[ { "id": 204784, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n75\n\nIt is not certain whether the fishermen who petitioned the Viceroy were local men, but, if so, their initiative on that occasion showed itself again some twenty years later when in 1857 an association called the Peng Wo Tong was formed among the trawlers based on Peng Chau. These are said to have numbered about 200 at that time. Though this may be an exaggeration, the Tong was undoubtedly a large organisation. Its name appears on the Tin Hau temple repair tablet of 1878 where its joint contribution of 140 taels of silver, out of a total of about 640 taels subscribed for the work, heads the list and its leaders were among the twelve principal organisers. Little is now remembered locally of its work and objects, or of its origin, but perhaps it was formed to retain more of the profits of fishing for the fishermen themselves, instead of letting them go to the Cantonese shopkeepers who might have become demanding and oppressive at the time. I do not know whether fishermen in other ports organised themselves into such groups, and it would be interesting to have further information on this point. This particular Tong concerned itself with more than business. As we have seen, it helped with temple repairs and it is known to have taken a hand in organising festival matters. One elder remembers attending an opera show organised by the Tong when he was about ten years old (1905) and he can even remember the name of the opera! It is certainly an organisation which would repay such detailed study as is still possible.\n\nThe number of fishing boats based on Peng Chau during this period was considerable, and an interesting variety of persons were engaged in fishing. At the end of the century there were said to have been still nearly 200 trawling junks there and a similar number, more or less equally divided, of two smaller types of sailing craft. Whilst this is perhaps an exaggeration it is certain that there were many more than can be seen there today. These were all operated by Tanka fishermen, the true boat people of South China, who lived and died on their craft.17 There were also a hundred Hoklo boats, long narrow craft with two or three standing rowers of a type still to be seen round Peng Chau and Cheung Chau. The Hoklos themselves spent their life between their boats and their mat-shed homes near the beaches. There were also lesser numbers of Hakka and Cantonese fishermen,18", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204785, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "76\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nOf these various groups of fishermen the trawlers were by far the most important. As has been said above, the Peng Wo Tong was organised from among them and does not appear to have included the fishermen from the smaller Tanka craft. This group seems to have based itself on Peng Chau for at least fifty years, and in all probability for a much longer period, between the formation of the Tong in 1857 and the destructive typhoon of 18th September 1906 which is said to have hit them very hard as many boats were at sea during the sudden storm and were lost. They were tied to the island by their links with the shopkeepers and wholesale fish dealers, or laans as they are known locally,20 The trawlers caught all kinds of fish and salted them in brine21 pending a return to harbour. There was a comparative lull in their fishing season between the Tin Hau festival in the third moon and the end of the seventh moon, when they returned to Peng Chau, gave their boats and tackle a thorough overhaul, allowed themselves the luxury of a holiday on land, and participated in religious activities which included the inevitable season of Chinese opera. The opera performances lasted for about five weeks, by tradition overlapping the end of the third moon and the beginning of the fifth. There is no doubt that these trawlers and their crews added considerably to the bustle and prosperity of the island.\n\nBesides the Tanka there were also Cantonese families who made their principal livelihood from fishing. I spoke to one old man of seventy-three (born 1891) whose whole life had been spent, as was his father's before him, \"on the surface of the sea” ✯❀ as he put it. This family were Puntis from Tung Kwun and my informant said he was the fifth generation on Peng Chau. There is no doubt that they were land people, but they earned their living from the sea using small boats called and operating several stake nets at various points round the island's coast. They fished mostly by day in the waters round Peng Chau, to which they returned at night-fall. There were over twenty of these boats when my informant was a boy.\n\nBeside the Cantonese fishermen, there were also some Hakkas with, at that period, as much interest in the sea as the land. The first ancestors of the CHUNG family came to Peng Chau at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An account of their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "88 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\ncredited with the construction of the Yee Chee about 1850. What does appear fairly certain is that the Kaifong originated among the Cantonese shopkeepers and house-owners of Wing On Street, the main, and for long the only, street on the island. The street had a corporate identity which was quite separate from the rest of the island, and this is clearly shown on the 1878 tablet which is at pains to differentiate donors as belonging to either \"this street\" or \"this island\". There were one or two of them, rather than one. By the turn of the century, however, Hakka shopkeepers in the main street, the CHUNG clan, who in origin was a leading member of the Kaifong, but this was apparently a recent development. The Kaifong's interests thus became those of the island community at large. It was not necessarily in regular session with meetings once a week or once a month, but is more likely to have been rather sporadic in its activities, active only when it was asked to advise, arbitrate or organise, as the need arose.\n\nThere was also an association for religious purposes known as the Hung Man Wui. It is mentioned in the 1878 tablet in the Tin Hau temple, when it was among the principal subscribers. One assumes, therefore, that it had many members. It was responsible for the organisation of the various festivals, including the staging of processions and the customary opera or puppet shows, and its directors were chosen by \"shaking the sticks\" at the temple once a year. Apparently anyone could join and, in theory at least, anyone could be chosen by the gods for the chief posts. I am told that it still exists today, for similar objects.\n\nLest this article should leave the impression of a well-organised and orderly community which lived a peaceful existence year by year in ever growing prosperity, it is as well to call attention to the more uncertain side of daily life at the time under review. The period was characterised by the gradual break-down of imperial control which was reflected in unsettled conditions. The tablets of 1835 recording the fishermen's petition to the Viceroy recalls the presence of pirates, and cargo junks and ferries in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205176, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n127\n\nbelow; another was the owner of a herbal medicine shop in Yau Ma Ti, and the other two came from Ho Man Tin. One of these was the village elder, and the other was a woman who was a keen Taoist and the wife of the richest man in the village.\n\nThe temple was the focal point of village life at this time and contributed much to relieve the boredom of hard work and ordinary routine for the cultivators, stone-cutters, shop-hands and their wives who were among its devotees. The highlight of the year was the celebrations at the time of the birthday of Kwun Yam, the patron goddess of the temple. This falls on the 19th day of the third lunar month. At this time the managers arranged for a variety of ceremonies and entertainments to take place. First, there was the annual chanting of religious books, called locally ta chiu (T). This was performed by Taoist priests known as nam mo lo (亮樣羅)12 and during this time it was customary for the villagers to follow a vegetarian diet. Having done their religious duty the elders made arrangements for entertaining both gods and men. They employed a troupe of actors to perform Cantonese opera for the traditional period of four days and five nights. My informants tell me that these shows took place every year when they were small, and indeed right up to 1926.\n\nRev. E. J. Hardy, who served as a military chaplain in Hong Kong for three and a half years at the turn of the century writes, with special reference to the villages of the Hong Kong region:33\n\n\"The great event of village life is the occasional visit of strolling players. In a very short time a temporary mat-shed theatre is put up on some barren spot on the outskirts of the village: around it cook-shops, tea-shops, gambling booths and the like, all made of bamboo, palm-leaves, and matting are erected. The place is like a fair. At mat-shed theatres the audience in the pit stand; above there are seats for subscribers and local magnates\".\n\nAnother feature of the celebrations on Kwun Yam's birthday was the firing of lucky rockets. It was usual to fire three rockets, and the assembled men and youths scrambled for the fragments of the rockets, which were believed to bring luck to the successful keepers. The first rocket was the most prized. This local entertainment could take place at various festivals. It is described for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206111, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "186\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe small pre-war Yuk Wong (or Jade King) Temple, recently reconstructed, and to some open ground now occupied by a theatrical matshed erected for the Tam Kung festival where Wai Chau and Cantonese opera will be performed for the traditional five nights and four days. This is organised by the people of Ah Kung Ngam, and a small booth on the left-hand side of the road (going in) is plastered with large sheets of orange paper on which the names of all subscribers to this free opera have been written. Up to the war of 1941 and again after the Liberation, up to 13 years ago, my local informants say that puppet plays were held here, but the greater resources of a larger population have now enabled the local people to have opera troupes instead. Both Wai Chau and Cantonese opera are performed, and I was promised the former for the day of our visit.* Among the principal organisers are an old Hoklo fisherman of 75 who has lived at Ah Kung Ngam for nearly sixty years and two middle-aged Hakka men whose families have been settled there for 3-4 generations.\n\nAccording to the old Hoklo fisherman who first came to Ah Kung Ngam about 1911-1912, the Yuk Wong Temple was then 'a broken house with an incense burner'. He goes on to say that it was restored pre-war by a big subscriber.\n\nWalking back from Ah Kung Ngam (and later on, in passing by bus through Shau Kei Wan) the visitor will notice the abandoned quarry sites on the hillsides. The official yearly reports of the Hong Kong Government in the later 19th century (styled Blue Books) show that the Shau Kei Wan quarries were then much more important than any elsewhere on the Island and rivalled those in Old British Kowloon. We note, for instance, that there were 72 quarries operating there in 1872, 49 in 1881, and 51 in 1891.\n\n*The subject of the Wai Chau opera was taken from the San Kuo or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most famous novels in Chinese literary history. The episode which was the subject for this particular play, entitled \"An Expedition for Revenge\", can be read in English between pages 597-607 of volume 1 of C. H. Brewitt-Taylor's translation of the novel in two volumes published by Kelly & Walsh, Limited, Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore, 1925.\n\n†The old man is right in thinking it was before his time. A list of temples in CSO No. 296/95, an old Secretariat file now kept in the Registrar General's Department, lists three trustees, all named Cheung, for the Yuk Wong temple at \"A Kung Ngam\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206469, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "Gifts from the University of Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies:\n\nTOPLEY, M.\n\nA conference on religion and ritual in Chinese society. 1971. TOPLEY, M.\n\nTowards the comparative study of Asian medical systems: Burg Wartenstein symposium no. 53. 1971.\n\nWONG, Shiu-hon.\n\n粵劇關漢卿硏究 (A study of the Cantonese opera Kuan Han-ching), 1970.\n\nGifts from the University of Hong Kong Library:\n\nCHEN, Cheng.\n\nLand reform in Taiwan. 1961.\n\nLETHBRIDGE, H. J.\n\nChina's urban communes. 1961.\n\nUNION RESEARCH INSTITUTE.\n\nCommunist China, 1960. 1962. 2 vols.\n\nExchanges from the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies:\n\nCHENG, C. Y.\n\nThe economy of communist China, 1949-1969. 1971. MAEDA, R. J.\n\nTwo twelfth century texts on Chinese painting. 1970.\n\nSINGER, M.\n\nEducated youth and the cultural revolution in China. 1971.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206812, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "SWATOW HORIZONTAL STICK PUPPETS\n\nCh'aochow Puppets in contemporary China and overseas\n\n83\n\nLiu Fu-kuang §✯ an educated person of about 40, who is the most outstanding Ch'aochow orchestra-leader here, is closely connected with the Hsin-shun-hsiang puppet-troupe. He came to Hong Kong in 1959. According to him, puppet-troupes completely disappeared in Ch'aochow after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. This is probably because their performances were intimately connected with the festivals of the myriads of local deities, the worship of which was strongly discouraged by the Communists. In 1957, Liu Fu-kuang saw the last troupe, called Shant'ou Ying-hsi-t'uan 4⇓✯D (Shadow-play-troupe of Shant'ou) perform in Swatow. He believes that not even one troupe is now left in Ch'aochow, after a history of about one thousand years and a hundred active troupes fifty years ago.\n\nPeople from Ch'aochow make up a large percentage of the Overseas Chinese population of South East Asia and Ch'aochow opera flourishes there; but there is said not to be one single \"paper-shadow-play\" troupe overseas. This shows that from the great tradition of puppet-theatre, only the two troupes in Hong Kong are left. It is therefore the last chance to savour and study this tradition before its extinction which, at least at the moment, appears to be inevitable.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nBatchelder, Marjorie H.: Rod-puppets and the Human Theatre, Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 1947.\n\nHuang Chun-ming: The Forbidden Puppets' in Echo of Things Chinese, Taiwan, October 1972, pp. 24-34.\n\nJacob & Jensen: Das Chinesische Schattentheater, Stuttgart, 1933.\n\nMargareta Niculescu: The Puppet Theatre in the Modern World compiled by Union Internationale des Marionettes under Margareta Niculescu, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, Toronto, Wellington, Sidney, 1967.\n\nTsim Tak-lung (compiler): Puppet-demonstration on pages 45-47 of ‘Chinese Theatre in Hong Kong', Proceedings of a Symposium, Nov. 22-23, 1968, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1968.\n\nBurger, Helga: 'The Cantonese Stick-puppets', in Kaleidoscope, Hong Kong, March/April 1973.\n\n\"The Far Eastern Puppet Theatre' in Souvenir Book of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, 1974.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207155, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "220 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nlarge paper bag. This cost 10 cents and the number of dim sum was 18 pieces, usually sufficient for 8-9 persons. The article made picturesque comparisons between the sizes of different foods, then and now, with much larger pieces being supplied in the past. Prices too came in for odious comparison. \"The difference in price in the old days and now is too great: people have said that it may be compared to the difference between the legs of mosquitoes and cows”. \n\nTea house business begins at dawn. Those in Western open between 5-6 a.m, and close about 9 p.m. nowadays. According to the article, the tea houses of 50 and more years ago started business before dawn and closed at 10 a.m., and opened again between 11-12 to 3 without doing business at night time. The interior of tea houses was very colourful. The waiters used slang to report, usually in a loud voice, the consumption of patrons for making up their bills. The customers lolled about and took things at their ease, putting their legs on their own or another stool, often dressed only in a singlet and shorts in the summer months. This sort of thing can still be seen in one of the tea houses that we will visit (the Foo Lung Tea-house, 382-386, Queen's Road, Central) and at lunch time many of the patrons bring their singbirds in cages which they hang around the walls. 50 years ago and more no women were present in the tea houses because at that time it was not the practice for them to appear in public places; and no doubt this added to the informality noted above. \n\nTea houses were also the scene of musical entertainment of a special Cantonese type known generally by the name of nam yam (✯✯) or \"Southern tunes\". Like Cantonese opera, the themes were often concerned with historical stories, handed down from one generation of entertainers to another. Blind musicians and singers often performed these roles. Until this year, this type of entertainment was given in the Tim Nam Tea House in Wing Lok Street, now under demolition. According to the former manager, the majority of the audience were boat people from the cargo boats plying in the harbour. In recent years this traditional type of entertainment has declined in popularity and both singers and audience were confined to a small group of devotees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207311, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES ON CHIUCHOW OPERA (MA)\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nMs. Helga Werle, whose article on Chiuchow (in Mandarin Chao-chou) puppets appeared in the 1973 Journal, describes two typical plays of the Chiuchow opera, and gives background information about this particular regional theatre of China. Ed.\n\nIn urbanized Hong Kong today one can see a performance of Chiuchow Opera at City Hall or Lee theatre two or three times a year, but the traditional purpose of this opera is the shen-kung hsi—a performance to celebrate the birthday of a deity. Many areas of Hong Kong have their organized Chiuchow communities centred upon the temple of a certain deity.\n\nThe Chiuchows have innumerable deities, often completely different from the Cantonese. Some of those worshipped in Hong Kong with temples erected in their names are:\n\nLi-shan lao-mu\nT'ai-i chen-ren\nLi lao-ch'un 李老君\nCh'i t'in ta-sheng\nSan-shan kuo-wang\nSan t'ai-tze lao-yeh\nMu-ch'a Chin-ch'a and No-ch'a called the three princes \"san t'ai-tze\", the three sons of Li Ching 李靖\nHan Chung-kung\n\nTo ensure the prosperity of each temple community the birthday of its deity must be properly celebrated. The most outstanding members of the community are chosen to form the prestigious festival committee, which has the duty to collect the necessary amount of money (between 50 and 100,000 HK$) to organize a worthy celebration. And what could rejoice a god's heart more than the luxury of a series of opera performances? After the dates are decided with the consent of the deity involved a large space is booked with a Government office (usually a public playground),\n\nPlates 5-12 at rear of the volume illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208081, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "104 \n\nYUEN-FONG WOON \n\nHeaven image and place it in their own tang-liu. Whoever had a son born that year would buy a lamp and hang it there. The number of lamps thus meant the number of additions to the lineage. If one's lamp had not been lit at the tang-liu during the year of his birth, he would not have the right to receive the ritual meat at his ancestral hall, \n\nThe lantern remained lit until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. On that day, each lineage lighted a whole chain of beautifully decorated firecrackers and then sent the hang-tseung (be it Kwaan-kung or the Goddess of Heaven) back to its own heung temple where it would remain until the following New Year. Whoever caught the first firecracker falling down would have all the luck for the year. So everyone struggled to catch it. Fights often occurred in the attempt. This was known as the fa-paau event (打炮). \n\nAnother event connected with the New Year Festival was the village opera. Sometimes professionals were invited to perform puppet shows; sometimes a Cantonese Opera troupe was invited and sometimes the villagers themselves performed. In all these cases, the Kwaan and the Oo organized their own performances. \n\nThe worship of the Earth God happened on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month. The Kwaan and the Oo worshipped their own Earth Gods in their own ancestral hall. \n\nIn contrast to Na-loh, Lung-tsai She was a picture of integration in its ceremonial life. There were no ancestral halls in the village for the Kwaan, the Wong or the Tang, only a community temple. Nonetheless, my informants called it their \"village ancestral hall”. This was probably because it had a lay-out similar to an ancestral hall. Like the latter, there was a huge wooden board inside the temple with the name Lung-tsai Hall (龍仔堂) written on it. Below this was an altar for putting all the sacrificial meat. Underneath was an Earth God shrine. But unlike an ancestral hall, there were no tablets at all in the temple. \n\nThe village also owned a hang-tseung of the Goddess of Heaven which was placed in a multi-surname heung temple on the outskirts of Ts'ung-long Heung. The hoi-tang ceremony was performed in the Lung-tsai Hall instead of a tang-liu. On New Year's day, the Wong, the Kwaan and the Tang each sent representatives to form a joint procession to take the Goddess back to the hall. When the \n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208398, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "106\n\nFREDRIKKE S. SCOLLARD\n\nnone of the human warmth characteristic of Shiwan sculpture. (Plate 18).\n\nWith familiarity, this very human art then becomes so charismatic that it is often referred to as loveable. The sentiment was well expressed by one of the potters of the Republican period who styled himself “Liang Zui Shi” (#45) (literally Liang drunken rock). Literally translated, Shiwan means \"rock bay\". As Liang's son explained, the style actually referred to the fact that his father was \"drunk\" with “Shi” wan.\n\nIn addition to its handicraft art, in the Qing period Fushan was also the pivot centre for Cantonese opera. Every year between autumn and summer, opera companies from all over the province would come to Fushan to hold auditions. This activity involved the whole community and especially the Shiwan potters who drew material from it for their iconography and figure sculpture, and who in their long rooftop friezes preserved and immortalized this evanescent drama which was so much a part of their lives. (Plate 15).\n\nAccording to Fushan archaeologist Mr. Chen Zhiliang (陈志亮), these ceramic rooftop friezes had two meanings. On the one hand the gala opera scenes such as Jiang Tai Gong deifying the gods (姜太公封神), and Guo Ze Yi celebrating his birthday (郭子仪庆寿), unfolding on the rooftops were auspicious symbols. On the other hand they disguised the anti-Manchu sentiments of \"overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming\" (†). In his short history of Guangdong opera, one of Mai Xiaoxia's major thrusts is to reconstruct scattered evidence in emphasizing the opera's role, and especially that of the Guangdong branch, as a disseminator of revolutionary thought. With the fall of the Ming and the advent of the Qing dynasty, heads were shaved, dress and language changed, and the civil service examination system was proclaimed open. But actors and actresses were despised as people of the lower nine grades of society and were prohibited from taking the examinations. Mai describes the opera as being the one loophole in one hundred prohibitions in which everywhere was hidden significance of national revolution. Ming costumes were preserved, except for non-Manchu enemy barbarians who were dressed in Manchu clothing; themes of Song loyalists such as the Yang Family Generals were common. One thousand pieces, Mai says, shared", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208560, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1978\n\n(Covering the period March 21, 1978 — March 26, 1979)\n\nDuring the just completed, nineteenth, year of the resuscitated Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, your Council continued to organise a regular programme of lectures, local and overseas excursions; to publish a Journal; to continue with its work on our project for photographing and cataloguing old buildings in the urban area, expand our library collection, and to endeavour to expand membership. I have pleasure in reporting on these various activities and related matters tonight.\n\nLecture Programme\n\nLectures during the year have been given by a number of different specialists working both in Hong Kong and overseas, and we were fortunate in hearing from many of them on the most recent results of their research. The programme opened on April 11 with a talk by Miss Barbara Ward, an anthropologist who has made several field trips to Hong Kong and who spoke on social and cultural aspects of traditional Cantonese opera with special reference to the importance of opera to the fisherfolk of Hong Kong. Miss Ward is currently Reader in Sociology at the Chinese University and a long-standing member of this Society. We wish her luck with her future work and hope to hear more of her field work in the future.\n\nAlso in April we heard from Professor Peter Hodge, an active member of the Heritage Society, about the aims of that Society, and the problems surrounding conservation of buildings in Hong Kong; and in May we had two talks by anthropologists—the anthropologists were well represented this last year—the first by Dr. Hugh Baker, and the second Dr. James Watson. Dr. Baker is an old friend and addresser of our Society and was visiting from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He talked about problems of conflict and intermarriage in lineage villages of the New Territories, a subject on which he is currently working. Dr. James Watson, also of the School of Oriental and African Studies and again no stranger to the Society, talked about long-term effects of emigration on the Chinese lineage community of San Tin—the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208991, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SOCIAL & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN N.T.\n\n121\n\nfew places in the world where genuine social enquiry is nearly completely free and, second, that, exactly as Dr. Wang Sung-hsing has just told us, the traditional ways of South Chinese rural life have been retained longer here than elsewhere. A simple example about marriage customs will show you what this can mean: In 1950, when I arrived here first, all rural weddings included the bride being carried to her husband's home in a red sedan chair (fa k’iu ##). I well remember the astonishment of a Mainland Chinese anthropologist friend when he saw this \"relic\" of what to him was an ancient, extinct custom of the remote past that he had never seen in his life before, and he had travelled almost all over China.\n\nAn interesting paper could be written about the paradox that the preservation of the traditional has been a direct result of colonialism. It happened in rather similar ways almost everywhere in the rural parts of the British colonial empire (and most parts were rural) but there is no time to discuss it this evening. Suffice it to say here that, contrary to popular opinion today, it was not usually the intention of the British colonial administrators (District Officers and the like) to impose alien ways and force change but to leave well alone (as long as in their eyes it was well) and interfere as little as possible. (The well-known book Myself a Mandarin by Austin Coates, once a District Officer in the New Territories, is a fairly representative account of common grass-roots administrative attitudes.) The result was that at least up to the time of the Second World War British colonialism almost everywhere tended to act in one sense rather like a refrigerator, \"freezing\" the local social and cultural systems at more or less the stage they had been when the British first arrived, and to a surprisingly large extent inhibiting changes that might otherwise have happened.\n\nThat something like this was certainly the case in the New Territories is obvious. Here, though rice is no longer grown, largely traditional villages can still be found, lineage and clan organisation still exists, formal ancestor worship in ancestral halls (ch'i t'ong: **) is still observed, and people still have a strong sense of local as well as cultural identification which is expressed in temple festivals, with Cantonese opera performances and fa p’aau (JE#) and kam chue (✯*), as well as in the continuance of old local rivalries in new political and administrative forms. Here, too, we can still talk with old people who remember the still recent more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209355, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "It is with much regret that I record that among the deaths of members this year are some of our oldest friends. One, Mr. Holmes Welch, was a founding member of the Society and Member of Council during our first four years. He came to Hong Kong with the American Consulate General after academic studies in Sinology and publication of a highly original work on Taoism: The Parting of the Way. In Hong Kong his interest in Chinese religion and philosophy, and the organization of religious institutions, continued, and he gave one of the very first lectures to the Society, published in our first Journal, “Buddhist organization in Hong Kong”. Later he left the Consulate but remained in Hong Kong to continue field research into Chinese Buddhism, working with refugee monks. In the late sixties he published several volumes on contemporary Buddhism in China. After returning to the United States he continued his sinological studies and whenever I met him at conferences on religion he always asked after the progress of the Society.\n\nAnother of our recently deceased friends was Mr. John Romer, Curator of Mammals at Hong Kong's Zoological and Botanic Gardens, Hon. Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, and Senior Pest Control Officer of the Hong Kong Government until he retired. He has contributed on several occasions to the Notes and Queries section of our Journal.\n\nIt was also with great shock that we learnt of the death, in January this year, of Barbara Ward, whose last talk to the Society was given only just over a year ago. Barbara was the first anthropologist to conduct field-work in Hong Kong. Coming out in 1950 she picked as her field a very challenging group about which very little was known from direct contact: the Cantonese Tanka, or sui seung yan “people upon the water” as they preferred to be known, that is, the floating population of fisherfolk. She showed how the traditional Chinese institutions and culture in which they participated were modified by their very way of life: ancestor worship is different when you do not live on the land, the role of father in a family is different too when he is also captain of a boat. Barbara's later studies in Hong Kong, to where she frequently returned, included Cantonese opera and its role in\n\nxii\n\nPage 12\n\n \n\nPage 12 \n\nPage 12 \n\nxii \n\nPage 12 \n\nPage 12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209945, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "182\n\nNOTES\n\n1 For historical developments of Taoism, see Ch'en, 1963; Stein, 1979: 53-82; and for a fuller discussion of Jiao-shi, see Saso, 1972: 32-83, Liu, 1974, and Keuper, 1977: 79-94.\n\n\"They hold Jiao-shi in either Cantonese or Fukien dialects and in general, Cantonese-speaking dao-shi provide Jiao-shi to Cantonese-speaking communities and Fukienese-speaking dao-shi to Fukienese-speaking communities.\n\n* The two dao-shi groups who conducted Jiao-shi at these two locations are among the few practicing Taoist groups in Hong Kong. Dao-shi who performed Jiao-shi in Fanling were Cantonese-speaking and in Cheung-chau, Fukienese-speaking.\n\n4\n\nExact instrumentation varies according to the practice of different regions; for example, Fukienese-speaking Taoist team performing at the Cheung-chau Bun Festival employs an er-hu in addition to the melodic instrument suo-na. Ch'en Guo-fu, 1963, mentions that the instrumentation of Jiao-shi music in the Jiang-nan area is quite similar to that of the Shi-fan-luo-go of that area which consists of the melodic instruments of di, xiao, sheng, er-hu, xian-zi, yun-luo, pi-pa and percussion instruments.\n\n6\n\nIt goes without saying that changes of the pitches in the original pattern will result in rhythmic changes as well; they are viewed nevertheless as pitch-variants. In rhythm-variant, the pitches remain relatively stable while rhythmic details change.\n\n• Based on the examples which I have analysed, it seems that the rhythm-variants are rarely used and even if they are used, they are often accompanied by some kind of pitch-variant (e.g.,).\n\n+\n\nOnly the vocal part is included in the transcription. The er-hu part plays the same melody an octave higher. The percussion instruments of luo and po, played by the Taoist priest himself in this case, repeat the following pattern throughout:\n\nluo ро\n\n33 XX- -X333\n\n*This structure makes it possible for the suo-na players to prolong their playing whenever necessary by repeating the middle part several more times before going on to motif k.\n\n• The similar use of instrumentation and seating arrangement, and melodic and rhythmic motives in Jiao-shi music and regional opera of the same locality are two ready examples. Chen, 1963, describes Taoists performing Kun-ju excerpts during Jiao-shi. See also Note 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210448, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "36 \n\nBARBARA E. WARD \n\nthan cubicles, were furnished with wooden beds, mosquito nets and chests for clothes and so on, while the \"cockloft” (gok tzae) upstairs was used for storage and might contain another sleeping cubicle (often used especially for the unmarried daughters of the house). The wooden partition facing the entrance in the front room downstairs was usually decorated with family photographs and carried also a small shelf with ritual paraphernalia and red paper hangings. In 1970 every house contained at least one radio (normally pouring forth a steady stream of Cantonese opera at full pitch) and an electric fan, all had electric light, most had an electric rice cooker or two, and two had refrigerators. \n\nIn 1950 no house had glazed windows, and most of the unceiled pitched tile roofs dripped muddy patches on the earthen floors on rainy days. The old houses covered a somewhat larger area than the present ones, and were taller. They were divided internally in a somewhat similar way, but were far less comfortably furnished. They were used differently, too. Women, children, and sometimes pigs, were the normal inhabitants. Pigs scavenged the paths by day, and were shut up in the pig-sties at night. Children went to school a little, played a little, helped their mothers. Women cared for pigs and babies, and cultivated sweet potatoes and occasionally ground-nuts on small patches of hillside, chopping and boiling the leaves for pig fodder. They also cut wood and grass for sale as fuel to the Boat People. They cooked, with wood and sometimes charcoal, in great flattish iron bowls set into stone-built stoves on the right-hand side of their front doors. They bought their rice and most other dry goods from one of the village shops, begged or took fish from the drying grounds, and ate (rather shamefacedly) their own sweet-potato leaves and tubers. The little money they made from the sale of fuel was augmented from the wages of their menfolk and the sale of pigs, which was also usually conducted by men. But husbands and sons came home only intermittently from their wage employment in Kowloon, stayed for a few days and then returned. The only permanent male residents on land were the senile and the very young, the shopkeepers and the old man who looked after the temple, where the school teacher also lodged during term time.14 \n\n13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "48\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nmen to gamble much later than before. In 1950 there had been one battery-operated wireless, owned by the main shopkeeper, around which the small evening population used to gather for entertainment, particularly on Mondays and Fridays when programmes of Cantonese opera were broadcast live from the Po Hing or Ko Shing theatres, and the shop therefore remained open till midnight. In 1970 nearly all the families and many individuals had their own transistor radios.\n\nOn the purse-seiners there would be a rather exhilarating passage out to the chosen fishing ground, where the boats would stop, set their kerosene pressure lamps, and wait. If it was calm and there were fish about, some people might do a little hand-lining, but usually this was a time for sleeping until awakened by an alarm clock sometime before midnight. The time of actual fishing operations obviously depended on the presence or otherwise of fish, but often there would be two main spells around midnight and just before dawn, with sleep in between. Small children on board slept through the night, but even on the mechanised junks, a ten-year-old was already a useful hand. During the fishing periods, and especially at dawn, fish-collecting boats might call around to buy the catch, and a few small-liners might also come to buy bait for their next day's activities. As dawn was breaking, the night-time fishermen would be well on their way either to market first or directly back to the anchorage. After mechanisation, most purse-seiners were able to take their own fish to the wholesale markets and still get back to their bases well before noon.\n\nMeanwhile, the land dwellers and those remaining on boats at the anchorage had slept, but they too would wake at dawn, or just before. The first purse-seiners would arrive at an already busy village. The day-time fishermen would be getting ready to go out, waiting usually to buy bait from the returning night workers. Women on shore would be drawing water, hanging clothes out to dry, rousing children from sleep. In the days before the nylon revolution, the first object of a purse-seiner was to ensure that his net was properly dried. As each pair came in, the sampans were launched, the wet net, piled high in the bows of the net-junk, was bundled into one of them, and carried off at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210935, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 285, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "268\n\nChau Li-ping's house, held on one, and possibly, two floors. Again, I did not ask the number of tables, but the place was packed. I saw no sign of entertainment in the restaurant but there was a large stage on the western waterfront. There was a capacity crowd there, and it was very difficult to squeeze through to another performance further on. The loud-speakers were good, and very loud, and the performance was a traditional Cantonese opera in high-quality costume. The show had cost the organizers $1,600 for two days. Further along, the Chung Hing Street (#26) association's stage was much duller by comparison, though traditional. The stage costumes and loud-speaker system were of poorer quality but I understood that this two-day show had cost only a little less, at $1,400.\n\nWe then visited the Chiu Chow Association ($45ƒ€) in its new (1969) premises. The place was packed, and we were on the third and top floor where there is an altar with spaces for memorial tablets. We ate again, and an auction of lanterns and other items was in progress during the forty or more minutes that we spent there. There was apparently no entertainment or stage performance, but the Wai Chiu Association (€), which is allied with this much newer association, was giving a Cantonese opera performance at the recreation ground at the Pak Tai temple. An outside altar had been set up for the Pak Tai god, at which kau pao2 were being handed in and donations registered.\n\nBesides the Chung Hing Street festivities, some of the other street associations were also celebrating the day. The Pak She Street (ii) and San Hing Street (#) Associations' premises were gaily decorated and lit up, and an altar and kau pao were seen in the San Hing Street premises. I did not have time to look closely into the Pak She office.\n\nThe Tai San Street (#) people have no premises and had no stage performances, but they had erected their usual lo tang pang (M) to which the small carrying image (17) of Hung Shing (#) from the nearby temple had been brought. This matshed is of particular interest. Inside is a red and white scroll with couplet dated Hsien Feng Z year (1859-1960) written by Cheung Yuk-tong (3FF) who, as we know from other inscrip-\n\nPage 285\n\nPage 286", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211253, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "289\n\nof illegal structures. In time, it became a fixture, and the canopy and office have long carried the markings affixed by the department and its successor from 1971, the Housing Department, that granted them tolerated status.\n\nThe principal celebration at the shrine takes place at the Mid Autumn Festival, on the 14th to the 16th days of the eighth lunar month. Entertainment is provided for both the god and his followers on this occasion, along with protective rituals carried out by Taoist priests. In Elgin Street days, a stage was erected for performance of traditional songs (WA). After the move to Peel Street, a stage was set up in the middle of the “street”, opposite No. 49, built over the steps and with space to let the public pass up and down during the three-day event. Performances of Hoklo Opera were held every year up to 1973, the year before my visit. Permission had been refused in 1972, and there was no opera that year, but in 1973 the managers ignored the prohibition, and held the performance regardless.\n\nFor some reason, the opera that year was performed by a Cantonese troupe, instead of a Hoklo one. Perhaps the 1972 interruption, and uncertainty as to whether it could be held in 1973, were responsible. In 1973 the cost was over 30,000 dollars, with the opera troupe being responsible for erecting and dismantling the mat-shed.\n\nTheir persistence in the face of official disapproval was related to traditional practice at the mother temple in To Tong Market. There, before 1949, Hoklo opera was performed every year. Moreover, the proceedings were on a much larger scale. The religious rites and operatic performances lasted between 20 to 40 days, dependent upon weather, the state of the local economy - whether it had been a good or a bad year - and the amount subscribed towards the event. Curiously, there seems to have been a local tradition that servants and workers were not to be engaged by residents over the festival period, long though it was. This, too, was said to have applied in Hong Kong, over the three days observed here.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the group could not hold opera performances", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "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": 211955, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "345\n\nlevel. The rest of the group (on the middle level) included a scene from the story of the Baishe Zhuan, the legend of the love between a snake-turned beauty and a virtuous scholar. The episode represented was that of the monk exercising his supernatural power to kill the lady, so as to free the scholar from the seduction of the demon. The other group bore the sign Wudan Shan, at once one of the famous mountains of China and a well-known place for Taoism. The top level of the group included the Jade Emperor. On the lower levels of these two groups were a temple, runners escorting a sedan chair, and the scene of the Eight Immortals Turning the Sea Upside Down.\n\n51\n\nDecorated with embroidery hangings, the Taoist altar had at its centre portraits of the Three Pure Ones and on either side the Heavenly Master and Taai-Yut Jan-Yan. Further from the centre were portraits of four minor “generals\", named “dragon\", \"tiger\", \"fire\" and \"water\". On the inner walls of the partitions hung pictures of the ten Kings of the Underworld. There was also a backroom to the altar, where the priests stayed between rites. Hanging in this room was an umbrella-shaped object with many charms trailing from it. There were, a priest told me, 28 in all, one for each of the 28 sau constellations. It was called the luo-tian, which meant, he said, the same as xian-tian, the Taoist primordial heaven.\" In the room was a temporary altar set up for the Three Pure Ones, plus a place with two red slips of paper saying \"May Tao be popular with people\" and “Good Luck in the rites\".\n\n52\n\nOn the day before the seven-day period of rites, the villagers decorated the room for their own gu in the main paang. Before each of the rooms stood a Luk Gwok flag, which was the same as the flag used in the Cantonese opera of the same name to announce the identity of a player; and a lo-gu ga; i.e. “drum and gong holder\". Hanging from the top of the opening were mechanical \"hanging puppets\". Inside near the front was a heung-on incense burner set of the siu-cheng type. The tables inside were decorated by toi-wai embroidery that hung from the edges. Hanging from the \"ceiling\" were similar pieces of embroidery known as waang-mei.\n\nSome of the villages put on displays in these rooms of relics of their illustrious ancestors. In the room for Shui Mei was the screen presented to Dang Git-Sau by relatives and friends to congratulate him on the occasion of his 61st birthday, which I mentioned previously. In the room for Wing Lung Wai was a series of scrolls presented in 1919 to celebrate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 6, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nOBITUARY: HUGH GIBB\n\nHON. AUDITORS' REPORT\n\nvii\n\nxiv\n\nxvii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT.\n\nARTICLES:\n\nJ.W. Hayes — The Old Popular Culture of China and Its Contribution to Stability in Tsuen Wan\n\nC.C. Choi Studies on Hong Kong Jiao Festivals\n\nDavid Wilmshurst The 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' Chinese Local Semi-Divine Deities\n\nKeith G. Stevens\n\nP.H. Munro-Faure China on the Brink of War\n\nFred Dagenais John Fryer's Early Years in China: First Impressions of Hong Kong and the Chinese People..\n\nSau Y. Chan The Offering to the White Tiger in Cantonese Opera\n\nLauren F. Pfister Clues to the Life and Academic Achievements of one of the Most Famous Nineteenth Century European Sinologists James Legge (AD 1815-1897).\n\nDan Waters Hong Kong Hongs with Long Histories and British Connections\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nP.H. Hase Ta Kwu Ling, Wong Pui Ling and the Kim Hau Bridges..\n\nP.H. Hase A Village War in Sham Chun\n\nP.H. Hase Sha Tau Kok in 1853\n\nKeith G. Stevens The Buddha, the Heavenly True Warrior ..\n\nKeith G. Stevens Altar Images from Hunan\n\nKeith G. Stevens T'i-shen: A Substitute for a Person.\n\nRiden Sung Chi-Pui – The Making of a Husk-grinder..\n\nH.J.W. Chetwynd-Chatwin – The British Merchantman \"Norna\"\n\nGeoffrey Roper Report on Visit to Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, Mid Autumn Festival 1992.\n\nDan Waters Sojourners in Xiamen: Notes on the RAS Visit.\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n1\n\n26\n\n44\n\n75\n\n89\n\n146\n\n169\n\n180\n\n2\n\n219\n\n257\n\n265\n\n281\n\n297\n\n298\n\n299\n\n302\n\n303\n\n307\n\n309\n\n314\n\nXX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212250, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE OFFERING TO THE WHITE TIGER\n\nIN CANTONESE OPERA\n\nSAU Y. CHAN*\n\n169\n\nIntroduction\n\nSymbolically, the White Tiger is a mystic figure in Cantonese folk religion. Though it can also bring merits to people, it is often referred to as a fierce devil. Thus the ritual known as zae bak fu (Offering to the White Tiger) should be held from time to time so that the harm caused by the White Tiger could be minimized. It is performed in a variety of Cantonese folk religious practices and a comparatively more elaborate form of the ritual has been preserved in the tradition of Cantonese opera, where it is also called zuk bak fu (capturing the White Tiger), zae toi (offering to the performing stage), po toi (breaking or initiating the performing stage), da mau (beating the cat) and occasionally as tiu coi sen (dance of the Deity of Fortune) and tiu jyn tan (dance of the Jyn Tan deity). As it has often been criticized as a superstitious act in mainland China, troupes there have, according to some informants, ceased to perform this ritual in recent decades. Nowadays this operatic form of White Tiger ritual is mainly preserved by troupes performing in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.\n\nI\n\nThe Exorcistic Function of the Offering\n\nAccording to interviews with many Cantonese operatic employees, whenever a theatre, whether temporary or permanent, is built on a piece of land that has never been used for such a purpose, the performing stage is called a sen toi (new stage) and the White Tiger ritual has to be performed for the protection of members of the troupe and the community which hires the troupe. It is believed that a tiger turns white when it reaches the age of 500. It would then make use of people's mouths to harm other people. Before the ritual is done, if one calls the name of another person, or simply talks, the words will be made use of by the White Tiger and the one who responds will be harmed. In the past, disasters such as the flooding, collapse and\n\n* Music Department, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212253, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 195, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "172\n\nritual in her paper mentioned above. Her description is as follows.\n\n+\n\n*Indeed, actors may well be especially requested to carry out similar acts of exorcism on behalf of their clients, just like priests. In 1975 at Sai Kung, in Hong Kong's New Territories, a development comprising several modern blocks of shops and high-rise flats was declared open in an official ceremony, which included the (also symbolic but hardly magical) act of cutting a red, white and blue ribbon performed by a high-ranking member of the British administration. On the preceding evening the actors already engaged to perform operas in the town in connexion with a temple festival were asked to perform The White Tiger, and they did so in exactly the same manner as in the performance of the same ritual scene two weeks before. The sole difference was that the second performance was for the purpose of exorcising evil forces from the new buildings, which stood on recently reclaimed land where people had never lived before. In other words, the players were acting here as exorcists for the community, not at all for themselves: like priests.\" (Ward 1979:32)\n\nActors and Characters in the Offering Ritual\n\nIn Cantonese opera, the White Tiger ritual requires only two actors who play the Deity of Fortune and the White Tiger respectively. In Cantonese folk religion, there are five deities which are believed to bring fortune to people. The one portrayed in the White Tiger ritual is known as Jyn Tan (literally \"abstruse altar\") whose real name is Ziu Gung-ming and who is thus often called Ziu gung jyn sey27Ah (supreme commander Ziu). To distinguish him from the other deities of fortune, Jyn Tan is often referred to as the \"military\" Deity of Fortune.\n\nAccording to legends, Jyn Tan has a black face and black beard. He wears an iron helmet, rides on a black tiger and carries an iron staff and a number of other magic weapons. Besides bringing people fortune, Jyn Tan is believed to uphold justice and eliminate disasters.\n\nThe origin of the White Tiger ritual is still unclear though the\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212256, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "175\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\n(to make a posture and show one's face), the actor goes through a series of stylised stage movements known as tiu dai ga (literally \"to dance the grand posture\") which is often used in Cantonese opera at battle scenes when a general appears onstage.\n\n5.\n\nWith another series of gestures and stage movements in a style similar to mime, the Deity of Fortune goes indoors, falls asleep, wakes up and discovers that his tiger has gone. The Deity goes out and searches for the tiger but cannot find it. He then climbs up and stands on the top of the wooden table, symbolizing that the Deity is now on the top of a mountain and waits for the tiger to appear. One of the backstage workers often hides under the table to keep the structure steady and firm.\n\n6.\n\nThe White Tiger actor enters the stage from stage right. Sometimes an actor might choose to enter with his back turned towards the audience (if there are any) so that the White Tiger's magical power would not hurt them.\n\nThe White Tiger crawls towards the piece of pork, grabs it and puts it through the mouth of the tiger mask. To symbolize the consumption of the pork, the actor throws it beneath the edge of the stage.\n\nThe Deity of Fortune jumps down from the table and fights with the White Tiger. After some struggle, the Deity surmounts the tiger and sits on its back. A backstage worker then goes onstage and hands a chain to the Deity who then fits it to the tiger's mouth.\n\n7. After the capture of the White Tiger, the Deity of Fortune holds the ends of the chain in his left hand and raises the wooden staff upright with his right hand. In order not to harm the troupe members backstage, the two actors keep facing the audience. With a backstage worker pulling its tail, the White Tiger and Deity of Fortune step backward towards the Tiger Gate at stage left. Upon their arrival at the gate, one of the workers helps the two actors to remove the mask, hat and beard; another worker assists in the cleaning of the painted face with a thin pile of joss papers. Sometimes a towel is used instead. Interviews with some experienced actors reveal that the tradition prescribes that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212257, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "176\n\n8.\n\ntwo actors resume their normal human identity at the conclusion of the ritual before they can step into the backstage.\n\nAt this moment, troupe members who stay onstage cry out loudly to signal the removal of the taboo which prohibits the opening of mouths. Joss papers are then burned as offerings to the spirits and deities. The whole White Tiger ritual lasts approximately from about three to five minutes.\n\nConclusion\n\nAs pointed out by both Tanaka Issei and Barbara E. Ward, there is an inseparable relationship between Chinese opera and religious rituals. The Offering to the White Tiger aptly illustrates how the performing conventions of Chinese opera are incorporated into the staging of an exorcistic act. On the other hand, as many scholars believe that Chinese opera grew out of religious roots, we might also say that the former adopted the conventions of the latter for dramatic expression.\n\nWhat is discussed in the present article relates to the White Tiger ritual and describes only some of the taboos and religious practices which are preserved in the tradition of Cantonese opera. As the present writer has pointed out in his other articles, other taboos and religious practices require troupe members to pay respect to the local deities upon their arrival at the place where they are hired to perform. Troupe members should also offer incense to the shrines of the profession's patron deities backstage, and place joss sticks at the edge of the frontstage to appease the spirits, ghosts and deities which will then protect them from falling off the stage. On the second day of the performance series, before the evening's play starts, joss papers should be burnt, as an offering to troupe members who have died. Moreover, as in many other Chinese regional operatic genres, whenever a troupe first arrives at a performing hall, even if it does not contain a \"new stage,\" the principal comic role actor has to write the Chinese characters dai ger (big fortune) on the wooden or bamboo pillar closest to the Tiger Gate at stage right, with a brush and using a type of red pigment made from a combination of oil and cinnabar, before the other actors can start their make-up. Such a ritual is known as hoi ber (to open a brush'').\n\nA traditional taboo prescribes that the strokes in the radicle hau ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212259, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "178\n\nAs a major form of entertainment business, a troupe has to reinforce a set of management rules, probably through trial and error, accumulation and empirical experiments, to maintain harmony among its members and keep the theatre in good conditions. But having to perform day after day and year after year in temporary structures, which could be situated in an isolated area miles away from local residences, and having to spend so much time travelling from village to village, it is understandable that troupe members might easily incline towards religion and in this way \"dress\" their empirical rules.\n\nFunctionally, the taboo of restricting the activities of the troupe employees in the vicinity of the \"new stage\" will help to ensure the health and safety of the employees as the firecrackers and joss sticks, and the burning of the mock money, form a kind of fumigation process which cleans the air and scares away snakes and other harmful rodents which might infest a plot of uncultivated land. The practice of writing an \"open mouth\" also serves to remind the employees of the importance of singing and speaking well in their performances.\n\nIt has long been the traditional aesthetics of Cantonese opera that a performance is evaluated first in its sing (sound), then in the sik (appearance) and last in its ngae (art and technique). The taboos related to the opening and shutting of mouths also reflect this consciousness of the primary importance of \"oral activities\".\n\nAs fire has been and still is a major threat to the temporary theatres, Cantonese operatic employees worship the deity Wa Gwong (literally \"bright and brilliant\"), who is also the deity of fire, as the profession's major patron deity. Undoubtedly, paying respect to this deity reminds the troupe members of their major threat.\n\nSimilarly, the reasons for placing joss sticks at the edge of the front stage are twofold. Firstly, the action itself arouses the actor's awareness of the danger of falling down. Secondly, the lit joss sticks placed there serve as a marker for the stage edge, so as to facilitate the actor's keeping away from it.\n\nThe practical functions of the taboos and religious practices which have been adopted by Cantonese opera employees might well suggest that such taboos and practices were originally products of repeated empirical trials, which have gradually been accumulated in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214198, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "19\n\neration to be found in wine. Then there is Journey to the West, which has been translated into English, where the Monkey King goes in search of immortality. We have Chinese opera and puppets (Liu, 1995:43-58). A great deal of mirth is to be found at Hong Kong festivals, whether it be at the Cheung Chau Bun Festival or the festival of the Hakka Boy God, Tam Kung. Then again, close friends of a bridegroom get a great deal of enjoyment from making fun of him on his wedding night.\n\nThere is also considerable humour (funniness) in the countless everyday expressions of 'old one-hundred names' (the man in the street). Such sayings which can be described as 'words that work,' are as common in China as chopsticks. For example, inserting money in a car-parking meter is known as 'feeding the hungry tiger,' and, when one is 'booked,' the 'ticket' placed under the windscreen wiper of one's car by a traffic warden, is called naau yuk kon (4), which is slang meaning a thin slice of Chinese dried, sweet beef. There is also a great deal of humour in the vocabularies of merchants and con men, nicknames and clever allusions to everyday objects and curses (Bolton, 1997:299). To scold someone is also an art which onlookers often treat as entertainment. The art is for the person to stand there and give the other person face and let him or her have their say. Then, after remaining quiet, the other person steps in and lets the other party have it!\n\nThe Chinese language abounds with expressions, many commonly used, which make you smile on the outside and laugh within. There are amusing adages such as:\n\n(a) Melon fields, under the pear tree.\n\n(Cantonese know, when this is said it means: don't bend down in a melon field or adjust your hat under a pear tree, or people may think you are stealing melons or pears. Thus, it implies, do not arouse suspicion.)\n\n(b) When a pretty woman marries an ugly man it is like sticking fresh flowers behind the ears of a donkey.\n\n(c) Local ginger is not hot.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 300, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "267\n\ntroops in quarantine. These were built from a framework of bamboo poles lashed together, with walls and roofs of palm leaves and woven rush mats. Similar structures can still be seen today on vacant lots erected at times of Chinese festivals for Cantonese opera performances. The only difference is that today zinc sheeting is used instead of matting. The matsheds were not popular with the troops as mosquitos and other insect life infested the sheds. During typhoons or heavy rains the sheds were liable to collapse and leave the troops exposed to the weather. The building of proper barracks was therefore imperative for the health of the troops.\n\nThe first permanent buildings at Gun Club Hill were constructed in 1903-4 for infantry but were soon afterwards occupied by the Asiatic Artillery which was originally made up of Sikh and Punjabi Mussulman Companies known as Gun Lascars. They became the Hong Kong Asiatic Artillery in 1891 and the Hong Kong-Singapore Battalion Royal Artillery in 1898. In 1905 four companies were housed in the newly completed barrack blocks flanking the parade ground. According to PRO records construction was \"brick and granite and best Manilla Hardwood; outer walls of Amoy Brick and inner walls of Canton Brick.\" By 1909 other buildings had been built and a layout of the barracks at this time shows an Infants' School, Followers' Hut, Sikh/Mohammedan Cookhouse, NCOs' Quarters, Guard House, Sergeants' Mess, Officers' Mess, and a small Medical Centre.\n\nMost of these buildings have now been replaced with more modern buildings, but two of the original barrack blocks facing the Parade Ground still exist, together with the Medical Centre and the Officers' Mess although somewhat changed in appearance. Photographic evidence in the Public Records Office shows that the buildings were brick-built two-storey colonial style blocks with pitched Chinese tiled roofs and balustraded 'Venetian' verandahs. The Officers' Mess seems to have undergone an external facelift in the 1930s with an annex added on to the south elevation facing the Chatham Road entrance. The barrack blocks and Medical Centre were remodelled and altered in the 1960s but retain much of their original colonial style.\n\nThe Medical Centre, formerly the Soldiers' Canteen, numbered Block 11, is a single storey rectangular white painted brick-built block with an eight bay front verandah with a flight of steps at each end\n\nPage 300\n\nPage 301", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214497, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 355, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "324\n\nthey danced they conspicuously imbibed large quantities of beer and Chinese spirit wines and were showered with water. Although some of the drink was spat out, the dancers' actions became increasingly drunken, with some entering a short-lived trance-like state. After about thirty minutes the dancing concluded with the eating of lettuce, the presentation of _lassie_ and the lighting of a string of firecrackers. The group then set off by van for other markets and fish trading establishments, with the final dance of the morning outside the \"Red Market\" due to be the most drunken of all.\n\nFor much of our knowledge of the Dance Festival, in particular the history and legend, we are indebted to Mrs. Ana Brito, an anthropologist from the Macau Maritime Museum, who as part of her studies on the Festival had interviewed a number of the dancers the year before. Copies of her notes in English, generously supplied to us by Mrs. Brito, show that the Festival was brought to Macau some decades ago from Sek Kei District in nearby Zhongshan County. According to a version of the legend that gave rise to the Drunken Dragon Dance, a certain village had been plagued by a terrible epidemic. In despair the villagers held a procession in Buddha's honour. As the procession was winding its way through the village a dragon in the guise of an enormous serpent arose out of the river. The serpent was killed, hacked into pieces and thrown back into the river, which turned blood red. The villagers drank the water and were miraculously cured.(1)&(2)\n\nLeaving the Dragon to make its way through the Inner Harbour area we left for Coloane Village, where festivities were centred on the Tam Gong Temple on the waterfront. This was heavily decorated and had all the trappings and atmosphere of a well-attended Chinese festival. There were many worshippers, as well as beggars, and clouds of smoke from joss sticks and fireworks. We played our part with Dr Patrick Hase lighting the RAS HK string of firecrackers. Nearby a large matshed had been erected where stars from the Cantonese opera world were soon due to perform.\n\nTowards noon the Tam Gong Festival procession gathered in the Rua da Cordoaria, off the village square, and then made its way through the village to the Temple. This procession was a less spectacular affair than the Tam Gong processions held in Ah Kung Ngam Village, Shaukiwan, Hong Kong, but was equally attractive within its own", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214709, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "88\n\naltered work for the railway had not been held up, as so often happens with New Territories' projects similar to this. This was in spite of the protracted discussions that had taken place regarding the removal of the graves at Pat Heung. By comparison a dispute between the Government and Ping Shan villagers, in the northeast of the New Territories, about the moving of an agnate's grave, has been going on for several years. This has resulted in the closure of some buildings along the Ping Shan Heritage Trail by the Tang Clan (Cheung; 1999, 570). At the time of writing they are still closed.\n\nAfter bussing the large group back to Sheung Tsuen a further ten-minute ceremony was held by the Taoist priests in the Kwan Yin Ancient Temple, opposite the matshed (see Plate 6). Again there was a repeat of chanting, bowing and the sprinkling of rice wine. This was to pay respects to the gods in the temple and was not really a formal part of the tun fu ceremony.\n\nWhether it is a wedding, a funeral or celebrating the completion of the refurbishment of an ancestral hall, in Chinese culture food usually plays an important part. Now, after the tun fu ceremony was over, it was time to feast and what and how people eat can reflect complex social messages. The banquet consisted of a basin meal. For some this was in the open and for others under cover, close to the temple. Before the meal there were speeches in Cantonese from both government officials and village representatives. These were followed by Cantonese opera. Only about 20 women (some of whom sit on village committees) were present among the over 1,000 people who sat down for the basin meal which included the crisp, golden-brown roast pigs which had been offered up to, and was food fit for, the gods. After this latter ritual the pork had taken on magical qualities. Later, by eating it, we the living were able to fortify our chi (prank or life-force) (Waters; 1996, 125) (Leung; 1992, 27). As is the custom in the New Territories on such occasions, all ‘ate from the common pot'. This was placed in the centre of each circular, Chinese table (Watson; 1987, 389). Eating together like this is intended to imply that all diners co-operate and depend on and trust one another. A basin meal is a great leveller. But it is not just how you eat. It is also what you eat. Consequently, many of the layers (frequently totalling nine which is a propitious number) of food in the 'common pot', in addition to the pork previously mentioned, were auspicious. For example faat choi, ‘sea moss' (or, as it is commonly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215576, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 353, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "303\n\ngenerals and an admiral, he must have had a very patriotic, British father.\n\nAs a British subject, Charlie Stilwell was interned in Stanley prison camp during the Second World War. A great story-teller he liked to recount how a police superintendent escaped. In reprisal, the entire police contingent at Stanley was incarcerated in Stanley Prison proper. Some had brought musical instruments from the police band into camp. As they were marched away to prison, Thirlwell recounted, the musicians struck up the well known, stirring march, Colonel Bogey, and everyone in camp joined in singing: 'And the same to you!' As a result, the Japanese felt they were losing control of the situation and fired their revolvers into the air (Sinclair; 1997, 32).\n\nAfter the war, besides working as a lighthouse keeper, Thirlwell led an active life when on shore leave. This included community service. Thirlwell had close connections with the Chaiwan fisher folk and boat people and his wife, in fact, was one of them.\n\n'He was a nice, cheerful man,' Dr James Hayes recalled, ‘and yes, he sang very well...' (Hayes; 1999).\n\nHe not infrequently sang stylised, Cantonese opera, with correct tones. He even sang lusty, boat-people songs which were beyond the capabilities of most native Cantonese. This surprised many who did not know his background. Charlie's appearance was much like a European. In reality, he was a Hong Kong born and bred Eurasian and he started learning Cantonese at his mother's breast. Perhaps surprisingly, he spoke English with a bit of a North Country English accent.\n\nHKBRAS member Louis Thomas agreed with Hayes: 'Yes, he was a jolly man, humorous, and one of those people who seemed to know everyone. He was well thought of. He enjoyed a glass of beer.'\n\nThomas said that at one stage his Round Table in Wanchai linked up with a boat people association at Chaiwan to provide assistance. Thirlwell was one of their leading members. He did a great deal of much needed community service.\n\nDeservedly, for his work as a loyal lighthouse keeper (and later in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215707, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 6, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "參觀活動\n\n除講座外,本會舉辦之本地及海外參觀活動,亦備受大眾讚賞。此等由專家策劃之遊訪,行程與一般旅遊大不相同。近期由本會安排之海外旅遊,包括不丹、西安、吳哥窟及胡志明市等。本地之參觀活動,多具民間色彩,如橫瀾島燈塔、廈村市、后海灣及粵劇後台風光等。此外,香港之戰時遺蹟、舊區遺痕、新界古物,以至博物館之展覽等,均在遊訪之列。此等活動,多由資深學者或導賞人士帶領講解。欲知最新參觀活動,請參閱本會網址www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.\n\nVisits\n\nIn addition to frequent talks, the RAS is famous for its carefully researched visits to places off the beaten track. Recent overseas trips around the region were to Bhutan, Xian and Angkor Wat and Saigon. Closer to home, members enjoyed visits to Waglan Lighthouse, Ha Tsuen market town, Deep Bay and backstage at a Cantonese Opera. Several visits to the remains of war time batteries and forts in Hong Kong have been arranged, as well as walks around the villages and city back-streets of Hong Kong and guided tours of interesting museum exhibitions. These visits are all led by experts who have made a special study of the subject matter. Details of upcoming visits can be found on our web-site www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215742, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 41, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Date 2002\n\nApril 13\n\nMay 4\n\nMay 18\n\nJune 1\n\nAugust 10\n\nAugust 31\n\nNovember 23\n\n2003 January 25\n\nMarch 1\n\nLocal Visits\n\nHa Tsuen Market Town, Deep Bay, led by Dr Patrick H. Hase (see also Lecture Programme)\n\n\"Waglan Island Lighthouse, led by Dr Dan Waters & Tim Ko (see also Lecture Programme)\n\nPak Sha O in Sai Kung Country Park, led by May Holdsworth & Dr Patrick H. Hase\n\nHa Tsuen Market Town, Deep Bay, led by Dr Patrick H. Hase (Repeat Visit)\n\nFing Ping Shan Museum, to visit the Da Qin – An Imperial Christian Site of the Tang Dynasty Exhibition led by Dr Martin Palmer (see also Lecture Programme)\n\nRoman Catholic Cathedral and Archives, led by Anna Kwong & Fr Louis Ha\n\nVisit to Ming Chi Sing Cantonese Opera Troupe: Backstage Visit, \"The Sweet General\", led by Stella Ma (see also Lecture Programme)\n\nDevil's Peak Fort, led by Lawrence Lai, assisted by Tim Ko (see also Lecture Programme)\n\nHong Kong Museum of History, to visit the \"War and Peace: Treasures of the Qin and Han Dynasties\" Exhibition, led by Dr Joseph Ting\n\nOverseas Visits\n\nDate 2002\n\nMarch 28-April 2\n\nXi'an, led by Dr Joseph Ting\n\nSeptember 28-October 1\n\nAngkor Wat, Cambodia & Saigon, Vietnam, led by Dr Patrick H. Hase\n\n2003 January 30-February 13\n\nEastern Bhutan, led by Dr Brian Shaw\n\nxxxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]