip. She married at 19, and worked under the supervision of her mother-in-law. Her husband was a seaman, and received only 8 dollars per month. Her mother-in-law looked after the children, and she cooked, farmed, raised pigs, cut firewood and grass, and carried water. She often had to rise at 4.00 in the morning and work till late at night.64\n\nUp to the eve of World War II, daily life in Sai Kung did not change significantly from the description given in this chapter. This background is needed for an understanding of the impact of the War on Sai Kung's residents.\n\nTHE WAR YEARS\n\nThe coming of the Japanese\n\nIt was 3.00 o'clock in the morning, December 10, 1941. Mr. Chung P'oon was awakened by loud banging on his door. Thinking that these might be bandits, he answered the door with knife in hand. He opened the door to find several guns pointing at him. The Japanese army had arrived at Wong Chuk Shan Village. For him and for the rest of the Sai Kung population, the occupation had begun....\n\nThrough an interpreter, the Japanese told him they wanted to be taken to Kowloon. Mr. Chung did not know it then, but we now know that two days earlier, the Japanese army had overrun Tai Po and Sha Tin, and the day before had taken what was known as the \"Shingmun redoubt\". British forces were withdrawing from the New Territories to Hong Kong Island, and a contingent of Sepoy soldiers were covering the retreat at Devil's Peak. The Japanese soldiers in Wong Chuk Shan had probably strayed into the village by mistake. They had come over from Shap Sz Heung, intending to find their way into Kowloon. Now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208312, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "20 \n\nRICHARD J. SMITH \n\ntingents such as the Ever-Victorious Army (Ch'ang-sheng chün) brought Western drill and tactics to literally thousands of Chinese soldiers. Officers from these forces not only instructed their own men, but also trained large numbers of troops for Chinese officials, most notably Li Hung-chang.23 At about the same time, foreign-training programs arose in several port areas, including Tientsin, Shanghai, Ningpo, Foochow and Canton. A number of Green Standard forces at the capital (and eventually elsewhere) were transformed into Western-armed \"retrained armies\" (lien-chün) on the yung-ying model, and several thousand Bannermen were molded into the famous Peking Field Force (Shen-chi ying), established by Wen-hsiang and others.24 \n\nThe Peking Field Force was an especially interesting experiment. Until the late 1860's, selected members of the force were drilled by foreign instructors using English words of command but thereafter, Western-trained Bannermen carried on instruction independently in Manchu. Nominally 20,000 strong throughout most of the late nineteenth century, the Peking Field Force usually numbered closer to half that amount. According to Major A. E. J. Cavendish, a British military attaché in China, the force as late as 1894 was considered to be an elite organization with \"higher pay and quicker promotion\" than in any other Banner units at the capital. Officers in the force were described as \"the pick of the Banners,\" and posts in it were \"eagerly sought after.\" Yet Cavendish formed a decidedly negative opinion of the force, which he described as poorly armed and superficially trained, with emphasis on form rather than content. One can imagine the shape of the rest of the traditional Ch'ing military establishment.25 \n\nA major deficiency in all of the early foreign-training efforts was lack of centralized direction and support. In the absence of adequate central government guidelines, drill procedures, arms, and even the language of instruction varied widely from force to force and area to area. There was virtually no effort on the part of the Ch'ing government to co-ordinate its military programs, or to expand foreign-training in a systematic way.26 In fact, the Manchus seem to have been intent on compartmentalizing Western military knowledge as much as possible—presumably for reasons of internal control. In 1863, for example, the Tsungli Yamen stated explicitly that in the provinces only Bannermen should learn to make", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208484, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "192\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMUD SKIS OR SCOOTER, DEEP BAY, HONG KONG\n\n(See JHKBRAS 13, 1973:168)\n\nSouth China Morning Post, 18 June, 1979\n\n“British soldiers flying helicopter patrols over the Mai Po marshes are seeing an increasing number of \"mud skiiers\" scooting towards Hongkong.\n\n\"They can move faster over the mud than a man can run over firm ground,\" said Sergeant Major Chris Wilson yesterday.\n\nAdded Corporal Jan Radford, another Army Air Corps helicopter pilot: \"The other day I saw a group of 40 coming across and most of them had mud-skis.\"\n\nA mud-ski is a piece of five-ply wood about 6 ft long with a curved brow which oyster farmers and crab fishermen usually use to pick up their catch.\n\nThey use the simple but sturdy piece of equipment around the shores of Deep Bay to transport themselves over the low-lying mangrove swamps.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208498, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Chung Fort Shuen: 30 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Tai Yu Shan Fort Shuen: 30 garrison soldiers under 1 Tsing-tsung.\n\nTai Yu Shan Shuen: 40 garrison soldiers under 1 Tsing-tsung. Sha Lo Wan Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nTai Ho Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nMui Wo Shuen: 5 garrison soldiers.\n\nFor the support of these guard-stations, other guard-stations were established on the mainland and the neighbouring islands. The following shows the distribution of garrison soldiers in these guard-stations:\n\nKowloon Walled City: 100 guard soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung and 2 Ngai-wai.\n\nKap Shui Mun Shuen: 10 garrison soldiers.\n\nShumshuipo Shuen: 35 garrison soldiers.\n\nTsing Lung Tau Shuen: 50 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Tsing Yi Tam Shuen: 15 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung.\n\nCheung Chau Shuen: 45 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung and 1 Ngai-wai.\n\nPing Chau Shuen: 15 garrison soldiers under 1 Pa-tsung. Yung Shu Wan Shuen (on Lamma Island): 10 garrison soldiers.\n\nPo Toi Shuen (on Po Toi Island, south of Hong Kong Island): 20 garrison soldiers.\n\nThese guard-stations were under the command of the Tung Chung Shau-pei of the Tai-pang Battalion.\n\nBesides the garrison soldiers, there were also war vessels with 60 soldiers under 2 Tsing-tsung and 1 Ngai-wai.\n\nThese forts and guard-stations remained in position till 1898, when the New Territories and the adjacent Islands were leased to the British. After that, they were redundant.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY CITED (all from Chinese Sources)\n\nO Mun Kei Leuk ¶ g. 1800 edition\n\nSan On Yuen Chi\n\n1819 edition\n\nKwong Tung Tung Chi ✯✯ 1864 edition", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208611, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n41\n\nwhile it remained in sight, but I understand a little later its crew beached it somewhere near Repulse Bay. The day after the parade of the ships in the harbor under bomb and shell fire, the harbor seemed entirely deserted and hardly any craft was discernible, the only shipping movement being a lone Star Ferry slowly coursing its accustomed way back and forth to Kowloon. Evidently during the night, the masters of the various craft had received instructions to scuttle or beach their vessels, and some river steamers could be thus seen along the Kowloon side of the harbor.\n\nBy this time it was becoming increasingly difficult to cross into Hong Kong from Kowloon, and practically impossible to return. In and around Hong Kong, the British authorities were using super-human efforts to keep communications open and supplies delivered to crucial points. Trucks were tearing around madly through the streets and people were milling back and forth, not knowing what to do or how to do it. Police were endeavoring to preserve order and the defenders of Hong Kong, both regular and volunteer soldiers, were taking up positions assigned to them. Pillboxes and barricades had already been erected at strategic points in the city streets, and these were now manned by machine gunners; most of the buses stopped running, as well as private cars; and only government-operated trucks were allowed to carry on their important business of keeping the city supplied with food and necessary services.\n\nAt the Cathedral for the first two or three days provisions could be purchased as usual, but gradually it became more and more difficult, and finally there was no more bread, no more eggs or fruit to be had. Then everybody went on rations of rice, soya beans, and green vegetables. Firewood, too, was beginning to be at a premium.\n\nAt about this time, the Bishop heard it rumored that his priests were interned at the old Metropole Hotel on Ice House Street. Accordingly, that evening, when the shelling and bombing went into a lull, he and I went to the Hotel to investigate, but found there not his priests but a timorous group of Italian and German women and children. Fear and anxiety were written on their faces, and they complained to His Excellency about the treatment they were receiving and besought him to strive to alleviate their position. A little later, His Excellency learned that his priests were at Stanley Prison and, sadly needing their assistance in his work for the people, he wrote an appealing letter to the Governor of Hong Kong for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208619, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The next day, the twenty-third, snipers' bullets began pelting our house from the north and we promptly retreated to the south. A couple of these bullets came in through the glass windows in our front hall, and our only casualty was Father Meyer who received a very slight scratch on the cheek evidently from a piece of flying glass. Artillery shells now began coming our way, apparently from the west and north, proof enough that the Japanese had succeeded in getting on the island of Hong Kong. The targets of these shells were evidently gun emplacements in and around Stanley village and near the Prison, for the shells struck along the water's edge—sometimes in the sea itself—and along the military road leading to the fort. A number of these shells actually hit the Anglican School and the Police Station in Stanley village. Some also struck buildings of St. Stephen's College and the various buildings on the Prison Compound. Many shells seemed to fall just between the buildings on St. Stephen's campus, one building of which had been turned into a hospital. From our own hilltop we again had a grandstand view, but our interest was not exactly that which one has when viewing a competitive game.\n\nBombs also dropped out of the sky on the fort and attempts were made to cripple \"Big Bertha\", but she came out of the fracas unscathed and continued to hurl her deadly missiles over the hills until the end. One Japanese bomb fell at the foot of our hill, striking a portion of the village market and killing eight or nine people. All around our hill the British had constructed trenches and machine gun nests, and we were in momentary fear of the shells finding these objectives. British soldiers could be seen moving steadily in among the trees, and many came in to our house occasionally for a drink of water.\n\nAs a further safeguard against snipers' bullets we barricaded the exposed doors and windows. We also moved our provisional recreation room from the lower chapel to the refectory, this latter being on the south side. During these hectic days we could do nothing but huddle downstairs in the corridors while air raids and shelling were in progress, and look forward to the night time when the din (except from \"Big Bertha\") was silenced. As we had no electricity we retired early and rose late.\n\nOccasionally we could observe a few straggling soldiers on the mountain just across from us, but could not distinguish whether", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208620, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "50\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nthey were friends or foes. There were a great many Canadian soldiers at Stanley; they arrived in Hong Kong just prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and we felt sorry for them as they seemed to have had very little training or direction. Of what was happening in Hong Kong during these latter days we knew nothing, but one thing was certain: the Japanese were on the Island and were converging on Stanley.\n\nThe twenty-fourth dawned bright and early and we began another and most anxious day. As the upper chapel was now in the line of fire, we moved the portable altars out into the first and second floor corridors away from exposed windows, and thus prepared for the Birth of the King of Peace. Apart from this there was nary a bit of decoration or sign of the approaching Feast, which always means so much to us. On the Eve of Christmas, after our usual repast of rice, soya beans and vegetables, we tried to recreate in our candlelit refectory, but soon our recreation was rudely interrupted by the sharp rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire which seemed rather close. Outside the night was black, but it was not long before Stanley was lit up with a constant stream of tracer bullets criss-crossing each other. The Japanese were coming down the hills from the north and west and the British, comprising Regulars, Canadians, Volunteers and prison guards began defending the Stanley peninsula and the approaches to the Prison and the Fort. There was not much possibility of sleep under these conditions, but we went to our rooms and kept under cover as much as possible. Those whose rooms were on the north side of the building hastily picked up their mattresses and doubled up with their confreres on the south side, putting their mattresses on the floor, in the least exposed corner of the room while a few hardier ones tried to sleep in their beds. Needless to say there was not much sleep that night, for the battle raged incessantly throughout the night and the rat-a-tat of the machine guns and the desultory boom of the trench mortars kept up without respite. Those who ventured to look out from the south verandah on what was ordinarily a peaceful scene, now beheld nothing but the flash of mobile field guns as they belched forth their deadly missiles, the criss-crossing of tracer bullets which made one think of the aerial fireworks on a Fourth of July, only on a more grandiose scale, and over all the inky blackness. During the course of the engagement one could readily pick out a machine gun", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208621, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n51\n\nnest from the spurt of British fire at that point. Then almost instantly a Japanese shell could fall dangerously close, but the machine gun would continue to sputter. But the time came when they ceased to sputter. Perhaps they had moved their positions, or perhaps were silenced. The British had some mobile guns in the roadway leading to the Prison, and the flash from their muzzles could be easily seen. Fortunately, all during this time no bullets struck our house, it being on an eminence out of the range of fire, but the Carmelite Convent below was in the very midst of the battle. Its walls were pelted with machine gun and rifle bullets, but by the great mercy of God no one was either injured or molested, save Father Hessler, and the extent of his punishment was merely a slap or two in the face on Christmas morning.\n\nAt midnight, the battle seemed to be raging fiercely, and we could hear distinctly the blood-curdling yells of the attacking Japanese as they swarmed down the road past the Convent and reached the defending positions. So it must have been when the American savages attacked a frontier outpost when the world was not quite as civilized as it is supposed to be today. As the night wore on, the din of battle seemed to grow less and less. The defenders were slowly yielding ground, and the Japanese advanced towards the Prison and the Fort, so that when dawn began to break, the firing became more desultory, and the Japanese were in possession of Stanley Village and St. Stephen's Hill. They were not yet in the Prison, nor had they attempted the assault of the Fort, some distance out on the Stanley promontory.\n\nOn Christmas Day, needless to say, there were no Midnight Masses at Stanley to herald the birth of the new-born King, but as there seemed to be a lull in the battle raging all around us, we began saying our Masses at about five o'clock, on the portable altars in the corridors. We used but one candle, and even with that, we were in trepidation lest that tiny flame draw the fire of some lurking soldier. Some of us managed to say our three Masses, others two, and still others but one, while a few never got the opportunity, for about seven o'clock in the morning, there was a great hubbub at our front entrance, and we soon heard the sound of crashing glass. Most of us got as far as the second floor and tried to figure out what was happening. Finally, Father Meyer went down to the front entrance and there saw a group of Japanese soldiers who had gotten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208623, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n53\n\nthat was the extent of our Christmas Day fare, breakfast, dinner and supper.\n\nAnd there we sat on the floor from seven thirty in the morning until four in the afternoon, wondering what was going to happen next. In the meantime, as the soldiers went through the house from top to bottom, they found a few of the Royal Engineers, a couple of Canadian officers and some soldiers. When the Japanese saw these uniformed men they no doubt thought that we were also soldiers, though dressed as we were in cassocks. Four of the above-mentioned officers, one a fine fellow named Lawrence, a Lieutenant of the Engineers, were immediately trussed up with ropes binding their arms behind their backs, and made to squat on the floor with us. Another group of some seven or eight was tied up in a similar manner but led away directly, and as we have every reason to believe, were bayonetted to death. Among this group were a few wounded soldiers and one who walked up our front walk waving a white handkerchief in surrender.\n\nAs we observed Lt. Lawrence bound and sitting on the floor in front of us, we noticed that he was in acute pain because of the tightness of the ropes. At this, Father Meyer spoke to one of the officers who had tied him up, and requested that he loosen the rope a little. At first, he paid not the least attention, but finally walked over to Lt. Lawrence and pulled the ropes even tighter, which made the veins in the poor man's neck swell up and his face became distorted with pain. Father Meyer expostulated, but in vain, though after about five minutes another officer came over and loosened the ropes to an endurable position. While we were sitting on the floor, one of the soldiers, a Canadian, said he would like to go to confession and the priest nearest him performed this duty for him, the Japanese being none the wiser.\n\nDuring the night while the battle was raging outside around our house three British soldiers who had been wounded were brought in and laid on the floor in the west corridor. There in the morning we found them, but as the Japanese burst in so early we could do practically nothing for them. During the day we made signs to the Japanese that we wanted to help these soldiers but our request was refused. Going in and out of the house the Japanese soldiers passed repeatedly by these wounded men and at one time, I saw a Japanese take his rifle and lower the point of the bayonet until it touched the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208624, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "54\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\ntip of a soldier's nose; then another came along a little later and gave the poor man a cigarette. Such action was noticed often; some of the Japanese being cruel, or at least stern, while others were quite humane. Later on we learned that these wounded British Tommies were thrown out through a window and bayonetted to death. During actual hostilities the Japanese took no prisoners, but once the armistice was signed, prisoners' lives were respected.\n\nSitting on the floor from time to time we heard loud knocking and pounding throughout the upper floors of our house. Later we found out that the Japanese had broken in the panels of many of the doors leading to the rooms. At one time, also, a machine gun was carried into the house, set up on one of the back verandahs for action, as there were apparently some British soldiers still in the vicinity of our house. From time to time a Japanese soldier would pass by and ask “Time?” at which some unsuspecting padre would show his wrist watch and then the soldier would reach out his hand for the watch.\n\nThus the day wore on. Case upon case of our precious foodstuffs were being carried out and we could see a growing pile of discarded bottles and cans on our front lawn. A Japanese could open a can or a bottle and if the taste or smell was not to his liking, he forthwith threw the can away. As mentioned earlier in this narrative, we had barricaded the door leading into the downstairs chapel with mission boxes to avoid being hit by stray bullets, and when the Japanese found that this entrance was more convenient for their looting, they immediately chopped in the door and removed the barricading boxes. This coupled with the fact that the British soldiers were found in our house must certainly have increased their suspicions of our status, and apparently they could not figure us out.\n\nAlong about four or four-thirty one of the soldiers stooped down and raised the hem of Father Murphy's cassock. What he saw, a pair of khaki trousers, evidently removed all suspicions and sealed our fate. For we were all ordered to stand up and take off our cassocks. We were then searched, told to stand in line and tied together in twos, threes and fours, with our hands behind our backs. This accomplished, with one soldier leading and another bringing up the rear we were led out of the front door and down our front road. I do not know what the thoughts of the others were, but I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208625, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n55\n\nexpected at any minute, especially when we passed a level spot of ground, to be ordered to turn around and face a firing squad. Half way down our driveway a plane was heard overhead and our guards herded us over to the bank at the side of the road so as to be out of sight of the aviator. Here, while waiting for the plane to disappear, our guards noticed two watches. Mine was one and its small chain was dangling from my pocket. The guard came over, pulled out the watch, looked at it, hesitated (for it was not a wrist watch and they were more in demand) and then deciding it might do, yanked it free from its clasp and resumed his post.\n\nThe plane by this time having disappeared, the guards marshalled us in line again and off we started, wondering where we were bound for and what was going to happen to us. Some thought we were going to be taken to Repulse Bay for internment, but as we got to the foot of our hill we turned not left, but right, towards Stanley Village, but instead of continuing on we were routed up a small driveway which led to an unused road just behind the Carmelite Convent. As we passed an open space where a number of soldiers were standing, I again thought of a firing squad, but we kept marching on until turning up another bypath, we were told to halt. This dead end of the road had been cut out of the hill and we were thus pretty well protected from flying bullets, for the fighting was still going on, at least sporadically.\n\nHere we noticed a higher ranking officer than we had hitherto seen, and he had with him a portable radio or telephone set, probably the latter as wires were in evidence along the ground. We were ordered to sit or squat down—it was most awkward to sit and to rise with our hands tied behind our backs, but we had to do so again and again. The officer then, using a very few English words, questioned us. We tried to make him understand that we were \"church\" people, and though puzzled he finally seemed to grasp the significance of this word. After making us sit and rise repeatedly to indicate our nationality—there were in our ranks Americans, British, Canadian, Irish, Polish and Russian, for in addition to us Maryknollers, there were Bishop O'Gara, and Father Charles Murphy, Canadians; Mr. Brown previously mentioned, British (or rather Australian); Brother Bernard the Salesian, Irish; Father Szeliga, Salesian, Polish and a Russian, whom we called Michael, who also had been in the employ of the British. Incidentally, Father", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "56\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nSzeliga and Michael were not tied up, being I supposed considered neutrals. As we were being questioned back and forth—the Japanese being evidently very much puzzled by our motley group—our passports were demanded, and after being examined were thrown on the ground in front of us.\n\nDuring all this questioning the battle was going on, and now and then we heard the whistle of a rifle bullet just over our heads, probably coming from the British defenders on the hill just below the fort (for the Japanese were now concerned with an assault on this last bastion). Also to our left in front of a Chinese house a Japanese field piece was barking intermittently and we could see soldiers keeping in the lee of the walls as they passed by from position to position. Also, as we were being questioned, we saw Lt. Lawrence and his three brother officers who had been with us led past and down a little declivity towards the Convent wall. As he passed Lt. Lawrence whispered: \"I'm sorry for any trouble I've caused you” and disappeared around the corner of the embankment. Shortly after, we heard shouts and screams. The four officers had been untied amid a cordon of fixed bayonets and I distinctly saw one, a young fellow, run toward us, only to have Japanese soldiers point a bayonet at his stomach and the poor fellow turned and ran back, with a look of agony in his eyes. It was all over within a few seconds, and just in front of me I saw a Japanese stoop down, pick up a little grass, and coolly wipe off the point of his bayonet.\n\nLater we learned from Chris Wong, our office clerk, that he and some of our servants had been compelled to dig a trench and bury the bodies of these brave fellows. They also buried other bodies of Canadian and British soldiers who fell on our property. The question in our minds was, were we destined to a like fate? Brother Thaddeus, who knew a little of the Japanese language, heard the soldiers say: \"Kill them! Kill them! They are soldiers in disguise!\" But he did not convey that knowledge to us at the moment.\n\nFinally, after about a half an hour or so, we were ordered to stand up and were led away, this time retracing our own tracks and ending up in a garage at the rear of a Chinese house just below our own hill. Here we were herded like cattle in a pen and once inside, with the sliding doors closed, I think we felt like a herd of cattle. It was intended for two cars, but for some time apparently it had been used merely as a gardener's storehouse, for scattered around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n59\n\nFather Szeliga, who was untied, handed it around and we all took a sip of the precious liquid, but the half-full canteen did not go far among thirty-four parched throats. Later on, a second canteen was handed in, and we had another swallow. We continued to ask and make signs for food, and at length, at four-thirty in the afternoon, we heard a commotion outside. Our door opened a little wider, and a few Japanese soldiers, one apparently a petty officer, brought in and distributed to each a small package of army hardtack and a can of evaporated milk undoubtedly from our own store. We found some sort of implement to open the cans, and we had our first meal of hardtack and milk. Not knowing what the future had in store, we drank only half the milk and kept the remainder for the morrow, just in case!\n\nAn attempt to explain to the officer who came with the food that two of our men had dysentery met with no response. Then we pointed to our bound hands and asked to see a higher-ranking officer. To this, he replied that tonight we would be taken to the headquarters of the gendarmes, and hope sprung up anew in our breasts. However, as the night came on, no officer appeared, and we sought our bed on the floor as on the preceding night, but with a little less inconvenience, as during the day we had managed to clean up a little more of the debris, or at least to push it aside and thus made a little more sleeping space. During the course of the day, a few Japanese soldiers came along and peeked in through the crack in our door, and one of them threw in a couple of pieces of dirt or stones.\n\nAs we lay down to sleep that night, we noticed shadows playing on our wall, and looking out surreptitiously, we saw that the Japanese had kindled some fires nearby, the flames of which partially illuminated our quarters. A second look confirmed our suspicion - they were cremating the bodies of the dead. A little later on, we thought we heard English voices outside, but could not distinguish them clearly. The next morning, we found that some captured British soldiers had been billeted in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the house to which our garage was attached, but not being allowed outside, we, of course, could have no conversation with them.\n\nDawn of the twenty-seventh came, and we had breakfast in bed! Sitting or standing in our crowded quarters, we finished the few", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208631, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n61\n\ntomato catsup, and we soon had a cupful of each of delicious stew, or what have you. We were allowed to go not more than a few feet away from our garage, such desperate criminals we evidently were. But this was far enough to exchange a few words with the British soldiers who had come in two nights before. They gave us a little tea, and said they were pretty well supplied with food. That night, when we were tied up again after our supper, the guards tied our hands not behind our back as heretofore, but in front, and as a consequence we slept a little more comfortably.\n\nThe twenty-eighth. Our bonds were removed, we were again allowed to go outside to cook our meals. There happened to be a few straggling vegetables growing within the ambitus of our permitted area, and these went into our stew. For cups and dishes we used the milk cans which we had the day before, and the hard-tack container was our all-purpose kettle. Fathers Meyer and Walter were our capable cooks, and as we were allowed to get water from a well we did not fare too badly. After cooking our meals we had to return to the interior of the garage, though finally our bonds were entirely removed. About this time we came across a few burlap bags and when we were allowed outside we managed to pull up enough dried grass to stuff these bags for pillows. Providentially the weather continued mild and we did not suffer from cold.\n\nAs we were preparing our noonday meal we heard a truck rumble by, and from it a cheery voice hailed Father Toomey. The truck stopped and even pulled into our driveway, and Major Kerr, a British officer whom Father Toomey knew very well, jumped down. Major Kerr, knowing Japanese, was acting as interpreter for the time being, and was even now with the British prisoners in the room adjoining us. Seeing our plight, he promised to do what he could for us and a little later managed to bring out a few cases of food for us and for the British soldiers. We also asked him to see what he could do about getting us off the cement floor of the garage and, after a conversation with an officer, we were allowed to go upstairs in the house where there was at least a wood floor. Accordingly, we lost no time in moving our very few effects to this new domicile.\n\nWe had not been upstairs for more than a few hours when a Japanese officer called us all to come down. We lined up in front of him, and in broken English he said, \"Japanese. English. Finished\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "62\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nWe did not know quite what he meant, but as he repeated these words, he made a motion towards our house on the hill. We interpreted all this to mean that peace had been concluded and that we were free to return to our house. We pointed to our house and he nodded his head. We leave our feelings to be imagined by the reader as we prepared to return.\n\nPicking up our few belongings, and, of course, the food which Major Kerr had kindly secured for us, and bidding goodbye to the British soldiers, we trudged back to our house. Be it confessed however, that we were not too hilarious as we did not know what awaited us above. Reaching our front lawn, we found Japanese soldiers in the house. They looked at us with unemotional faces and refused to allow us to enter. So we sat on the lawn until almost dusk when they said we might stay in our lower chapel. Entering in we found the place fairly presentable, though the odor in some spots was none too pleasant. We opened the window, did a little cleaning up, and settled down for the night, sleeping on the floor between the altars.\n\nDuring the night the temperature fell considerably, as only it can in South China, and as we had but a couple of blankets, and only a few had retrieved their cassocks, so we shivered. We would fall asleep only to be awakened by the cold. Then a walk over and around other sleeping forms, and another attempt to sleep. We had fixed up toilet facilities as best we could under the circumstances in the corridor and finally the dawn came. Before retiring we had managed to get a cup of our now famous stew by building a temporary fireplace just outside the chapel door, up against the walls of our building.\n\nAs the day dawned, we were up and trying to get warm by walking around, until our culinary staff announced breakfast, which was similar to the previous night's supper. During the morning we were allowed to walk around outside on the lawn, managed to improve our fireplace, picked up some firewood and carried water from our garage tap. As the soldiers were still in the building, we were not supposed to go beyond our lower chapel, but now and then during the day one or two of us would venture through the building. Sometimes we were unmolested, at other times we were warned to keep out, with a grunt. On these occasional forays we contrived to retrieve some of our belongings, such as clothing,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208633, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n63\n\nblankets and other small things. But what a sight met our eyes! The general scene was almost indescribable! Some of the rooms and especially the toilets were filthy. In the corridors, the portable altars still stood with their appurtenances as we left them Christmas morning. Strangely enough, the chalices were for the most part untouched; the vestments and altar cloths were intact but in many instances trailing or lying on the floor. And the floors of the corridors were literally filled with all sorts of things, papers, books, empty tin cans and bottles, broken boxes and what not. The rooms were in a similar state. Bureau and wardrobe drawers were pulled out, their contents scattered on the floor, and papers and books and all our minor possessions which the Japanese did not want were everywhere. One wondered where it all came from. In many cases the beds were missing or at least the mattresses. These we later found arranged in rows on the floors of the larger rooms, where the soldiers had evidently slept. The panels of most of the doors had been broken into and shattered strips lay on the floor.\n\nThe office was also a mess. This had been used for a dining room but, despite this fact, the floor was covered as the rest of the house was, with papers, files and everything imaginable. The safe had been broken open and what money we had, taken. Before the crash came we had placed the Blessed Sacrament in this safe, but very providentially before the Japanese got to it, the Chinese seminarian who had come with the Salesians opened the safe and consumed it.\n\nThe chapel upstairs was wholly unmolested, the Japanese seeming to have great respect for shrines, and later on a Japanese officer bowed as he passed our Chapel door. Report has it that one of the British officers was found hiding behind a statue in the Chapel! Poor fellow!\n\nWe noticed red splotches here and there on the floor and walls, but we surmised that these were for the most part caused by the breaking of innocent catsup bottles, though where the wounded soldiers lay, there were of course real blood stains. At the first opportunity, we tried to find our cassocks and breviaries. Most of these eventually turned up, but cassocks needed a washing before being able to be worn.\n\nObviously our food storeroom was the first object of attack by the famished Japanese, and there wasn't much left when we return-\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "64\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\ned. However, we managed to pick up some odd tins here and there, and some things which did not appeal to the Japanese taste were left untouched. As the soldiers were still in the house we could not salvage much under their eyes, but we did manage to bring some things to the lower chapel and hide them away. A few sacks of rice and soya beans were left, and also a quantity of sugar and, singularly enough in this instance, a larger quantity than we had had in the beginning. And last but not least were the army biscuits which the British had brought in with them.\n\nWell, all that day we puttered around retrieving what we could, but the soldiers gave no signs of evacuating. Our dinner and supper were cooked outside on our makeshift stove, and we managed to pick up a few cups and dishes for our food. Anything tasted good these days. We slept again on the floor of the chapel, but having been given by the Japanese some British army blankets, we were not so cold that night.\n\nDuring the wee small hours of the morning of the thirtieth, we heard the soldiers moving about in the upper corridors, and when we arose at dawn the last of them had departed, leaving the wreck to us. Our first concern was for saying Mass, and it did not take us long to set up a few portable altars in the upstairs chapel to get ready the necessary requirements for the Holy Sacrifice. Personally I do not think I ever said Mass more fervently, or with greater gratitude to God for His protection and His divine Providence. After breakfast, cooked again in the open, we literally swarmed over the building and like busy bees began the task of cleaning up.\n\nThe office, as said before, had been used as a dining room, and there we found the remains of a seemingly hurried meal, eaten by the departing soldiery. On the table were plates (ours of course) of heaped up rice and other remnants of food. A chalice or two had been used for drinking cups. Stepping gingerly over the debris in the corridors, each one returned to his room to take stock of the situation, and to ascertain as far as possible how much and how many of his possessions had been looted. Generally speaking, only those things which a soldier could use were missing, such as shoes, some articles of clothing, money (although some gold currency was untouched), watches, small clocks, cameras, eye glasses, razors and toilet supplies. Of course, too, everyone was cleaned out of cigarettes and it was difficult to buy any. Up in our attic, where many of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208641, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n71\n\nOn the eighteenth, two Japanese officers called and we entertained them with tea. They were pleasant enough, but had little to say. Soldiers and officers have come almost every day, either for a courtesy call or out of mere curiosity. One officer especially has been very friendly with Father Toomey, and has brought him cigarettes and milk. Others seem rather arrogant and haughty. Of course, we in turn are mild and meek for we don't like bayonets. Today, finally, our Ford V-8 was towed away down the hill.\n\nShortly after our return from the garage, we witnessed a rather sorrowful scene and one which will long remain in our memories. It was when, a few days after the signing of the armistice, the British and Indian soldiers marched out of the fort on the hill and took the winding road down through Stanley and to Hong Kong and to internment in Kowloon. There must have been at least a thousand, if not more men, disarmed and dejected, and passing just below our hill we watched them as they went by under the victorious Japanese flag hung across the road. As we stood on our hilltop and saw that mournful column passing along silently, we thought of the glories and peace of Hong Kong which had been and now everywhere is desolation and despair. The victors are despoiling the city; they have ruthlessly dethroned the foreigner and humiliated him in the eyes of the Chinese; they have destroyed overnight, as it were, the work of decades; they have completely disrupted the organization of a huge modern city, and starvation faces the populace. The Japanese have learned their lessons well from the West, and the West is now reaping the harvest of what it has sown. Poor Hong Kong! which had to be one of the first victims.\n\nAfter tiffin on the 20th, we received final word to leave Maryknoll House, now His Imperial Majesty's property, for our new home in the Prison Warders' Apartments attached to the Prison at Stanley. We are to be interned, not as the Italian Fathers were, in the Prison itself, but in modern apartments, these having been built only a few years ago. We hastily summoned our coolies, and the vanguard soon got under way. We walked in advance, each with a suitcase or bag in each hand and a bundle of bedding on his back, the coolies bringing up the rear with the heavier and more awkward bundles. Twenty-four priests and Brothers, and as many more coolies made quite a cavalcade, and looking back, it seems that we have been able to move all that Father Troesch and Father Meyer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208642, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "72\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\ngot together. Father Toomey went on ahead to arrange for our quarters, and all bid good-bye to Maryknoll on the hill. Just as we are leaving, His Excellency Bishop Valtorta walks up our hill, not knowing that we were being evacuated. At the foot of the hill, we meet a truck, and are surprised to find sitting on it, Father Norris, C. P., who has been brought out from town. The truck was on its way to the refugee camp just below our house, in order to pick up a few rice caldrons and some firewood for our kitchen equipment at the camp. At any rate, we are going to have rice!\n\nWe pass the Carmelite Convent, struggling under our burdens; go through the village of Stanley, which looks deserted and desolate, and we continue on our way, after having first been stopped by a group of soldiers, to the Prison Warders' apartments. We find we are to be billeted in Blocks “E”, “F” and “G” and the British and Dutch, some of whom have already arrived, are to occupy the other Blocks as well as St. Stephen's College buildings and the Indian Quarters below. We are directed to the top or third floor of Block \"E\", and as there was no order or assignment of rooms, we took the first available space and put our belongings on the floor. We also find that we have been allotted two flats on this third floor, each consisting of three rooms, with a small bath and an equally small kitchen and pantry. In these six rooms, there will be eventually (Father Bauer, with Brothers Michael and Thaddeus still being in Queen Mary Hospital, and Father Feeney still in Kowloon) thirty-two people, we having lost His Excellency, Bishop O'Gara and Father Charles Murphy; they, being Canadians, going to the British quarters, and gaining Brothers Cornelius and Anthony, two Christian Brothers who, with Fathers Norris and Benson, were here ahead of us. We are billeted four to seven in a room and have camp cots for beds. There is little other furniture save a chair here and there, or a small table and a wardrobe or bureau in some of the rooms. We have the whole top floor of our Block, except the servants' quarters, very tiny rooms at either end. After stowing away our belongings under camp cots and in corners, we make up our cots and prepare to retire.\n\nAs we have no electricity, we sleep until daylight and then rise to begin our first day in an Internment Camp. Having brought with us a number of Mass kits, we immediately set about putting up some temporary altars. For these, we use some tables and bureaus", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208655, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n85\n\nsix rooms with two tiny kitchens and pantries, and two baths. We are quartered as follows: in room 7, Fathers Hessler, Walter, Knotek and Brothers Michael, Lawrence and Anselm; in room 8, Fathers Callan, Reardon, Allie and O'Connor, C. M.; room 9, Fathers Downs, Quinn, V. Walsh, Tackney, Moore, Madison and Brother Thaddeus; room 16, Fathers Troesch, Meyer, Bauer and Brother William. In this room, we had been saving a cot for Father Feeney, but before the Sisters were interned he managed to secure a pass on the plea of being a neutral alien and was later allowed to go to the interior of China.\n\nIn room 17, Fathers Benson, Norris, C. P., and Brothers Cornelius and Anthony; room 18, Fathers Toomey, Keelan, O'Connell, Siebert, Gaiero and McKeirnan. With six and seven in a room, and even with four in the smaller rooms, we are pretty crowded, like bees in a hive. Our tableware consists of a soup plate, a large spoon and a cup. As our cups are breaking one by one, we are falling back on discarded jam tins, with a small wire handle. Our dishes are thus easily washed. We also wash our own clothes, wherever we can, in the kitchen sink or bathtub, or in a pail, of which we have one or two, and hang them out on the verandahs or, in wet weather, in the corridors, all of which gives our apartment the appearance of a New York East Side tenement.\n\n4—Mr. Walsh, a sergeant of the Hong Kong Police, died suddenly today of heart failure. However, Father Toomey was in time to anoint him. Brother Anthony comes down with malaria. Brother is a very big man, and has worked very hard both during hostilities in caring for the sick and wounded at LaSalle College, and in the Camp on manual labor. One small slice of bread today.\n\n5-Mr. Walsh buried this morning after a High Mass of Requiem on the tennis court, at which quite a number of internees, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were present. Interment took place in the old Military Cemetery (within the confines of the Camp) on the hill near the Prison. In this ancient cemetery are the graves of many British and Irish soldiers and their families who died shortly after the founding of Hong Kong either from malaria or from wounds. Now new graves are multiplying, being those of soldiers fallen in this present war, and of internees. Father Quinn starts a class in Spanish. One slice of bread again today.\n\n7-Our Saturday evening songfest was put on tonight by the ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "88\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nsoya bean supply in the Colony is exhausted or it is being diverted to other uses. It can hardly be exhausted, as the British Government must have put in an immense supply. American communal meeting, at which people either stand or sit on the floor, as we have no chairs. Roll call at twelve noon in each Block, to be repeated every 48 hours.\n\n19 Feast of St. Joseph. Benediction at Maryknoll Sisters' Chapel. Good supper tonight—hamburg steak, soya beans, vegetable, rice and one slice of bread. From now on we are allowed only one electric light in each room, and no fans allowed.\n\n20—No soup at noon today, because we have no salt in the Camp kitchen. EXTRA! SENSATIONAL ESCAPE! The whole Camp was electrified this morning by the whispered report that at least five, possibly eleven, internees, have escaped. As reprisals, we are to have a roll call twice a day, at 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., with all lights out at 11, and there are to be Japanese gendarmes on duty throughout the Camp. Our own American patrol is automatically dismissed. No public gatherings allowed. There is to be no diminution of our food rations, however. We understand that when some of the interned soldiers escaped recently from the Shumshuipo Camp, the rest of the internees were put on a diet of rice and water for a week. Brother Anthony ill again. No cigarettes as yet, and the brethren are resorting to all sorts of concoctions, made of pine needles, ginger and other leaves, for tobacco. Internees are seen walking around with their eyes glued to the ground, looking for cast-off cigarettes. How low have the mighty fallen!\n\n21—Latest official instructions: all typewriters and flashlights to be turned in to the authorities; also, we are not allowed to stand on our verandahs or on any eminence overlooking the Prison and look down on the superior beings quartered there, nor may we look on groups drilling. With the ban on public meetings, our proposed American spelling bee has been cancelled. Father Vincent Walsh improved and no operation seems necessary. The new regime on \"The Hill\" brings no relief or betterment in our food situation, though today we each got one duck egg and a slice of bread.\n\n22—Sunday. As usual, with the Bishop and Father Norris preaching. Father Benson has not been well for some time and today goes to the Tweed Bay Hospital, with diabetes and rather...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208667, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n97\n\nOld road boundary stones are being made into headstones, and as for coffins, we have only one and that is used for every funeral, the body being sewn up in a burlap sack and buried thus after the mourners leave. Rumors of more extensive repatriation persist, and according to the Bamboo Wireless now, we are going back to the States by June first. However, according to the super pessimists in Camp, of which there is no dearth, there is to be no repatriation at all; it is only a hoax. Incidentally, also we have in our ranks, some very able statesmen and generals who, if the devil were given his due, could settle all the world's problems. Father Bauer improved under his new treatment and diet. Evidently Dr. Kirk has found the root of the trouble.\n\nEXTRA: Our flour ration has been stepped up to 8 ounces per person per day, and today, we get one bun and a piece of bread for tiffin. Our garden and other tools have been returned but they must be kept locked up at night in the community storeroom lest we dig our way to safety.\n\n23—Funeral Mass at 8:30 for Mr. Simmons. Burial service at 6 p.m. in the cemetery, conducted by the Rev. Mr. Martin, former Head Master of St. Stephen's College. This was occasioned by the finding of some human bones around St. Stephen's which may be those of soldiers, British or Canadian, who fell during the fighting at Stanley. Included among the names of those on the small box containing the bones were those of Dr. Black, Capt. Whitney and the three English nurses (one a Catholic lady) who were killed in St. Stephen's College Hospital on Christmas Day.\n\nIn the early days of the Camp, a number of unburied bodies of soldiers were found at various spots, and when possible, buried by the internees, and as we take our evening stroll, we often pass and repass these graves of unknown soldiers. A few, however, have been marked and a small wooden cross erected, and in some instances, friends of the dead soldier have fixed up the grave quite attractively with stones. In the cemetery, too, a few very industrious and charitable men are working, making paths and in many ways trying to beautify the grounds with the limited material at hand.\n\n24----His Excellency, Bishop O'Gara, preached a eulogy this morning at a Requiem Mass, said by Father Hessler, for those whose remains were buried last evening. Another death among the British, of cancer. Quite a good-sized piece of bread today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208685, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n115\n\n21-Report has it that some 52 internees may be allowed to go to Shanghai on Wednesday. No electricity due to overloading of circuits. As a result, we have to get our \"chow\" cooked in the British kitchen for a couple of meals. The Shanghai baggage goes to town in the food truck.\n\n22--The Shanghai trip delayed and the baggage returns from the city.\n\n23-We understood a few days ago that the Japanese had rounded up several hundred very destitute Chinese in the city with the intention of deporting them somewhere along the South China coast. They were first brought out to Stanley and placed in the Prison for a day or so. Next they were herded onto several large junks in Stanley Bay. The junks were towed out to sea but meeting heavy weather, the tugs had to put back into quieter waters and anchored again in Stanley Bay just off the western side of our Camp. As we walked along the top of St. Stephen's Hill, we could see the unfortunates very plainly crowded on the junks, and standing up, with no covering over their heads. Thus they remained for at least two days and nights, exposed to the sun and rain. No doubt their food was but a trifle, for while anchored off the Camp, a number of bodies were seen by the internees to be thrown overboard, and later these bodies were washed up on the beach, where they remained unburied. I believe the Camp officials requested permission to bury them but the beach being outside our barbed wire enclosure, the permission was refused. The junks finally sailed away with their human freight. Earlier in the Camp, a similar permission was asked to bury a few bodies of soldiers which had been washed up on the beaches, but again the permission was not granted. July so far has given us 22 days of rain which, like California, is most unusual for this month, and as a result the reservoirs are filled up and overflowing.\n\n25-The Shanghai repatriates are told to be ready to leave at any time, but there is still a further delay. No doubt it is a question of shipping. Among them are two Dutch Salesian Fathers. The British put on a good show at 7 p.m., \"The Optimists,” on the bowling green outside our former American Club A-4 Block. Swimming restrictions lightened; we may now go and return at any time within the prescribed hours. Mixed marriage in our private Maryknoll Chapel at 9 a.m. Father Hessler officiated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209009, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUIRIES\n\n139\n\nFuk Tak Temple **\n\nTai O Market- No information.\n\nThe number of temples found in each area is as follows\n\n1. Mui Wo-2\n\n6. Tsin Yu Wan-1\n\n11. Sha Lo Wan-1\n\n2. Pui O-4\n\n7. Yi O-1\n\n12. Tung Chung 3\n\n3. Tong Fuk-2\n\n8. Tai O-7\n\n13. Tai Pak - 1\n\n4. Shek Pik-3\n\n9. Keung Shan- 1\n\n14. Nim Shue Wan-1\n\n5. Fan Lau-2 10. San Shek Wan-1\n\n15. Chak Lap Kok-1\n\nHong Kong, March 1980\n\nANTHONY K.K. SIU\n\nTHE KOWLOON WALLED CITY\n\nThe Kowloon Walled City was situated to the north of the present Kai Tak Airport. It had been the most important military base in Hong Kong during the later Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1911).\n\nAt the beginning of the Ch'ing period, there was no walled city. In the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1668), there was only a watchpost, called the 6, recorded as having thirty guards. Fourteen years later, in the 21st year of Kang Hsi (1682), the number of guards was reduced to only ten, and the post was turned into the Kowloon guard-station. This Kowloon guard-station, with only ten soldiers, was still in existence up to the 16th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1811)\n\n1\n\nDuring the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1810), the Fat Tong Mun Fort # was evacuated, and a new fort was built on the coast of Kowloon. This was the Kowloon Fort #. Its garrison was forty-eight men, under one pa-tsung and one ngai-wai.\n\nAfter the 22nd year of the Tao Kuang reign (1843), Hong Kong Island was under British rule. In order to strengthen the fortification of Kowloon, a walled city was built in the 27th year of Tao Kuang (1847). This was the Kowloon Walled City\n\n* See JHKBRAS 19 (1979)· 209-210.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209010, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "140\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe Walled City had an area of about 70 mou. It had a length of about 130 yards and its breadth was about 240 yards. The walls were about 20 feet high and five to ten feet thick. There were four main gates. The gateways were about ten feet high and eight feet wide, and they could be shut with iron gates.\n\nThe main entrance was the South Gate PT. Outside the main gate, there was the Lung Chun River. A stone bridge called the Lung Chun Bridge crossed the river. Soldiers could land at a pier and march directly into the Walled City.\n\nThe Walled City's garrison was 150 soldiers under one fu-cheung or brigadier. In addition, fifteen soldiers and one ngai-wai-tsin-tsung or sub-lieutenant guarded the Kowloon Coastal Guard Station 九龍海口汎 whilst the Kowloon Fort 九龍砲台 was guarded by one tsin-tsung or lieutenant with 75 men. The number of men remained the same until the early Kuang Hsü Reign.\n\nThen in the 24th year of the Kuang Hsü Reign (1898), the New Territories was leased to the British. The Walled City at first remained under the rule of the Ch'ing Government. However in 1899 the garrisons in that area were evacuated, and the Walled City was abandoned.\n\nNowadays, nothing of the Walled City remains, except two old cannons of the Chia Ch'ing Period and the old yamen which can still be found in Lung Chun Road inside the old Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, November 1980\n\nANTHONY K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Chapter 8 of the San On Yuen Chi, K'ang Hsi edition states, \"During the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1667), the Kowloon watch-post, guarded by thirty men, was established. Then, in the 21st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1682), the Kowloon watch-post was turned into the Kowloon guard-station and the number of guards was reduced to ten only.”\n\n2 See Chapter 11 of the San On Yuen Chi, Chia Ch'ing edition 新安縣志卷十一\n\n3 Chapter 125 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition records, “In the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing Reign", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209274, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "JUAN YÜAN'S MANAGEMENT OF SINO-BRITISH RELATIONS IN CANTON, 1817-1826 163\n\ncommercial vessels.\n\nStill, the legacy of the Chia-ch'ing Emperor in offering kindness to foreigners was continued even at this time. In the midst of the Topaze crisis, there was the famous fire of Canton. On 1 November, the fire began in a cake shop outside the city wall, when the baker was careless with the pieces of brushwood he was using as fuel for melting sugar. \"The streets were narrow and the houses crowded together\", wrote Juan Yuan to the Emperor. \"Fanned by strong north winds, despite concerted efforts by soldiers and civilians, the fire could not be contained.\" It burned through the night and all of the next day, destroying \"more than 2,423 shops and extended to the foreign factories.\"64 A number of warehouses belonging to the hong merchants were destroyed. Puiqua and Mowqua especially suffered great losses. Sailors from the foreign ships managed to salvage some of the cargo in storage at the factories, but the factory buildings were burned. In the stampede of refugees from the fire and the looters, twenty-two people died. Puiqua petitioned to Juan Yüan on behalf of the hong merchants and foreign traders for remission of taxes owed. 140,243 taels of taxes due to the Canton Customs by the foreign traders were completely remitted. The hong merchants were excused from half of their taxes of 524,156 taels. They did not have to pay anything in 1823. In 1824, however, the other half of the taxes owed had to be paid, with each hong merchant's burden in proportion to the damages he had sustained. Chinese local shopkeepers who considered themselves well-to-do refused compensation from the government, but small shopkeepers as well as the Tanka boat people accepted money from welfare funds released by the province. The foreigners considered these measures fair play indeed.\n\n65\n\nWith the removal of British naval vessels from Chinese waters, threats to the Canton system were relaxed. Opium smuggling remained a major problem, but by 1823 the network of smugglers was well established, trans-shipping the contraband from foreign ships onto small local crafts outside the Bogue, so it was no longer a source of conflict between the foreign traders and Chinese authorities at Canton. Illegal payment in silver to the suppliers meant its exportation, which was forbidden by imperial decree. By the time Juan Yüan left Canton in the summer of 1826, the shortage of silver was already becoming evident. His successor became a part of the opium smuggling network as each patrol boat was paid a bribe of 36,000 taels a month to overlook the illicit trade.97\n\n64\n\nIn the summer of 1826 Juan Yüan was transferred to the post of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209431, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "66\n\nELIZABETH SINN\n\nand were repulsed. Then, on the 23rd, led by Admiral Courbet, they launched an all-out attack on Foochow, destroying, within an hour, eleven Chinese warships and the Foochow shipyard. News of the sinking of the fleet at Foochow left Canton in the grip of hysteria. On the 30th, the high authorities in Canton proclaimed that they would offer awards for the lives of French soldiers. Plans were made to block up the river entrance as fears of a French naval attack on Canton grew.\n\nMeanwhile, French ships arrived in Hong Kong. On 3rd September, the La Galissonière came. This frigate had taken part in the actions both at Keelung and Foochow; moreover, it had Admiral Courbet on board. He was saluted by British guns in the harbour.1\n\nChang Chih-tung was immediately told of this, and his informer advised him to prepare for war because of rumours in Hong Kong that the French would shortly attack Canton.2\n\nOn the 5th September, the Canton authorities issued another proclamation. It called upon all Chinese to support the Chinese government against France, but it seems to be addressed especially to the people of Hong Kong and Macao. It pointed out that Chinese in these localities were often traitorous, because, enticed to work for foreigners for high pay, they frequently ended up in their military service. This meant that they would sometimes be actually fighting China herself. The proclamation called upon these Chinese \"to show a devoted regard for [their] fatherland” by refraining from working for the French, especially by refusing to repair their boats, and by killing French commanders and damaging their ammunitions of war. Those who followed these instructions would have their past offences forgiven, and be rewarded, while those who continued to help the enemy would imperil their family and relatives in China. Ten days later, on the 15th September, another equally inflammatory proclamation was issued calling on Chinese in Singapore, Penang and other places to kill and poison French persons.4\n\nIn Hong Kong, starting on the 11th, workers at the Cosmopolitan Dock at Hunghom refused to work on the La Galissonière. In addition, they also refused to continue work on the French Mail steamer, the Volga, even though they had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "77\n\nIt is reasonable to believe Chang's claim to the Acting British Consul in Canton that he had no wish for disturbances in Hong Kong, 19\n\nCanton depended on Hong Kong for provisions of arms and ships as well as on loans from banks and contributions from wealthy Chinese there. It is more difficult to believe that he had not desired at least some anti-French activities in Hong Kong. A French invasion of Canton was imminent in the minds of Canton officials, and they believed that non-cooperation of Chinese in Hong Kong could do much to hinder French war efforts.50 It is no surprise that he should appeal to the Chinese in Hong Kong to refuse working for the French.\n\nIn fact, a more pertinent question is why did Hong Kong Chinese of various classes respond to the proclamation? Again, Marsh and the English newspapers were convinced it was fear of retaliation in China, and the Daily Press spoke of agents sent here to make sure that Canton's instructions were followed.51 Perhaps this did apply to parts of the population. But I believe there were other forces at work. One of these was a mixture of strong anti-French and patriotic feelings.\n\nThe war between China and France had been well reported in Hong Kong newspapers, and local Chinese had apparently kept a close eye on its development throughout. In September, 1884 sketches of the siege of Keelung in which the French had been repulsed, were being sold in Hong Kong streets.52\n\nIt was reported by several sources that among local Chinese, there were strong feelings against the French, and the local Chinese newspapers gave vent to similar expressions of public opinion.\n\nIn September 1883, the Hua-tzu jih-pao went so far as to suggest that awards should be offered by the Chinese government for the heads of French officers and soldiers for their evil acts in Tongking and Annam. The Hong Kong newspaper proved more zealous in this respect than the Canton government. The Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, Chang Shu-sheng, became so alarmed at this provocation by the Hong Kong newspaper that he protested to the Acting British Consul in Canton, H. F. Hance. Hance in turn complained to Marsh, who was Acting Governor at that time, and he issued a warning to the paper.54", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209600, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "Smashed up the matsheds over at Kowloon; And here, perhaps, I may be allowed to say Apropos of nothing in the play,\n\nThese Kowloon matsheds are a perfect bane; They're hot and stuffy and let in the rain; And oh! those musical and parched mosquitoes When they are hungry, don't they fairly us.\n\nThe British soldiers should have bricks and mortar.\n\nOur Ayrun* brother has them, then we oughter.\n\n235\n\nThen there were the opinions of life at the lower end of the military hierarchy. Giacomo and Beppo treat sarcastically the soldiers' life — they have just been encouraged to \"go and enlist — you'll have extensive pay\". Giacomo replies:\n\nAnd get boiled beef for dinner every day.\n\nA soldier's life ain't quite all beer and skittles, There's too much guard and not enough o' vittles.\n\nAnd as for Beppo:\n\nMe be a soldier not much. I couldn't stick it What price the slow march in defaulter's piquet, Instruction drill and then fatigues, although We don't mind working for the good old P. and O.** I rather fancy we should greatly like\n\nTo see the coolies go again on strike.\n\nA dollar a day, more beer than we can carry\n\nIs better than parade in Happy Valley\n\nIf that were all they did I would enlist.\n\nThe long delayed unveiling of the Queen Victoria Jubilee statue† in Statue Square drew comment when Fra Diavolo, being pounced upon by villagers, expresses surprise:\n\nWell, landlord, may I beg an explanation Of this great rising of the population? Perhaps another statue has been found\n\n* Native Indian troops also stationed at Kowloon,\n\n** During a coolie strike in 1895 soldiers were used to load and unload cargoes.\n\n†The statue was commissioned in 1890. It was not unveiled until May 1896.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209645, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 302, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "280\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npotential dangers to the colony argued the need for a governor with an intimate knowledge of the territory and the reputation of being a strong disciplinarian.\n\nThe situation to which May returned was very different from that which he had left seventeen months previously. The early part of the year 1911 was fairly peaceful2 in spite of the abortive uprising in Canton in April and the assassination of the Manchu general there in August. But the outbreak of the revolution in central China in October soon spread to Canton and the Manchu governor was forced to flee to Hong Kong in early November. These successes were wildly celebrated by the Hong Kong population with demonstrations and firecrackers. But rejoicing soon gave way to hooliganism and violence as the feeling grew that the overthrow of the foreign Manchu government in China ought soon to be followed by the ousting of the British from Hong Kong. Shops were looted in broad daylight, the police were stoned, Europeans were threatened and attacked on the streets, bomb-making factories were discovered, and laws were openly defied. When police made arrests they were liable to be attacked by mobs attempting to release the prisoner. There was a rush by Europeans to buy firearms for self-defence.3\n\nLugard took strong measures to deal with this situation. There were daily route marches through the streets of the city by soldiers with fixed bayonets. On 30th November emergency powers under the Peace Preservation Ordinance were invoked by proclamation, giving the police wide powers to disperse crowds, enter houses and make arrests, and the same day an amending bill was rushed through the Legislative Council in one meeting to give magistrates the power to impose the penalty of up to 24 lashes with a cat o' nine tails for a wide range of offences, in addition to any other penalty prescribed by law. In the three months from December 1911 to February 1912 fifty-one prisoners were flogged with the cat o' nine tails for such offences as theft, assaults on the police and resisting arrest. At the same time the garrison was reinforced with two battalions of infantry and a battery of artillery sent from India,\n\nThese strong measures had their effect and before Lugard departed in March 1912 he felt sufficiently confident that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 303, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n281\n\ndisturbances were under control to rescind the proclamation invoking emergency powers as soon as the Chinese New Year celebrations were over. But conditions in the colony had not yet fully returned to normal and various wild rumours continued to be put into circulation, including the story that when May arrived the enlarged garrison would make an attack on China and annex further areas of Guangdong north of the New Territories. However, no-one was expecting any serious trouble on the morning of 4th July when the elite of the colony turned out to welcome the new governor.\n\nThe ship bringing Sir Henry May from Fiji arrived off Kowloon point early in the morning and at 10 a.m. Sir Henry crossed the harbour in the government launch to Blake Pier where he was greeted with a salute of 17 guns. He inspected the guard of honour and met the members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, all of whom were well-known to him. Among them was Sir Kai Ho Kai, the senior member of the Legislative Council, who had just received his knighthood, the first ever given to a Chinese in Hong Kong. Sir Kai had strong connections with the reform movement in China, but he had loyally supported the British administration in the measures taken to deal with violence in the colony, and the knighthood was his reward for this as well as for his long career of public service.\n\nThe next part of the ceremonial was the procession to the City Hall. Sir Henry and Lady May took their seats side by side in two sedan chairs, each carried by eight coolies. The chairs were escorted by eight Indian constables, four on the right of Sir Henry's chair marching two paces apart, and four on the left of Lady May's chair. Behind them was a European police sergeant, and he was followed by four more chairs carrying the four daughters of the new governor. The route to the City Hall was lined by soldiers stationed at intervals of three paces on either side of the road.\n\nAs the procession left Blake Pier and passed along Pedder Street towards Des Voeux Road a Chinese dressed in European clothes was seen to push his way through the crowd around the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "92\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\nThese speak a different language from the other three races. They have a history of having migrated ages ago from the Yangtse valley, and economically are pioneers, opening up inferior lands, and doing all quarry work. They occupy the eastern and northern islands, and are often called \"Chinese Scotchmen”. For this reason Scottish regiments here are called “Hakka ping\" (Hakka soldiers). Nearly all regimental servants here, I believe, are Hakkas: formerly the Hakkas were anti-Manchu and often joined Triad Societies. As such, they gave vigorous assistance to the British in 1857-61, and the connection with the Army has been kept up.\n\nHoklos, a Cantonese nickname for the coast peoples of Northeast Kwangtung; it means \"men of Hok1\", meaning Fukien. Most come from the area around Swatow and Swabue. Their language is very widely different from both Cantonese and Hakka: as different as German from English. They are fishermen, grasscutters, limekiln and saltpan workers. Their major settlements are at Tai O, Pingchau, Cheung Chau, Taipo (by the District Officer's island), and probably others. They are migrating here steadily, and many appear in court for offences of all sorts. A major reason behind the migration is probably that the coastal areas from which they come are suffering erosion and losing soil: the collapse of the Hoi Luk Fung Soviet Republic is another factor: finally, piracy is no longer as profitable as it was.\n\nPolitical divisions\n\nThe Ladrones or \"Pirate Islands\" of which Hong Kong and its outlying islands are part were so named by the Portuguese pioneers of sea trade to the East. They are shared unequally between China, Britain and Portugal. In China they are administered by the nearest district magistrates, of Hoifung, Po On, Chungshan, Sanwui, and Toishan districts. Macao has only two or three nearby isles. The British Islands are divided between the District Officer, North, and the District Officer, South, so that the latter is sometimes called \"Lord of the Isles\". I had that job for nearly 3 1/2 years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209962, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "199\n\nA pair of Chinese drums, each with writhing dragons, with colours still surprisingly bright considering their age, is on show. There are Chinese caricatures of British soldiers and a red lion rears on the ensign which flew from a piquet boat in the attack on Chusan in 1842.\n\nThe regiment was one of those honoured by being allowed to carry the China dragon on its badge and it still features today, with the word \"China\" underneath, on the buttons and badges of the Border Regiment. The museum has a good collection of belt plates and cap badges bearing the dragon.\n\nThere is an interesting Chinese map, epaulettes and medals of the First China War. A banner seized by the 55th now in Kendal Church is the subject of a separate note.\n\nMore modern memories of Hong Kong are housed in the museum of the Middlesex Regiment, in Bruce Castle, Tottenham, London. The museum was closed for re-organisation when I visited but I was kindly shown the relevant items in the collection. The role of this distinguished regiment in the 1941 battle for Hong Kong is well known. There are several weapons which were used in the battle. One machine gun was buried to prevent its capture by the Japanese and it was recovered after the Allied victory. A Japanese machine gun is also held.\n\nThere is a framed menu card which was used on the regiment's Albuhera Day, 10th May 1943, in a Hong Kong prison-of-war camp. Sketched on the front is a guard tower and those present have signed their names. A Japanese flag bears the Rising Sun. Other reminders of POW life are the 1st Battalion's bugle which was used in Hong Kong, and later in Japanese prison camps and a small wireless set which was used secretly in the prison-of-war camp here. For refusing to divulge its whereabouts Colonel L.A. Newnham was tortured and executed. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross.\n\nThe museum also has a small flat fan with a pagoda painted on it which belonged to Captain Kyodo Shigeru of the Lisbon Maru. A poignant reminder of the incident is a sketch which shows the stern of the ship already under water and the decks crowded with desperate men. The drawing was kept for over two years concealed in a bamboo stick by Major C.M.M. Man,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210180, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "130\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npreviously been located near Sham Chun, but, shortly after the cession of Hong Kong the sub-magistracy was moved to Kowloon, known as Kowloon City after a wall was built around it in 1847. A military garrison was transferred to Kowloon City from Tai Pang in north-east San On, at about the same time.\n\n73\n\nThere had been a few small military posts on the island of Hong Kong established long before 1841. These were manned by soldiers and ratings of the Tai Pang battalion which served as a kind of military marine constabulary, sailing war junks and manning small posts scattered across this part of the district. However, they may have been discontinued before 1841 as there does not seem to have been any civil or military establishment on Hong Kong island when it was taken over. Johnston wrote in 1843\n\n\"no public buildings were found on any part of the Island of Hong Kong when it was first occupied by the English, except a small tumble-down Chinese house at Chek-choo (now Stanley) and another at Shek-pie-wan (now Aberdeen) where the petty mandarins stopped occasionally\n\n76\n\n+74\n\nIt seems, then, that the magistrate sent collectors and runners to the island in connection with the land tax and that a clerk was sent in a boat to issue licences to the boat people. There are reports of the district magistrate's officers still attempting to collect land taxes at Stanley as late as 1844 and the boat people may have been subject to the annual charge of 400 cash said to be levied on the 150 boats privileged to fish in local waters. The San On magistrate was still trying to collect this in 1844. Such visitations were being reported by the inhabitants in the few years following the British occupation of Hong Kong, and the British official correspondence gives the impression that this had been a regular practice in past days. However, it was not to be tolerated after the cession, and after representations by the Hong Kong Government, the provincial treasurer of the Canton province indicated that any claims to the former land tax would now be relinquished.\n\n77\n\nOtherwise, the inhabitants were left to their own devices. In common with other communities of the region, large and small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210195, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "145\n\nfree of disease. Thus the control system achieved its main objective, which was not the protection of women from exploitation, but, as it was commonly expressed in Hong Kong, 'the provision of clean Chinese women for the use of the British soldiers and the sailors of the Royal Navy'.\n\nIn Britain during the 1870s and 1880s the system set up by the Contagious Diseases Act came under attack by various moral reformers who considered that the licensing of brothels by the state implied official condonation of immoral behaviour. They also objected to the discrimination by which the women were compelled to submit to a demeaning medical examination. As a result of a long campaign the system was brought to an end and the Contagious Diseases Act was repealed by Parliament in 1886. In itself this had no effect on the colonial ordinances, but colonial governments were then instructed by the Secretary of State to follow the British example. The Governor of Hong Kong protested vigorously to London, claiming that the repeal of the local Contagious Diseases Ordinance would be unanimously opposed by the Executive and Legislative Councils, by the naval and military authorities and by all classes in the community, since it was the only means of controlling the spread of venereal disease, of preventing the proliferation of brothels in respectable areas of the city and of protecting young girls from being forced into brothel slavery. But the Secretary of State was adamant that the law imposing the compulsory inspection of women must be repealed, though he was prepared to allow the registration of brothels to continue solely for the purpose of providing a means to check against the possible enslavement of their inmates. The Hong Kong government continued to prevaricate, forwarding petitions to London from the keepers of 42 brothels reserved for Europeans and from 23 European prostitutes begging that weekly examinations and the issuing of health certificates might be allowed to continue. These pleas had no effect and the Secretary of State sent Hong Kong a copy of an ordinance which had already been passed in the Straits Settlements with instructions to introduce a similar bill as soon as possible. He also ordered that the issuing of certificates should cease forthwith. Finally in 1889, two years after the original directive from London, a bill entitled the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance was introduced into the Legis-\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210208, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "158\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ntutes in Hong Kong suffered from disease. The committee considered that an ‘admirable arrangement' would be the restoration of the old system of tolerated brothels confined to servicemen and subject to medical inspection, but they recognised that this was out of the question. So a variety of palliative measures were proposed such as a wide definition of the offence of soliciting in the street, more police, greater use by government of the power of deportation to rid the colony of known prostitutes, increased provision of treatment facilities and free hostel accommodation to encourage infected women to persevere to the end of their treatment. There is no information on how far these measures were implemented in wartime Hong Kong, or how successful they were.\n\nAfter the occupation in 1941 the Japanese authorities reinstated a system of controlled and medically inspected houses in Wanchai for the use of their own troops. These were once more closed down as soon as British rule was restored.\n\nThe system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong originally had two purposes: the control of the spread of venereal disease, particularly among the soldiers and sailors of the garrison, and the prevention of the exploitation of Chinese prostitutes in conditions which often amounted to virtual servitude. In practice the first aim always had priority, and while the system of licensed prostitution was in operation, legally from 1857 to 1894, extra-legally from 1900 to 1932, it seems to have been largely achieved. But control over Chinese prostitutes catering for Chinese clients was always less comprehensive and less strictly enforced. It served to curb the environmental pollution of brothels operating in respectable residential neighbourhoods, (apparently the main concern of the Chinese elite), and it may have reduced somewhat the incidence of venereal disease, but it probably failed in its ostensible purpose of preventing brothel slavery. Practically all prostitutes appearing before the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in order to be registered were brought by their brothel mistresses and had been coached in the replies they should make to the stereotyped questions asked: 99 per cent claimed to be between 21 and 24 years old and to have entered the colony only a few days previously. Few if any attempted to avail themselves of the help of the secretariat to escape from their profession.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "214\n\nMuch later in 1958, Foulden learned of the Victoria Cross and the brave deeds of one of its sons, who had been born in a caravan, and who had become legend. However nothing appears to exist in writing in the village, and his name is not on the war memorial. Few people remember him. Nevertheless Mr. B.W. Billman, who was born in 1901 and is the oldest inhabitant, was proud to tell me:\n\n\"Of course I remember him! We sat in the same class. But I did not realise, at the time, he was so 'special'. He was just a quiet, likeable, country boy...\"\n\nWarrant Officer Osborn was officially listed as \"missing\" and there is no known grave.\n\nHis name does, however, appear on the memorial at Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery in Hong Kong. Also, on November 5th, 1981, a statue of a World War I soldier, which had formerly stood in the grounds of Eucliffe Castle, at Repulse Bay, the site of a brutal massacre of British and Canadian soldiers, in World War II, by the Japanese invaders, was unveiled in \"Osborn Barracks\" in Kowloon Tong. These barracks are named after Hong Kong's only recipient of the Victoria Cross.\n\nThe statue was donated by the Eu family, and the plaque, which was unveiled by Mr. Allen Kilpatrick, past Canadian High Commissioner, reads:\n\n\"Erected here in memory of WOII John Robert Osborn VC, Winnipeg Grenadiers, and through him all those men and women, service and civilian, and of every race, colour and creed, whose secret acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice in the defence of Hong Kong, December 1941, went unnoticed and unrecorded\".\n\nOf the Canadians I spoke to in early December 1985, who had returned to the scene of the battle, probably ex-Sergeant Robert (Bob) Manchester remembers Osborn best.\n\n\"He was a determined man and an experienced soldier.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210932, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 282, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "265\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMORE ABOUT THE KOWLOON WALLED CITY\n\nThe Kowloon Walled City, situated to the north of the present Kai Tak Airport, was the most important military base in the Hong Kong region during the later Ch'ing Dynasty. It was built in the 27th year of Tao Kuang (1847) to strengthen the fortification of Kowloon.1\n\nThe first invasion that it faced was not of British troops but of Chinese bandits. On the 26th day of the Seventh Moon in the 4th year of Hsien Feng (1854), bandits under Lo Ah-tim2 took possession of the Walled City. Seven days later, on the 4th day of the leap Seventh Moon of the same year, imperial forces under Cheung Yu-tang recaptured the Walled City. The fighting lasted for only one day, over thirty bandits were killed, and only two soldiers, Liu Tat-bong and Lam Yu-ping*T, died. Since then, the Walled City remained under the rule of the Ch'ing Government.\n\n3\n\nThen in the 24th year of Kuang Hsu (1898), the New Territories was leased to the British. The following terms were stipulated by treaty: \"The Chinese officials stationed there (i.e. the Kowloon City) shall continue to exercise jurisdiction, except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong. Within the remainder of the newly-leased territory, Great Britain shall have sole jurisdiction. Chinese officials and people shall be allowed as heretofore to use the road from Kowloon to Hsinan. It is further agreed that the existing landing place near Kowloon City shall be reserved for the convenience of Chinese men-of-war, merchant and passenger vessels, which may come and go and lie there at their pleasure; and for the convenience of movement of the officials and people within the city.”\n\nHowever, in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899), when the British encountered strong resistance to the occupation of the New Territories,\" according to Chinese sources, they asked for the help of the Ch'ing Government. Six hundred soldiers were then sent to assist the Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion to suppress the upris-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210933, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 283, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "266\n\ning in the New Territories. Unfortunately, the British misunderstood that the soldiers were sent there to assist the uprising.\n\nWith this as an excuse, the British invaded the Walled City on the 8th day of the Fourth Moon (i.e. 19th May) and drove away the Imperial officials and the three hundred soldiers.\n\nThis ended the Ch'ing rule over the Kowloon Walled City.\n\nHong Kong, June 1987\n\nAnthony K. K. SIU\n\nNOTES\n\n2\n\nSee JHKBRAS 20(1980): 139-141.\n\nThey were said to be Hakka stone workers and Triad members.\n\nCheung Yu-tang E, a native of Wai Chau H, was a Fu-cheung #or Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion in 1854. He was stationed in the Walled City for thirteen years. Then he retired in the 5th year of Tung Chih (1866) and died four years later in the 9th year of Tung Chih (1870) at the age of 76.\n\nSee Chapter 82 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsu edition 廣州府志卷八十二,\n\n5 See the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong, 1898 (signed at Peking, 9th June, 1898): Treaties between China and Foreign States Vol. 1, P. 539-540. Shang-hai, 1917.\n\n6 See Despatches and other Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899.\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the Lease of Kowloon Customs and her territory on the 9th day of the 4th moon in the 25th year of the Kuang Hsu Reign (1899).\n\nSee the Report of Viceroy Tam Chung-lun and Governor Luk Chuen-lam of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces to the Imperial Court on the British Occupation of the Kowloon City and the French Occupation of Ng Chuen and Shui Kai Prefectures 奧督撫譚鈺麟鹿傳霖泰英人佔據九龍城法人圖佔吳川遂溪兩縣請飭籌 on the 15th day of the 5th moon in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210997, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "34\n\nAt the head of the pier was the Lung-chin Pavilion which provided shelter for travellers. It was also known as the “Mandarin-Greeting Pavilion” (ying-kuan t’ing), for it was presumably here that officials landing at Kowloon were officially greeted before they proceeded to the Walled City.21\n\nIronically, the first invaders of the Walled City were not British, but Chinese. In 1854, certain anti-Dynastic elements in Hong Kong, taking advantage of the general disturbance caused by the T'ai-p'ing uprising, attacked the Walled City across the harbour and occupied it. According to British officials, they were mainly Hakka stone workers and Triad members. Though the rebels had promised the inhabitants protection if they withdrew their support from the Imperial forces, as soon as they took possession of the City, they ransacked the houses and seized pigs, poultry and dogs for food.\n\nThe Kowloon officials fled to Hong Kong Island. At one point, nine war junks carrying 2,000 Imperial soldiers were ready to confront an equal number of rebel naval forces. The British in fact held the ring by ordering all warships to leave Hong Kong waters and so averted a major naval battle. The Imperial troops finally prevailed.22 However, the hsun-chien's official residence in the Walled City was so damaged by fire that for a while, he was obliged to move to Ch'ih-wei on the Shumchun river.23\n\nChinese officials at Kowloon and British officials in Hong Kong kept in close touch and generally co-operated in maintaining law and order in the vicinity. In 1867 for instance, when conflict broke out between villagers from either side of the border, Governor Macdonnell made a special trip to Kowloon, met the Chinese official on his steamer and agreed to co-operate in keeping peace.24 In 1884, Kowloon officials warned the Hong Kong authorities of a possible rising of the Triad Society.25\n\n24\n\n26\n\nUnder Ordinance 2 of 1850, Chinese fugitives in Hong Kong were handed over to Kowloon officials, but the provision was not reciprocal — China had no obligation to extradite criminals to Hong Kong. Chinese authorities, however, did arrest and convict them. The Namoa case was the most dramatic example. In 1890,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "37\n\nment, when attempting in April to occupy the New Territory (as the New Territories were then called), encountered much more ferocious resistance than anticipated. At this juncture, 600 men were sent into the Kowloon Walled City by the Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and the British authorities, convinced that they were there to support the resistance, demanded their withdrawal. The Colonial Office went so far as to threaten starving out the garrison at the City until troops were removed.41 The Chinese, however, claimed that the troops had been sent by special request of the Hong Kong government to preserve order, and though some of the men were withdrawn, by 4th May, 200 were still stationed in the City.42\n\nThis prompted the British to take action to attack Shumchun and Kowloon City as punishment for the Governor-General's duplicity in abetting the local resistance. On 16th May, at 3:00 p.m., a force of 300 men consisting of Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 100 Hong Kong Volunteers proceeded to Kowloon and occupied it, apparently meeting little resistance.43 All Chinese civil and military officials were ordered to depart as the British claimed that their continued presence and the retention of Kowloon Walled City in Chinese hands had proven inconsistent to British military requirement. To “legalize” the situation, an Order-in-Council was issued in December, announcing British jurisdiction over the Walled City which was to be administered in the same manner as the rest of the Colony.44 Yet this remained a unilateral revision of the Convention which the Chinese government never recognized.\n\n44\n\n45\n\n46\n\nThe Chinese naturally responded bitterly to the development. T'an Chung-lin, the Governor-General, protested vehemently to the court of the undignified manner in which the military officers and soldiers were cast out.45 At Peking, the Tsungli Yamen complained to the British Minister.46 Chinese eagerness to recover jurisdiction at Kowloon is best revealed in the letters from Lo Feng-lu****, Chinese Minister at St. James, to the Foreign Office.Yet, paradoxically, this eagerness was not accompanied by action; no attempt was made by the Chinese to reinstate an administration in the Walled City.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211325, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "17\n\nenter the city walls added to the general tension. More specifically Governor-General Yeh Ming-chen, perceived by local Europeans as an obstacle to peace, as they understood it, was quite unwilling to meet the British demands. As for the French, certainly their desire to establish an influence for themselves equal to that of the British by championing the rights of missionaries added impetus to French interest in a confrontation. As is well known, pretexts once desired are usually found. For the British, the Chinese boarding of the Arrow near Canton was said to be an act of lèse-majesté against the British flag (regardless of the reality of the ship's status). And for the French the convenient death of a French missionary played its role in bringing the combined flotilla before the walls of Canton in late December 1857. There several thousand British and French soldiers soon gathered to make their assault.\n\nFor those not immediately responsible for the military assault the enormity of the undertaking they were involved in must have caused considerable reflection. They were about to attack and presumably occupy an enormous city of more than a million inhabitants. There was no telling, assuming a successful assault, how long they would be required to hold it. But Canton's future administration would be a quieter challenge and one less immediate than the more pressing matter of first taking the city. The actual assault has been often discussed. It suffices here to note that the city's capture, apparently due to the Governor-General's poor planning, was a reasonably simple affair.\n\nWithin days of occupying the city it was clear that the allies would be quite unable to govern it directly. The principal issue was that they were faced with the administration of a city of more than a million people when no more than three among the allied forces could even communicate in Chinese. Of the British only Harry Parkes, the future allied commissioner of the city, and Thomas Wade, later ambassador to Peking, knew Chinese.\n\nThe French, for their part, were without a senior officer able to communicate at all. Their only contribution in this regard was the presence of a certain Marques who was then serving the French mission as a Chinese secretary. For the French, more than for the British, the lack of Chinese linguists was to be a major impediment to their activities throughout China and for years to come. Almost ten months later Paris", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211329, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "21\n\nassault. As far as their own soldiers were involved, a dramatic and severe flogging by the allies of the offenders is said to have aroused Chinese admiration.” But most importantly, beyond the immediate necessity of restoring order, a regular system of patrolling the streets had to be devised. Unfortunately, the initial efforts proved counterproductive.\n\n26\n\nAt first, the Allies had sent out groups of soldiers on an ad hoc basis to patrol the streets. But the regular European troops proved to be much less effective than they had been in the city's capture only a few days before. In fact, their mere presence marching through the city's winding streets caused such a stir among the local population that bands of Chinese thieves, following close behind, found their passing to be an excellent opportunity to shoplift from the market stalls. It was obvious that a less conspicuous method of patrolling was needed. Thus the decision was made to establish mixed units of Western and Chinese troops. By late January, several hundred such units had been organized to patrol both the city and the suburbs. They were told not to dress in uniform and included British, French, Chinese, and Manchu troops. About half a dozen police stations were established around the city, and from them, both night and day, the new units emerged to carry out their duties.27 Happily, the units co-operated well and were apparently less disruptive than the formal military units had been. According to some observers, the sight of the double files of Europeans and Chinese, each led respectively by a sergeant and a petty mandarin, was not as well worth contemplating.** When criminals were apprehended, the procedure of having the Europeans dealt with by the allied tribunal, while Po-Kuei took responsibility for the Chinese, seemed to work quite well.\n\nBy the early spring, the occupation seemed to be settling into a routine. Many of the shops were opening again despite the considerable damage caused by the bombardment, and commerce was active.\" Nevertheless, if open hostilities had ended, the Cantonese, who had so long resisted the foreign demands, were hardly co-operative. In fact, so unco-operative was the general population that there was, in early January, talk of lobbing a few more shells into the city just to make sure the inhabitants were sufficiently cowed. However, both Gros and Elgin, the chief diplomats of the mission, were against the idea, and nothing came of it.\n\n30\n\nMonths later, the situation had only slightly improved. By March, the\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211331, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "23\n\npast patriotism and encouraging them in their resistance to the occupation.\n\nThe developing resistance clearly required a military response. Thus, in early June General van Straubenzee led an expedition beyond Canton’s walls to disperse 1500 to 2000 braves gathered to the northwest of the city. Little was accomplished. Most of the braves had already dispersed when the Europeans arrived and unfortunately several of the soldiers died during the expedition, some of wounds and others from the heat.\n\nWithin the occupation government the situation was beginning to appear more and more dangerous. The initial decision to rely on the mandarins to run the city now appeared to have been a tactical error. Some of the foreign officers claimed it had given a false impression of allied weakness. The Cantonese themselves, reasonably passive during the initial assault, were now increasingly attacking the foreigners. In mid-June a Dr. Turnbull, chief surgeon of the expeditionary force, was decapitated having been captured as he attempted to aid two soldiers wounded in an earlier assault. The surgeon’s death further highlighted the increasing precariousness of the occupation. Each night, under cover of darkness, the situation became much worse. The walls of the city were assaulted by unknown assailants. The foreigners sat through each night as various bombs and fuses were thrown at their positions by the locals. Such attacks were answered by daylight Allied reprisals against the various settlements beyond the walls located in the directions from which the shots had been fired.\n\nBy late June the acting British consul Winchester put out a circular warning British merchants to be wary of the warlike tones of the imperial commissioner’s proclamations and warning them to “secure themselves against the treacherous and stealthy attacks so consistent to the ideas of the Chinese …”. They were also told to expect a reduction of ship traffic in front of the city walls as the allied commanders moved to deal with the growing military threat. Eventually all river traffic by Chinese junks was forbidden in the area near the city.*2\n\n42\n\nThroughout the summer the situation continued to escalate. After the Chinese tried to burn a ship which housed the French vice-consul the French retaliated by torching homes to the west of the city walls.* The\n\n47", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211620, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "10\n\n16\n\nnot the temper to speak. He had the Chinese at his feet, and might have had what he wished; and what has he got? A few paltry dollars and a barren island... The Chinese are already chuckling, and say they have got the best of it. It makes me quite sick to think of it, and there are not half a dozen people on shore or afloat who are not quite furious'. The alleged sentiments of the Chinese in this letter are in direct contrast to those reported by James Matheson in a letter to William Jardine of 11 February: 'The cession of Hong Kong to the British is what most mortifies the Canton folks with Ki Shen's proceedings. They cannot bear to speak of it with composure'.\" It seems that a portion of the British community in the Pearl Delta area (the author of the letter wishes to appear to have as large a constituency as possible, not only within the merchant community) may have presupposed that their feelings of failure with regard to the acquisition of Hong Kong meant a corresponding sense of triumph for the Chinese.\n\nThe second letter to The Times was equally scathing as it claimed that the British negotiators had been tricked because 'Hong Kong was virtually ours, for it is the place which the opium ships have used as a rendezvous for years'. It was only to be expected therefore that the Chinese would choose to cede that island rather than any other.\n\n19\n\n18\n\nOf the acts of soldiers in the expeditionary force, it might have been expected that the formal taking of possession of Hong Kong would have been worthy of mention even if the author had not been present in person, but it seems that this is not the case. Neither Duncan McPherson nor W. W. Mundy refers to it. Nor did soldiers such as A. Cunynghame20 or Alexander Murray21 who became involved just after the cession of Hong Kong refer back to the ceremony. There is only one reference to the taking of Hong Kong in the official mouthpiece for the forces, The United Service Journal of 1841, and that was in a general article entitled 'The British colonies considered as military posts' written by Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkie. He complained in July 1841 that the rationale for his inclusion of Hong Kong in the article was threatened because arrangements between the British and the Chinese had collapsed, ‘and consequently it is more than doubtful whether I shall have any more authority for treating of this island as a British colony, beyond the simple fact that it has been formally taken possession of as such',22\n\nContemporary press notices of the event, again in direct contrast to news of the opium war and the expedition to the Bogue, are terse and rudimentary. The Chinese Repository of February 1841, edited by the", "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": 211690, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "80 \n\nand get permission for us to move into the War Memorial Nursing Home, where the British staff were still functioning under the wing of a Japanese Doctor-Colonel and a gendarmerie post. He was able to arrange this for us, and we were fetched in a car and installed in the Nursing Home next day, January 6th. Dr. Talbot, an ear specialist attached to the hospital, looked at my ear and said the postponed operation should be performed without delay as the earhole had become completely blocked with scar tissue and pus was accumulating dangerously inside. On January 10th I was sent down to Queen Mary Hospital for X-ray photos to be taken both of the ear and the knee. The Martins were still there, and this was the last time I saw them. The expedition was of great interest to me since it was the first time I had visited the town since the Japanese occupation. The streets were crowded with Chinese, most of them in mile long queues trying to get cooked rice from \"co-prosperity\" congee kitchens. All the shops were shut and barricaded but the pavements in Queen's Road and the central district generally were lined with hawkers selling bread ($4 a loaf) and other foodstuffs, and large quantities of looted articles; bedding, silverware, cutlery, etc: one could have got almost anything one wanted, and all this without any apparent interference from the Japanese.\n\nAs the X-rays confirmed Dr. Talbot's diagnosis I let him operate on January 13th. He found it necessary to do a radical mastoid operation and make me a new earhole. At the time we expected to be left in peace for a month or so as there were a number of severely wounded British soldiers in the Nursing Home and we thought the Japanese would not insist on them and us being moved until they were fit to be moved. Eight days later, however, they announced that they needed the hospital and that it would have to be evacuated next morning. The military patients were sent to the military hospital at Bowen Road, and the rest of us to Stanley. I was told I need not go to Stanley Camp unless I wished, and I was given my choice of two other hospitals but I said I must go where my doctor went; so I was put on a long chair which was put on a lorry, and with my wife and our few belongings and half a dozen lorry loads of doctors, sisters and patients we went off to Stanley. That was on January 22nd. The place was in a turmoil as lorry loads and boat loads of people were arriving from all the Chinese hotels in Hongkong and Kowloon where the Japanese had congregated them and they were all scrambling for billets. The British personnel from Queen Mary Hospital (from which they and all the British wounded had been moved the previous day) were busy trying to get a hospital organised in a block\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211694, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "84\n\nanti-aircraft fire, but as far as I could see, they were completely unscathed. The bombing seemed to me to be directed entirely against what were, or might be taken to be, military objectives, and this indeed may be said of the artillery fire also. During the 18 days fighting Queen Mary Hospital, 400 yards from Mt. Davis Fort, did not receive a single direct hit. The two hospitals on the Peak (i.e. the Matilda Hospital and the War Memorial Nursing Home) were repeatedly hit by shells, but I think this was due to the fact that the Japanese were searching for two field batteries which were located uncomfortably close to the two hospitals: this, at any rate, was the explanation given by a Japanese officer who came to the War Memorial Nursing Home while I was there after the surrender. One point which struck me very forcibly was the small size of the bombs and shells which the Japanese were using. I saw many direct hits by bombs on buildings on the Peak but in no case did I see any building completely demolished as my house in Chungking was; and the shells, which I am told were mostly from field guns and trench mortars, did not seem to have much penetrating power: they hardly scarred modern reinforced concrete buildings such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building and the block of flats where my wife and I were living. I am told that the Japanese were using heavier weapons elsewhere, but my general impression was that the Japanese were mainly using what I think Mr. Hore-Belisha called “Woolworth” material.\n\nAs regards the behaviour of the Japanese in Hongkong I think I must distinguish between two phases, i.e. the actual attack and afterwards. There are many well-authenticated stories of the shooting or bayoneting of British prisoners during the attack, though how general the practice was I have no means of judging. (A Commissioner of Customs, Mr. Flanagan, who is in the \"Narkunda\", told me he had seen a number of corpses of British soldiers still with their hands tied behind their backs). There was also a very nasty affair at Stanley where two doctors, three nurses and a number of Canadian officers and possibly others were massacred. There were also apparently numerous cases of rape including a few European women and girls. The situation however was quickly brought under control and there was nothing at all resembling the licensed disorder which followed the capture of Nanking in 1937. We were indeed told by people who were in Kowloon when the Japanese came in, that the behaviour of the latter towards European women was good though numbers of Chinese and half-caste girls were taken off, obviously for ...\n\n* The staff repatriated via the \"Kamakura Maru\" were transferred to the \"Narkunda\" in Lourenço Marques. (Editor's Note)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211695, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "85\n\nuse in soldiers' brothels. Stories regarding these events are in the highest degree contradictory.\n\nAs regards the post-occupation period, the main Japanese objective seemed to be to impress the Chinese population with the advantages which the Japanese regime was going to bring them but they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem presented by the teeming Chinese population who, with the disappearance of the British food services, were on the edge of starvation. Though congee centres were opened, these were on a quite inadequate scale and it soon became obvious that the Japanese were going drastically to reduce the numbers of Chinese in the Colony, by the threat of starvation if necessary. Dr. Selwyn Clark told me, during my one excursion from the camp on April 22nd that his office was besieged from morning to night by the Chinese employees of the Hong Kong Government and by the relatives and dependents of Chinese volunteers all completely destitute. The Japanese would do nothing for them and he could do very little. The French hospital was full of malnutrition cases who were doomed to death as they could get neither appropriate food nor drugs. The Japanese had also forbidden the admission of any more civilian patients. Many Chinese actually died of starvation, and tens of thousands voluntarily returned to China. One large party of alleged destitutes and vagabonds (about 600) were brought to Stanley by motorbus and put in the prison. After a few days they were put aboard junks at Stanley and the junks went off somewhere. Within a very short time a number of bodies of men and women were washed up on shore where they were left to putrefy for several days. There were rumours of a “noyade”, but I think a more reasonable explanation is that the Japanese were deporting these people and that the more desperate committed suicide.\n\nI have already referred in these notes to the looting of the Peak area by Chinese. This looting was general all over Hong Kong and Kowloon except, I believe, in the Central District. In the space of a few hours Government rice stocks, hospitals and private houses would be picked clean. To a great extent the looting was done in the short interval between the withdrawal of the British forces from any point and the arrival of the Japanese but in many cases, as on the Peak where we were, the looting went on after the occupation and almost under the noses of the Japanese gendarmerie. There is hardly a house on the Peak, I am told, that has not been reduced to a mere shell, all woodwork including floors and staircases being removed and plumbing and electrical fittings,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211769, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "159\n\nstill more because of the unsettled conditions in China during the 1850s and 1860s. Internal dissent manifested itself through the Taiping rebellion, in which Shanghai was threatened. The native city was occupied by insurgents during 1853-1855 and in order to prevent Imperial troops from threatening the neutrality of the Settlement, the recently formed Shanghai Volunteer Corps (which later, in the 1860s, gave some amateur dramatic performances) fought the Battle of Muddy Flat on April 4, 1854, a skirmish about which some Shanghailanders still spoke with unreserved pride fifty years later, but for which a performance of the dramatic corps had to be postponed for more than a month.\n\n―\n\nIn the early sixties, tension heightened again; in August 1860, the Taipings threatened the Settlement; 1861 was relatively calm, but in January and August 1862, the town was once more the target of the rebels. Foreign, mainly British, troops, however, had been brought down to Shanghai from North China, where they had been fighting another war, and with the aid of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, as well as mercenaries, all attacks could be staved off. Early in 1864, the Taiping insurrection was definitely quelled,\n\nAll this was not without its consequences, of which only those pertaining to theatrical life need detain us here. It was not to be wondered that, as long as the Settlement was under the threat of attack, its foreign population had other matters to attend to than mere amusement, so in these years (1861-1862), there is an almost total eclipse of entertainment. Yet, no sooner had tensions eased somewhat than \"nightlife\" again appeared in full swing. The thousands of soldiers and marines had swelled the originally small population; as a result, this led, on the one hand, to amateur dramatics by the garrison forces; on the other, to an increased audience for travelling companies, which gave, for the first time in Shanghai's history, rather lengthy seasons.\n\nAs was mentioned above, the resident foreign population was fairly small, and this should not be forgotten during any discussion of cultural life in the Settlement. In 1846, the total number of foreigners was given as 120; five years later, the British census showed 256, of whom 38 were females; in December 1859, there were 495 male and 74 female westerners, whereas the census of March 1865, which incorporated the results of events in recent years, showed a total of about 2100 resident foreigners, increased by 1850 military (a number which had no doubt been still higher in 1863 and 1864) --- 160 women again formed a tiny", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212642, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "176\n\nguerillas with whom we had our connections were not the so-called “communist\" guerillas of the North West. They were right-wing guerillas; in fact the largest and most effective group were under the direct orders of Tai Li.\n\nAs can be seen from the Map, our school was well placed to receive teams for training from all the guerilla areas of operation in the delta. If we imagine a clock of which the school was the centre, 200 kilometres away at 11 o'clock was Wuhu; 300 kilometres away at 12 o'clock was Nanking, at 12.30 Chinkiang, and at 1 o'clock Soochow. Shanghai stood at 2 o'clock, 400 kilometres away, and Hangchow at 3 o'clock only 100 kilometres away.*\n\nThe second course finished in November. At about this time I received a signal from Chungking to say that in place of the British troops, who had returned to India, the Chinese authorities had asked the British to open another school on the same lines as ours, under general X......., and asking my views of a suitable establishment; it was thought that General X... would be moving over in our direction. Later still I heard that the new school was to be established far away in an area remote from any targets. I knew that our success had thrived on the close contact we had been able to maintain, owing to our location, with our teams and the quick news we received of their successes, and they in their turn derived encouragement from our proximity and the advice we could give them at short notice with any special problems. I felt that in the absence of targets the new school could have none of those successes that had meant so much to us; and when later still we were ordered to move our school to amalgamate with the new school the situation became incomprehensible. It looked as if our teams were to be left in the air and a whole year's work wasted. The frontline generals with whom we had developed most cordial relations thought it was by our own wish we were leaving and inundated us with letters requesting us to stay.\n\nIn the meantime the third course had commenced. It included fewer teams of regular soldiers and more guerilla teams than either of the first two courses, possibly as a consequence of the growing better understanding of our work amongst the forward generals. At the end of each course we held competitions and offered small prizes to the teams who\n\n* Very approximately", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212734, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "28\n\n[yun-yen].\n\nIn October 1874, at the age of 32, Mesny returned to Hankow from Kueichou with the rank of Major-General and, he claimed, an excellent letter of recommendation from the Governor of Kueichou, addressed to Prince Kung and the Ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen in Peking. In 1886 he was promoted to the brevet rank of Lieutenant-General.\n\nIn his autobiographical ‘obituary' in the North China Herald, Mesny wrote \"The confirmation of my rank as a Major-General in the Chinese Army with the decoration of the Kualing [hua-ling] Plume, the order of the Pa-t'u-lu and promotion to be Brevet Lieutenant-General, with ancestors ennobled for three generations, was published in the Peking gazette, and the documents handed to me by the British Legation officials at Peking, and by the British Consul at Canton\": His decoration, the San-tai Erh-pin Kao-feng, an honorary title and patent of retrospective rank conferred upon meritorious officials, their wives and their immediate ancestors for three generations, was recommended to the Throne by the Governor of Kueichou, Ts’en Yü-ying, in 1879. [Grandfather Guillaume Mesny, who had died many, many years earlier and who was now presumably in the Afterworld, must have been most surprised, to say the least!]\n\nMesny also handed out awards and decorations: During his first campaign in Kueichou, Mesny had a supply of Meritorious Warrants (kung-p'ai [which confers the right of the recipient to wear a button on his hat, normally the fifth or sixth degree with blue feathers]). His supply was already sealed with the commander-in-chief's seal, and Mesny bestowed them on meritorious men after each battle, adding the name of the recipient, the date, etc., and Mesny's own seal. He also had hundreds of the Military Silver Medal [Chung-kung Yin-pai] made during the war in Kueichou from 1867-1874, at his own expense, and bestowed them as rewards to deserving soldiers. It consisted of a thin piece of silver about three and a half inches at its longest diameter, with a slit in it for a ribbon, and the character Shang \"Bestowed\" in repoussé work stamped upon it.\n\nHis ranks and grades during his service with the Chinese Imperial forces are a more complex subject and one that is far from clear from Mesny's own writings. He portrayed himself as having 'senior' mandarin rank, and this has been reflected in one of the postage stamps produced by the Jersey Post Office in 1992, on which he is depicted as a 'Mandarin'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212825, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "119\n\nissued for the passage of our party through Yunnan to Kokang in Burma. The suggestion was added that it might at the same time be possible to give some assistance to the Chinese guerillas, reports of whose existence in western Yunnan had come to our ears. On looking back I think this suggestion was a mistake, because the guerillas were Lung Yun's men and the Central government might be unwilling to encourage them.\n\nWhile awaiting the passes I remained in Kun-ming, where I found old friends and made many new ones. Our bungalow on the lake side became a popular resort, particularly on Sundays, when many Chinese, American, and British comrades would come out to drink tea on the lawn and to enjoy the lovely sunny weather. On the hill at the back several old and picturesque temples provided objectives for an afternoon stroll. One of the temples, carved out of the rock face overhanging the precipitous mountain side, was approached along a ledge, also cut out of the rock, an approach to inspire qualms in any but the strongest-headed visitors. At week ends wealthy Chinese from Kun-ming would flock to these temples, where the priests kept special guest rooms for those who wished to stay. Earlier on, when Kun-ming had been subjected to occasional bombing raids, the rooms were at quite a premium.\n\nWe had some good friends among the American officers, many of the more senior of whom were regular soldiers with long years of service in the Philippines and other tropical places. One in particular who some years before had met the officers of my regiment, the Sherwood Foresters, when they went over from their station in the West Indies to visit Panama, at a later date provided us with very considerable assistance. If it was part of American high policy not to encourage the presence of British troops in certain areas of the Far East, the attitude was certainly not reflected in the manner of the American officers towards us. They invariably treated us with the greatest cordiality: with their large establishments and regular system of supply they were often in a position to assist us, especially over transport* and many are the good turns for which we have to thank them. I am sure this camaraderie of the field is the best possible antidote, and a very effective antidote, to the mischievous propaganda put out by our common enemies in the attempt to create discord between America and Britain.\n\n* The American Army had an excellent and well-managed hospital where they treated British patients just like their own.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212836, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "130\n\nthe new officer to remove himself and his troops from the village where we were staying immediately. Poor man, he was only obeying his orders and did not know what to do; but he went. After that we were only watched by plain clothes men; but the dismissal of the escort, or prisoner's guard, as it would be called to the natives, showed the natives that we intended to be masters in our house, and helped to break down the fear under which they laboured.\n\nI was sorry to lose the men of the escort: they came from far away Hunan, and were good representatives of the salty peasant stock of a great nation.\n\nExcept on certain main routes used by the Chinese troops the villages in Kokang were not deserted, like many of those we had passed in Yunnan. It is an old story. A British officer, H.P. Davies, who was travelling through these parts in 1895, wrote: 'Our first march only took us back to Na-hsang, the place I had passed through on my way to Tawnio. This village which appeared quite prosperous a month before, we found almost entirely deserted. On enquiry we learned that some Chinese soldiers were expected there soon as escort to the boundary commission. No doubt these worthy villagers had had previous experience of Chinese troops and were determined to hide themselves and their property as much as possible.\n\nTawnio in Burmese, and Malipa in Chinese, is the name of the chief town in south Kokang; Na-hsang is a village across the border on the Chinese side. Here again it is most unfair to blame the Chinese troops. They are expected to move without commissariat and to live off the country; they have no money with which to pay for what they take, so no wonder the people of the villages make themselves scarce.\n\nAt Nancha we came across the makings of a small tragedy. The old headman had two unmarried daughters - his son had been carried off by the Chinese to attend school at Kun-ming, in other words he was a hostage - the elder of whom had bound feet, and the younger not bound. The modern young men would no longer look at any girl with bound feet; that was out of fashion; but until the elder sister was married, the younger, a bright good-looking girl, could not marry. It was a puzzle to which there appeared to be no solution. But the women in these parts are very independent; I heard later that the younger girl had run away from home and married the swain of her choice by just going to live", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212914, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 223, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "208 \n\n'breaking up storm'; a wild blow whose climatic explanation I cannot remember. Then came the first snow and the wooden frames for the verandahs were brought out again.\n\nWhen I was at the school a new building was completed for the Prep School and a new classroom block was built where the boys from the Boys' School and the girls from the Girls' School could take co-educational lessons. Reading Jean Moore's account of her days at Chefoo I learned that boys and girls were not only kept apart in their sleeping accommodation but also for lessons. This had been dropped by the time I went so it was strange to find myself in a school for boys only when I went to England later on. We only mixed for lessons and church (where we sat apart except in the choir which I joined) and for the rest we existed in entirely separate schools.\n\n—\n\nIn this school we were also kept pretty isolated from the local population. We did not learn the Shantung language, though the teachers were entirely bi-lingual. We did not go into town but would come across Chinese on our walks in the hills. Here we would see men pushing incredible loads on massive wheel barrows or carrying loads on bamboo poles. Mules were the beasts of burden as there were no motorable roads outside the town.\n\nWhen the Japanese overran Chefoo they set up a road block right outside the school and we would try to engage the soldiers in chat. The Japanese controlled the town but the hills were infested with guerrillas and we could occasionally hear firing in the night. The Japanese left us alone at that time for they were not at war with Britain. I had left China before Pearl Harbour but once the Japanese were at war with the British and Americans the school was closed down and shipped off to another location as part of a prison camp.\n\nOut of School\n\nIn the Prep School our lives were confined to the school area and, in the summer, the beaches in front. We also went for long hikes in the hills behind the schools but it was the beach that was most fun. On Sundays we walked in crocodile the couple of miles along the waterfront to a church in the town most going to the Union Church but some went to the Church of England. I do not recall any Roman Catholics among us and doubt whether I had heard of them then.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "225\n\nparallels Hong Kong's, petitioned the British government to acquire 'an insular possession near the coast of China... beyond the reach of future despotism and oppression,' Matheson, who did not have Hong Kong specifically in mind, thought of British merchants as 'princes of the earth,' and despised the Chinese, ‘a people characterized by marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy... [in] possession of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.'\n\nChinese officials were no less culture-bound: Commissioner Lin Zexu, the Emperor's man in Canton, confronted the British just before the 1839-1840 Opium War by burning 2,613,879 pounds of British opium, 'surely the largest drug haul ever collected,' says Welsh. The British had been smuggling opium into China, hoping to balance off the large amounts of money they were spending for tea and other products exported home to Britain. Lin Zexu advised punishing the British traders by withholding exports to them of rhubarb and tea, without which they could not exist. Because 'their legs were too tightly bound to permit them to box or wrestle,' British soldiers, he said, were not suited to fighting on shore. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their confiscation of opium was followed by attacks by British gunboats on their port cities. They were forced to open Shanghai and other coastal cities to the British and cede Hong Kong to them.\n\nNot until Chris Patten was appointed governor in 1992 did Hong Kong become a high British priority. While publicly demanding that the garrison lay down their lives for it, says Welsh, Churchill privately considered the colony not worth defending against the Japanese. During World War II, the Foreign Office regarded Hong Kong as 'something of a thorn in the side' - a view some of its diplomats still hold — and wanted to return it to China; the Americans wanted this too. In 1946, the first postwar governor, Sir Mark Young, drafted a plan for a 'Municipal Council' constituted on a fully representative basis, but this was consistently turned down. Later, the colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, commented, \"The electorate of Britain didn't care a brass farthing about Hong Kong.' Welsh says this remains true, but he also reminds us that, in 1992, Chris Patten was proposing a more democratically elected Legislative Council not for the British voters but for the people of Hong Kong. As Welsh suggests, in 1946 China would have been in no position to object. But Hong Kong has since become more valuable than anyone could have dreamed in 1946.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213081, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "130\n\nTo eradicate this focus of infection, it was resumed by the Government the following year. In the subsequent re-development, the old houses were demolished and replaced by new ones provided with windows, privies and space in front and behind as required by newly enacted legislation. Many other actions were taken to deal with the situation. The whole of Hong Kong was subjected to a thorough cleaning up. The laws related to public health were amended to impose strict measures against the Epidemic, including compulsory reporting and removal of patients. To enforce this, house-to-house search was conducted by British soldiers, against the violent objection of the Chinese community who regarded it as unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of their homes. Additional hospital facilities for the isolation of patients were hastily made and as the epidemic progressed, more had to be opened up from time to time.\n\nWithin the administration, responsibility for the health of Hong Kong was divided between the Sanitary Board and the Colonial Surgeon at that time. The membership of the Sanitary Board was as follows: the Registrar General, the equivalent of a Secretary for Chinese Affairs, as Chairman, the Surveyor General, the equivalent of a Director of Public Works, the Captain Superintendent of Police, the Colonial Surgeon, and five other members. After the Epidemic broke out, a Permanent Committee was appointed to recommend necessary legislation and bye-laws for taking vigorous action. In the post of Colonial Surgeon, the equivalent of the present-day Director of Health, was Dr. P.B.C. Ayres who had held it since 1872. Under him was Dr. J.A. Lowson, whose diary we are going to look into.\n\nJames Alfred Lowson was born in 1866. He graduated from Edinburgh University in medicine in 1888 at the age of 22. He came to Hong Kong, probably in or before 1892, because in October that year he represented Hong Kong at interport cricket in Shanghai. On the return trip, his ship, the S.S. Bokhara, was sunk off the Pescadores in a typhoon. He and one other member of the cricket team were among only twenty-five survivors out of about 150 passengers and crew on board. In 1894, at the age of 28, his posting was medical superintendent of the Government Civil Hospital, at the onset of the Epidemic. At that time, in the medical and health service, there were only three full-time medical officers, Dr. Ayres, Dr. J.M. Atkinson and Dr. Lowson, in that order of seniority, assisted by some private practitioners on a part-time basis. In the March 1st entry of his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213108, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "158\n\nKong waters. This petition was probably written because of fears as to the practical problems they would face if they lived in British territory, and their market was in Chinese territory. \"In the early years after the lease, grievances over the Customs remained at high heat. In the winter of 1906, the villagers from the New Territories went on strike, and refused to go to market. In 1907 there was a full-scale riot, triggered by a Customs official beating a villager for not paying duty. Later that same year, the elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned to the authorities at Canton, begging that the Customs officials at Sha Tau Kok be restrained.4 Later, relations with the Customs improved a little, but the duty demanded from villagers remained a major irritant and grievance throughout the period from 1899 to 1951.\n\nAnother irritant, and brake on economic development, was the political chaos in the border area of China. As can be seen from the Calendar of Border Disturbances at Appendix 1, political trouble in this area began even before the Revolution of 1911. An abortive rebellion in the Wai Chau (Huizhou,H) area in 1900 saw the Ch'ing Government lose control of the wild lands east of Yim Tin. A second abortive rebellion was centred in these hills, at Sam Chau Tin (Sanzhoutian,E), in 1904-1905.\n\nA second period of disturbance came after the Revolution, during the years 1911-1928, when the area immediately north of the frontier was the plaything of various competing political groups and would-be warlords, passing from one to the other week by week - 'In those days, when we went to market, the soldiers would be wearing yellow, but the next week, they would be wearing brown'. This period was marked by large-scale banditry, piracy, and general turmoil. With the large garrison of Customs and military personnel at Sha Tau Kok, bandits never threatened the town itself, but the Yim Tin Customs post was sacked by bandits in 1913 and (three times) in 1916, Nam O (Nanao,) Customs post at the entrance to Mirs Bay, was sacked in 1913 and 1914, Chan Hang in 1915, and, a little east of Chan Hang, Kai Chung (Xichong,) Customs post was sacked in 1916 and 1917. The Customs post at Sha Yue Chung (Shayuchong,) was sacked in 1919 and 1920, while the Sha Yue Chung Ferry (the lifeline of the market to the east) was captured by pirates in both 1921 and twice in 1922. For nearly one and a half years in 1918-1919, indeed, all the Customs Stations in Mirs Bay east of Yim Tin were forced to close, so lawless had the area become. The irregular soldiers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "174\n\n-\n\nBetween the grain market and the fish laans was a broad open space. This was used for drying grain and fish, and other things. This was where the matsheds for the local Ta Tsiu were put up - the gambling house also put on opera here at the New Year, partly as a gesture of thanks to patrons, but also to cope with increased demand at this season (gambling tables were set up in the matshed). This space was where the execution of about 1935 mentioned above took place.\n\nWest of the Tin Hau Temple, the village of Sha Lan Ha (Shalandia, [] F) stretched along the shore. This was predominantly a residential village, mostly of the Ng (A) family, genealogically connected with the Ngs of Tam Shui Hang. There were no shops here, just houses, for the boatyard, 4 and one of the town tobacconists, who found except this site, close to the Customs Station, profitable. The boatyard was a large concern, with associated ropeworks and sailyards within the village.\n\n叫\n\nThe biggest and most prestigious building in the town was the Tung Wo School and Man Mo Temple at the north-east corner of the town. This was a well-built brick building, with three courtyards, and, as mentioned above, had been built shortly after 1854 by the Shap Yeuk as the district school and also their office and Meeting Hall. The temple was at the seaward end of the complex. It was built several steps higher than the school, and it had a higher roof. The whole building was essentially single-storeyed, but there were cocklofts for resident students. The original main entrance was facing the bridge, but after the soldiers took over the attached gun-tower as their barracks they used the open space in front of the main door as part of the barracks, and the villagers disliked passing that way. New side doors were, therefore, provided on the side facing the sea, both for the school and the temple, and these were the normal entrances in the 1920s. Between the school and the sea a four-foot high wall with a gate delimited the school and temple yard.\n\nWithin British Sha Tau Kok there were only a few buildings in 1925. On the saltpans, the workers lived in tiny huts - no more than 10 feet square. These workers were not local. The local villagers did not know how to make salt. The saltpans were owned by local villagers - mostly trusts and individuals from Tam Shui Hang village - but the owners merely rented the saltpans to overseers who brought teams of workers with them. The overseers and workers were Hoklos from Swabue (Shanwei, E) down the coast. The workers did not have their families with them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213137, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "Year \n\nEvent \n\nSource \n\n1919 \n\n8 serious cross-border armed robberies. The Customs Stations closed in 1918 re-opened (August). \n\nAR JLHG \n\n1920 \n\nRefugees flee to New Territories from communal fighting in border area. Assisted cross-border crimes increase. Sha Yue Chung Customs Station sacked by bandits. \n\nAR \n\n1921 \n\nIncrease in smuggling native tobacco from China. 4 piracies (including of the Sha Yue Chung Ferry). Further armed cross-border banditry. \n\nAR \n\n1922 \n\n2 piracies on the Sha Yue Chung Ferry. Fighting between pirate bands in Mirs Bay. \n\nAR \n\n1923 \n\nLarge increase in smuggling, due to disturbances in the border area. Serious cross-border armed raids, an execution in China as a result. \n\nAR \n\n1924 \n\nUnsettled conditions, due to continuous fighting between Sun and Chen Faction armies for control of district. Upsurge in cross-border crime, including 8 armed raids, some mounted by Chinese irregular soldiers. \n\nAR \n\n1925 \n\nBoycott causes considerable trouble in Sha Tau Kok. Huge crime wave of cross-border crime. \"Quite 90% of crimes committed in the New Territories could be traced to persons coming from over the border\". Sinkers enter and terrorise New Territories villages. British troops sent to Sha Tau Kok to restore order. Hoi Luk Fung Soviet rebellion affects Mirs Bay area. \n\nJLHG \n\n1926 \n\nConditions better, but disturbed conditions across the border lead to boom in New Territories because of the number of refugees seeking houses. Many matsheds erected for refugees. Heavier border policing needed. Mirs Bay fishermen unable to fish except close inshore because of \"disturbed conditions\". \n\nAR \n\n1927 \n\nConditions better, but still troubled near border. Attempted piracy of Tolo Harbour ferry junk. Heavier policing of Sha Tau Kok border area reduces cross-border crime. Border patrol constructed in New Territories. \n\nAR \n\n1928 \n\nIncrease in smuggling. Violence against recent refugee arrivals in New Territories. Chinese irregulars replaced by regulars and disciplined at Sha Tau Kok – Major piracy in Mirs Bay (\"Fean\" case). Hoi Luk Fung Soviet rebellion affects Mirs Bay area. \n\nASR \n\n1929 \n\nCustoms seek major increase in staff because of increased smuggling (every year until late 1910s). Much better conditions on border because of better policing on Chinese side of border. \n\nAR \n\n1930 \n\nIncrease in smuggling. Kai Miu Customs Station sacked by bandits. \n\nAR, JLHG \n\n1931 \n\nIncrease in smuggling, especially sugar. Sha Tau Customs Station sacked by bandits. 2 Battles with smugglers off entrance to Pearl River (\"Loser Maru\" case). Inadequate customs staff members leads to problems. \n\nAR JLHG \n\n1932 \n\nIncrease in smuggling, especially sugar and cloth. Smuggling on Railway a growing problem. Smuggling through Lok Ma Chau and Sheung Shui a growing problem. Smuggling on Shan Chun River a growing problem. Kai Chung Customs Station sacked by bandits. Gun battles with smugglers at Law Fong (twice), Chek Mei, Man Kam To. \n\nAR, JLHG \n\n187", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213318, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "121\n\nWhen Gutzlaff had first landed at Chapu an armed force of Chinese was drawn up along the shore. The Chinese soldiers had matchlocks and burning matches ready for a charge, and a Tatar general had placed himself in a temple to superintend the operation; however, wrote Gutzlaff, \"being accustomed to the fire of Chinese batteries which seldom do hurt, and knowing their matchlocks cannot hit, we passed through their line of defence in peace\". The soldiers retreated and crowds of people in the rear being very dense the camp was overrun and tents fell to the ground. After this nothing disagreeable happened. On one excursion Gutzlaff went to a temple on a high hill overlooking the populous region, \"with its abomination of idolatry.\"\n\nToday little remains of old Chapu. The harbour, still used by fishing boats, is overlooked by a broken wall pierced for cannon, with three old cannon still mounted but on modern concrete bases, two being breech loaders and one a comparatively old muzzle loader. There is no sign now of the old city walls, nor of the old Tatar Quarter. It is a sleepy rural town on a former main road now left more or less isolated by the modern highway between Hangchou and Shanghai, by-passing Chapu by some fifteen miles.\n\nThe British Expeditionary Force began the 1842 campaigning season by evacuating Ningpo and Chinghai in early May to raise sufficient troops for the attack on Chapu. The force left Ningpo on 7 May for Chapu where some six thousand Chinese Green Standard troops and some seventeen hundred Manchu soldiers held the beaches and the adjacent heights and were waiting for the British to land and attack. It took the wooden-sided troop transports nine days under sail to cover the sixty miles from Chinhai to Chapu. Theoretically Chapu was strongly fortified but, as had happened before, the Chinese proved unprepared for anything but frontal attack.\n\nThe British Order of Battle consisted of the Force Headquarters under Lieutenant General Sir Hugh Gough, a fleet of seven ships of war, four steamers and troop transports, a naval brigade of some two hundred and fifty men, and four regiments.\n\nThe plan called for three columns, with the Left Column under Lieutenant Colonel Morris, consisting of the 18th Royal Irish under Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas R. Tomlinson (consisting of 492 all ranks),", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213495, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "59\n\n# AN OUTLINE OF THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF SAI YING PUN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\n## ALFRED Y.K. LAU\n\n### The Origin of Sai Ying Pun: A Pirate's Fortification or a British Military Encampment?\n\nThere are a lot of controversies and debates regarding whether the name of the district, Sai Ying Pun, (literally means the Western Military camp) is derived from a fortification, which was established by the notorious pirate, Chang Po Tsai in 1806 or from an encampment which was set up by the British soldiers in 1841.\n\nThe first hypothesis is held by a group of Chinese scholars. It was first put forward by Professor Hsu Ti Shan in his article, \"On the Research into the History of Hong Kong and Kowloon.” He said:\n\n\"Today's Sai Ying Pun was actually a name used by Chang Po-tsai for his fortification in those days. Originally there were two fortifications in those days, one in the east and one in the west. Tung Ying Pun, the one in the east, was situated around today's Tsat Tsze Mui while Sai Ying Pun, the one in the west, was situated around today's Sheung Wan. Unfortunately we now cannot point out where are the exact relic sites of these two fortifications.” (Lai, 1948, P.12)\n\nProfessor Lo Hsiang Lin also supported this argument. He said:\n\n\"Turning down Eastern Street across High Street to the level of Third Street and Second Street, we enter the district generally known as Sai Ying Pun (literally Western Camp), bounded by King George the Fifth Memorial Park on the east and the Sai Ying Pun Market on the west. This is the site where the celebrated pirate Chang Pao-tsai (of the middle years of the reign of Chia-ching 1806 - 1810) erected one of his headquarters. The actual habitation and fortification structures have long since been destroyed but it is still possible to get some idea of the suitability of the site, as regards the view and topographical features by surveying the district as a whole.” (Lo, 1963, P.60)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "60\n\nThe second hypothesis, on the other hand, is held by a few western historians. Writing in the 1930s, H.G. Jarrett claimed that:\n\n\"The Army was hard put to it finding suitable quarters for some time after the occupation of Hong Kong and the move from West Point was not made until some three or four years after the founding of the Colony in 1841. As the arrival of large numbers of soldiers and their quartering in matshed barracks (which the chronicles tell us were erected in the western part of the town) would naturally impress the Chinese and we easily see the connection between this encampment and the vernacular name, which, if any indication were needed, definitely established the area where the first barracks went up.\" (Jarrett, 1933-5, P.23)\n\nG. R. Sayer also said that:\n\n\"The latter (barrack) is known for obvious reasons as West Point and is destined to provide the name Sai Ying Pun, the Western Encampment to a large district of the town.\" (Sayer, 1937, P.99)\n\nOne way or the other, one thing is sure that the place name Sai Ying Pun was not provided by the British when they first arrived at Hong Kong in 1841. The reasons are not difficult to furnish.\n\nFirst, when the British first came to Hong Kong, they were not accustomed to naming the places in Chinese terms. For example, the British gave out names like Queenstown, East Point, Belcher's Bay. The British even cared to rename places like Shek Pai Wan as Aberdeen and Chek Chu as Stanley. There was no reason why the British had to name an area with only a few establishments as Sai Ying Pun. As a matter of fact, the British named the place West Point Barrack since the place was situated at the western extreme point of the British occupation at that time.\n\nSecondly, there are too many variations in the name Sai Ying Pun used by the British themselves to make us believe that the place was named by the British. If Sai Ying Pun is an original English place name, variation in the spelling of the words would not have existed. In early Government Gazettes, the place was called Sy-ing-poon. In an early city plan of Victoria, the district was named Sei Ying Poon. In G. R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "200\n\n3\n\nand four belong to German prisoners. The remainder are Allied servicemen's graves. The headstones, including those of the Chinese Labour Corps members, are of the usual Portland Stone with the Commonwealth War Grave standard segmental curve on the top (see Plates 1 and 2). This distinguishes them from graves for civilians which are curved but with a piece notched out at each top corner. Stones for Royal Air Force graves are 'winged', with curved tops sweeping upwards slightly at each side.* Few if any of the Chinese who served in Europe in the First World War, one assumes, were Christians. There are no crosses on their gravestones.\n\nOf the two Chinese graves in this cemetery one is unnamed (see Plate I), although there is an army number. This is not unusual. When Chinese labourers were first recruited, pigtails, which could still be found in China at the time, were cut off. Thumbprints were then taken and numbered wristlets were riveted on. The inscription on the first gravestone reads, in Chinese and English, 'Faithful unto death'. The second headstone (see Plate 2) is in memory of Wong Fuk-hing with the proverb, 'A good reputation endures forever.' Wong came from Shan Tung Province, Yeung Sun county. A Chinese person's native place is important enough to be inscribed on his or her headstone. Traditionally, Chinese like to be buried on their native soil.\n\nNot far from Foncquevillers Military Cemetery is an old farm house which, in 1916, stood near the front line of the First Battle of the Somme, the largest land battle Britain has ever fought. Some 57,470 British soldiers were killed on July 1, 1916, the first day of this action. The cellar at the time, linked by a tunnel to the trenches which crisscrossed the area, served as a battlefield operating theatre. On March 19, 1916, two British soldiers were shot at dawn, close by, for desertion. Although my son and I visited this old house owned by Avril Williams, which now serves as a guest house and English tea rooms, she was unfortunately not at home. Her daughter showed us around.\n\nThe chief reason that Avril Williams came here, from England, was so she might visit and tend the graves of those who fought and died: 'So we might continue to live the way we do.' On the headstone of Private George Palmer's grave, who was killed in 1917, a request from his mother is inscribed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213631, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "201\n\n'Will some kind hand in a foreign land place a flower on my son's grave.' \n\nAvril Williams has answered that call countless times. She looks upon the departed, including of course the two Chinese, as members of her extended family. It is important they all have visitors.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 J Keith Stevens, 'British Chinese Labour Corps' Labourers Buried in England', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society vol. 29, 1989 (1991), p 390 and Plates 24 and 25\n\n2 Michael Summerskill, China on the Western Front, Britain's Work Force in the First World War, published by Summerskill (1982), passim\n\n3 The Register at Foncquevillers Military Cemetery\n\n*S M Bard, Report on Survey and Study of old Service Graves at Stanley Military Cemetery, Antiquities and Monuments Office (Hong Kong, c 1990), p.10, and S M Bard, Annex to Board Paper Antiquities Advisory Board/21/91, Study of Military Graves and Monuments Hong Kong Cemetery (Hong Kong, 1991), p 17\n\n4 In large Chinese families children are still sometimes known by numbers eg 'Number Four Sister'\n\n5 British soldiers in World War Two each wore two identity discs on a cord around their necks. On these plastic discs were stamped their army number and their name. If a soldier was killed one disc was buried with the body and the other was sent back to base for record purposes\n\n6. Four proverbs were used. The other two were, 'A noble duty bravely done', and 'Though dead he still liveth'. All four have a hint of a Christian message\n\n7 Tim Sebastian, 'Haunted by the Ghosts of Heroes', South China Morning Post (1 July 1995), Features p.3\n\n8 Ibid\n\nPLATES\n\nPlate I Although an army number is inscribed, this grave of a Chinese labourer in Foncquevillers Cemetery is unnamed. This is not uncommon\n\nPlate II The inscription on this grave shows the name of the labourer and his native place in China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213884, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "210\n\nKong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.”\n\nThe Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan:\n\n[The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years.\n\nTo help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was \"to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly\". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan.\n\nThe worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that:\n\nThey really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation...\n\nHe explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed:\n\nWhen the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213886, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "212\n\nthe return of Chen Jiongming from the neighbouring province of Fujian. Chen was the Governor-General of Guangdong in 1912 and 1913. After the failed \"Second Revolution\" in 1913 against Yuan, he escaped to Malaysia (while Sun to Japan) and developed his own anti-Yuan organization independent of Sun's party in Japan. When the Canton Government was established in 1917, nominally under Sun Yat-sen, he returned to Canton only to find that the guest armies had real control over the province. As a result, he gathered a small troop of soldiers made up of native Cantonese and moved to Fujian in early 1918, where he strengthened its fighting potential. Chen Jiongming's return was financially supported by a group of Chinese bankers, who were affiliated with Liu Zhubo, in Hong Kong. They advanced to Chen Jiongming an amount of $200,000 and promised to pay the Guangxi troops a “give-way fee”, if the armies retreated to their home provinces. The fighting could not wait for bargains, as in late October Chen Jiongming's army had forced its way into Canton. The Guangxi guest armies obtained the \"overdue army expenditure\" through a different means. The guest armies retreated westward to Guangxi, looting all the way home.\n\nThe return of the Cantonese troops under Chen Jiongming was welcomed by the Cantonese. The atmosphere in Canton, as reviewed in the newspapers, was that Chen Jiongming should be the Provincial Governor. Funds for a new government were promised by the merchants.\n\nAt this juncture, on November 25, Sun Yat-sen and his key supporters left Shanghai and triumphantly returned to Canton. He prepared to assume power again. After all, Chen was Sun's subordinate in 1913 and 1917. The situation Sun found on his return to Canton was not to his liking. Sun was made Director and Minister of the Interior in the restored government. Wu Tingfang was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. But Chen Jiongming had been planning for the future in Canton, and his list of titles was impressive. Chen was the Minister of War, Governor of Guangdong, Commander in Chief of the Guangdong Army, and High Inspecting Commissioner of Guangdong and Guangxi. In January of 1921, Sun summoned all available parliamentarians to a meeting in Canton. There was no quorum, but they voted anyway. At the end, the Parliament elected Dr. Sun Provisional President of China. Chen Jiongming was in no hurry to act, nor was he ready to listen to Sun. In an interview with the British Consul, Sun described his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213905, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "231\n\nTHE HAN LIN ACADEMY AND A CHINESE DEITY\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nThe Chinese Imperial Academy, Han Lin Yuan E, known to foreigners as the College of Literature or the Academy of the Forest of Pencils, was founded ca. 8th century AD and at any one time contained about five hundred of the most brilliant scholars of the Empire selected from the highest graduates at the national triennial examinations. Martin in his Lore of Cathay explained that those selected were in practice Chin-shih graduates who could pass a further examination called tien-shihPC, the palace examination. Their role was the advancement of learning generally, and included compiling dynastic histories, drafting and drawing up decrees, composing prayers for ceremonial occasions, drawing up patents for nobility and proposing posthumous titles for deceased emperors. They were, ex-officio, Imperial counsellors. The Academy also contained the Great Encyclopaedia of the Yung Lo emperor.\n\nThe Han Lin Academy formerly stood on the site which, in 1900 after the Boxer rebellion, became part of the extended British Legation. It had consisted of some twenty to twenty-five separate halls and was utterly destroyed in June 1900 by the Kansu Muslim soldiers of the Chinese provincial military force accompanying the Boxers, and commanded by General Tung Fu-hsiang1, in their attempt to burn down the besieged British Legation during the Boxer troubles. They only failed because the wind suddenly veered, saving the legation whilst the Academy was burnt to the ground.\n\nAdmission to the body was the highest literary honour obtainable by a Chinese scholar. Much has been written about the academic aspirations of individual Chinese down the ages and here we shall simply note the three degrees qualified at state examinations during dynastic times. They were the hsiu-ts'aiA, the county level examination which foreigners equate to the bachelor's degree, the chu-jenA, the provincial degree equated to the master's degree, and finally the chin-shih, the advanced scholar, at the national level triennial examinations, equated to the PhD. The one who passed out top of all in a year was known as chuang-yuan, the First Scholar of the Empire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214185, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "6\n\nlaughter to one person and a mere smile to another. Indeed to a third person, the joke may fall completely flat. People often do not agree about what they find funny. Why? Much is physiological and beyond the scope of this paper. Some people take the view that life is not funny and you need to be a philosopher to extract fun from it. Nevertheless, few men or women will confess to a total lack of humour. As Frank Moore Colby (1865-1925) the United States editor wrote:\n\nMen will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour? The British statesman, William Gladstone (1809-98), is one of the few who was said by his critics to have been entirely lacking in humour (Muir, 1990; XXXII).\n\nSidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) the French novelist wrote: Total absence of humour renders life impossible (one could add, this applies for both Chinese and Westerners).\n\nNevertheless humour is probably not unique to the human race and many canine lovers will tell you can sometimes spot a grin on the face of a dog.\n\nWestern senses of humour\n\nThe brand of humour common in the United States, where people are not afraid to ‘debunk' anyone or anything, is, according to one middle-aged American woman living in Hong Kong, not always the most subtle. It can vary considerably compared to the humour, often based on behaviour or appearance, found in Britain where irony is frequently used and words portray the opposite of what is actually meant. Of course an Englishman may be unable to laugh at a Chinese joke because he has insufficient command of the language.\n\nFor instance, a European and a Cantonese were arguing how America was discovered. The European said Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492, together with soldiers and missionaries. Columbus landed, kissed the ground, and declared the name of the new land 'America'. The Chinese disagreed saying that Fa-Xian (AD 337-422), a Buddhist monk, landed there in a Chinese junk. As he walked up the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214209, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "30\n\nThe author, as a soldier himself, recalls a 'lecturette,' in Britain, while expecting the country to be invaded by Germans in 1940. His army squad was being instructed how to set booby traps. A thin wire was stretched from tree to tree, across a country road at the appropriate height, so that it could slice off the head of a motorcycle despatch rider. This was effectively demonstrated by a mock-up on film and just about everyone present, who were all generally good-hearted, genuine people, laughed. They were acting 'out of character.' But, after all, there was a war on.\n\nThe author recalls during the invasion at Salerno, in Italy, when there was a possibility that the British and American forces would be pushed off the beachhead, British soldier comrades told how they had gone on patrol and how in order to keep two German soldiers from shouting out, knifed them as they slept in their trucks. A Gurkha who was listening to the conversation immediately piped up. 'That's not fair! You should at least wake them up before you kill them!' Everyone thought it a huge joke. Today, looking back under peacetime conditions, it all seems terribly macabre and gruesome.\n\nLin Yutang is quoted as saying, 'Humour is the product of contentment and leisure.' Yet the British tommy was able to crack jokes even when faced with abysmal conditions. It is recorded that, in the defence of Hong Kong in December 1941, the men of the Middlesex Regiment 'never lost their sense of humour' (Lindsay, 1978; 136). Probably the Chinese Communist soldiers, on the 10,000 kilometre Long March, which lasted over a year in 1934-35, did not either, although their sense of humour was, no doubt, different. For instance, the Chinese soldiers used to sing, 'Don't fall behind, don't get wounded, don't get the eight silver dollars' (Lee, 1999). This can be likened to the English World War Two song, 'Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag ....'\n\nBut jokes can offend and one needs to be careful, in some countries especially, not to give the wrong slant to sexist jokes which can ruffle feathers. When talking to a Chinese, whose traditions value filial piety, you do not in the main tell mother-in-law jokes — although there are a few jokes about mothers and their relationships with sons-in-law. Again, in Chinese society, you do not say, where death is more or less a taboo subject, 'You're too slow for your own funeral', or 'He's got", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214211, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "A Chinese woman with a good command of English, married to an Englishman for many years, said to the author, 'The English like to insult their friends.' She was really saying they sometimes pull each other's legs unmercifully. When the author asked for an example she said, 'When they meet they say \"Hello you cheeky devil.\"' She could have added they have to be really good friends to do that without bad feeling creeping in. The Chinese lady also admitted, however, that her 'old man' and his friends sometimes told jokes that she could not grasp properly.\n\nThe above brought recollections to the author, of British soldiers during World War Two addressing friends. Rather than use the word 'devil,' they would say, 'affectionally,' 'You cheeky bastard.' Although crude, it was by no means uncommon and intended, and taken by many, believe it or not, as good, clean fun.' This is an extreme case among a small section of society, one must admit, but more than one Englishman has run into trouble because a Chinese friend, with a different cultural background, has taken what was intended merely as a mild leg-pull as an insult. Europeans have to be careful that the flippant remark is not taken seriously. A Chinese once said to a European, 'How did you know I was a teacher?' As quick as a flash came the reply: 'You can smell them!' \n\nEnglish humour includes, as related in this paper, wit, sarcasm, understatements and criticism. Self-mockery plays a part too, with Westerners calling themselves gwailo (ghost or devil person, in loose Chinese terminology) and laughing at themselves to get out of awkward situations. As a Hong Kong Cantonese, with a Master's degree in sociology from a university in Britain, said to the author, the Chinese tend not to laugh at themselves because of fear of losing face. If they learnt to laugh at themselves it would make life easier for them, he maintained. In a similar way, the friend continued, if Chinese have complaints or there is something wrong with them they do not relish telling others because it can portray weakness.\n\nThere is the tale of a Chinese who lost face by not being invited to a party. As a result, he recounted: If I had been invited I would not have gone; and even if I had gone I would not have eaten; and even if I had eaten I would not have eaten much; and even if I had eaten a bit more than intended, well never mind!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214305, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "127\n\nMongolia during the next few years, the last being in 1915 and then wrote his book Fur and Feather in North China. In the autumn of 1915 he went over to meet his brother and sister, both missionaries in Sian, and took the opportunity to seek more specimens in the Ch'ingling range to the south of the city.\n\nDuring this period President Yuan Shih-kai's soldiers mutinied in Peking, and there was talk of Chinese troops in the Chinese city of Tientsin being in an ugly mood. Sowerby, having learned of the potential for trouble, went to discuss the matter with the Military Intelligence Officer of the British Garrison in Tientsin who then ensured that the Garrison was alert and properly guarded. Although expatriates were safe in the European quarters of the city the Chinese city of Tientsin suffered that night from mutineers on the rampage. The rioting was brought under control by the police together with the soldiers who did not mutiny and Sowerby, who had gone with a friend to see what was going on, watched something, he later wrote, that he could never forget.\n\nRR Sowerby [possibly a relative] explained in his short biography of Arthur Sowerby that Arthur travelled back to England during the first World War with the intention of joining the forces. He had already been told while still in China that his chronic arthritis, caused by exposure during expeditions to Manchuria, gave him no chance of success but despite this he went and \"to his disgust he was immediately posted to the Chinese Labour Corps [CLC] as there was urgent need of officers who could speak the language.\" As this Corps was not formed until 1917 and did not reach France until late that year it would seem that Arthur did not make his way to England until 1917 or even 1918. It would also appear from correspondence that he had already been involved with the Corps before, in Shantung, again from R R Sowerby: \"He had been anxious to avoid the CLC, having already had all he wanted of it, recruiting coolies in Shantung...\" He was posted to the Staff of the CLC base at Noyelles near Abbeville where he was involved in court-martial, criminal investigations and other similar duties but was soon struck down by another attack of arthritis and sent to hospital where he met up with his brother, now a major with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Some time later Sowerby heard that his brother had been gassed at Passchendaele and unlikely to live. In the event he recovered but his lungs were permanently damaged. Arthur was demobilised in 1919 and for one whole year settled down in England.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214326, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "148\n\nMore than a year later, on 25 July 1860, French and British forces combined prior to proceeding to Peking to enforce the treaty of Tientsin. On 18 September, a small group of diplomats, civilians and soldiers, led by Mr (later Sir) Harry Parkes, of the British Consular Service in China, left the main body of troops to make certain arrangements with the Chinese Commissioners. They were taken captive on their way back to rejoin the troops. Given the nature of their mission at the time of their capture, great indignation was felt.\n\nMr Harry Parkes was held for ransom. Other prisoners were treated with great cruelty. This again caused great indignation.\n\nBy way of reprisal and on Lord Elgin's deliberated orders, the Imperial summer palace at Peking was razed to the ground. On 24 October 1860, the Treaty of Tientsin was finally ratified and the Convention of Peking was annexed to it as a make-weight.\n\n6\n\nThe arrival of full news on these and related events gave rise in Britain to several months of heavy press coverage on China and the Chinese in early 1861. The London Illustrated News, with its combination of illustrations and narrative, is a useful case study to illustrate both the extent and the variety of this coverage.\n\nThe Illustrated London News\n\n8\n\nOn 5 January 1861, The Illustrated London News was full of news from China. It carried three illustrations \"by our special artist\": two double-spread half-page illustrations of \"Street Scene in Pekin: A Crowd of Celestials Contemplating the Barbarians\" and \"An-tin Mun, the Gate of Pekin in Our Possession\"; and one full-page double-spread illustration, showing \"The Earl of Elgin's Entrance into Pekin on the 24th of October Last to sign the Treaty of Peace Between Great Britain and China\". The Illustrated London News also gave the text of the Convention and a description of the ceremony of the signing of the Convention.\n\n11\n\nThe same issue also contained part of Mr Harry Parkes's detailed and circumstantial narrative of his own imprisonment, and an account by the Daily News correspondent of the fate of the whole number...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214327, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "149\n\nber of thirty-nine British, French, and Sikh prisoners who had been taken by the Chinese on 18 September 1860. They had literally been carted from here to there, denied water for long periods, imprisoned, interrogated with violence, and loaded with chains. Some had been tied so tightly with ropes that the circulation was impeded, and eighteen at least died slowly of the resulting gangrene.\n\nContained in the Daily News correspondent's narrative as quoted by The Illustrated London News was a thumbnail sketch of one of the prisoners who died, Private Phipps, of the King's Dragoon Guards. \"He was a strong and cheerful man, and could speak enough Hindustani to make himself intelligible to them... [that is, to the Sikh soldiers]. To the last he appears never to have lost heart, and even when dying encouraged his companions, telling them to keep up their courage, for that help would soon come. All honour to this noble soldier! Though but a private in the ranks, he had the soul of a hero. Well may England be proud of such sons.\n\n913\n\nThe same issue of The Illustrated London News also gives an account of an event which has subsequently been held synonymous with wanton destruction—the burning of the Emperor's Summer Palace in Peking. At the time, however, a different view of this was offered: \"It having been ascertained that [the prisoners'] ill-treatment began in the Emperor's Summer Palace, it was determined to burn it to the ground, to mark in some tangible way the detestation entertained of the Chinese treachery and cruelty\".14\n\n15\n\nThe Illustrated London News was to maintain the Chinese theme over a period of months. Its next issue (12 January 1861) carried a portrait of Henry Loch,1 Secretary to the Earl of Elgin, who had been the bearer of the official despatches which had arrived from China on 27 December 1860,16 and which had occasioned the high degree of coverage in the subsequent issues of The Illustrated London News, which has just been described. (Loch was the gentleman with whom, as it seems, Fraserburgh North Eastern Scotland historian, John Cranna, confused Frederick Stewart (“Founder of Hong Kong Government Education\"), when he inaccurately asserted that Stewart, at one time a secretary of Lord Elgin's, when that administrator held office in the Far East\".)17", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214336, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "158 days later, coincidentally, on 23 September 1861, a small postscript to the China coverage of The Illustrated London News established that there was indeed a link between Hong Kong and British actions in China.\n\nThe item took the form of an illustration of a Monument to the Royal Marines, erected in the Cemetery at \"Hong Kong, China\". In explanation of the illustration, it read: “The front inscription is as follows; 'In memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers, buglers, and privates of the Brigade of Royal Marines (Light Infantry); and the non-commissioned officers, buglers, and gunners of the battery of Royal Marine Artillery, who fell in the execution of their duty in China during the years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860. Erected by their comrades.' The slab on the right-hand side gives the names of three officers and 48 men killed in action; whilst that on the left shows the total loss from all causes to have been 257; and the numbers wounded were 27 officers, 16 sergeants, 20 corporals, four buglers, and 155 gunners and privates. The rear slab records the services of the brigade, from the taking of Canton in Dec. 1857, with the various expeditions in the neighbourhood, the Taku Forts in 1859, the defence of Shanghai, and the brilliant campaign in the north, which ended in the Treaty of Peking on Oct. 24, 1860.\"\n\nHong Kong, SAR, China\n\nAt midnight, 30 June 1997, Hong Kong was returned by Britain to China.\n\nThe Monument to the Marines \"who fell in the execution of their duty in China during the Years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860\" still stands, known only to the few Hong Kong residents today who take an interest in things of the past. And to most of these few, the past events which the Monument records are too distant in ethos as well as in time even to be uncomfortable; but are felt rather as irremediably alien.\n\nThis brief survey and commentary on the contemporary China coverage in one British periodical during the period 5 January to 23 September 1861 may perhaps offer reassurance that, like us today, the contemporary British public before, during and after Lord Elgin's China Campaign was also more comfortable when the soldiers could come", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214423, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 281, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "247\n\nTHE STORY OF STANLEY FORT\n\nBrief History\n\nR.G. HORSNELL\n\nThere seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village), Tytam Bay. The English name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3 field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of fever within the Hong Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate 20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable, nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures which formerly had been used in the very early days.\n\nThe present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings:\n\n1 Barrack Block\n\n1 Sergeant's Mess\n\n1 Dining Room and Cookhouse\n\n1 Bath House\n\n1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214456, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "281\n\nFIRST WORLD WAR LABOUR CORPS CEMETERIES IN FLANDERS\n\nBRIAN C. FAWCETT\n\nThis note follows on from that written by Dan Waters.\n\nThere are several cemeteries in Flanders in which members of the Chinese Labour Corps are buried, some containing as few as two or three graves; one of the largish is that of the Indian and Chinese British Cemetery at Ayette, which was a scene of fighting in 1918.\n\nWhilst on a battlefield tour in July, 1998, my wife and I were fortunate to make a very short visit to Ayette Cemetery. This is reached down an unmade dirt-track off the D919 about 16 kilometres south of Arras. It contains the graves of ten soldiers of the Indian Army, forty-two men of the Indian Labour Corps, one German prisoner, twenty-seven men of the British Chinese Labour Corps and six men of the French Chinese Labour Corps.\n\nInstead of the Cross of Sacrifice, there is a pagoda-shaped shelter at the back. A double flight of steps leads to the gravestones, those of the Chinese being on the left and those of the Indians on the right.\n\nUnfortunately during our fleeting visit I was unable to view all the gravestones but noted that, whereas the British Chinese Labour Corps gravestones were engraved with Chinese and English characters, giving the man's number and date of death, with a suitable inscription, those for the French Chinese Labour Corps had a small plate inserted therein giving the man's name, date of death and \"Mort pour La France.” The shape of the gravestones is also different, those for the French being more rounded at the top. I was unable to read the Chinese characters but for anyone interested details of each grave are recorded in the memorial registers which can be found in the cemeteries, or may be obtained, for a fee, from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.2\n\nAs with all Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries it was in immaculate condition, the grass being cut and the flowers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 318, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "285\n\nTHE AMERICAN SOLDIER OF FORTUNE FREDERICK TOWNSEND WARD HONOURED AND REVERED BY THE CHINESE WITH A\n\nMEMORIAL TEMPLE\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nFrederick Townsend Ward was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1831 and though he is said to have attended a private college in the United States, which included a military element in its curriculum, he failed to graduate. He left home and as a young ship's officer sailed on several trading voyages to China.\n\nIn his twenties, having sought excitement and a career as a free-booter during which time he claimed that he had fought in the Crimea with the French and in Central America where he met Garibaldi, he sailed yet as an officer on a US registered ship to China where, at the time, the Taiping rebellion, a major rebellion against the Ch'ing [Manchu] dynasty, was at its height and he finally sought employment ashore. Basically, he was a mercenary who saw his chance and took employment first sponsored by local Chinese officials and supported by a Chinese official in the defence of the Shanghai area from the rebels, then later by Ch'ing officials in his campaign against the same rebels, either for gain or excitement, possibly both.\n\nWard raised a force of some hundred Western mercenaries, on behalf of the Chinese in Shanghai, together with scores of Filipinos, as well as soldiers and sailors discharged or deserters from the Anglo-French expedition, for the protection of the city against what seemed like an impending attack by the Taiping Rebel forces. This proved a failure and a year or so later he raised a highly competent and disciplined force of Chinese soldiers officered by Westerners to fight the rebels. Ward became a Chinese citizen with an official rank. He claimed Chinese nationality when arrested by the captain of a British warship for violating neutrality but in the event was handed over to the Chinese because of his \"non-nationality.\"\n\nAt first the force of about a thousand was known as the Foreign-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214562, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 420, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "389\n\nI append a copy of the inscriptions on the two monuments in question with a list of the other headstones in the same locality which may possibly prove useful for future reference.\n\nAppended to the report was a copy of a list of gravestones within the British cemetery in Dinghai also recorded during the visit of the individual who wrote the report. It came as somewhat of a surprise to us to note the number of graves of wives and children of British soldiers as we had assumed that during the two short assaults on Zhoushan in 1842 and 1857, and the several years of occupation British soldiers were without their dependants, because of the remoteness of China from the more permanent British bases.\n\nList of Monuments in British Graveyard\n\nat Chusan\n\n1. Monument to 55th Regt.\n\n2. Captain Colin Campbell\n\n3. Commander Harmer, H.M.S. Driver\n\n4. Eliza Woods and infant son wife of Sergeant Woods.\n\n5. Captain Hopton Steward of\n\nix Regt. Madras Native Infantry.\n\n6. Wife of Quarter Master Perl Royal Irish Regiment.\n\n7. Corporal M. Gleeson 98th Regt.\n\n8. Sergt. Blake, 98th Regt.\n\n9. Infant daughter of Sergt. Cobden\n\n10. Mrs. Gregory, wife of Lieut Colonel Gregory 98th Regt.\n\nPage 420\nPage 421", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214739, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "118\n\n(Liddell Hart 1999);\n\n\"I suggested, and he appeared to agree, that it would be better to risk its loss by holding it too lightly than to strengthen it so much as to make it, morally, a \"Verdun\" or \"Port Arthur\" with great danger to our prestige if lost.\"\n\n9\n\nSome veterans complained about the lack of sympathy of London with colonial subjects, as evidenced in Colonel Anthony Hewitt's comments in his foreword to the work of Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996). Hewitt's passing comment is mild compared with the criticism of military historians of the allied countries. Vincent (1981) and Ferguson (1980), Cameron (1991) and most Chinese authors such as Yip (1982); Yuen (1988) and Tse (1995) criticised the British Government for being totally unprepared for the invasion of the Colony. The critical views expressed in English works in this period were pertinent to post-war claims for compensation by ex-servicemen in Commonwealth countries. The prevailing Chinese position is that Hong Kong should and could have been defended. An odd view is Tse (1995) who argued that Japan made a strategic mistake by taking the Colony, as it would serve no useful military purpose.\n\nBell's archive research (Bell, 1996) established that Hong Kong was not treated as an outpost but \"an integral component of an offensive strategy” based on faith in the superiority of the Royal Navy and the certainty of Hong Kong's relief. However, Bell's offensive strategy view is hardly consistent with the absence of fighters or bombers in the Colony before the outbreak of the Battle.\n\n\"Britain did not have enough men, or enough guns, tanks, ships and aeroplanes for the war against Germany. So it was impossible to send sufficient men and supplies for the defence of Hong Kong. These included the men of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. These men - English, Chinese, Eurasians, Portuguese and others - whose homes were in Hong Kong, prepared to defend the Colony from attack.” (Stokes, 1965, p.89)\n\nThough it is highly questionable whether the Scottish, Canadian and Indian soldiers in the \"others category\" mentioned by Stokes would regard Hong Kong as their permanent homes, Stokes' description is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214741, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "120\n\nexception was the Chinese translation of Walter Easey's Hong Kong Today published in 1977 (Easey, 1977).\n\nThe last seven years of the so-called \"transition period,\" i.e. the 13 years from the 1984 Sino-British Agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 witnessed another boom in literary output related to the fall of the Colony to the Japanese and its aftermath. The first work was Bruce's Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers of 1991 (Bruce, 1991). The second work was Rollo's The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong (Rollo, 1992). Next came a Chinese work on the communist guerrillas that operated in occupied Hong Kong, Tsui's Partisan Activities in Hong Kong (Tsui, 1993), published in 1993. The following year saw the work of Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: the Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese (Wright-Nooth, 1994). In 1995, two more Chinese works appeared, Ko and Tong's Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period (Ko and Tong, 1995) and Tse's The Fall of Hong Kong (Tse, 1995). Ruins of War; a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, written by Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996), was the major last work of this period. The publications in this period are generally less restrictive than earlier works in that they (a) give due credit to the Chinese defenders in the Battle and communist partisans, with their base in Sai Kung, New Territories, during the occupation; (b) spell out the potential and actual contribution of Chinese soldiers in the Colony; and (c) give sympathetic consideration to the Chinese civilians. The same is true of general history books on Hong Kong such as Cameron (Cameron 1991), Welsh (1997), Morris (1997) and Chan (1990).\n\nChurchill's Wisdom of Defending Hong Kong in Retrospect\n\nThe recurrent theme of unofficial publications is that the fall of Hong Kong was inevitable and its belated reinforcement by the two Canadian battalions was pointless. I would suggest that in this regard a more comprehensive view of the battle requires an appreciation of the post-war history of British Hong Kong. The books referred to above have not discussed the political consequence of not fighting an impossible battle.\n\nOne may speculate that had the British Administration given up the Colony without a fight, it would have lost the Colony forever. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214833, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 248, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "215\n\n \nquarrel with China was always stated to be with the Chinese Government, and not with the Chinese people. The British plenipotentiaries and commanders on land and sea always made this distinction, and tried to make it clear in proclamations and public notices addressed to the people of the various parts of China in which they were conducting their operations. The most striking example was probably at the Bogue, where the war steamer Nemesis had flown a banner with large Chinese characters, declaring that Britain was making war only on the Imperial government. Such attempts were repeated throughout the War. Before the army left Shanghai in 1842, Sir Henry Pottinger had issued a proclamation of this kind, once more reminding the inhabitants that the British were in fact fighting not the Chinese people but the Imperial government.\n\n \n13\n\n \nBesides taking this general approach to their operations, the naval and military officers of the Expedition were motivated by the traditions of their branch of the armed services, and by the laws, customs and usages of war as recognized in Western Europe of the day. They expected to apply these in China, embracing such considerations as recognition of flags of truce, humanity towards a defeated enemy, the fair treatment of prisoners, and the protection of the civilian population.\n\n \nBritish officers were quick to note acts of courage by Chinese or Tartar soldiers during engagements, and they accorded posthumous honours to brave commanders. They tried to curb looting and rapine by their soldiers and camp followers, and were particularly anxious to spare women and children. They regretted the suicide of Chinese and Manchu commanders in defeat and were dismayed by the self-destruction of many families who took their own lives at Chapu and Chinkiang, rather than fall into their hands. Many examples of their chivalrous outlook can be cited from their accounts of the War, and some will be noted below.\n\n \nProblems of Control\n\n \nBut war is war. Despite the best efforts of their commanders and their officers, British troops behaved badly at times. Drink was responsible for some of the excesses. Wyndham Baker is very implicit on this point. After the capture of Amoy, he wrote:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214834, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "216\n\nTH\n\nI am sorry to say the following day the troops were plundering in every direction and nothing could restrain them. The fact was that the old town which had first been attacked - in fact all the towns - abounded in a spirit very common in China called Shumshoo.... This could not be kept out of the reach of the men and its effect on them was of the most dreadful nature and very different from that of the spirits we are used to in England. A man no sooner took a small quantity than he was bereft of his senses, and men were lying about in all directions in a most dreadful state and committing the most horrible atrocities, which I am sorry to say are but too common in War.\n\nHe added, \"Since then we have been destroying every drop we can get hold of, and I think in one day I must have destroyed some 20 hogshead of this pernicious liquor.\"18\n\nNor could all soldiers be controlled. During the attack on North Wangtong, one of the Bogue Forts taken in 1841, Captain Belcher was very critical of the Indian sepoys, whom he accused of firing into the Chinese soldiers who were cramming the trenches and wished to surrender, begging for mercy. His account is both vivid and graphic:\n\nWishing to rescue some of them, I went into the trench and drew three out, motioning them to come amongst our troops, and they would be safe. Two were shot down while holding by my skirts; and one of my gig's crew, perceiving my danger, dragged me away, exclaiming, \"They will shoot you next, sir.\" Thus much for employing troops who cannot understand English, and will only be commanded by their own officers!\"19\n\nAt a later stage in the War, after kidnapping of their fellows had embittered them, the soldiers could be harsh with the enemy, and might wish for retribution. Wyndham Baker recounts this situation at Ningpo, where \"the greatest difficulty was experienced in preventing the soldiers from firing on the Chinese after they had laid down their arms and were supplicating for mercy.\"\n\nThe British Military Commander\n\nSir Hugh Gough, the British military commander for much of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214836, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "218\n\nof personal behaviour. One such was Brigadier Colin Campbell of the 98th Regiment, afterwards Field-Marshal Lord Clyde. He had been present at the capture of Chin-Kiang-Foo in 1842, but as he explained in a letter sent to a female enquirer had not taken any loot - the Indian word for plunder - \"so that I have nothing of that kind, to which so many in the expedition helped themselves so bountifully at Chin-Kiang-Foo and near Nanking.”27\n\n27 Admitting to an equally strong desire, he said he had foreseen what he called \"the certainty of having to punish others for it if the War had continued,\" and this had dissuaded him from helping himself to private property. However, he added, he would have had no such scruples were he been able to loot an imperial palace.\n\n28\n\nCampbell had military and civil charge of Chusan during the final years of its occupation after the Peace, and the Chinese Commissioners who came to take it back from the British in 1846 lauded his administration of the island. Their words, in Gutzlaff's translation, are worthy of repetition here, as showing the calibre of the man and his lofty spirit:\n\nWhilst observing and maintaining the treaty, you behaved with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality towards our own people, and restrained by laws and regulations the military of your honourable country. The sepoys, to the number of several hundreds, who were quartered in the city and mixed with the Chinese, lived with them on the best understanding, and no instance of insult or aggression ever received. The European soldiers stayed with you, the Honourable Brigadier, outside the walls; and you, the Honourable Brigadier, kept them under such strict control, that they never ill-treated or annoyed the inhabitants.29\n\nCampbell's biographer writes: \"His principle was to leave the inhabitants as much as possible to themselves. He never interfered with their concerns or customs, unless called upon to arbitrate in matters which the headmen of the district were unable to settle.\" Campbell was equally zealous in keeping away the Chinese mandarins from the mainland who sometimes sought to exercise their authority there and were arrested when they crossed over.\n\n30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214837, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 252, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "219\n\n\"Playing at War\": Poor View of Chinese Good Faith and Criticism of Captain Elliot\n\nTurning, now, to their views of the Chinese way of waging war, however much they respected individual courage, our British soldier and sailor authors and their commanders had soon come to form the notion that Chinese leaders were untruthful, deceitful and were not to be trusted in war or diplomacy. They and their colleagues were generally highly suspicious of the deceits and ruses practised by Chinese diplomats and commanders in order to gain time, especially those palpably insincere approaches such as took place during the negotiations attending the operations in the Canton River and the heights above the City in 1841: \"all being eager for the fight, and dreading a messenger of humbug,\" as Commander Bingham put it.31\n\nThey frequently criticized Captain Charles Elliot, the British plenipotentiary, who was making every attempt both to re-open the Canton Trade and to avoid further hostilities. He was not popular when he agreed to the temporary suspension of military and naval operations; and never less so than when he agreed to ransom Canton at the end of May 1841, without consulting the commanders, who were then heavily engaged with the enemy.\n\nAfter the small British force of soldiers, sailors and marines had spent several days' fighting their way onto the heights of Canton, orders had been issued on 25th May for storming the City early on the following day. However, as Belcher recounts, \"At dawn, the ominous white flag was again displayed [by the Chinese] and for some hours there had been repeated cries of \"Elliot, Elliot!,\" as if he had been their protecting joss.\" Sure enough, he continued, a British officer who had lost himself since ten the night before and roughed it out in the paddy fields overnight, presented himself with a despatch from Captain Elliot. \"Dead silence prevailed until it was handed to Sir Le Fleming Senhouse who immediately said \"I protest against it!”\n\n32\n\nMajor Armine Mountain of the 26th Regiment, Deputy Adjutant-General to the Expeditionary Force, was forthright in his condemnation of Elliot, writing home that \"We have been playing at war, instead of waging it.\"33 Mountain was equally scathing of what he saw as the overindulgence shown to the native population adopted at Ting hae", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "222 \n\nA Bold Approach to War \n\nI have referred to the indomitable spirit that animated the British troops and sailors of the War. This was something one cannot fail to notice in the various accounts of the War. As in the First Burma War, there was a boldness that must have taken the Chinese aback whenever it was demonstrated. Being practically universal, one minor example may serve to illustrate the rest. It comes from J.D. Vaughan, later a magistrate in the Straits Settlements, who had served as a midshipman on the Honourable East India Company's steam frigate Tenasserim in 1842, and is recounted here largely in his own words.46 \n\nA few days after the capture of the Yangtse city of Chin-kiang-foo, his captain took two of the ship's boats with twenty or thirty men each, with a brass three-pounder at the bow, and went to a town on a canal flowing into the great river. The writer was in one of these boats. The ship's Chinese carpenter, a Southern Chinese picked up at Singapore, could write but could not speak the Mandarin language of the area. Armed with a slate, and a truly astonishing degree of sang-froid, he made the captain's wishes to purchase provisions known to a large throng of citizens and soldiers who had assembled on the banks. Negotiating with a mandarin, they got all that they wanted, and during their brief stay were treated with the greatest civility and kindness. “A table and chairs were brought, and the elders of the city had a most interesting conversation with us through the invaluable carpenter. It was a curious sight to see the skipper sitting as cool as a cucumber smoking his cigar surrounded by our foes.\" \n\n“Few men,” Vaughan says, “would have ventured so fearlessly into the very clutches of an armed foe within a few miles of a captured city with war raging all around; and strange to say we came away un-harmed and not an angry face was to be seen amongst the crowds of men who flocked out of the gate of the town to see us.” \n\nMany other instances can be found in the books on the War, and indeed it was the norm. This verve derived from military and naval discipline and tradition, and from the leadership shown by, and expected of, British officers of the day. Only when that leadership failed, as in the contemporary disasters at Kabul in the First Afghan War, when a British army was annihilated through hesitation and mismanagement, \n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 256, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "223\n\ndid the spirit of the British and native troops falter. No such weakness characterized the leadership in the China Expedition.\n\nThe General Orders\n\nThe \"General Orders - No.I\" for the Force assembled in the Canton River for the capture of Canton, issued on behalf of Sir Hugh Gough and dated 24 May 1841, set the general tone for the operations and the expectations of its General.\n\nThey speak of \"proving what can be done by discipline and bravery,\" of \"the assurance that every man will do his duty,\" and of \"devotedness to our country's honour and our professional character.\" They refer to \"the cunning and artifice\" of the Chinese military system, which is \"not one to which the British soldier is accustomed\" but \"which must fail before the steady advance of disciplined soldiers.\"\n\nIn conclusion, the Orders state that \"Britain having gained as much of fame by her mercy and forbearance, as by the gallantry of her troops\" and reminds the Force that whilst \"an enemy in arms is always a legitimate foe...the unarmed or suppliant for mercy, of whatever country or colour, a true British soldier will always spare.\n\nSuccess Moderated by Respect\n\n48\n\n**47\n\nBritain's victories in China may be attributed to its well-trained, disciplined troops and seamen, superior weaponry, good leadership and a high morale. British officers were proud of their successes, achieved in the face of high sickness rates due to disease and unfamiliarity with the country.\"\n\nHowever, they were well aware that success in imposing Britain's demands on the Chinese Court was also due to another important factor, recognizing that China's outmoded military techniques and equipment did not allow her commanders and their men, however brave and resourceful they might be, to match their Western foes.\n\nYet British officers were not dismissive of China's ancient civilization and attainments, and their superiors were punctilious in paying formal respects where due. British naval ships were ever prompt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214844, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "226\n\nconcerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress.” Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from “An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842”, Blackwood's, 1964, p. 80.\n\n\"The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981), p. 117.\n\n12\n\nAs, e.g. in Bingham, op.cit., Vol.I, p. 187: \"Captain Elliot assured the Chinese, by proclamations in their language, that no harm was intended to the peaceable inhabitants by the present expedition; that it was caused by Lin's bad treatment of the English; and that the force would only act against the mandarins, officers, and soldiers of the government.\"\n\n13 Bingham, Vol.II, p.171, and Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975), p.129.\n\n14 Beeching, p.149. They had done the same in Lower Burma in 1824-26 (George Bruce, The Burma Wars 1824-1886 (London, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973) pp.33-35.\n\n15 See Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Sheridan (Eds), The Laws of War, Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 6, \"The Age of Napoleon”, in which Gunther Rothenberg wrote (p.97) that \"Professional soldiers were well aware of the laws and customs of war between civilized states, and by and large observed them,” and that despite atrocities and violations, their \"basic existence and validity” were never challenged.\n\n16 The most notable example being the firing of a salute of minute guns by the flagship, HMS Blenheim, when Admiral Kuan's body was recovered by his family after the battle of the Bogue in January 1841: see Bingham, Vol.II, p. 151, and Beeching, p. 128.\n\n18\n\nBeeching, pp. 147, 151. Wyndham Baker in Blackwood's p.79. By way of comment he added, “The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "227\n\nChinese, except as regards the use of Opium, are exceedingly temperate in their habits and we cannot account for the immense distilleries which have been discovered here.\"\n\n19 Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970, Vol.II, p.152.\n\nWyndham Baker, p.156. Commenting, he had added, \"The British common soldier in fact is a strange compound, for they are very kind to their prisoners when once the excitement ceases.\"\n\n21 Beeching, p.136.\n\n22\n\n24 Beeching, p.152. Another British placard recorded by Chu warned that there was to be no more commandeering of goods without payment: ibid. However, despite good intentions, according to another Chinese diary, this time from Shanghai in 1842, rape and looting did occur there, and impressment of civilians for forced labour for such heavy work as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder [ibid., p.149]. Wyndham Baker, when landing his guns before Chin Kiang Foo, refers to \"about 100 helpless natives to assist in carrying the shot boxes.\" Baker, in Blackwood's 1964, pp.161-2.\n\nBeeching, p.139.\n\nThe British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, had agreed, minuting: “The worst proposal I have seen from Mr. Pottinger....It ought not to pass unnoticed\": Beeching, pp.139-140. But Pottinger deserves credit for preserving the famed Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking from British soldiers and sailors who, armed with chisels and hatchets, were intent on obtaining souvenirs by stripping tiles from the tower. \"Sir Henry Pottinger was very indignant at this gratuitous vandalism; a guard was stationed to keep off intruders, and no one was thenceforth allowed to visit the tower without a permit from the Admiral or Commander-in-Chief.\" Parkes wrote, \"Such an act as this is shameful and a disgrace to the British name.\" From Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901), p.32. Alas, the Porcelain Pagoda was destroyed by the Taipings not long after, in 1856.\n\n25 Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), p.139.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214958, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "been claimed that during this journey Macartney tried to obtain information about tea growing in China but was unsuccessful. This is incorrect. In fact, he was allowed to collect shoots of tea plant. These were later carefully transported to Bengal with samples of soil where they flourished and very likely gave rise to present Indian tea. This was perhaps the only success of Macartney's Embassy.\n\n14\n\nWe know of Macartney's open instructions on his mission, which included negotiating opening ports for trade and establishing full diplomatic relations with China. There is also a strong conjecture that Macartney was authorised to offer the Chinese active British efforts to stop opium trade, if negotiations achieved their principal aims. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to obtain confirmation of this very important directive. Although Macartney's Embassy was unsuccessful, the Ambassador wrote a rosy account of the mission suggesting that it was not a total failure but had achieved a great deal of goodwill between the two nations. Not so, writes Dr. James Dinwiddie, member of the Embassy, whose official duties as astronomer and scientist were to demonstrate the scientific instruments brought as presents. If we are to believe this meticulous observer with scientific training, it became apparent early during their sojourn in Beijing, and later in Chengde, that the Chinese including the Emperor were not impressed either by the members of the mission or the elaborate scientific instruments offered as presents. \"These things are good enough to amuse children,' the Emperor was supposed to have said after briefly examining them. Their reception, wrote Dr. Dinwiddie, was at best perfunctorily polite, at worst impatient and abrupt. From the day they stepped onto Chinese territory, a feeling of fear and mistrust seemed to pervade the motions of Chinese officials who appeared to check every move of the members of the Embassy; soldiers constantly guarded the Embassy. They were warned, early during their stay in Beijing, that their visit would be terminated shortly, and it seemed clear to the good doctor that the mission was doomed from the start. Even if Dinwiddie was unduly sensitive to the attitude of their hosts, it seems clear that the Embassy had achieved little towards establishing friendly relations, or an atmosphere of mutual trust, between China and Britain. Macartney's mission has been aptly summed up by Peter Auber1 as 'Received with the utmost politeness, treated with the utmost hospitality, watched with the utmost vigilance, and dismissed with the utmost civility.' Subsequent embassies were not so well treated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214984, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "36\n\nAll those interested in joining were told to report to Weihai Wei where they were housed in the barracks of the previous British-officered colonial regiment of Chinese, as the buildings were still in existence. Weihai Wei, located on a bay on the north coast of the province of Shandong, was formerly the HQ of the Chinese Northern Fleet. The British lease of this was signed on 1 July 1898 on the stipulation that the British could lease it as long as the Russians held Port Arthur, the port on the other side of the Gulf of Zhili. Weihai Wei was the summer station of the British Asiatic Squadron, known as the China Fleet. Later, after Qingdao [Tsingtao] had been taken from Germany, this was used as it had better port facilities, railway and roads.\n\nOn arrival at the recruiting centre, each prospective recruit received a medical. He could be rejected, amongst other reasons, for having trachoma [an eye disease], tuberculosis, venereal disease and bad teeth. Between 30% to 60% were rejected as medically unfit mostly due to eye troubles, which is not surprising in a region known for its summer sandstorms and dust. Lyn Macdonald, in her book Somme mentions that some labourers were recruited from the Chinese prisons. I, personally, would not consider this correct, as the authorities would interview each candidate and, if found to have a criminal record, would be rejected. With the large number applying why would they recruit prisoners, who may cause unnecessary trouble? Daryl Klein mentions that some coolies were recruited from Shandong and comprised men of differing work backgrounds, namely farmers, carpenters, brickmakers and bricklayers, dressers, weavers, brass-smiths, black-smiths, bakers, stonemasons and ex-soldiers. Nowhere does he mention ex-prisoners.\n\nIf the above tests were passed, the men were given serial numbers, which, with their names, were written down in romanised letters and Chinese characters. Difficulties arose if the men did not know their names or surnames. He may say that he lives in a family village and offer the village surname as a suggestion or simply give his nickname, but most knew their mother's surname because of the Chinese custom of exogamy. Problems also arose when trying to ascertain the recruit's address, for similar reasons.\n\nA bracelet, stamped with his number, was securely fixed to his wrist. As this was considered degrading this system was eventually discontinued.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214989, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "41\n\nhis contingent of coolies via the Panama Canal for New York and ahead of them was the Empress of Asia which was torpedoed, so they headed for the safety of Jamaica. From his memoires I cannot ascertain a date. He held a high opinion of his coolies and stated that the greatest aid to maintain discipline was to retain his sense of humour under all circumstances. He also believed in seeing that they were properly cared for when ill and, most important of all, when selecting coolies for promotion, to prefer the old man with character with the slow moving brain to the smart young town coolie.\n\nDaryl Klein, who joined the CLC as a 2Lt in late 1917, assisted in escorting a large contingent by sea, leaving Qingdao in about February 1918, sailing via Japan where they coalled ship and on to Canada where they stayed for about ten weeks. They were then conveyed in June 1918, with some Canadian soldiers, on HMT Empress of Asia, this ship being used to convey troops and others, via the Panama Canal to Kingston, Jamaica and, after refuelling in New York, on to France. This contingent consisted of 13 officers [of whom one was an ex-banker, one an ex-officer from Russia and one an ex-missionary], 4,200 coolies with five interpreters and one medical assistant. During the voyage, Klein interviewed two First Class Gangers [or sergeants], Sgt Tang Chi-chang, aged 27 and previously a school teacher in Nanjing and a graduate of Weixin University; he was also a Christian. Sgt. Sen Shin-lin, aged 26, had served in a warlord's army for six years.\n\nAs Halifax, in Canada, had been so badly damaged by the accidental explosion of an ammunition ship in harbour, G. E. Cormack and his contingent had to stay at Victoria, British Columbia and whilst there he had to look after a coolie who had been admitted to hospital for a severe operation, which was successful. Later a deputation came to see Cormack and presented him with a carved wooden panel, which they had made, representing two stags fighting. This was their way of showing appreciation of his attention to their sick comrade. This carved panel is now held in the Imperial War Museum, London, and, at the time of writing, is not on display. [see photograph]\n\nWorking in France\n\nIn a Company of about 500 men, there would be 24 British officers and NCOs, lead by a major or captain; 476 Chinese labourers, with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "42\n\nbalance being formed of an interpreter, a Head Ganger (equivalent to a CSM). Some Class One Gangers [sergeants], 7 Class Two Gangers [corporals] and 16 Class Three Gangers [lance-corporals] in charge of 14 men. These were known as paitou. No military titles were used for the labourers as they were not regarded as being service personnel.\n\nThe labourers were expected to work up to ten hours a day for seven days every week, time off being allowed for Chinese holidays. This was the norm for Chinese workers back in China and therefore not considered untoward. They were employed in ports to unload/load cargoes, repair roads, lay railway lines, build huts and aerodromes. At the end of the War, they were used to level shell holes, search for and unearth unexploded bombs, roll up barbed wire and also to collect the remains of bodies and bury them in graves already dug by CLC labourers. In some areas the labourers were eventually running their own truck repair shop, smith's shop, paint shop and motor-cycle repair shop. Others maintained the artillery and serviced tanks. Some also, as a pastime, constructed items from used war material [bomb cases, bullets, grenades, etc.] as souvenirs for the soldiers, and these items formed and were eventually known as 'Trench Art.' They were also adept at making items from other materials and also modelling and carving from chalk. The Imperial War Museum, London, has on display two lions carved from chalk and also, not on display, a lion modelled from clay by a labourer no. 53279, of the CLC. Unfortunately, there are no further details about this model. (see photograph)\n\nTo provide a picture of how Chinese labourers were employed let us examine the development of their employment on tank repair over the twelve months from August 1917 to August 1918. Members of the CLC first arrived at the Tank Central Workshops on 8th August, 1917. These were located in the Ternoise Valley, on the road between Hesdin and St. Pol. Tank HQ was at Bermincourt, Central Workshops at Erin but the whole establishment later expanded to take over more of the valley and include more villages.\n\nThe 51 Chinese Labour Company, consisting of 4 officers, 12 British NCOs and 200 tradesmen, was followed, on 26th August, by an additional 270 tradesmen.\n\nA large number of the men failed the trade tests and, for those who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214997, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "49\n\n'I am a Christian, Sir.'\n\n'Very good,' replied the officer, 'I hope I am one too.'\n\n'But I am a Presbyterian, Sir, and at the Depot there were others of that religion, and we could have a service together. In my hut now there are no Presbyterians, and all are wicked.'\n\nMutinies did, however, occur, not only amongst service personnel of the Allies, but also amongst the various Labour Corps. Some were court-martialled and punished in various ways, i.e. hard labour, penal service, imprisonment or even death.\n\nIn September 1917 some British soldiers stationed at the base camp at Etaples, south of Boulogne, caused trouble and rebelled. Word of this spread to some unwilling Chinese and Egyptians, working at Boulogne, who then stopped work unloading supplies and went on the rampage. Field Marshal Haig ordered this to be quelled and, as a consequence, 27 unarmed strikers were shot dead, 39 wounded and 25 imprisoned.\n\nOn 10 October 1917, in a serious shooting incident in the Fourth Army area, 5 Chinese labourers were killed and 14 wounded. The inquiry into this incident came to the conclusion that this was due to the CO not appreciating the standard of discipline required to be maintained between his officers and British NCOs as regards the treatment of labourers.\n\nOn 16 December 1917, a mutiny, as a result of bullying by British NCOs, was reported amongst 21 Company CLC at Fontinettes. The armed guard fired on the mutineers, killing 4 and wounding 9. A Canadian soldier was also killed. The next day, a British infantry platoon forced the Chinese to resume work and, after the ringleaders were jailed, normality was restored on 23 December.\n\nOn Christmas Day 1917, labourers of 151 Company CLC conspired to kill their Sergeant Major, a \"half-caste\", as he had been an extortioner and had forced the men to work too hard. Two hundred men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers rounded up some of the mutineers whilst others had fled to near the HQ of 5 Corps at Locre. On Christmas Day, D. H.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215041, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "93\n\nWaters, D. D: The Chinese labour Corps in the First World War : Labourers buried in France : Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: Vol. 35 : 1995\n\nThe Commonwealth War Graves Commission,\n\n2 Marlow Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 7DX\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nTel: 44-1628 634221 Fax: 44-1628 771208\n\nImperial War Museum\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\n3\n\nLambeth Road, London, SE1 6HZ Tel. 020 7416 5000\n\nLiang Shiyi (1869-1933). Chinese government official and financier. Under the Qing government, amongst his financial dealings, he helped found the Bank of Communications (1907). He was President of the Board of Communications (1912), Chief Secretary in the Presidential Office and General Manager of the Bank of Communications, acting Finance Minister (1913-1915); Director-General of the National Revenue Administration and Director-General of the Domestic Loans Office. He was linked with Yuan Shikai and in 1916 fled to Hong Kong. He formed the Wei Min Corporation for the recruitment of Chinese labourers to serve in France, as a proponent of China's entry into the war. Returning to Beijing in 1918, he was made Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Communications; Speaker of the National Assembly; Director of the Domestic Loan Bureau (1920); and Prime Minister (1921-1922). After exile (1922-1925) he again served in the Beijing Government under both Duan Jirui and Zhang Zuolin. He retired to Hong Kong in 1928 after the Northern Expedition reached Beijing.\n\nThis was usually referred to by “real” soldiers as the Crosse and Blackwells, as this British provision company had a very similar crest.\n\nLt Col. Bryan Charles Fairfax, a Yorkshireman, was born on 12th September 1873, the second son of Col. T.F. (or L?) Fairfax of the Grenadier Guards and passed through the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, being commissioned on 8th March 1893 into the Durham Light Infantry (DLI). He was posted to the 2nd Battalion, then serving in India. In 1898 he volunteered for service with the newly raised 1 Battalion, The Chinese Regiment of Infantry, stationed in Weihai", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215518, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 295, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "245\n\nVictoria is increasing rapidly in size, and the Happy Valley will soon be within the municipal boundaries. The time must come when the existing Cemeteries will be closed, and the dead taken elsewhere for burial. The Protestant Cemetery is now nearly full, and every little corner is being made use of...29\n\nA soldier also wrote home about the cemetery:\n\n[Happy Valley] is crammed with the graves of Europeans who have succumbed to the diseases of the unhealthiest country in the world. The graves of the soldiers are numbered. And when the last one was buried on his grave was 5373, showing that that number had died since the city was garrisoned by the British...30\n\nDespite what had been written in the mid 19th century, new burials were and still are carried out in the cemetery till this day - almost one and a half century later.\n\nEarly Burial Grounds in Stanley and West Point\n\nThe cemetery in Stanley,31 renamed Stanley Military Cemetery after the Second World War, was another burial ground erected in the early days of British rule. The area was the site of early military barracks. Although burials can be traced back to 1843, no mention of the cemetery has been found in any of the examined records, nor is it depicted on Lieutenant T.B. Collinson's map and sketch prepared in 1846. One source suggests that the cemetery was opened on 21st July 1843.33 It may be possible that servicemen and families were buried in that area, but the cemetery was not designated until later.34 The use of this cemetery was apparently discontinued after 1870, but it was re-opened during the Japanese occupation period for the burial of civilian internees. After the war, many of the servicemen who died in the battle were re-buried in the cemetery. No new burials have taken place there since the war.\n\nSimilarly, West Point, another barrack area3 in the early days, was also the site of a burial ground in the early 1840s. It is recorded that the Pro-Prefect Father Navarro forwarded on 26th February 1843 a petition for another burial site at West Point for the troops, which was granted on 3rd March the same year.36 However, no further information", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215541, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 318, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "268\n\n38 Fortune, Robert (1935). THREE YEARS' WANDERINGS IN THE NORTHERN PROVINCES OF CHINA. Shanghai: The University Press, p. 22 (footnote),\n\n39 Inscriptions found at the entrance of the cemetery. However, in Barbara-Sue White's TURBANS AND TRADERS: HONG KONG'S INDIAN COMMUNITIES (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17, the year stated is 1854.\n\n40 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith.\n\n41 \"The cemetery can be found in an 1863 map, see Hal Empson, p. 132.\n\n42 Smith: A SENSE OF HISTORY, p. 401\n\n43 Ibid, p. 402.\n\n44 A HAND-BOOK TO HONGKONG BEING A POPULAR GUIDE TO THE VARIOUS PLACES OF INTEREST IN THE COLONY, FOR THE USE OF TOURISTS (1893). Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, p. 94.\n\n45 杜瑞樂 (Joel Thoraval)著(張寧譯)(2002):《葬禮與祈禱的安排:香港回教信託基金總會歷史概貌》(1850-1985),載陳慎慶編:《諸神嘉年華:香港宗教研究》(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, p. 392.\n\n46 Empson, p. 132. The cemetery is also shown in another 1866 map in the same book, see p. 49.\n\n47 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith. Details regarding the founding of this cemetery are not known as yet. In a 1863 map, at the site of the subsequent Muslim cemetery, an area marked as 'Indian soldier' can be found, which might be an early burial ground for Indian soldiers, but details regarding its founding is not known, see Empson, p. 133.\n\n48 The graves in this cemetery were removed to Cape Collinson Catholic Cemetery, around late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Father Louis Ha, long after the Bethanie had been purchased by the University of Hong Kong in the early 1960s,\n\n49 \"For the breakdowns of population figures, see Blue Books or HKGG of the corresponding years.\n\n50 The figure included that of 'British Kowloon,' i.e., the area south of old boundary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215569, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 346, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "296\n\nby a second team. The change-over day was Tuesday. This meant, roughly, one week on and one week off. The light would be manned 24 hours a day, with four hours on duty for keepers (who wore uniforms) and eight hours off. There were also two replacement Marine Department staff who stood by at headquarters in the event of a lighthouse keeper taking leave or falling sick.\n\nEvery Sunday there would be a lighthouse \"spring clean,\" when windows would be cleaned and everything made shipshape. In addition, equipment would be checked and minor maintenance carried out. Nevertheless, a maintenance section would visit the island once a month to attend to anything not functioning correctly and which was beyond the capabilities of lighthouse keepers to rectify.\n\nDefence\n\nIn addition to Marine Department staff, it is understood that during various periods, for defence purposes, British soldiers were stationed on Waglan. Quarters for a military presence were provided. Similarly, a squad of Japanese soldiers was stationed there during the Second World War.\n\nBoth Waglan and Gap Rock, where there were air-raid shelters, were damaged by bombing during World War Two. There are said to be two Japanese ghosts on Waglan, with one Japanese soldier, so it is believed, having been buried under what is now the floor of the recreation room which was built later. One member of staff of the Marine Department said to me:\n\nIt's no wonder keepers saw ghosts on Waglan, cut off from their families as they were. It was a psychological thing.\n\nTo defend Waglan in the event of attack, at the start of the 20th century, cannons were mounted on the island. These were said to have been transferred later to the Government Queen's College (Bruce; 1990, 7). There are, in fact, two cannons in the grounds of the College. The cannons are marked:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 360, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "310\n\n31 Under such conditions temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius.\n\n32 Gap Rock is sometimes known as Daam Gon Shan, in Cantonese, meaning \"Carrying Pole Hill,\"\n\n33 Besides Waglan Island, lighthouse keepers on Green Island (who were also Government Marine Department Staff) carried out weather observations and passed information on to the Royal Observatory Office at Kai Tak Airport.\n\n34 When the author visited Waglan, in 1999, all the buildings, including keepers' and soldiers' quarters and the fog-horn building, were still there although they were generally dilapidated.\n\n35 Author interviewed Tam Cheong-wai, then Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, Government Marine Department, 22 February 1999. Tam has since retired.\n\n37\n\nIX\n\n10\n\nB.P. stands for \"Bailey Pegs\" the maker's name.\n\nFare was not spartan if compared to that given to British soldiers during World War Two when, the author recalls, on active service \"iron rations\" sometimes consisted of a tin of bully beef and a packet of \"hard tack\" (army biscuits) for each soldier.\n\nAuthor's interview with Lai Tak-wah, Government Marine Department, 12 February 1999.\n\n38 Sometimes known as the \"Rose of China.\"\n\n39 A number of rocks in Hong Kong are imagined as resembling animals, birds and other objects. There are Lion Rock, Amah Rock and Lovers' Rock (\"Marriage Fate Rock\"). The last is along Bowen Path and is supposed to symbolise an erect phallus.\n\n40 The author recalls in Britain, between the two World Wars, that there were still a number of pictures of Grace Darling hanging in homes showing her rowing a lifeboat in a storm.\n\n42 The notification of marriage appeared in the South China Morning Post in August 1935.\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215649, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 426, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "378\n\n11. and 12. Two World War Two shots of British soldiers although regiments and locations are not known.\n\n13. and 14. Photocopies of the old British Central School at 136 Nathan Road, Kowloon, now the Antiquities and Monuments Office. This is where Douglas Franklin studied from 1936 to 1937. He then went to King George the Fifth School until he was evacuated to Australia in 1940.\n\n15. A 1960s map of Victoria Peak District (photocopy).\n\n16. Two newspaper cuttings dated 17 May 1955 giving accounts of the funeral and life of Mr Franklin senior.\n\n17. A Hong Kong one-dollar bank note with the head of King George VI (1936-1952) on it.\n\nFurther information is written on the backs of photographs and snapshots.\n\nAll the above have been placed by HKBRAS, on Permanent Loan, with the Hong Kong Museum of History, where they are available for display and research purposes.\n\nMay I repeat that HKBRAS is extremely grateful to Douglas Franklin, a true Hong Konger having been born here, for his generous donation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215666, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 443, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "395\n\ncorrespondent for The Times in southeast Asia, having previously supplied articles to the paper on a freelance basis. One of the last to escape the invading Japanese, he reported the retreat along the Malay Peninsula and the last stand and surrender of the British garrison in Singapore on 15 February, 1942.\n\nAfter Singapore, Mr. Morrison went to Java before following the campaigns in the South West Pacific under General MacArthur, and later in Southeast Asia under Admiral Mountbatten.\n\nMr. Morrison was a courageous correspondent who never thought twice about entering a dangerous situation to get a good story. During the Second World War he spent a lot of time reporting from the front and shared the soldiers' life in the jungle. He regularly hitch-hiked on Australian or American army transport planes in order to follow the action and provide authentic accounts of the fighting with the Japanese. He often came close to death. In late November 1942 he was slightly injured during an air raid on the Buna front in Papua, and in December 1943 he was involved in a plane crash which resulted in head wounds and fractured vertebrae. This is how he telegraphed the paper:\n\n'Regret involved in airplane accident enroute obtain eyewitness operational full stop hospitalised injuries seriouser than yestertime hope recover soon Dickson Brown newschronicler kindly consented cover next three days thereafter Curthoys sorry disappoint you good story - Morrison'\n\nHis injuries on that occasion kept him out of action until July 1944, when he returned to cover the South East Area Command. He was not out of trouble for long. On 10 December 1945, while reporting from Batavia (now Jakarta) covering a local campaign he was again wounded and cabled the paper:\n\n'Left hospital today. Thumb, in which fragments of Dutch bullet are lodged, will take at least a fortnight to\n\nIan Morrison and family, circa 1950", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215690, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 467, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "420\n\nAlthough there were Red Cross food parcels occasionally, these were much fewer and further between than for POWs in Europe. Some food was passed through the wires by Chinese women—some from the Wanchai bar district—loyal to their menfolk, often at great personal risk to themselves. As with most members of the armed forces during the Second World War, great dependency was placed on cigarettes. In prison camp, they also served as a form of currency. In spite of Spartan living conditions, gambling took place, sometimes for cigarettes or for Red Cross food parcels.\n\nConstant hunger brought out the worst in people. There was unfairness, selfishness, and stealing. Yet there were many staunch characters, and mutual support was vital to see an inmate through. Three or four men bonded together stood a better chance of survival than the loner. There were few suicides, but many just \"gave up the ghost\" and ended it all. We are told there was no evidence of religious conversions as conditions in camp worsened. The number of deaths among British Army Indians is recorded as being higher than for Canadian or British soldiers, partly because conditions in their camp were worse. Pressure was put on Indians to enlist to fight against the British. That so many resisted was a demonstration of strength of character and loyalty to the British cause.\n\nIllnesses such as diphtheria, dysentery, and malaria were ever-present, together with a shortage of medicine and medical facilities. Operations were sometimes carried out without anesthetics. Some inmates' hair turned white overnight, while others lost their sight. One prisoner even set himself up as a \"bone crusher,\" breaking limbs on demand so that fellow prisoners could be given time off from work.\n\nAccustomed to a Western lifestyle, differences in culture exacerbated the situation. European POWs did not enjoy a diet based on rice. Nor did they care for Japanese or Chinese tea without milk and sugar. A number of prisoners believed moxibustion, where pressure points on the body are stimulated not by needles but by burning mugwort, was a form of torture, although the Japanese may not have always administered treatment with the comfort of the patient in mind.\n\nMention is made in the book of a POW, although no name is given, who complained while on parade to the Red Cross that prisoners were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215825, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "57\n\nbut it was harder to replace soldiers with combat experience.\n\nBecause the weather changes from day to day, so must the extent to which it could influence the approval or rejection of a certain operation in war. Hong Kong's weather, as formidable as it was, could not by itself determine if it merited recapture or not. Nor could any objective's weather be the lone factor. If it was, then many of the war's campaigns would not have taken place. If the control of a specific territory was judged crucial, then the powers concerned would do anything within their capacity to seize or retain it.\n\nNo place in the world has perfect weather at any time of the year. In Hong Kong's case, its worst weather occurs during the middle of the year. Had a Hong Kong operation taken place, Allied planners would have naturally preferred that it take place towards the end of the year. That would give the Allies up to six months of relatively trouble-free weather with which to work.\" A Hong Kong operation was bound to include amphibious landings, and these were very susceptible to bad weather. It was important for the Allies to gain at least a foothold on land, as it would give a political and psychological boost to the Allied war effort, as well as put them in a better position militarily vis-à-vis Japan. The China Coast was a perimeter within Japan's empire, and any breach made here would accelerate Japan's demise. So that first foothold was vital, just as it was equally vital for the Japanese to prevent it. In Japan's history, foul weather had worked in her favour when she had to defend against an amphibious invasion, so it wasn't unprecedented for the weather to play a decisive role in war. For the Allies, the last thing they would want was to see a Hong Kong operation in progress be thwarted by a non-human entity like the weather. Such a contest would be a no-win situation for the Allies.\n\nIn the end, the Allies never carried out any landings on any port on the China Coast. Their destruction of the IJN and blockade of Japan by sea and air was so complete that they didn't have to worry about the Japanese in China, which remained a secondary theatre at the end of the war. Hong Kong's weather was never specifically mentioned as a factor, but was probably on the minds of some Allied planners after the poundings their navies had taken in the last months of the war. Hong Kong returned to British, and eventually Chinese, rule, and was fortunate to have not undergone a destructive campaign for it to change hands again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215871, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 170, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "103\n\n6\n\nCertain Stations at Home and Abroad shortly before the taking up of the New Territories by the British in 1898. The War Department had a scheme, drawn in 1902, to develop the \"low promontory\" between Yau Tong and Chong Lui (which has become the present Lei Yue Mun Typhoon Shelter) into a barracks area. This promontory is now the Yau Tong industrial and residential zone. The proposed military reserve was extended to cover the entire Cha Kwo Ling promontory (\"Rocky Hill\"). Neither the barracks scheme nor the reserve has ever been implemented. However, there is no doubt that the British military attached great significance to the Lei Yue Mun and Devil's Peak area in the late 19th Century. The leasing of the New Territories definitely had a clear military intention, because it had the French, Russian, or Imperial Chinese forces in mind.\n\nThe Gough Battery was definitely in place as early as 1900. The Pottinger Battery was likely erected at the same time, and not later than 1902. The Duke of Connaught was said to have observed the firing practices of both the Gough and Pottinger Batteries in 1907 (Rollo 1992: 83). The approved establishment for the Gough Battery in 1914 was one officer plus 15 soldiers (Rollo 1992: 96).\n\n[The Pottinger Battery had two 9.2-inch BL (Breech-Loader) Mark X guns. The Gough Battery originally had two 6-inch BL Mark VII guns. However, one of the gun emplacements was later enlarged to accommodate a 9.2-inch BL gun no later than 1910. The approved establishment strength of the Pottinger Battery in 1914 was one officer plus 26 soldiers (Rollo 1992: 96).]\n\nThe Devil's Peak Redoubt was the location of the Eastern Fire Command. It was definitely in place by 1914. Though it could accommodate at least 150 soldiers in action, the approved establishment of the Redoubt in 1914 was only one officer plus 10 soldiers (Rollo 1992: 96).\n\nThe 6-inch gun at the Gough Battery was removed as early as 1912. The three 9.2-inch BL guns at Devil's Peak were subsequently relocated to the batteries on Hong Kong Island South. The 9.2-inch calibre Mark X gun at Gough Battery, originally on a Mark V mounting (Rollo 1992: 187), was removed in 1936 to Stanley Fort and placed on a Mark VII mounting (Horsnell 1998/1999: 249), and the two guns at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215975, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 274, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "208\n\n—\n\nforeign military strength prevailing against the Qing regime, calculated by the British and French to force compliance with the new treaty conditions, also actually caused greater threat to those foreign travellers who moved outside the provincial capital. Still, all this being recognized by Legge and his travelling companions, including Ch'ea, they pursued their missionary goals and tested the reliability of the Qing forces to uphold the treaty conditions. In the end it was clear that local Qing authorities could only be partially successful in maintaining public order during their travels. This fact was highlighted during the missionary tour. Legge explicitly mentions in his journal published in Hong Kong in June 1861 - issues almost always deleted from the edited versions published in the missionary journal accounts produced for English audiences - the troubles they faced at certain places where crowds had stones and bricks nearby and available to attack their party. One of the harshest responses came in the district city of Wye-chow, a large walled city not very distant from Poklo. Stonings there caused noticeable damage to the main boat rented for the trip. In another district town up the river by the name of Hé Yuán, the \"rain of stones\" became \"exceedingly unpleasant.” In order to avoid further physical threat on their return through the alleys of the walled city, Legge and Chalmers with their attendant soldiers finally climbed up on the city walls where the attackers had their point of advantage. By this means they surprised the stone slinging \"rabble\" so that they quickly dispersed without presenting any further threats until the group had entered their boats.70 Legge was nonplussed: \"I did not think that we should have experienced such treatment so far away from Canton.\" The political reality that antiforeigner feelings were running high and spread broadly throughout the region could not be denied.\n\n69\n\nAdded to this was a deeper, more persistent strain of demonology which continued to erupt in the curses yelled at the missionaries in any place that was \"inhospitable.\" One single record in Legge's journal illustrates the visceral level at which this demonology worked. At one point northeast of Poklo as they were travelling up the East River, the boat passed through a herd of water buffalo “luxuriating”\n\n71", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216028, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 327, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "261\n\nwere keen to claim association with the first rulers of the Zhou, of the 12th century BC, and also with the infamous first ruler of China, Qin Shih Huangdi who, it was claimed, had used the area of Dantu as a penal settlement.\n\nDuring dynastic times Zhenjiang was a walled administrative seat, an important prefecture, and one of twelve prefectural cities in Jiangsu province, in a major region known as Jiangnan [South of the River]. Zhenjiang means 'Guard-post of the River', a title given in 1113 during the Song dynasty, and its location, guarding the junction of the Grand Canal and the Yangzi, is such that it was a fortified post at the point where the southern arm of the Grand Canal crosses the Great River to join the northern arm, as well as being the first and ideal position to control the upstream passage of the Yangzi. The British political aim, when their soldiers captured the city in 1842, was to cut off the vital supply route, the Grand Canal, from southern China to the north in order to exert maximum pressure upon the Imperial government.\n\nAlthough Zhenjiang lays claim to a number of incidents, destruction by nature and by human hand, visits by royalty, legendary happenings we shall restrain ourselves to note but a few.\n\nSun Ce**, who was assassinated in 200 AD, conquered a wide territory down to the mouth of the Great River, to which region he gave the title Jiangdong [East of the River]. His brother, Sun Quan of Wu# succeeded to his throne, and it is to him that Zhenjiang is said to owe its existence as a city. Moreover, it was here that he came to court the beauty, Pan Furen, whose father Sun Quan had condemned to death. He pursued her until he was able to make her his wife. Although Nanjing was Sun's main city Zhenjiang had reminders of his fortifications still visible during the early years of the Republic. The foundations of the fortifications that he built round his Governor's Residence could still be traced in a line of crumbling masonry that capped the ridge of heights connecting the then existing Zhenjiang city wall northward to the monastery, Ganlu Si. Also, inside the present city stood a high solitary gateway, with a building on it known as the Old Drum Tower. The masonry foundations of the gate were alleged to date from the time of Sun Quan, and some graves outside the North gate were also said to be those of some members of his line.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216054, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 353, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "287\n\nThe Consulate was on the most commanding elevation, at least fifty feet above the road with a steep mountain behind. About two hundred unruly soldiers gathered round the lower enclosure but seeing the four armed men did not approach. A written message was sent off to General Tao, commanding the permanent camp, half a mile off, stating that the man would not be released until the general came in person, identified the prisoner and punished him. After half an hour General Tao in his chair, with Colonel Peng on his charger, arrived and were informed that there was no intention to claim jurisdiction over or be harsh with the arrested man, but that it had to be clearly understood that if any soldiers or even officers came in to the settlement, they would be forced to obey the municipal bye-laws; and the Consul was the municipal chairman. The General was not too happy about the position he found himself in but was civil. He went with Parker to the prison, spoke with the man through the bars and as a result the man received about twenty slight bastinado-strokes on the spot and all was settled.\n\nThe winter of 1877-8 was unusually bitter, the year of the great Shanxi famine when millions of Chinese perished from sheer want of food. Neighbouring provinces were invaded by endless streams of refugees and more especially so through the area surrounding Zhenjiang - because all roads from the north lead there. The authorities had provided thousands of mat hovels, on and against the city walls where shelter from the bitter wind was obtainable. Skilly was served out gratis twice a day with between fifty thousand to a hundred thousand refugees congregated around Zhenjiang.\n\nAs we have already noted Zhenjiang was far from being the ideal posting and at least one consul there, in 1923, is known to have committed suicide. Consular duties brought hazards which, while not thought of as routine, were certainly sufficient to cause many a consul to look back with horror and amazement at what they had survived. One such consul would recall that in 1913, during the early days of the period of the war lords following the foundation of the Republic, with petty armies looting and causing endless unrest, soldiers of one such war lord, Zhang Xun, approached Zhenjiang bent on plundering the city. The British consul and a lone western merchant went out to face them - then, after very nearly being shot they held them at bay until one of their officers appeared and brought them under control. In another incident during the anti-British movement troubles of 1925 the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216055, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 354, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "288\n\nconsul was nearly hit by a bullet that entered his office through the window. This same consul was involved during student protests later the same year when the police quarters were set alight and the students rampaged through the town intent on killing foreigners. He and his family were only saved by the timely arrival of Chinese soldiers, and escaped by river down to Shanghai.\n\nToday the Zhenjiang Museum occupies the former British Consulate at 85 Boxian Lu in Boxian Park at the heart of the old town. Amongst the items on display in the grounds is an anchor said to have been from H.M.S. Amethyst, the frigate of the British Yangtze Flotilla, which, after weeks of being blockaded, stuck on a sand bank, escaped downstream despite having been badly damaged by shell fire from the PLA [People's Liberation Army] during their thrust south across the River in 1948 to liberate China from the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. British efforts to seek a diplomatic solution involved Edward Youde, a twenty-four-year-old third secretary at the Embassy, who volunteered to reach the senior PLA military officer at Yangzhou to seek a safe-conduct pass for the Amethyst to sail unmolested downstream back to Shanghai. He first had to obtain passes to permit him to cross the line between the Nationalists and the Communists. After several days of adventures and lengthy cross-country hikes, sometimes under fire, Youde reached the senior PLA officer and his request was forcibly rejected. His mission a failure, he returned, again amidst numerous adventures to report to his Ambassador in Nanjing. He later became better known as Sir Edward Youde, one of the last Governors of Hong Kong.\n\nChristian missionaries\n\nThere were Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries, Anglicans and the 'faith missions', Baptists, Presbyterians and the Lutherans, and so on, as well as the individual evangelicals, zealous saviours of souls. The most important aspect of this work, though most would not see it in this light, was by setting an example, though this in no way belittled their social, medical and educational work. Medical missionaries, another dedicated breed, were an exception with their professional abilities being widely welcomed not only by Chinese but also by the Europeans within both treaty ports as well as in the remoter parts of China in which they lived and worked.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216065, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 364, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "298\n\nhad been destroyed and burned down. Thousands of rioters had arrived there in boats and destroyed foreign property. These enigmatic statements suggest that Mesny believed that ‘charity funds for famine relief' were being misused by the Viceroy and others to buy off bandits, even if he does not actually spell it out. There is no indication in his Miscellanies to whom he reported after his fact-finding mission or what he did with his information about the famine, or whether he actually provided physical relief for some of the unfortunate victims.\n\nAs so often happened a very minor incident, in this case concerning a Sikh policeman, grew in a matter of hours into a major riot. It was riots in 1889 referred to by Mesny, when the Sikh, a member of the municipal police force of the Zhenjiang Concession, was alleged to have struck a Chinese. According to Arlington it was started by the Concession Chief of Police, an Indian, accidentally killing a coolie who 'dared' to have his head shaved on the Bund [a terrible thing to shave the head on the Bund!]. The events followed a not unusual pattern with the mob throwing stones and the Europeans managing to escape to a ship on the Great River but not before telegraphing for assistance to Shanghai. The Chinese authorities too had been called upon for help and though both Chinese police and soldiers arrived they simply stood around and did nothing. Both the British and American consulates were destroyed; meanwhile Shanghai replied requesting additional information and advising the westerners in Zhenjiang that a gun boat was being prepared. Order was restored by Chinese troops on the following day. Three days later the British gunboat arrived and was boarded by the Consul who was greeted by a gun-salute. The very first report of the guns sent every Chinese off the Bund and out of the Concession like a cloud of smoke being dispersed by a typhoon. A benefit arising from the riot was the construction of a new consulate office and house with its own garden. A slightly different picture of the cause was given by Consul Parker which he had obtained from hearsay.*4 The Zhenjiang municipal police had arrested a Chinese military officer for 'reckless riding'.\n\nAfter the riots of the 1880s strong, double riot gates of stout iron bars were constructed, each with a span of some twenty feet, so that the whole of the width of the Bund, some forty feet, would be barred when they were closed. The Concession police during the first decade of the 20th century consisted of some sixteen Shandong men from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "133\n\nContraband of ordinary commodities such as flour, clothes, etc., may be transported at the risk of the owners, to the ports of belligerent countries.\n\nIn the event of the necessity arising of landing any cargo passing through a Chinese port, the same will be landed and stored at the expense of the owners.\"\n\nArguments arose over whether foodstuffs being exported from China to Japan for consumption by civilians should be considered as contraband of war as they could be used for military purposes. It was agreed that with formal consular certificates, certifying that the goods were not destined for the theatre of war, and stating clearly that the goods were shipped at the owners' risk; foodstuffs could be exported to Japan.\n\nThe day-to-day involvement of the Chinese population and their reaction to foreign soldiers\n\nTheir land and people suffered hardships, casualties, and financial losses without any thought being given to them by the Westerners or the combatants. It has been quite surprising just how few references to China and the Chinese there were in contemporary Western writings.\n\nChinese physical involvement was marginal. Apart from individuals being employed by both sides as spies, bands of Chinese mounted guerrillas were employed by both belligerents; some under Japanese leadership made Russian lines of communication dangerous and effectively tied down ever larger Russian forces. Yuan Shikai, the Viceroy of Chih-li, turned a blind eye to these and similar activities and made every effort to co-operate with the Japanese. Although the Russians were aware of this policy, there was little they could do about it. They did, however, take it out on any individual or groups of Chinese in territories under their control who appeared in any way acting for or sympathising with the Japanese.\n\nBritish illustrated periodicals tended to portray Chinese as ‘exotic and different, something sinister or inferior.' The same journals included not only sketches from their correspondents capturing the gruesome nature of the war in all its chaos, cruelty, and destruction but also photographic images.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216435, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "144\n\nA contemporary western report described how Japanese discipline handled the billeting of Japanese soldiers in Andong. \"They were billeted in every house while the Chinese inhabitants went about their daily business undisturbed. At first they concealed their goods until they found that their property was secure, then producing it to sell to their visitors at exorbitant rates. Meanwhile, sanitary precautions were not neglected. Japanese officers visited every house in which their soldiers were billeted, and coolies were sent in to give them an unexpected spring clean for their Chinese owners, sweeping out accumulated dirt from passages and courtyards, and sprinkling disinfectants.'\n\nAnother western correspondent attached to the Japanese described one of the Russian towns near Port Arthur as 'suggestive of a French village. The railway station was solidly and picturesquely built of brick and illuminated by oil-lamps. The streets were broad, though in the autumn became rivers of mud. The houses, for the most part, were built of brick, as were the extensive barracks. After the battle, the barracks and many of the houses were adapted as storehouses by the Japanese. The native Chinese village, half a mile from the station, had been forsaken by its inhabitants who had a strong commercial instinct and had adopted temporary habitations of matting in the immediate vicinity of the Japanese army, where they had instituted a kind of bazaar.'\n\nBy 25th July, the Japanese had fought and reached Newchwang. The Russians had pulled out and left the burning Russian town to the victors. However, there was no rapturous welcome for the Japanese according to a report by a western correspondent describing their arrival:\n\nFour Japanese scouts rode into the square. They were mounted on sorry, tired horses, all mud-splattered, and rough. The men wore uniforms stained and torn by campaigning. The people regarded them with interest but without any display of emotion. They were not welcomed, nor was their intrusion resented. Then arrived four more, and later another four, with a non-commissioned officer. To him came the chiefs of the Chinese guilds with greetings. The foreign residents held aloof for the expected army, the officers, and the generals. A short while before, British ladies had provided free teas and free refreshments for the Russian troops arriving from outlying camps, and for recruits doing their drill-ground exercises. No one had anything to offer these tired, battle-worn men; they tendered not so much as a light for a cigarette.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216437, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 196, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "146\n\nA contemporary comment in a western journal explained that ‘the Concert of Powers, that powerful instrument which Lord Salisbury compared to a steamroller, gravely assented to the theory of China's neutrality in principle, and did nothing else in practice. Japan's reply to the Russian charges was to cite a number of flagrant breaches of neutrality which the Russians themselves had committed. Japan, too, gravely warned China, and entered various solemn protests. These were not without effect, for by this stage of the war the Chinese were beginning, perhaps more alertly than most western nations, to be awake to the fact that the Japanese were the coming race.\"\n\nOne of Japan's protests to China was that ammunition for the Russian Army at Mukden was being transported there by way of Tientsin (Tianjin), and in one instance as many as three and a half million rounds were seized by Tientsin Customs while awaiting shipment. Peking took the only course open to it in telegraphing to local Chinese authorities that they must end these practices.\n\nA Russian breach of neutrality\n\nOn 4th October 1904 a body of Russian infantry of the 3rd Regiment of Sharpshooters, all wearing Chinese uniforms, attacked the Japanese on the road to Mukden. 'There had been a number of reports of Russian soldiers dressed in Chinese uniforms having approached Japanese troops and even attempted surprise attacks. It was also reported that the Russian Army was continuing to purchase an enormous number of Chinese uniforms. This was not only contrary to the rules of war but exposed innocent Chinese to danger owing to the impossibility of distinguishing at a distance between Russian soldiers and the real Chinese. As the Hague Convention stipulated that unlawful use of uniforms of the enemy, and the Chinese were not the enemy, the Russians deemed it a legal stratagem xüli\n\nAnother major breach of China's neutrality occurred in early January 1905 when Russian General Mistchenko determined to violate Chinese neutrality to get his army to Newchwang without danger to himself. A British correspondent’s description reads:\n\nThe Russians had no intention of playing the game fairly; the rules had been made for the Japanese and not for their own observance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]