[ { "id": 204852, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "130\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ntoday. This information negates the subsequent statement \"The only specifically recorded Lamqua portrait in an American collection is that of Dr. Peter Parker\n\n+\n\n8\n\nA bibliography omitting nearly 50% of the last published bibliography will startle any serious scholar. It may be possible to write about Chinnery without consulting E. W. Bovil's articles in Notes and Queries and about the Opium War without using Maurice Collis' Foreign Mud with its Chinnery illustrations, but it is not recommended practice. W. C. Hunter, partner in Russell & Co., is quoted in the text, but both of his books The Fan-Kwae in Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 and Bits of Old China with its chapter on Chinnery, are omitted from the list. Any modern researcher will want to check the Jardine-Matheson papers in Cambridge, England. They are not mentioned here. There is a list of plates, but no general index.\n\nIn the China section of photographs, there are 57 oils, water-colors, and drawings captioned as by Chinnery, also 10 so-called \"School of Chinnery\", 28 port scenes, all called \"School\", and 2 miscellaneous. Authentication of any artist's work, particularly if unsigned, is a matter of opinion. When in doubt, it is far sounder to \"attribute\" and the best museums follow this custom. In recent months, a world expert on Chinnery and your reviewer considered together these 57 pictures and questioned or denied 21 of them, a substantial percentage.\n\n+ •\n\nIn 1953 the statement was made, and remains unchallenged, it is obvious that the Hong Kong Chinnery is the only portrait of Howqua that may be said to have been painted in a truly accomplished Western manner such as one would expect from the brush of Chinnery. The other portraits of Howqua, in spite of their long-standing attribution to Chinnery, almost without exception speak of Western art with a strong Cantonese accent\". There is no photograph of the Chinnery portrait of Howqua in Hong Kong in this book a significant omission. However, there are three portraits of Howqua11- all obviously by Chinese\n\n* Page 39.\n\n9 Arts Council Catalogue 1957.\n\n10 Albert Ten Eyck Gardner-The Art Quarterly, Winter 1953\n\n11 Plate 39 top and bottom, Plate 40 top.\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206656, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "198\n\nChinese Woodcuts\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nby Max Loehr (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 1.\n\nColumbia University, 1971.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nUNUSUAL TREES IN HONG KONG: THE CANTON WATER PINE\n\nIf you leave Kowloon and proceed along the Tai Po Road, shortly after passing the Hong Lok Yuen orchard, you will come to an open area with villages and flower farms by the roadside and with hills in the background bounding the valley.\n\nNear milestone 184 on your left is a large Cantonese village, Tai Hang, and in this village at the back of Fei Sha Wai, there are two fascinating but often overlooked trees standing at no great distance from the road. These are Chinese Deciduous Cypress, or Canton Water Pine as it is sometimes known. The scientific name is Glyptostrobus pensilis. Belonging to the family Taxodiaceae, Glyptostrobus is a genus which contains only the single species pensilis. Its distribution is confined to the Provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in South China, and mature specimens are very uncommon in Hong Kong.\n\nThe tree may be recognised by its light-brown, fibrous bark, and its foliage which demonstrates two types of leaves: overlapping scales on fruiting twigs and thin needles on the sterile twigs, both of which are a delicate green in spring, turning brown and falling in autumn. The long-stalked cones are pear-shaped and about one and a half inches long.\n\nThese two old specimens are said to have been planted by one of the ancestors of the village. On asking about the possible age of these two trees, the Village Representative Mr. Man Tse-leung said that they had been planted by one of his ancestors in the Ming Dynasty with seedlings from Law Fu Shan, Canton from where the Man family came some 400 years ago. The Village Representative's account of the origin and age of these two ancients is not without precedent. It is a world-wide practice for an emigrant to take something representative of his old country with him to his new home, in order to give later generations something from his country of origin. Mr. Man's ancestor apparently did just such a thing.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n31\n\n371,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong in that year (1971 Census). All \"official\" Teochiu estimates of the total Teochiu population suggest that the census figure is considerably too low. Various Teochiu associations have estimated that there are as many as one million Teochiu (Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce, 1971:105; Chiu Chow Cultural and Educational Association, 1974:125). If this is an accurate estimate, then between 20 to 25% of the total population is Teochiu. This figure is most probably, however, an overestimate and the true figure probably lies somewhere between the government figure and the Teochiu estimate. Whatever the actual number of Teochiu, they are the second largest ethnic group in Hong Kong, Cantonese being the largest.\n\nIt is difficult to outline the pre-World War II history of Teochiu in Hong Kong in that there are few written sources aside from brief statements in Teochiu publications. The major source of information is thus the recollections of older Teochiu who lived in Hong Kong prior to World War II. It is clear that the largest portion of Teochiu lived and worked in Nam Pak Hong (南沛行 at #5), a triangular area of several blocks in what is now Western District. This area was the location of the earliest import-export trading firms after the establishment of the Colony in 1842. Many of these firms were owned by Teochiu and although there appear to be no records indicating the extent of Teochiu control in the early entrepôt trade, Teochiu informants suggest that many of the firms in Nam Pak Hong were Teochiu.\n\nThe success of these early firms, some of which are still in existence, is in large part due to what must have been a very rapid development of commercial ties with Teochiu businessmen in Thailand, other areas in Southeast Asia and Swatow.1 It can be assumed that many of the Teochiu and perhaps a majority, who came to Hong Kong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did so in order to participate in and to extend the regional Teochiu commercial networks. A Teochiu publication discusses the biography of an important Teochiu businessman who came to Hong Kong in 1842. This man had emigrated from his home district in\n\n1 Swatow was the second largest town in Teochiu in the 1800s and not very important commercially, but quickly became the centre of commercial and industrial development after it was opened as a treaty port in 1858. It later became the administrative centre for Teochiu and is still the administrative centre today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208776, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nHe named the new temple the 'Pu To' (Po Tor in Cantonese) in the East, meaning Kwangtung. There is a much older 'Pu To in the South' at Amoy in the Fukien province.* The original 'Pu To' is the famous island of that name off the Chekiang coast. It is covered with temples and is one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism.†\n\nApart from seeing the relics associated with its founder and visiting his grave and those of later abbots, the purpose of our visit is to walk round the premises and to note the wealth of presentation boards (§§§) to be found on them. These combined examples of calligraphy and Buddhist sentiment are cut on wood and mostly painted in gold characters on a red ground. Many are from the brush of the several abbots, especially the founder who clearly took a delight in naming and commemorating the different buildings and gateways.\n\nThe Monastery occupies a considerable area and its grounds were previously much larger, taking in a wooded area in front which has since been resumed by the Government for development. There has been considerable re-building and much new building, but overall the influence of the founder is still plainly evident.\n\nChinese calligraphy has always been a highly—indeed perhaps the most—respected and prized art form. Dun J. Li in his The Essence of Chinese Civilization (New York, Van Nostrand Co., 1967) writes (p. 414):\n\nOf all the talents the Chinese emphasized, none was more important than the literary talent. Such emphasis was evidenced by the fact that prior to the modern period the Chinese produced more books than the rest of the world combined. As for fine arts, the art form which the Chinese cherished most was calligraphy, and the works of such great masters as Wang Hsi-chih (321-379), Liu Kung-ch'üan (d.A.D. 865), and Chao Meng-t'iao (d.A.D. 1322) were imitated throughout history.\n\nHe then gives biographies of several famous calligraphers, taken from the standard dynastic histories, which illustrate this esteem. Emperor Mu-tsung of T'ang (821-824) was not considered an able, enlightened ruler.\n\n* P. W. Pitcher, In and About Amoy (Shanghai and Foochow, The Methodist Publishing House in China, 1909) p. 78 and illustration at p. 161. † See the extensive account in Reginald Fleming Johnston, Buddhist China (London, John Murray, 1913) pp. 259-389.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209710, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 367, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n345\n\nseem to arise from an invincible conviction of the superiority of some western ways, of the inferiority of some Chinese practices, and of the inevitability and desirability of a general westernisation of China in at least religion, and some social customs. Lethbridge rightly draws attention to these remarks in his short but clear introductions. At the same time, it is abundantly clear from all these books that these remarks arise only from routine acceptance by the writers of the common assumptions of their time and class. Bredon's Peking, indeed, makes it abundantly clear that some of these beliefs, and particularly the belief that traditional religious practices were \"superstitious\", were also held by many Chinese at this time, particularly by the new revolutionary groups. In most of their work these western writers were recording facts, from a depth of personal acquaintance with the Chinese that few modern writers can even begin to emulate. What is more, the China these writers knew was the traditional, pre-modern society of the late Ch'ing: the society that so many modern scholars labour so hard to comprehend was lived and breathed by them.\n\nFor me at least, my first introduction to Dyer Ball's Things Chinese has led to a very real admiration for a work which is still of the greatest value as a prime source for traditional China. Similarly, I have never been to Peking, but Bredon's Peking is so well and clearly written that the later Imperial capital now seems very real and vivid to me. Again, there can be little doubt that Bredon and Mitrophanow's The Moon Year represents, for all time, the fullest, clearest, and most sympathetic treatment of northern religious practices: these differ markedly from those in the Cantonese speaking parts of China. Reading The Moon Year leads me to regret that no writer of similar stature was moved to record southern ritual practices at the same date.\n\nIt would be invidious to attempt to judge between these works. Peking and The Moon Year are clearly classics which will stand for all time as the best statement obtainable of a vanished world, but Things Chinese will almost certainly be the most consulted of the three, at least from my bookshelves. This is for two reasons. First is Dyer Ball's clarity, lack of bias, common sense and accuracy: his articles spell out well the traditional attitudes of the Hong Kong area. His comments are, indeed, a better insight into traditional practices than almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "60\n\n(f) Finally, in entering business or commerce, a man will frequently assume yet another name, “pit tsz” (筆子), for purposes of business only.\n\n(g) Apart from the milk name, proper name and school name, a girl will at marriage assume her husband's clan name in front of her own, e.g. HO Fung Ling (何鳳玲), on marrying TANG Man Lin (鄧文連), becomes TANG HO Fung Ling (鄧何鳳玲).\n\n(h) The reluctance of married women to reveal their full maiden name often leads them to leave off their final name and instead to add the suffix \"shi” (氏).\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The notes were later amended and in this amended form were put on a file (Ref1/477/54) which is now in the Public Records Office. The notes as given here represent the original form, with footnotes, introduction and minor amendments by the author (Hon. Ed.).\n\n* Wills, of whatever sort, were, whatever the legal position, very rare among New Territories villagers. I remember only one, of a wealthy Cantonese landowner.\n\n* I met such a case in Tai Po where the wife, fortunately, did not contest the husband's claim that she was not a virgin.\n\n* I must have come across up to half a dozen cases of sam p'o tsai, including two or three disputes where the girl refused to marry her intended groom. The groom's family did not attempt to force marriage, but were concerned about a formal separation. The groom's family had of course for some time received the free use of the girl's services as a household worker, and so could not validly demand compensation from the girl's natural parents. A sam p'o tsai is quite different to a mui tsai who was to all intents and purposes a slave girl. (Mui tsai were banned in Hong Kong before World War II.)\n\n* Up till the 1950's, huet chong graves were normally left untouched for 5 years, this being the period needed for bodies to decompose completely. But, from the 1950's onwards, bodies took longer to decompose, and 7 years is now the standard time. I know this, because from 1958-60 I was in the Urban Services Department in charge of disposal of the dead. I was also in the Urban Services Department from 1968-71, when again I was connected with this aspect. In those days, the coffin section at Wo Hop Shek cemetery used to be cleared every 5 years, but there were so many unfit graves that this period was extended to 7 years. The need for the longer period arose apparently from the wider use of antibiotics and other drugs which seem to have the effect of preserving bodies and which were then coming into much greater use.\n\nSee in general on Burial Customs the author's Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong, journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 1, 1960, pp 115-124.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210290, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "240\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nburnt and vegetarian food was offered by many worshippers there.\n\nAt the entrance of the Tao Ch'ang, 4 notices stated: \"The water and land cross-over is at this Tao Ch'ang ()\" separating the Tao Ch'ang area from the other areas. Within the area, there were 39 worshipping objects. There were three distinct areas to the Tao Ch'ang: i) On one side of the entrance, there were the territorial gods of the human world, and, on the other side of the entrance, there was a god who holds the key to the door between earth and hell (two of his runners were with him). ii) In the main hall, there were tablets of different spirits who were supposed to come from the ten courts of the underworld, and tablets of the Taoist Saints. Two Generals were put in the centre of the hall to watch over the spirits. iii) At the back of the area, was the altar (or Hoza in Japanese) where the priests practised their rituals under the images of the 3 Buddhas and the Goddess of Mercy. Compared with the typical Buddhist arrangement for rituals for appeasing the dead, the Tao Ch'ang area of the Kobe Chinese 'Yue Lan' was more inclusive and closer to Chinese folk tradition, though the priests were all Buddhists.\n\n32\n\nThere were 7 types of objects worshipped (Table in the Appendix):\n\ni) Those represented by incense bowls and offerings only.\n\nii) Paper-made figures.\n\niii) Paper-made lanterns.\n\niv) Porcelain statues.\n\nv) Paper-made houses.\n\nvi) Paper-made tablets.\n\nvii) Paintings.\n\nNot all worshippers knew the names and roles of all the objects worshipped. During the festival, worshippers presented incense sticks to all the objects of worship in the festival area. However, besides the Ming-che and the \"Ancestral Hall\", the two runners attracted the most attention from the worshippers. Worshippers bribed them with bundles of paper money. One Cantonese lady of about 75 years old explained that by doing so, it was hoped that the runners \"would take care of our ancestors whose spirits are com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210292, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 263, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "242\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nnese News (MA###); reports about the Ghost Festival in Kobe no longer emphasised the role of the Hokkienese. Thus, the secondary identification (identity of being a Chinese and/or of being a resident in Kobe) instead of the primary identification (identity of blood relation and/or of origins) became the central idea of the Festival. Thus the Festival is more inclusive now.\" The Festival, though including all elements of the secular world as well as the sacred world, stressed only ancestor-worship because only ancestor worship supercedes the boundaries of all social groupings and categories, eases the tension of group competition among the Chinese, and connects all social groupings and categories into one worshipping group which is based primarily on the relationship of the worshippers with Kobe, and secondarily on their territorial identity as Chinese.\n\nNOTES:\n\nThe original meaning of 'Yue Lan' is \"hanging upside down” (of the hungry ghost in Hell). However, during the festival, participants used terms like: Obon (Mah, Japanese term for the festival), Chung Yuan (†, middle of the year, which is a term mainly used by the taoists for the same event), and/or Kuai Chie (m, ghost festival). Some Cantonese even called it a Chiao (M) (simply meaning a festival dedicated to the Gods). Moreover, the documents used during the festival spoke of it as 'Pu Tu' (#), meaning general offering and place where spirits can cross over to this world, e.g. the papers that hung over the entrance of the Tao Ch'ang (entrance A) wrote \"The water and earth Pu Tu is held in this Tao Ch'ang' (*), at the entrance B, it was written 'the Great Occasion of Pu Tu' (E), the invitation card wrote \"the great meeting of Pu Tu' (#★#), and the same term was also used in the P'ang.\n\n1 See Kobe Kakyou Ho (#), no. 71, 1976.3.10. In 1974, there were 46944 Chinese in Japan. 8585 of them lived in Hyogo Prefecture of which 7071 were concentrated in Kobe city. The distribution of the origins of the Chinese in Hyogo Prefecture was as follow: Taiwan (41%), Cantonese (21%), Hokkien (11%), Kiangsu (11%), Shantong (5%), Chekiang (4%), others (7%).\n\nSee plan at the Appendix to this paper, and Plate 15.\n\nPlate 16.\n\n3 Plates 17, 18, 19.\n\n6\n\nSometimes informants called the paper-made houses \"Cho' () without distinguishing between the house for the 'Newly Dead', and that for the gods. Here, Ming-che is used for the house of the \"Newly Dead', and Cho for that of the gods.\n\n7 Plate 20.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211310, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "worlds’ at sea. Each was as specifically demarcated by its own rhythms, customs, and dialects as its counterpart on the shore and so different were the language, social customs, and sailing patterns of the pirates in Chekiang and Fukien from those of Kwangtung that, in the end, it seemed logical to divide the topic and focus my endeavors solely upon piracy within “the Cantonese Water World”. To what was its spectacular growth of piracy owing? Can it be attributed to ecological or environmental factors?\n\nThe growth of piracy in the Cantonese water world\n\nCertainly, the geography of the Sino-Vietnamese border was ideal for piracy. The region’s plethora of wide, navigable rivers ensured that most of its commerce would be conducted by boat while its long broken coast with its myriad of coves and bays, held out plenty of shelter to any would-be pirate.\n\nIn terms of political geography the region was also well-suited to piracy, for the Sino-Vietnamese border was a region to which the arm of the law scarcely reached. The Chinese government’s writ of authority gradually expired in proportion to the distance one moved west along the coast from Canton to Vietnam while that of the Vietnamese expired as one moved east along the coast from Hue and Hanoi, and the authority of both faded quickly as one moved seaward from the shore. Adding to the administrative complexity was the fact that this region, unified in so many ways by patterns of livelihood and local affinity, was split politically by the international boundary that transected it. Early on, wily outlaws had learned how to survive by crossing back and forth between its differing jurisdictions which served mainly to hinder pursuit.\n\nTo an already superb geography, the economies of the water world added another prerequisite for piracy: waterways abounding with traffic on which to prey. Over the sea lanes moved a continuous progression of merchandise and passengers moving hither and thither from port to port. The wealth of the region was legendary. Commerce was its lifeblood, and fortunes could be made by fitting out ships, purchasing cargoes, or servicing those engaged in such pursuits.\n\nYet, for all the legitimate commerce that took place across its waters", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211311, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "3\n\nduring the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Sino-Vietnamese water world was a region further linked by the dynamics of a covert, illegal, but highly utilitarian exchange: the iron of China for the rice of Vietnam. The rice surpluses of Vietnam were important to the burgeoning Cantonese population no longer able to feed itself, but Vietnamese law forbade the exportation of rice. At the same time the Chinese were barred from exporting the iron so greatly desired across the border that Vietnamese officials often waived their own regulations for Chinese junks that brought it in by reducing or eliminating the customary port duties. Because each country needed products from the other and open trade was not possible, a well-established smuggling operation, in which the line between smuggling and piracy was often very thin, resulted.\n\nFinally, there was at all times within the water world a pool of potential pirates. Most numerous among them were the fishermen who almost always had trouble making ends meet, merchants and petty traders whose businesses had failed, outlaws, whose last recourse in fleeing from justice was the sea, and other ne'er-do-wells whom Wei Yuan indiscriminately labelled as \"scum of the coast\". In short, these were the flotsam of the earth, who, after having been pushed off the land, found themselves in desperate straits at the water's edge.\n\nTheir combined energies gave rise to the petty piracy of part-time fishermen-pirates that flourished along the Sino-Vietnamese border for centuries. Petty piracy was a small-scale affair consisting of limited groups of between ten and thirty men who possessed at most a single junk or two. Although such gangs might come together and disperse several times in the course of their activities, each functioned as a single, independent unit whose members were simultaneously connected to no other groups. Survival was their goal and their tactics consisted of sporadic raids and hit and run attacks.\n\nWas there then some kind of ecological or environmental crisis which can account for the dramatic upsurge in Chinese piracy at the end of the eighteenth century? The answer appears to be \"no\", for although ecology can explain why piracy persisted within the water world for centuries, there seems to be no major environmental crisis that can provide a single-handed explanation for the growth of piracy. The overall", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211541, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "234\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nDian H. Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast 1790-1810 (Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. viii, 243.\n\nIn 1813, there appeared in English a translation by the European scholar Neumann of a Chinese work on pirates: more specifically, on that particularly large group which infested the China Sea from 1807-1810. Dian Murray takes a look at them over a longer period of twenty years, to give us the first modern work on the subject. She uses a wide range of sources in Chinese and Western languages, the subject of a useful bibliographic essay towards the end of the book.\n\nAt their peak, the pirate bands numbered between 50,000 and 70,000 men and women, organized into a confederation of six fleets and 20,000 junks: surely a horrifying prospect for officials and villagers and townpeople alike, not to mention other seafarers. And so it proved. The author gives many examples of defeats inflicted on Ch'ing officers, and the killings, abductions and sackings to which the inhabitants of many places were subjected over the period of greatest piratical activity. Chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 99-136) contain many examples of the kind, in colourful detail often culled from county gazetteers. In the end, the pirate menace was removed by a combination of greater force and foreign aid, together with application of the well-known expedient of buying over the leaders with money and titles, which resulted in the surrender of the last fleet, leaving the way open for the Ch'ing navy to overcome the remaining smaller groups piecemeal (Chapter 8).\n\nOther chapters deal with the milieu in which the pirate menace originated: the (Cantonese) \"Water World\" as Professor Murray entitles it (Chapter 1), the Sino-Vietnamese piracy of the late 18th century whose leaders were enlisted by the rival claimants to the Vietnamese throne (Chapters 2 and 3), the \"Professionalization of Piracy\", which gives an account of organization, leadership, recruitment and life at sea (Chapter 4), whilst another chapter is devoted to the manner in which piratical operations were conducted, including information on ships and weapons (Chapter 5).\n\nA \"Conclusion\" surveys the era and the pirate phenomenon under", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211542, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "235\n\nvarious heads, including causation and factors leading to the development of such large fleets, whether the pirates were rebels or only another form of Chinese bandit (using the later 19th century North China Nien Rebellion on land for purposes of comparison), and suggesting that overcoming the pirate menace was not, in the end, a good thing for Ch'ing government or its coastal forces, owing to its contributing to the false sense of security and sufficiency that was to be shattered by the encounters with Western forces thirty years on.\n\nThere are useful appendices giving information on a small number of pirates' social backgrounds (for voluntary pirates), on the “Pirates' Declaration” of 1809 posted in Macao and Canton, on Pirate Junks, on the Pirate Surrender Document of 1810, and on Chinese Weights and Measures. The Notes at pp. 179-213 contain much extra material.\n\nProfessor Murray has given us a readable and fascinating account of a colourful period, and an insight into a group of persons who brought fear, suffering and violent death to many people.\n\nThere appears to me to have been no particular socio-economic or political reason that would either justify or extenuate the activities of these pests. The times no harder nor the government more inept or corrupt than the norm, on land or at sea, although the beneficial results of a long period of stability and prosperity were beginning to be offset by increased pressure of population. As the author says, piracy was a part of life in the \"Water World”. In the Hong Kong Region, this was true up to and after the British took over the New Territories in 1899: see pp. 26-31 of my book The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983). In the late 18th century, as Dr. Murray states, it just so happened that larger than usual groups of pirates on the Sino-Vietnamese coast were encouraged by contesting rivalries over the Vietnamese throne, and that above average leadership was available.\n\nThe book resulted from a doctoral thesis. Dr. Murray has done a good job. Her industriousness is evident, and she has opened up a fascinating subject with asides on other major themes. If I can voice a personal \"moan\", it is about something for which she herself is not really responsible. I refer to the deplorable habit of giving Cantonese place", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "106\n\nunique practices as do, for instance, the Hakka, Chiu Chau and the boat people. Northern Chinese have no 'second burial' after exhumation as do southerners. Indeed funeral conventions sometimes vary slightly from village to village. Some believe that a menstruating woman must not touch a corpse as she is ‘unclean”. Men, as a sign of respect, may comb their dead wife's hair.\n\nIn Hong Kong there has been considerable merging of customs by different regional Chinese groups, but the focus is still, especially for Cantonese, on veneration of ancestors. This has been construed as meaning, if the living pay sufficient respect to the dead they will, in return, exert benevolence over the lives and prosperity of present and future family members. Ancestor worship is practised in several countries especially where communities are composed of kin groups believed to be descended from common ancestors, like the Five Great Clans of the New Territories. Christian churches have difficulty accepting the word 'worship' and prefer the term 'ancestor reverence.' Filial piety has been described as the most powerful force in China for the past 3,000 years. Probably nowhere are family records as meticulously kept as in China.\n\nReturning to the case study, while the deceased was alive, a western-trained Chinese physician suggested that she undergo an operation. She refused. Going 'intact' into the next world is still considered important by many. Thus Chinese medicine, with little emphasis on surgery, is not infrequently preferred to western medicine. This follows the Confucian dictum: 'One should not inflict harm on one's body, not even hair and skin because they were inherited from one's parents' (ADZ 膚,受之父母,不敢毀傷).\n\nThe human body is a sacred treasure which must not be marred by surgical incision.\" Eunuchs in Imperial China kept their castrated private parts in jars to be buried with them on their death. Not until 22 November, 1913, did an official edict in China grant permission for autopsies. The great shame with beheading was to have a dismembered body.\n\nIn Hong Kong, up to the 1950s and even later, if a patient had an operation and then died, some families would request that any removed organs be buried with the 'heavenly body'.\" Today, patients expect to be told whether something was removed during an operation. Donating of organs, such as kidneys for transplants or removing a beating heart,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212600, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "134\n\n40 Leung Chor-on, loc cit\n\n47 Frena Bloomfield, 'Automatic Writing (Fu Kay)', The Occult World of Hong Kong (1980), pp. 27-33\n\n45\n\n49\n\nFrena Bloomfield, The Book of Chinese Beliefs, op. cit. p 12\n\nMarjorie Topley, 'Chinese Occasional Rites in Hong Kong', Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, week-end symposium October 1966, brochure of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 99-117 (p. 116)\n\n30 Jack M. Potter 'Wind Water Bones and Souls. the Religious World of the Cantonese Peasant', Journal of Oriental Studies, 8 (1970), pp 139-153\n\nSI\n\n'Bacon Receives Simple Farewell', South China Morning Post, 2 May, 1992", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212831, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "125\n\nto hold the local headman responsible for the collection of the number required; they were paid for at fixed military rates. Throughout Yunnan commerce in peace time moves by pack saddle. The Yunnan mule is a large strong animal, at one time much in demand for work in Burma; but now the wear and tear of war had created a shortage. We had to wait some days at Paoshan before the necessary number of beasts was produced, and then we only got off because I had carried introductions to some of the local gentry, who willingly came to our assistance.\n\nWe took seven days to reach Shunning, over a series of mountains; the mule track went up and up and up, and down and down and down; it seldom ran level and we seldom covered more than ten miles by the map in a day. In actual ground covered the distance was often double. We arrived at Shunning in time for the Chinese New Year. We had to wait over for the festival, a day on which no one will work, and the general commanding the Army very kindly invited us to a feast prepared for his American allies. Here again we stayed at the American mess and were made most comfortable. From Shunning to Tetang we took five days; mules became scarcer and on several stages bullocks were brought in from the fields to carry our wireless sets and equipment. Pack bullocks move more slowly than mules, but get there eventually. Our chief trouble was in trying to get off sufficiently early in the morning. On arrival at the destination for the day, the headman would be warned how many beasts we would need the next day, and he would promise to have them ready for an early start at 7 o'clock. But there was often difficulty in collecting the requisite number and it might not be till long after midday before we could move off. It was wearing on our patience.\n\nIt was on this stretch that I received further confirmation of the sort of trouble we might expect. At one deserted village, where we stopped for the night, we were joined by a stranger who appeared friendly enough. He was later heard haranguing the Chinese members of our party in Cantonese which he thought we did not understand, asking them why they worked for the foreign British, telling them it was unpatriotic to do so, and threatening them with dire consequences.\n\nI cannot tell the whole of our difficulties, only sufficient to make the story clear; but that much I believe should be told. It is only fair to the British public, particularly at a time when the most important conferences are to be held concerning arrangements for the future peace of the world, to know how their compatriots fare in foreign countries, and how", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213264, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "66\n\nBanks, Hongs and Government House\n\nMany old established western hongs have long come to terms with the 'breath of the dragon'. As one senior Standard Chartered Bank staff member phrased it (partly with tongue in cheek perhaps?): 'Some Europeans are more concerned about fung shui than the Chinese. Besides, paying attention to it is good for business.'\n\nThe British Standard Chartered is the oldest foreign bank in Hong Kong (its forerunner, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, was established in Hong Kong in 1859). Management was advised that for its new building, completed in 1990, one main door was not enough to 'catch all the good fortune and allow money to flow in'. An additional entrance, facing northeast, was included in the plan, 'to capture \"luck\" from Central District and from the harbour and business from the Hong Kong Banking Corporation next door'. The main entrance is very important. It is subjected to more foot traffic than any other part of a building. Its door should be well-hinged, upright and in scale with the building as a whole.\n\nSimilarly, the decor of Chartered Bank's interior includes a number of features synonymous with prosperity in Chinese culture. The stained-glass windows in the entrance hall portray a bus with registration number 28 (homonyms in Cantonese also meaning 'easy to prosper'). A red (a lucky colour) tram car has the number 88 (signifying 'doubly prosperous') and steps have been constructed in flights of eight. Lucky numbers are popular in Chinese communities around the world.\n\nSimilarly it is good if one's grave, or niche in a columbarium where one's ashes are deposited, has a fortuitous number. In Europe numbers carry different meanings. Seven (among Chinese, this number is often associated with how many dishes mourners partake of at a funeral wake) is sometimes considered lucky, while 13 is deemed unlucky. Consequently, a 13th floor is sometimes omitted in a building.\n\nAs is common in many commercial premises in Hong Kong, running water is good because water signifies money. While having a water feature may not mean much in a bank in York or New York, such beliefs do imply a great deal to many customers in Hong Kong. Yet, surprisingly, few appeared to have been too upset when the fountain at the 'Landmark', in Central District, was done away with.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213280, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "82\n\nThe site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns.\n\nBut whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east.\n\nIn the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable.\n\nNevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213311, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "113\n\nMorgan, Carole, ‘A Short Glossary of Geomantic Terms', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 20, 1980\n\nNeedham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China, vol II. Cambridge University Press, 1956\n\n· ditto, vol IV, 3, 1971\n\nNoble, Sara, Feng Shui in Singapore, Graham Brash, Singapore 1994\n\nO'Brien, Joanne with Kwok Man Ho, The Elements of Feng Shui, Element Books. 1991\n\nPennick, Nigel, The Ancient Science of Geomancy: Man in Harmony with the Earth, Thames and Hudson, 1979\n\nPeplow, S H and M Barker, Hong Kong Around and About, Ye Olde Printerie Ltd, 1911\n\nPike, S N, Water Divining, A Book of Practical Instructions, Research Publications, England, 1945\n\nPotter, Jack M. 'Wind, Water, Bones and Souls: the Religious World of the Cantonese Peasant', Journal of Oriental Studies, Hong Kong University, vol. 8, 1970\n\nRossbach, Sarah, Feng Shui: Ancient Wisdom for the Most Beneficial Way to Place and Arrange Furniture, Rooms and Buildings, Hutchinson, 1983\n\nFeng Shui: The Chinese Art of Placement, Dutton, New York, 1983\n\n------ Interior Decoration with Feng Shui, 1981\n\nInterior Design with Feng Shui. How to Apply the Ancient Chinese Art of Placement, Century, 1987.\n\n-Interior Design with Feng Shui, Rider, London, 1987\n\n1\n\nShen, D C, '\"Feng Shui\" Woodlands' Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 14, 1974\n\nSkinner, Stephen, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui, Chinese Geomancy. Graham Brash. Singapore, 1983", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213344, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "149\n\nSong dynasty were said to have set up a travelling palace in the vicinity as they passed through the Hong Kong region fleeing the Mongols.\n\nAnother characteristic of this group is that they relied on documentary sources such as dynastic histories, genealogies, local gazetteers and stone inscriptions, but had little use of non-text materials. They did, however, discover an enormous amount of valuable local historical material. In particular, Lo and Lin made important contributions through their systematic collection of genealogies and by expounding on their value in the study of local history. Equally significantly, as renowned mainstream historians, they played an important role in giving Hong Kong history a legitimate place in the wider field of Chinese historiography.\n\nSocial Scientists from the West and Japan\n\nAnother group of scholars working on Hong Kong, anthropologists and sociologists from the West and Japan, not only came from different parts of the world but very different intellectual traditions. Interested in Chinese society and yet no longer able to carry out in Mainland China the kind of prolonged, detailed and intimate field study they required, these scholars opted for Hong Kong's New Territories where much of traditional China still survived. The pioneer was Barbara Ward, an English social anthropologist trained at the London School of Economics, who arrived in 1950, much earlier than anyone else. Then in 1961 came Jack Potter from Berkeley to study economic developments in the village of Ping Shan. Two years later came Hugh Baker from London University to write his Ph.D. thesis, thus becoming the first of a long line of scholars to conduct extensive field work in Hong Kong addressing the issue of lineage which was seen as a key to understanding Chinese society. To carry out his research, Baker lived in the village of Sheung Shui, learnt the Cantonese dialect and generally immersed himself in the local community. The major outcome of his research is A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui. (London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1968).\n\nOthers to follow were E.N. Anderson, R.L. Moench, John Brim, and Graham and Elizabeth Johnson from the United States, L.G. Aymer from Sweden, Hiroaki Kani from Japan, Marjorie Topley, H. Nelson and R.G. Groves from the UK. In the 1970s they were joined by James Watson and later, Rubie Watson. Each focused on a particular village or group of people—staking out his or her turf, so to speak. Through their in-depth", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213445, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 41, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The territories are ribbed by rugged mountainous ranges rising to over 3,000 feet running mainly from northeast to southwest, the eastern half enclosing numerous landlocked bays and arms of the sea. Included in the area are some two hundred islands, the majority of which are small and barren. These islands are uncultivated for the most part. The largest area of cultivable land is to be found in the northwest of the territories. Only about 50 square miles altogether are under crop,\n\nThe population of the New Territories can be broadly split into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers. That broad division should be qualified by the fact that certain of the land-dwellers combine fishing with agriculture and again certain of the purely fishing population live half on the land in derelict boats and huts built on stilts in muddy creeks. The census last year revealed that the total population of the New Territories was 456,404 of which the land-dwellers numbered 409,945 and the sea-dwellers 46,459.\n\nThe land-dwellers for the most part live in traditional village communities of one or more clans. Their livelihood depends on the cultivation of rice and vegetables, in the cultivation of pine forests and in the cutting of undergrowth for fuel, in the rearing of livestock and poultry, in the picking of medicinal herbs, in oyster culture, in fishponds, brickworks, limekilns and in food factories. The sea-dwellers engage in fishing both deep sea and offshore, operate water transport by junks, and ply for hire in sampans.\n\nThere are a number of immigrant groups who have entered the New Territories as refugees since the Chinese revolution and especially during the period after the last World War. The largest of these communities is that from Shanghai which arrived during the years 1948-51 and brought with it considerable capital and industrial skill. But the unassimilated customs of these immigrants are no part of the Chinese customary law of the New Territories. It is with the indigenous inhabitants, the land-dwellers and the sea-dwellers, that we are presently concerned, and although none of these appear to have been autochthonous nor do some appear to have been of Chinese origin, they have all been settled so long in these territories and now regard themselves as Chinese and speak Chinese dialects that they must be classed as the indigenous Chinese inhabitants. These inhabitants can be sub-divided into the Cantonese, the Hakka, the Tanka and the Hoklo.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214132, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "The two walled villages that our Group did walk around, in this basically Hakka Chinese region, struck the author as being, both in layout and construction, similar to the Hakka Tsang Tai Uk walled village in Hong Kong's Sha Tin. All, for example, have communal soul tablets above their altars in their ancestral halls, unlike Cantonese ancestral halls which have individual soul tablets for passed leading members of the community. The walled villages we inspected also have wok i gables which are supposed to denote scholarship among the persons living there. In these walled villages in China, there was also the odd coffin or two stored in their ancestral halls. These are sometimes bought by old people and kept in storage ready for when the last trumpet call sounds. The author has read of coffins being bought and stored in this way but has never actually seen it practised in Hong Kong.\n\nExcept for bad pockets of pollution, including both dust from construction sites and smoke from factories, parts of the countryside in the Huizhou region reminded the author, very much, of the Hong Kong he knew in the 1950s. As we sped along a new highway with many tollgates and little traffic, a wide variety of vegetables were being grown occasionally by the People's Liberation Army which has to earn its keep. On one occasion, our minibus was held up by a column of ducks waddling, single file, across the road!\n\nBut, in addition, there was a great deal of paddy with rice harvesting in progress. Winnowing machines were being used similar to those you sometimes see today stored in ancestral halls in Hong Kong's New Territories where they are no longer required. Although there are some small tractors in the Huizhou Region, in the main, the water buffalo is still the beast of burden. On one occasion, the author counted a herd of over 20 out grazing.\n\nWe saw, of course, many fish ponds on our trip in 1997, and, although we did not see any salt-pans as one could see in Tai O, on Lantao, in the 1950s, and even up until the early 1960s, they still exist in out-of-the-way places in China. The small group of RAS members that visited this eastern Guangdong region, in 1995, did see salt being harvested at a place called Ping Hoi. Before World War Two, salt farming in Hong Kong was usually undertaken by Hakka Chinese, and, in addition to Tai O (previously the most important place for salt farming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214200, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "21\n\nBut, while comparing Chinese and western humour, with the latter propagated by television, radio and other forms of the mass media, it has to be borne in mind that the peoples of many countries are changing their way of life. The world is fast becoming a global village.\n\nAmusement in language\n\nIn the mid-1950s, the author recalls, a fashionable colour in Hong Kong was described in Cantonese (a vibrant, vivid language) as ‘duck's excreta green'. This tickled foreigners but was (and still is) good descriptive, serious stuff to our Chinese friends. They never seem to realise, however, that any of their own surnames, such as Mr Wu, Mrs Ma (meaning horse), Mrs Lung (meaning dragon) or Miss Ng (which is difficult for some Europeans to pronounce), may strike the average Westerner as funny. Yet the author has never really understood why his family name, 'Waters' (which hardly ever strikes Europeans as comical) (probably meaning his forebears lived near a river or a lake), is often considered amusing by Chinese. A Chinese physician once wisecracked: 'Dan Waters, please pass some water;' while a Chinese architect quipped, 'Dr Waters has been inspecting waterworks structures all morning.' In other examples just the mention of the name Green, Whalebelly or Goodbody strike many Chinese, understandably perhaps, as comical. We British have become accustomed to such names. However, the countless Chinese firms with names like Lee Kee Motor Boat Service, No-Squeak Wong the cobbler and Au-Choo the medicine shop, do strike the average Westerner as good for a chuckle.\n\nThere is a Chinese saying which, when translated, goes something like this:\n\nWalking we will not change our family name. Sitting we will not change our given name.\n\nIt really implies we are digging our heels in and sticking to our principles. Nevertheless, Sir (now Lord) David Wilson did change his name when he came back to Hong Kong to become Governor in 1987. He had served in Hong Kong before and his Chinese name had previously been romanised as Ngai Tak-ngai (Spurr, 1995;246). The Chinese, however, who read far more into a name than the average European,", "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": 215008, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "60\n\nremembered that the cemeteries and memorials are primarily places of individual commemoration and excessive signage can detract from this.\n\nThere are many cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and France where members of the Commonwealth forces are buried and commemorated. The Menin Gate at Ypres commemorates over 54,270 who died in the Ypres Salient, from October 1914 to the 15/16th August 1917, and who have no known grave. Those who died from 17 August 1917 to the end of the war and have no known grave, over 34,880, are commemorated on panels at Tynecot, which is also the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world with 11,856 graves. In France, the memorial at Thiepval commemorates over 72,000 Commonwealth members who died on the Somme and who have no known grave. At none of the above are there any names of members of the CLC. At Etaples, there are over 11,400 graves of World War I, including that of one Chinese member of the CLC, Fu Puzhen, 9436, a Ganger of the 56th Company. As Keith Stevens remarked, Fu here, alone, represents his countrymen with a population amounting to a quarter of the world's total.\n\nThe last cemetery the Friends visited was Les Baraques Military at Sangatte, south of Calais. Of the 197 named CLC members buried there virtually all were from Shandong province and the metropolitan area of Zhili. Only two came from other provinces, Anhui and Hubei. There were several seamen commemorated who most probably would have been Cantonese from the south and recruited by the Royal Navy in Hong Kong. There are also graves of British personnel who served with or were attached to the CLC. We saw the grave of 2Lt E S Burley, Army Labour Corps, attached to the Chinese Labour Corps, who died on 15th February 1919, aged 44 years, whose parents came from London, England and whose wife lived in South Africa.\n\nOn a later personal visit to this cemetery, with my wife, we located the grave of Gunner M E Barnes of the 43rd Company, Royal Garrison Artillery who transferred, in the rank of corporal, to the 135th Labour Company, Chinese Labour Corps Royal Garrison Artillery. He died on 19th November 1919, aged 49 years; and was a native of Lewes in Sussex. Also the grave of Private M Cooper of the 2nd/6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, who transferred to the 88th Labour Company,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 215648, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 425, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "377\n\ninscription. The ivory canister is accompanied by a book to which one refers to read one's fortune. In Cantonese, this method of fortune telling is called Cow Tsim\n\n3. A copy of the Hong Kong Telegraph Pictorial Supplement dated 2nd June, 1934. It includes a group photograph of staff and pupils of the Peak School among who is Douglas Franklin's sister - Sylvia. Other photographs in the supplement include the construction of the Shing Mun dam, the latest fashion and high society of the day\n\n4. Photograph taken some time before Mr Frederick Franklin's wedding in 1925. Mrs Franklin had been a nursing sister employed at the Government Civil Hospital in Western District. She originated from Scotland\n\n5. The old Peak Church, taken in 1925, where Frederick Franklin and his bride were married\n\n6. Saint John's Cathedral Choir, on the steps of the Cenotaph in Statue Square, taken at the Armistice Service in 1938. The statue of Queen Victoria, under the canopy, is in the background. The Cenotaph is a smaller version of the one in Whitehall, London\n\n7. Christmas Fancy Dress Party at the Peak Hotel, 1924. The hotel was demolished after World War Two\n\n8. Snapshot of Mr Franklin senior with Sir Robert Ho Tung, one of Hong Kong's most famous sons. Robert Ho Tung died in 1956. Although Eurasian he normally wore Chinese clothes\n\n9. Snapshot taken in 1924 of Frederick Franklin and the lady who later became his wife, together with a friend in front of a matshed at Repulse Bay. The three are in \"whites\" and, apart from pith helmets, the two men are dressed very much as we dressed in the 1950s and '60s. Mr Franklin was wearing shorts and knee-length socks and his male companion was wearing a Saigon linen wet-wash suit\n\n10. Another snapshot taken in 1924; again, all three are wearing similar attire. Father sits on the running board of the car, which is definitely 1920s vintage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]