[ { "id": 204237, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nBesides the Governor and Shortrede, the first office-bearers included Major-General D'Aguilar, Peter Young the Colonial Surgeon, Mercer the Colonial Treasurer, John Bowring the Younger (of Jardines); and also Thomas Wade, the celebrated interpreter and Envoy to China, who later became famous as inventor of the Wade System of romanization of Chinese still in general use today, and, as Sir Thomas, was to become President of the Society in London in 1887.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by Mr. G. Gutzlaff, the missionary, at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring (the younger John Bowring's father), and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nDuring the twelve years of its life, the Society was dogged to some extent by the personal animosities prevalent in Hong Kong in the early days; but it flourished under the inspiration of Sir John Davis, and also for a time under Sir John Bowring, who enjoyed a European reputation as a scholar—as President he preferred to be called Dr. Bowring—and who animated the Society with his personal influence and by his contributions to its discussions. The Society had no permanent home of its own, but in 1849 it was granted by Sir S. G. Bonham a room in the Supreme Court building. It published six volumes of Transactions, the first in 1847 and the last in 1859.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859 and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary—Dr. W. A. Harland, M.D.—the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which could be printed and distributed only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine, and his successor Sir Robert Jardine, and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204240, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n5\n\n## PRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nIt is with great pleasure that I submit a report of the activities of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for the first year of its existence after its revival in December 1959.\n\nThe original Branch which was founded in 1847 in the early days of the Colony and which included some of the most eminent oriental scholars of the time as well as the leaders of the Church, Government, the Armed Services and of the merchant houses, came to an abrupt end in 1859. After the lapse of a century a movement started in the Colony among those who had been members of branches of the Society elsewhere, in Malaya and in Shanghai where the Society had been compelled by force of circumstances to close down in 1950, to revive the Society in Hong Kong. As Sir Richard Winstedt, the Director of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, wrote:\n\n\"Circumstances had placed the port in a very favourable position for the study of one of the most important cultures of the world\"\n\nand Hong Kong had now the opportunity of filling a void and fulfilling its natural role as a centre for the diffusion of knowledge and culture of Asia and of China in particular.\n\nIt is barely over a year since a meeting was held attended by more than thirty interested members when a resolution was passed for the revival of this Branch. More than twice that number had pledged their support, including persons prominent in academic, professional, commercial and financial circles. The meeting adopted the constitution which had been approved by the parent Society and elected officers and a Council to hold office until this General Meeting. (The names of those elected have already been given in the brief history of the Branch at the beginning of this volume.)\n\nThe success of the founding meeting was crowned when His Excellency Sir Robert Black set the seal of his approbation by consenting to become the patron of the new Branch and when he presided over a meeting of the Society on January 23 of this year. It was the first time that a Governor of the Colony had presided at a meeting of the Hong Kong Branch since the days of Sir John Bowring, a hundred years ago. Thus he closed the gap of a century.\n\nWe are, I feel, justified in considering the result of the first year's work as very gratifying and the second year has already started in a way that is highly encouraging. Within a month of the founding meeting we had 72 members. At the end of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204243, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n8\n\nand contributions from the community, it built a commodious home for itself with a spacious lecture room and provided accommodation for its very valuable library and museum. In Hong Kong we hope that some facilities may be afforded in the new City Hall for societies like ours but if our plans are to mature we need a meeting place of our own where we can build up an Oriental library which should fill a special need which cannot be supplied by the University, whose library is not readily accessible to the public, or by the new City Hall, whose library will probably be of a wider popular interest.\n\nAs the basis of our projected library we propose to print a sufficient number of our periodical journals to enable us to exchange periodicals with kindred societies in other parts of the world. We also propose in our journal to review books on Oriental affairs which may bring us a useful nucleus of publications. Until we have enough money to buy books it would be greatly appreciated if members who have any books of interest and connected with the objects of the Society would kindly remember that any gifts of books and journals would be most welcome.\n\nThe Branch is greatly indebted to benefactors who have been generous with donations. In Sir Richard Winstedt's message on its formation he expressed the hope that both European and Chinese firms with their accustomed generosity would help to foster the growth of a Branch of high promise. This hope was realised in the donations received of 500 dollars each from Messrs. Butterfield & Swire, Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., and The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and 250 dollars from Mr. Ellis Hayim. Then in April last year there came a munificent gift from an anonymous donor who is not now resident in the Colony. This was the gift of 10,000 dollars in memory of Arthur de Carl Sowerby, a great authority on the natural history of China, who was the founder and curator of the museum of the Society in Shanghai. These contributions have enabled us to put aside a capital fund which will help us in our aims for the future while yielding a useful interest in the meantime. It is greatly hoped that other merchant houses and individuals in the Colony may, without any direct appeal, emulate the example of these benefactors and help us to build up a Branch of the Society in Hong Kong worthy of the heritage which Professor Drake in his inaugural address coupled with the corresponding task which such heritage implied.\n\nDuring the year there was little change amongst the officers and members of the Council. Mr. Endacott resigned owing to pressure of work and the vacancy was filled in accordance with the rules by the co-option of The Hon. A. G. Clarke. Mr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204472, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n93\n\nThe graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring 清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow1. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau.\n\nAt New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able-bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties.\n\n550\n\nThe whole ethos and action of the clan was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads, who were educated to the Confucian tenets, were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture, and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness, and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204495, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "112\n\nM. W. WELCH\n\nand improved the primitive method of firing so much that well-shaped vessels of fairly hard clay, which may be considered as ancestors of porcellaneous ware, were actually produced. Supports of refractory clay evidently used for the pots in the kiln are proof of this great progress.\n\nThe pottery found in site I and II is pretty uniform in composition and appearance, and I would say typical of SAK. The mixture of clay is very fine; the potsherds quite thin and hard. When struck they give off a fairly fine \"ping\". So far, no other kind of pottery has been found on the sites. There has, for instance, been none of the rough and sandy ware found on Lamma and Lantao, which is crumbly and very thick.\n\n44\n\nOn the potsherds I have found, there are three types of SAK pressed patterns. Though there are no complete pots, I have been able to put together enough of one to conclude that it was fashioned in the same manner as those found by Maglioni in the Hoi-fung area: the pot shaped and patterned first, the foot added later.\n\nPerhaps the most interesting aspect of my site is what I have not found. There has, for instance, been no bronze. Maglioni makes the point that absolutely no bronze or other objects belonging to a metallic period have been discovered in any of the pure SAK sites. Nearby, however, he came upon numerous large villages of the later (PAT) period, often with bronze pieces, and he has a theory that the spreading of the PAT culture was the reason for the dispersion of the SAK people.\n\nI have found nothing that can be assigned to PAT. This is in contrast to other sites in Hong Kong, where a few SAK pieces have been found, but always mixed in with a much larger number of PAT artifacts. My sites are not only rich in SAK, both implements and pottery, but they are pure SAK. They are, indeed, the first pure SAK sites to be found in the Colony.\n\nThere are two other things I want to mention. One is the type of very roughly shaped large tools that I have found in groups on all three sites near kaolin deposits, frequently embedded in a lump of hardened kaolin. I have tentatively separated these tools into eight categories according to their shape. Five are\n\n“Archaeology in South China\" by Raphael Maglioni, University of Manila Journal of East Asiatic Studies, Vol. II, No. 1 October, 1952.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204747, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n39\n\nwas persuaded to join the firm of Baring Brothers & Co. In 1873 he became senior partner of the house, finally retiring in 1882. (L.T.R.)\n\n24 Lin Tse-hsü's fate. Hunter long survived Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-hsü was dismissed from office in 1840 and later sentenced to exile in Ili in Chinese Turkistan, where he remained for three years. He was allowed to return to Peking in 1845. He later served as Governor-General of Yunnan and Kweichow, and retired from office in 1849. He died in 1850 at the age of sixty-seven. (J.L.C.B.)\n\n25 Heang-shan (Heungshan). Former name of the District in which Macao lies. Re-named Chung-shan in honour of Sun Yat-sen. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n26 Morrison. John Robert Morrison (1814-1843) was born in Macao, the second son of Dr. Robert Morrison and his first wife Mary (née Morton). He had some schooling in England but at the age of twelve he came back to Canton with his father in 1826. He became a fluent Cantonese speaker as well as a Chinese scholar, and on the death of his father in 1834 was appointed Chinese Secretary to H.M.'s Commission in China. In 1838 he became, in addition, Interpreter, and in 1841 succeeded Elmslie as Secretary and Treasurer to the Superintendent of British Trade in China. In 1843 he was appointed Chinese Secretary and member of the Executive Council of the newly founded Colony of Hong Kong and was recommended for appointment, by the Governor, as Colonial Secretary. Before the appointment was approved, however, he died in Macao in August 1843, and was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery there. (L.T.R.)\n\n27 Kwang Chow Foo. Kuang-chou fu The Prefect of the Prefecture of which Canton was the chief city. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n28 Kam Hay Hue. No such title. But I suspect Hunter intended to indicate the Namhoi Hien which title was sometimes written Nam Hoy Hien. See note 14. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n29 Pwan Yu Hue. Also written Punyu Hien. The magistrate having jurisdiction over the eastern part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included Whampoa and the foreign shipping there. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n30 Fearon, Samuel Turner Fearon was the second son of Christopher Fearon and Elizabeth Noad who were married on 14 May 1818 at the Streatham Parish Church. His father served as a midshipman at the Battle of Trafalgar and after being discharged from the Royal Navy he joined the Honourable East India Company's marine service. In this service he made a number of voyages to Canton and when he decided to take a shore posting there he brought his wife and family out with him. Samuel became a fluent Cantonese speaker and in 1838 was appointed Interpreter to the Canton General Chamber of Commerce. After the cession of Hong Kong he was appointed interpreter and clerk of the Chief Magistrate's Court and a couple of months later were added the duties of Notary Public and Coroner. Three years later he was appointed Assistant Magistrate of Police and on 1st January 1845 he became Registrar General and Collector of Revenue. In July 1845 he was granted a year's sick leave and while in England he was appointed Professor of Chinese at King's College, London, an appointment which he held from December 1846 until December 1852. (L.T.R.)\n\n31 Van Basel. Magdalenus Jacobus Senn van Basel, born in Groningen, Holland on 27 September 1808, was appointed clerk in the Dutch Consulate at Canton in 1826, and Vice-Consul in November 1831. He was later in partnership with G. M. Toe Laer and P. Tiedenan in the firm of Senn van Basel & Toe Laer & Co. In 1848 he became Collector General of Taxes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204765, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE \n\n57 \n\nshould not, in the course of scientific investigation, be omitted as a possibility; even though subsequent events thrust them apart, by interposing a new and more vigorous culture, based on intensive agriculture and possessing sufficient military power and social drive to impose on the less numerous people of the waters and of the forests a language, a dress and a society different from that which they originally had. \n\nI will here ask you to turn your eyes for a moment to Canton, which is less than 100 miles from here and which when the first Chinese settled in this territory was, and had been for many centuries, the metropolis (and probably the only city of any size known to the inhabitants) of this region. Canton was founded originally as a Chinese trading settlement or colony, in the middle of non-Chinese territory with ethnologically non-Chinese inhabitants. It became first the capital of a peripheral kingdom, which from time to time acknowledged and was acknowledged by the Son of Heaven: then the capital of a province which from time to time, when the central government was weak, tended, and has continued to tend even into modern times, to re-assert its independence. Then in the Sui22 Dynasty it became the first port in which foreigners were officially permitted to settle and trade—I mean of course the Arabs, whose completely assimilated descendants are still to be found in Canton and Hong Kong; and finally, following the same well tried pattern (since Chinese administrators, like all others, adopted new ideas with grave reluctance and preferred to follow the old ruts) the first port to which the ebullient Europeans, following in the track of the Arabs, also came to purchase goods the Chinese did not particularly want to sell and to offer in exchange commodities they did not want to buy. \n\nThe frame of our picture, or of our jigsaw puzzle, would not be complete without a reference to Canton. Bricks bearing the imprint of, and presumably made in, Pun-yue1—that is to say Canton can be seen today in the roofs and walls of the ancient tomb, if it be a tomb, at Li Cheng Uk.83 Throughout the Tang139 Dynasty the inhabitants of Canton must still have been mainly non-Chinese, since the author of the Hsin Wu Tai Shih121 is at some pains to explain why it was that so many Chinese came and settled in this region during the disorders which brought down that dynasty. From the point of view of Canton, and therefore", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204817, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "TOO \n\nV. R. BURKHARDT \n\nNot content with the normal camouflage to baffle their enemies certain butterflies actually mimic other species which, on account of the feeding habits of their larvae are unpalatable to their predators. It has been stated in entomological works that Danaus plexippus, the Milkweeds Butterfly, enjoys this immunity, but so far no one has offered proof. The Howling Bird, Megalaima virens, or Great Chinese barbet, is found in the Colony and occasionally is kept as a cage bird. It feeds on fruit, but prefers grasshoppers and insects if it can get them. A wasp, or hornet penetrating into its cage is certain to be snapped up, and swallowed after the sting has been knocked out on the perch. A specimen of Danaus genutia, allied to the aforementioned D. plexippus, was dropped in at the top of the Barbet's cage, and eagerly seized. The moment the body was crushed, however, it was dropped on the floor and the bird spent quite a time cleaning its beak to remove the taste.\n\nThe female praying mantis cannot be called nice in her feeding habits, as she includes even her husband on the menu, but she will not eat one of the Danaidae family and, if one falls into her claws she will release it unharmed if touched with a stick.\n\nThis immunity from whetting someone's appetite has been capitalised by one of the Nymphalidae, Hypolimnas misippus, a really remarkable insect. The male is black with a large white patch in the centre of each wing, surrounded by brilliant blue. The female does not resemble it in the least, but has taken for her model Danaus chrysippus whose marking and colouring she has closely adopted. The butterfly has a wide distribution, but is nowhere very common except in South Africa where D. chrysippus is also very abundant. The mimic varies in size as does the model, and adopts the same slow, lazy flight in its company where it is almost indistinguishable from the unpalatable species.\n\nOne of the local Papilios, the common P. polytes has two forms of females. The usual one encountered has the same markings as the male, but a dimorphic form is a very good copy of Papilio aristolochiae whose larva feeds on a poisonous creeper. The model here is shunned by birds its scarlet body giving warning of nastiness. Papilio polytes differs in having a grey body but there are carmine splashes bordering the white on the lower wings, which probably render it some, if not all, immunity from attack.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204999, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "98\n\nCOLINA LUPTON\n\nindication is given in this book of how the British Government saw the ultimate future of the Colony, though this is of academic interest today.\n\nThe years 1946-1949 were spent in drawing up what has become known as the Young Plan, after the Governor of the time, which would have provided for an elected Municipal Council, with a franchise for all men and women over the age of 25 who could read and write either English or Chinese. This plan was however thrown out by the Legislative Council, of which the unofficial members felt that reform of their own body should come first. They also objected to the fact that the proposed Municipal Council would overlap the functions of the Colonial Administration. In any case, the time, mid-1949, was unsettled in view of events in China and the opportunity was missed. Subsequently, the whole of Hong Kong society underwent such an upheaval with the flood of refugees and the diminishing of trade with the Mainland that constitutional reforms were shelved.\n\nA feature of the post-war situation of Hong Kong is the fact that everyone knows that the really important long-term decisions are not made in the Colonial Secretariat or even in Government House. This certainly adds to the lack of interest in acquiring any share in the Government. On the other hand, a paradoxical result of the establishment of the Communist Government in Peking is that most of the Chinese who have come to Hong Kong in the last fifteen years are here to stay, unlike the transients who before the war came to the Colony to find jobs in bad periods at home, expecting to return to their families when conditions improved. Hence the Chinese population does in fact have more interest than it did in pre-1949 days in seeing that the Government should at least be of the complexion it desires. As time passes, this will be both more and less true: a greater proportion of the populace will be Hong Kong born or educated, or both; but since it is clear that as Mr. Endacott says, Peking's demands for the revision of the \"unequal treaties\" are unlikely to stop at the Shum Chun river, the Colony's lifespan depends on how pressing the Chinese Government feels this revision is.\n\nAn interesting point in the early history of the Colony which Mr. Endacott brings out very clearly is that it was the British Government, which by not allowing any constitutional advance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205087, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "38\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER\n\nmen temples were built and dedicated to them in many parts of the effected area. In the New Territories there were three such temples - one at Sha Tau Kok,10 one built by the Kam Tin lineage of the Tang Clan,102 and a third in the market town of Shek Wu Hui known as the Chau Wong Yee Yuen,103 which was built by the five clans and endowed by them with land for its upkeep. It was not the five clans as clans which did this, but rather lineages of the five clans which came together and each purchased a share in the temple.104 The Man Clan took two shares in the temple, one purchased by each of the two lineages; as was the case with the eastern Tangs.105 The Pangs, Hau* and Lius each had one share. Not only was land purchased and a temple106 built with this money, but also a ferry boat was bought to assist all members of the five clans to cross the Sham Chun River107 to get to the large market town of Sham Chun, with which all had dealings. The share-holding lineages took part in an annual feast at which the business of the temple was discussed, the feast being paid for out of temple funds. As might be expected, however, the history of this temple association has not all been peaceful, and recently a major dispute has arisen, three members108 claiming complete control of the funds to the exclusion of the others.109 The matter quickly escalated to a point where both sides hired lawyers and placed vituperative advertisements in the Colony's newspapers. Eventually, after three years of argument, it was settled in 1963.\n\nThe second example of cooperation between the clans is of the army which they raised between them to oppose the arrival of the British when they took control of the New Territories in 1899. Under the leadership of literati of the Tang Clan, working from the ancestral hall of the Ha Tsuen lineage,110 they mustered men, arms and supplies in quantity and attacked the British at their landing point in Tai Po. Unfortunately they lacked training and could do no more than fight an ignominious retreat back over the hills. Some records of the organisation of this force are still available through documents captured by the British at the time, and it is obvious that all the planning was done by and communications established at the level of the literati of the five clans. It seems that these men kept up some kind of informal contact, and there is mention of an organisation called the Tung P'ing Kuk112 in the first British reports on the area, which was said\n\n*Hau is the correct spelling, not \"Haus\". I've made the correction. \nPlease let me know if you need further assistance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205349, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "104\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nBy the REV. Mr. Krone\n\n(Editor's Note. Beginning with Vol. 5 (1965) the Society made a start with reprinting selected articles from the Transactions of the old China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which existed in Hong Kong between 1846-59. The only known complete extant sets of the Transactions in the Colony are the microfilmed sets recently acquired by the Library of the University of Hong Kong and by the Society. The article reprinted below is taken from pp. 71-105 of the sixth and last volume of Transactions, published in Hong Kong in 1859. It is a valuable contemporary account of the north-western part of the San On (Hsin An) district (新安縣) and will be of special interest to readers of this Journal in that it describes something of the history and conditions of life in the area just beyond the present Sino-British frontier in the New Territories. Its re-appearance in print will also provide scholars with the text in a more accessible form than the microfilmed sets which are available here and elsewhere. The author was a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society which, according to the account of its history given in The China Mission Hand Book (Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1896) pp. 272-275 came to South China in 1847. From this account, Mr. Krone appears to have come to China about 1850 and worked there for upwards of ten years. He seems to have gone on leave thereafter and died in the Red Sea on his way back to China from Germany. The article is reprinted here exactly as it appears in the original, despite a few obvious errors and inconsistencies).\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nRead before the Society, February 24th, 1858\n\nTHE District of Sanon, to which the mainland opposite to the Island of Hongkong belongs, is one of the fourteen districts of the department of Canton. During the Han dynasty, and at the time of the Three States, the present Sanon District, together with those of Túng-kun and Pok-lo, formed only one large district, bearing the name of Pok-lo *.\n\nand Túng-kun\n\nUnder the following dynasties, Sanon ✯✯ constituted one district, which was denominated Túng-kun 東莞 ★, afterwards Po-on, and since the 2d year of the Emperor Chi-tok of the Tong dynasty, Túng-kun ✯ £. 東莞. Hung-mo, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary in the 27th year of his reign to appoint an officer with the title \"Shou-yu-sho\"-Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "150\n\nLIN SHU-YEN\n\nfamilies the men and women were in their fifties. In the third, the son, who is about thirty, did most of the work.\n\nThe leaching process, Lin tells us, was carried out mainly by natives of Lantau Island and was the only method inherited from their remote ancestors. In 1962 I was able to speak to an old lady who came in 1898 at the age of 16 to the village of Leung Uk, at the south-west edge of the salt pans, to be married to one of the villagers. She told me that men and women from the locality worked in the fields, some of them from Leung Uk. Not many people worked in the fields at that time, and they were operated by an outsider. The workers were paid on a piece work basis depending on their output, but it was customary for the company to advance money for daily food and deduct the sum from the final wage.\n\nFor how long the local village people, as opposed to outsiders, carried out the work on the salt-pans is not known. The Leung Uk settlement, since it is named after the Leung family, it is reasonable to suppose that they were the first inhabitants of the present settlement, was apparently settled about 1800. This estimate is based on calculations from a genealogy which also states that the first ancestor came to Tai O from a village near Shum Chun Market to the north of the present Sino-British frontier. These people are Hakkas. The other villages in the Tai O basin, adjacent to the market town, are the similar small settlements of Nam Chung, San Tsuen, and Wang Hang, and it is unlikely that they are earlier than Leung Uk. At the 1911 Colony census, the population of these three small villages was recorded at 50, 42, and 90 respectively, whilst the population of Leung Uk was 104 persons. There were other, larger villages a little further afield, and some of their inhabitants may also have worked at the pans.\n\nSince writing the above, I have chanced upon a note in The Hong Kong Naturalist, also in Vol X (1940), by Father R. Maglioni, the noted archaeologist, in which he offers some comments upon Lin's article and an earlier one by Dr. C. M. Heanley on some of the problems connected with local, i.e., Hong Kong archaeology. He writes:\n\n\"About the furnaces described by Dr. Heanley in The Hong Kong Naturalist (Vol. VI, Nos. 3-4), I must confess that I am not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205411, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nheld office for many years on the main advisory bodies representing the Chinese community in the Colony, including the District Watchmen's Committee, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee and the Po Leung Kuk.15\n\nSir Show-son CHOW's son, Mr. CHOW Yat-kwong, J.P. has kindly given permission for members to visit the house in the New Village which contains the family's ancestral hall,\n\nIII. THE Hung Shing Temple And AP LEI CHAU\n\nThe Hung Shing Temple, The Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau, judging by the temple bell, dates from the 18th century.16 It appears to have been enlarged in 1847 and some wall-tablets show that it was given a major repair in 1888. The present building dates from that time or earlier. Its origin is uncertain because it is not clear who built it in the first instance. Records show that the Ap Li Chau land population was \"no more than two or three families of Hakka grass cutters\" before 1841, so that we must look elsewhere for the builders. It could have only been built and supported by the joint efforts of the local (i.e. Aberdeen) land people and boat population. The former only amounted to a few hundreds before the British came, but the boat population was probably as considerable before 1841 as after, e.g. 415 boats and 2,243 persons at the 1856 census18 and 424 boats and 4,130 persons in 1866.19\n\nThe temple is interesting in that it has old-style flagpoles still standing in front of the building. Old prints frequently show this kind of pole; but though a few bases can still be seen nowadays in Hong Kong, Macau and the New Territories these could be the only ones left with the poles and their basket-like tops still in place.\n\nAp Lei Chau before 1911. The present land settlement on Ap Lei Chau was founded in the early decades of British rule. By the mid-1860's there were 60 houses there, which implies that several hundred residents were living on the island at that time.20 By 1897 the number of residents was 1,123 rising to 1,437 at the Colony Census of 1911.21 This population gained its livelihood to a great extent from concerns directly associated with the fishing industry, such as boat-building yards, ship chandlers and rope and sail works, and from provision shops and general stores that also catered for the fishermen's daily needs.22 There was very", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205412, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n167 \n\nlittle farming, as the island has steep and rocky sides and there are only a few places where agriculture may be carried on. \n\nAs in other little towns of this sort whose existence was founded upon the business opportunities created by the presence of a fishing fleet, the population was mixed, consisting of Punti and Hakka people from a number of districts of the Kwangtung province.23 For the most part, it was recruited from among young men from the country districts bearing introductions to fellow clansmen and relatives already working or settled on Ap Lei Chau, or else following them back to Ap Lei Chau when they came on short visits to their native place. For most of its history, men outnumbered women residents. As late as 1911, the relative numbers of males and females, including children, were 1,041 to 396. In 1897, it had been 783 to 340.24 This was because many wives stayed behind in the village and were never taken to Ap Lei Chau. In this respect, Ap Lei Chau was like any other settlement of overseas Chinese living away from their native place and under alien rule. \n\nFollowing a pattern long established elsewhere, the local people established their own \"district associations\" (鄉會) on the island in the 19th century.25 There were three of these organisations, each under a fong or 'ward' name. Membership of the Fongs was automatically extended to all comers, whether temporary or permanent residents, and irrespective of status. The odd-job coolie and the established merchant were equal members, though having adequate means and more leisure, the latter would, of course, play the more important part in the Fong's affairs: it would, in any case, be expected of him. Only women and children were excluded from membership. \n\nAt a time when the Victorian colonial administration of the Colony saw its main function in the rural areas as keeping the peace, the leaders of the three Fongs, in effect, of the Ap Lei Chau community made themselves generally responsible for local affairs. However, the need to perform special duties was apparently intermittent and spasmodic, and their most regular function was to make adequate arrangements for celebrating the birthdays of the principal gods of the two local temples, Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, and Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and the occasion of the Yue Lan Festival (盂蘭節) in the 7th moon. Each Fong took its turn to be entirely responsi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205467, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "Colony in not losing more than 53 ordinary and two life members in 1967 and to gain 59 ordinary and three life members. It is hoped that, in the year 1969 which will be the tenth year after the revival of the Hong Kong Branch of the Society, we may achieve a membership of 500.\n\nThe Journal of the Society (which has now reached its seventh issue) covering the year 1966 came out in 1967 under the editorship of Mr. Hayes and has maintained its high standard and interest.\n\nFrom the Hon. Treasurer's report it will be seen that on the working of the year there was a small deficit of $738 due mainly to the doubling of our expenditure this year on the Society's publications, the Journal, the Volume on the 1966 Symposium and the reprinting of Sir Lindsay Ride's article on the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao, from the sale of which we expect to replenish our finances. Our efforts to build up a library available for the use of members have this year shown some promise of success. We have now a collection of over 300 volumes of standard works on China and the Far East including, in particular, works on South China and Hong Kong and a valuable collection of exchange journals. Our collection has been enriched with the books purchased with the generous grant of $2,850 from the Asia Foundation and with about 100 books from the library of the late Colonel Burkhardt and Madame du Breuil generously presented by Colonel Burkhardt's daughter. Our thanks are due once again to Mr. F. A. Nixon who has enabled us to receive from the Fung Ping Shan Museum of the University five albums containing photographs of his collection of Nestorian Crosses which are housed in the Museum. The British Council have come to our aid by kindly providing space in their library for the greater part of our books, while some of the rarer books and reference works will still be kept for the time being in the University Library. The accommodation given to our library by the British Council is the best temporary solution of our library problem until some kind benefactor appears to give us a room of our own with sufficient funds to provide for a part-time librarian. Before the original branch of the Society was wound up in 1859 it had a substantial and valuable library which was presented to the Morrison Educational Society and it was fortunate then in having good friends in its first President — Sir John Davis — and the Chief Justice who provided a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205519, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "56\n\nNOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\nH. A. RYDINGS*\n\nThose of us who have watched the rapid development of libraries of all kinds in Hong Kong since the new University Library building was opened in 1961 may sometimes think that there is no library history worth considering for the first hundred years of the existence of the Colony. Certainly an appeal to members of the Hong Kong Library Association, made some two years ago, for any information on the early history of Hong Kong libraries met with no immediate response. Later, however, my colleague Mr. G. W. Bonsall, in searching through local newspapers and other sources for information on other subjects, came across a number of items about libraries, which he kindly brought to my notice. The present article is based upon this, slightly augmented from other materials, and in no way purports to be a comprehensive history of Hong Kong libraries up to 1900. It is evident that much more remains to be found by the diligent searcher before such a history can be written. For the moment, however, this brief sketch based on what has so far come to light may be of interest as an introduction to Hong Kong's library history.\n\nForemost of the early libraries in the Colony is undoubtedly the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms. 'Colonial', writing in 1933, stated: “A privately organised library was established in Hong Kong as far back as 1848. A small library with attached reading rooms was run by this organisation for some years, and really formed the basis on which the City Hall library was subsequently established.\" Although 'Colonial' does not name the library, he goes on to say: “In 1871, probably in view of the coming into being of the public library, the original institution, retaining its more or less private character, was organised into a club, which was known as the Victoria Club.\" As will be seen later, this makes it certain that the reference is to the Victoria Library.\n\nThe next reference2 found to the Victoria Library & Reading Rooms is a report of the Annual General Meeting held on June\n\n* Mr. Rydings has been University Librarian at the University of Hong Kong since 1961. He is a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and is currently its Hon. Librarian.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205709, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\nAs things turned out, Gibb did not return to Hong Kong, and Ng Choy was therefore appointed on a three-year term. This appointment was unfortunately interpreted by some members of the British community as an attempt to create an anti-English party feeling in Hong Kong.\n\nIn May 1880 when one of the magistrates went on leave, the Governor replaced him temporarily by Ng Choy who thus became the first Chinese to hold a senior appointment in the Hong Kong Government. This led to a question in the House of Commons as to why Ng Choy should combine a paid official post with an unofficial seat in the Legislative Council; but by the time these explanations were required the original holder of the post had returned to the Colony.\n\nThe attitude of the British community towards him and the Governor as a result of his appointment to the Legislative Council as well as this parliamentary question must have embarrassed Ng Choy very much. During this time, China having suffered repeated defeats from the hands of foreign powers, there was a movement in China to promote western technology and to modernize China, and any Chinese who had been trained or educated abroad would be welcome back to China. Thus when an invitation came from China for him to serve China, Ng Choy accepted it gladly. He left Hong Kong in 1882 before the expiry of the 3-year term in the Legislative Council, and later sent in his resignation from Tientsin.\n\nNg Choy became Secretary and Legal Adviser to Viceroy Li Hung-chang, one of the most important Chinese political figures of the time. Now known as Wu Ting-fang, he soon rose to become Chief Director of Railways and later Ambassador to the U.S.A. After the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, he held important appointments respectively as Minister of Judicial Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Financial Affairs. In 1917, when China entered the First World War, he was for a short time nominated as Premier. In 1922 he became Governor of Kwangtung and died the same year in office, soon after General Chan Kwing-ming's revolt in Canton.*\n\n* In his The Chinese (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1909) p. 196, John Stuart Thomson praises Wu and styles him \"the Chesterfield of China in all the graces of speech and manners.\" Ed.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205716, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "16 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nDr. Ho died in September 1914 at the age of 55 leaving over ten sons and daughters by his second wife who was a Chinese. \n\nThe fourth Chinese to serve on the Legislative Council was Wei Yuk, son-in-law of Mr. Wong Shing. He had another name Wei Bo-shan17 and Po Shan Road is named after him. He was born in Hong Kong in 1849 of a wealthy family, his father, Wei Kwong, being compradore to the Hong Kong branch of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China (now the Mercantile Bank Ltd.). After many years of Chinese studies under private tutors, he entered the Government Central School. In 1867, at the age of 18, he proceeded to England to attend the Leicester Stoneygate School. In 1868 he went to Scotland and studied for four years at the Dollar Institution. After a European tour, he returned to Hong Kong in 1872 and then worked in China for a short period. When his father died in 1879 he succeeded him as compradore to the bank. He was a very public-spirited citizen, well-known for his charming manners and pleasant personality. In 1880 he was elected a director of the Tung Wah Hospital and in 1887 became its Chairman. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1883. \n\nWei Yuk's appointment to the Legislative Council was additional to and not in replacement of Ho Kai, and came about as follows. \n\nDuring 1894, the Governor, Sir William Robinson, forwarded to the Secretary of State a petition signed by the Honourable Messrs. Thomas Whitehead, Paul Chater, Ho Kai and other residents in the Colony, asking for unofficial membership in the Executive Council; \"free election of representatives of British nationality in the Legislative Council\"; \"a majority of such representatives in the Legislative Council\"; and freedom of the official members to vote according to their conscientious convictions.18 \n\nThe Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, criticized the petitioners' demands as lacking in clarity on the ground that the petitioners \"asked for the free election of representatives of British nationality without reference to the qualifications of the voters\". Thus if the petitioners intended that only those from the British Islands should vote and be eligible for election, this would exclude the Chinese who comprised nine-tenths of the entire population. He dismissed the claim to have a majority of elected representatives,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205723, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\n23\n\nmerchants in this Colony. In all necessary measures to that end, I know that I can rely upon the whole-hearted support of this Council\". At the same meeting, the Senior Unofficial member, Sir Henry Pollock, paid the following tribute to Sir Shouson Chow and Robert Kotewall; \"During the last seven months, in particular, we have felt indebted not only to Sir Shouson Chow but also to his Chinese colleague on the Council. We, Sir, behind the scenes, can appreciate perhaps more fully than the general public the work of the Chinese members of this Council during the period I have referred to”. \n\nOn 9th July 1926, Sir Shouson Chow was also appointed the first Chinese member of the Executive Council, following the death of Sir Paul Chater who had served on that Council since 1896.26 Although the appointment was made on personal grounds, it was evident that political considerations also came in, viz., to pacify anti-British sentiment in China and to further encourage the loyalty of local Chinese towards Hong Kong. \n\nSir Shouson Chow served on both Councils until 1930, when he resigned from the Legislative Council. He continued, however, to be a member of the Executive Council until he retired in 1936. He died many years after the war, in 1959, \n\nWhen Lau Chu-pak retired from the Legislative Council in 1922, he was succeeded by Ng Hon-tsz who was born in 1877 and was compradore to Shewan, Tomes, Ltd. He was a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1907 and was a founder of the Tsan Yuk Hospital. He was at various times a member of the District Watch Force Committee, the Sanitary Board and the Council of the University of Hong Kong. He served in the Legislative Council for only two years and died in 1923 while in office. After his death, Sir Henry Pollock remarked at the Legislative Council meeting held on 10th May 1923 that Mr. Ng had always been a \"wise, sound and faithful councillor”. \n\nMr. Robert Kotewall, who succeeded Ng Hon-tsz as a member of the Legislative Council in 1923, was born in Hong Kong in 1880. Educated at the Central School as well as the Diocesan Boys' School, he was a noted English as well as Chinese scholar and was a very good speaker. After a distinguished career in the Hong Kong Government until 1916, he turned to business and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205754, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "54 \n\nR. G. GROVES \n\nOn 2nd June Rev. Schaub wrote that the \"literati of Pan T'in had a meeting with the headmen of the six large market places in their neighbourhood.\" He continued, \"most of the collected elders of the various villages were very reluctantly promising some help, but after all they came to an agreement that they would send 500 men from each market place when the Indian troops should really come to Pan Tin.\"3 Meanwhile, the villagers of Pan T'in were constructing trenches between their village and Li Long. \n\nOn 5th June Rev. Schaub reported that fortification work was still in progress. He had heard that \"members of the rich and prosperous clan Tang in the city of Tung Kun ... are behind the scenes, that soldiers and weapons are coming up from there.\" Rev. Schaub continued, \"last Saturday a messenger came from one of our out-stations, 15 miles from here... to bring us the news that the various market places in that region had also a gathering to discuss their plans.\"74 \n\nRev. Schaub enclosed his own translation of a gentry placard posted in a nearby market town. It begins with a denunciation of the barbarians, and continues: \n\n44 \n\nTo fight the barbarians, I propose in a rough way: (1) to get the funds. It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is also not right that the various confederations should pay the costs. Some of these places have a large population, and many fields... but for instance Thonglak (alias market of peace) could not do this. It is a small place and there is not a large population... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together to ask our Government for help \n\n**75 \n\nBy the end of June it was clear that the British did not intend an expedition against the villages of the interior. The occupation had, however, become involved in larger diplomatic issues between Britain and China. It dragged on throughout the summer until 13th September, when the last of the British forces withdrew behind the frontiers of the Colony. In the interim much of the Sham Chun valley was left without any form of Chinese government. On the day the British forces finally quitted the valley \n\nPage 60\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205931, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "the Society included the hierarchy of the Government, Military, Medical and Mercantile communities.\n\nIn his Inaugural Address as President of the Hong Kong Branch, Sir John Davis stressed the importance of directing the Society's attention to practical projects and to natural history, geology and botany, as well as to literary pursuits, and suggested that he could get the sanction of the Colonial Office to the grant of a moderate piece of ground for a Botanical Garden. Sir John left the Colony in 1848; but, as the result of a stirring appeal by the Rev. C. Gutzlaff at a meeting of the Society in August 1848, the project was approved, although it was not carried into effect until the governorship of Sir John Bowring, and then the Garden was placed under Government control and not under that of the Society.\n\nThe Society was fortunate in enjoying influential Government and press support, including that of the China Mail, and continued under Sir George Bonham who gave the Society a room in the old Supreme Court building to hold its meetings and to house its library.\n\nWith the departure of Sir John Bowring in May 1859, and the death in the September following of the Branch's devoted Secretary, the Society collapsed. The efforts of Dr. James Legge, as well as those of Sir Hercules Robinson, the new Governor, as President, of the Bishop of Victoria and of the Acting Chief Justice as Vice-Presidents and of Harry (later Sir Harry) S. Parkes were of no avail.\n\nThe collapse of the Society came at an unfortunate time and deprived it of the prestige and momentum which it would undoubtedly have gained from the work of some of its famous members. Legge was on the eve of publishing his famous translation of the Chinese Classics, which eventually appeared only through the generosity of Joseph Jardine (and his successor Sir Robert Jardine) and of John Dent, the heads of the two largest merchant houses in the Colony. A little later, in 1865, T. W. Kingsmill had to resort to the aid of the Shanghai Branch for the publication of his studies on the geology of Hong Kong.\n\nIt was thus with a deep sense of responsibility, and also of duty, that it was decided to revive this Society in 1959 after the lapse of a century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205977, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "52 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\n12 Malcolm Struan Tonnochy (1840-1882). Educated at Blackheath Proprietary School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; died in office while Superintendent of Victoria Gaol. Obituaries of Tonnochy are to be found in the Hong Kong Telegraph, December 14 and 15, 1882, and China Mail, December 15, 1882. The Telegraph tells us \"that yesterday the deceased was in good spirits and played tennis in the afternoon, dined out with a friend, and was in the Club until shortly after midnight\", A Chinese barber found Tonnochy dead in bed when he came to shave him in the morning. He was a bachelor. \n\n13 Walter Meredith Deane (1840-1906). Educated St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; Captain Superintendent of the Police, 1866-1891. Deane was severely wounded on duty in 1878 and resigned in 1891 on account of ill-health. \n\n14 Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (1840-1916). Educated at St. Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; promoted from Colonial Treasurer, Hong Kong, to Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements, 1878. Administered Government 1884-85; appointed Lieutenant-Governor and Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1886; Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Straits Settlements, 1887; H. M. High Commissioner and Consul-General for Borneo and Sarawak, 1889. \n\n15 Alfred Lister (1843-1890). Educated at University of London. Hong Kong Civil Service 1865; prepared detailed index to the Ordinances of Hong Kong in 1870; Colonial Treasurer 1883-90. Died on board ship near Yokohama while on sick leave, Lister held the office of Treasurer as an adjunct appointment only, and with an almost nominal salary, in conjunction with his substantive appointment of Postmaster-General, Lister left a wife and four children in England. See Hong Kong Telegraph, 15 June, 1890. Governor Des Voeux referred to Lister as an \"excellent officer\". \n\n**\n\n16 Sir James Russell (1843-1893). Educated at Queen's University, Belfast. Hong Kong Civil Service 1865; private secretary to Governor Sir Richard MacDonnell 1868; Police Magistrate 1870; Chief Justice of Hong Kong 1888. The Hong Kong Telegraph, 4 September, 1893, in an editorial entitled \"Sir Judas' Russell: His History\" declares \"You could not have been much of an expert in the Chinese language two short years after your appointment to a cadet-ship, yet in 1867, you were Government ‘Interpreter'\". The editorial referred to Russell as \"the Gargantua of Hong Kong social life\" and \"the Jeffries of the Hong Kong Bench\". The writer of the editorial was the atrabilious Robert Fraser-Smith, who founded the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1881. Since Fraser-Smith had been jailed several times for libel, he had reason to dislike the Chief Justice. (See Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke A Research Guide to China-Coast Newspapers, 1822-1911, Cambridge, Mass., 1965). Russell, a bachelor like Lister, died at Strathpeffer, Scotland, shortly after resigning from Government. \n\n17 Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845-1929). Educated at Repton School. Hong Kong Civil Service 1867; retired on pension as Police Magistrate in 1898. One son, Peveril, was the first baby born on the Peak and brother of P. G. Wodehouse, the novelist. Wodehouse was the last of the batch of officials originally appointed to the Colony in the capacity of student interpreter. \n\n18 Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937). Educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, Watson's Academy, Edinburgh (gold medallist), and Edinburgh University (Greek medallist), Hong Kong Civil Service 1878; attached to the Colonial Office for one year; Registrar General 1887; Colonial Secretary 1895-1902; Special Commissioner to Inspect and Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1898; representative of Great Britain to delimit the boundaries of the extension of Hong Kong; first civil Commissioner of Weihaiwei, 1902; retired 1921.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205994, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINATOWN IN HONG KONG:\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\nDAFYDD Emrys Evans\n\nIt seems unrealistic to talk of a 'Chinatown' in a place as obviously Chinese as Hong Kong. But for a very long time, there was indeed an area thought of by the Europeans as a part of the city into which they would not normally go. This area has, right from its inception, been known as \"Tai Ping Shan' or Mountain of Peace, after the Chinese name for the mountain the Europeans called Victoria Peak. When the British arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of 1841, the north shore of the island was substantially unoccupied, there being nothing more than scattered huts between the village of Sai Ying Pun in the west and Wong Nei Chung in the east. The principal site for the new city lay in the present Central District of Hong Kong, and the first areas built up by the Europeans (apart from the waterside godowns and houses which extended from the Central Market to Causeway Bay) lay around the present Central Magistracy but rapidly extended within the first three years of the Colony's existence east and west of that spot. Although a small number of Chinese obtained grants of land in this area it is true to say that the town was exclusively European (with, of course, a number of Parsee merchants from British India) from the line of the present Garden road as far as the present Aberdeen Street and up the hill to Hollywood Road. At the time of the Colony's inception there were never more than a few hundred Europeans contrasted with several thousand Chinese who came as tradesmen and artisans. Where, then, did the Chinese live?\n\nApart from the small town that Jardine, Matheson & Co. built out at East Point, there were three principal areas where the incoming Chinese settled at first. It is known that in the early days after June, 1841 a good many matshed huts sprang up on the hillside to the west of the area later to be the site of the main part of the town (and these were destroyed by the great typhoon in August, 1841) and one stretch of the waterfront was 'taken over'. As early as August 1841 the 'Lower Bazaar' was forming in the area of what later became Jervois Street and Bonham", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205996, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\n71\n\nwhich the European had no place and was not really expected to penetrate. Two Europeans (Richard Oswald and F. J. Porter) did apparently have lots there though how they came by them is not recorded, and the American Baptist Mission Board had a school house and small chapel.\n\nA third area was Tai Ping Shan where many Chinese lived in matsheds, but it is not known how many lived there in these early days.\n\nBut one inconvenient feature soon revealed itself as the demand for building land increased in the Colony on the establishment of regular government in the middle of 1843. The town was restricted in its possibilities of development to the east by the reservation of 'Government Hill' (the area on which the Government Offices now stand) for Government purposes only. Beyond Government Hill to the east lay the military cantonment and, since the main part of the town was now inevitably fixed where the present central district stands, the only possible direction which expansion could take, other, that is, than up the mountainside, was to the west. But, between Inland Lots 43 and 10 on the Queen's Road lay the Upper Bazaar, an uncomfortable fact which not only meant that there would be a large number of Chinese-type houses in the middle of the 'European' town (with their attendant rather greater risk of fire) but that their presence would interfere with the proper development of the area with drainage and streets and so on. In terms of extent, the Upper Bazaar was occupying almost 11 acres of valuable building land for which speculators would be willing to offer far higher Crown Rents than those which the then inhabitants were paying. So almost inevitably, the suggestion came to move the Upper Bazaar lot-holders away to another location.\n\nThe story of the removal of the Upper Bazaar is of interest on several counts: it is the first 'resumption' of land for public purposes in the history of Hong Kong, a process since employed on an ever increasing scale by the Government for the improvement and redevelopment of the environment. It provides us with an insight into government practices of the day and the cumbersome manner in which decisions could be taken and implemented, and also of the role of the Press at that time. Finally, it led to the establishment, as a matter of deliberate Government policy, of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206002, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "# THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\n77\n\nOffice's records had fallen owing to non-registration of transactions (it being by then more or less necessary for a purchaser to take a chance on the title to land offered to him by a vendor), a strenuous effort was made to regularise the situation and much \"squatting\" without title and consequently, in most cases, non-payment of Crown Rent, came to light.\n\nThe end for old Taipingshan came not in the 1880's but in the 1890's when Bubonic Plague was brought to the Colony from West China. The most virulent reservoir of the bacillus turned out to be Taipingshan. The only solution, not only to the problem of stamping out the plague but also to other forms of social offence given by the district, was to remove the Chinese town physically. This was done by powers given in the Taipingshan Resumption Ordinance of 1894, and the result was wholesale demolition of much property and re-aligning of old and construction of new roads. Taipingshan had to be razed and, fortunately for Hong Kong, never rose again in its former glory.\n\nUniversity of London, 1968.\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS Evans\n\nMr. Evans is Professor of Law in the University of Hong Kong. Two of his earlier contributions to the early history of Hong Kong appeared in the Notes and Queries section of the 1968 Journal.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The area was known as Taipingshan from the early days of the colony and its name is not derived from its function as a refuge for T'ai Ping rebels in later years.\n\n2 See Gordon (Land Officer) to Pottinger, CO129/Vol II, f. 152,\n\n3 See Gordon to Malcolm (Colonial Secretary), CO129/Vol. II, f. 138 dated 6 July 1843.\n\n4 The rents for both the Upper and Lower Bazaar Lots represented the same rate per square foot as that charged by Johnston for Town Lots.\n\n5 But the Chinese were turning to the use of brick rather than wood by the end of 1841; see Canton Press, 19 February 1842.\n\n6 Gordon to Pottinger, 19 December 1843; CO129, Vol. II, p. 445.\n\n7 Davis to Stanley 26 July 1844; CO129, Vol. VI, p. 435.\n\n8 Woosnam (Pottinger's private secretary) to Gordon, 10 January 1844: CO129, Vol. V. p. 69.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206261, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "72\n\nALINE K. WONG\n\n1967 Riots, the Kaifongs have increasingly made recommendations to the Government either as individual bodies or through the Research Council and the new Federation. They have increasingly helped to form public opinion with regard to policy issues. However, the new role of the Kaifongs must be attributed partly to the changed policy of the Government in paying more heed to public expression on policy issues since the early 1960s. The Kaifongs have taken advantage of the new situation to present their views on various economic and social measures. Recently, the Government has solicited their opinions in particular, since the Kaifongs came to play a very important role in rallying popular support for the Government during the Communist-inspired 1967 riots,\n\nTo conclude, the work of the Kaifongs is not only dictated by their own financial needs, but is also influenced to a significant degree by the welfare and social policies of the Government. The case of the Kaifongs serves as an illustration of the need of traditional institutions to adapt to the demands of rapidly changing urban conditions. Although the Chinese community in Hong Kong is not a close ethnic community like the Chinese communities overseas, yet the Chinese culture predominates over the social life of the local population. And even though the Kaifongs are by no means the main prop to the traditional culture, yet they represent the cultural forces still working for a great majority of the people. But similar to the Chinese institutions overseas, they are not immune from the processes of social change in such a dynamic society as Hong Kong. However, they are not well equipped to cope with them. Change is not easy, given the traditional structure of the Kaifongs, their traditional leadership and traditional policy outlook, they can no longer meet the modern demands for professional and specialized social services. In spite of the fact that they are making efforts along the direction of community development, lacking the professionally-qualified staff, they are unlikely to make great successes. Thus, as the Government is taking over more and more responsibility for social welfare, the Kaifongs' traditional welfare functions are decreasing in importance. However, so long as the political makeup of the Colony stays relatively unchanged, the status-conferring function of the Kaifong associations is likely to remain, since wealth is likely to continue being converted into status rather than power.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206271, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "82 \n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\ncollecting rent on over a hundred shops and houses. But in 1855, he was declared bankrupt. He had stood security for the administration of the estate of the Chinese merchant Chinam; the administrator had misused the property of the estate, and Loo Aqui had to pay up, throwing him into insolvency. However, anticipating this, he had previously transferred most of his property to his relatives. After his bankruptcy, he no longer appears as a public figure, although two near relatives, perhaps his sons, Loo Shing and Loo Chew (or as he is sometimes called \"Young Qui\") are on several of the later lists we have used to determine elite status. One of Loo Chew's sons was compradore for David Sassoon, Sons and Company in the 1870s; another son, Loo Kum Chun, in 1872 was Secretary to the Tung Wah Hospital.\n\nThe family of Loo Aqui was from Whampoa, and they were most likely Tanka or boat people. The Rev. Karl Gutzlaff, Chinese Secretary to the Superintendent of Trade, reports that \"the most numerous class who have, since our arrival, fixed themselves on the island, are from Whampoa; many of them are of the worst characters, and ready to commit any atrocity\".9 They had defied the Mandarins' edicts prohibiting Chinese citizens from supplying provisions or other services to the British forces. However, it is not surprising they seized the opportunity to make a quick profit by collaborating with the enemy. They were a secondary caste within the Chinese social structure and were deprived of certain rights. As boat people, they had had a long association with foreign shipping. In recognition of their valuable services to the British, they, along with others, were allotted land in the new town. The Tanka, on leaving their boats for land, soon put aside their distinctiveness and merged with the general population, though they long maintained control of trade in cattle, fish, and prostitutes.10\n\nHong Kong government authorities were much concerned in the first ten years of the Colony's existence about the type of Chinese who came here. Conditions were not conducive to attract substantial Chinese of respectable background, who could strengthen Hong Kong's economy by promoting local and south-east Asian trade in Chinese products. There had been some optimists who believed that the Chinese would welcome the opportunity to live and trade under an \"enlightened, benevolent government\", but they had underestimated traditional Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206278, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n89\n\nFukienese merchants to settle in Hong Kong. Several other merchants appear on the earliest of the élite lists indicating their presence in the first decade of the Colony's history.\n\nIn 1852 \"Cun-wo A Kwi, merchant\" contributed five dollars to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital. This is Chow Aki* of the firm Cong-wo, which had been established in the Lower Bazaar in 1842, having a branch at Canton. In 1849 he bought the lease of the Central Market, holding it until 1857. He became a large investor in real estate, but sold out most of his property in 1866 and retired to Macao.\n\nA merchant who survived the pitfalls of commerce in early Hong Kong was Wong Ping1. He is named as a silk merchant on the land-owners' petition of 1848, but he was one of Hong Kong's first industrialists in that he owned a rope walk beyond the western end of the Lower Bazaar. He was one of three trustees to hold Inland Lot 361 in Taipingshan on behalf of the Chinese community. The lot was granted in 1851 and upon it was built a temple \"for the reception of Tablets to the memory of... deceased countrymen\".22 The building was used, however, not only for memorial tablets but also as a depository for those who were about to die, following established Chinese custom. When this use came to the notice of the European community it was shocked. The reaction and public discussion which followed resulted in Government allocating a grant from the revenues of the gambling monopoly to the Chinese community for the erection of a suitable hospital to be known as Tung Wah. Wong Ping was not a member of the Organizing Committee of the Hospital, though he was on the Kai Fong Committee for 1872. He died in 1887. Wong Yue Yee alias Wong Yick Bun, of the Chun Cheong Wing Nam Pak Hong, a Director of the Tung Wah in 1872, may have been a relative as Wong Ping is mentioned in 1881 as a managing partner of the Chun Cheung Hong for some twenty years. He also was associated with the Tsui Shing firm and the Tuck Mee Hong.\n\nIn the 1850s the Taiping Rebellion upset the social and economic structures of China. The changes in China were reflected in changes in Hong Kong. The Taiping threat upon Canton created a refugee group which sought in Hong Kong more stable conditions. Some were wealthy and brought their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206322, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n133\n\nAffairs, and so recruitment for the force was suspended and vacancies caused by death or retirement were not filled.\n\nIn 1948 the Secretary for Chinese Affairs wrote that 'even before the outbreak of the Pacific War it was becoming evident that this system of raising money (i.e., by voluntary subscriptions) would have to be abandoned. Plans for the reorganisation of the Force were under consideration at the time when the Japanese invaded the Colony'. By the District Watch Ordinance, No. 15 of 1949, the force became the direct responsibility of government and the pay and terms of service were brought into line, rank for rank, with those of the Police Force. The Committee was not mentioned in the new Ordinance, and the names of its surviving members were no longer given in the Civil Service Lists.\n\nThe reasons for this change were never made clear by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. But it seems reasonable to conclude that the utility of the force declined once the regular police became more professionalised. There was probably some resistance within government and the community to the idea of a few prominent Chinese controlling a private police force and, on occasions, putting it to their own use. It could also be argued that since the returned Governor, Sir Mark Young, had promised a far greater participation of the many rather than the few in public life, the need for a small body of rich Chinese to act as a key advisory body was seen as not quite 'democratic' in the new Hong Kong; moreover, a few prominent Chinese, members of the Committee, had been a little too prominent in the organisations set up by the Japanese. For these and other reasons, then, the District Watch Force and its Committee after eighty-three years of life and service to the public came to an end in 1949.\n\n—\n\nAn analysis of the District Watch Committee terminates in a number of broader sociological enquiries: the role of associations in Overseas Chinese communities and the nature of leadership in such societies. It is not my intention to pursue such comparative questions in this short and mainly descriptive paper; but of course some comparisons should be suggested. The system that evolved in Hong Kong was not imposed on the Chinese by a colonial government; there were no Congrégations or Kapitan Chinas in Hong Kong63 nor, for that matter, did secret societies supply leaders as they did in Malaya at one stage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206328, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n139\n\n36 In 1917 there were 31 guilds for employers only (in trades such as silk, sandalwood, wicker furniture and copper), 35 skilled craftsmen guilds (sandalwood workers, masons, tinsmiths, etc.) and 5 guilds with mixed membership (employers and workers). There were also 17 district societies, such as the Heung Shan (Hsiang-shan) resident merchants association and the General Commercial Association of the Tung Kun (Tung-kuan) merchants resident in Hong Kong. See the list of exempted and registered societies in the Gazette, 27 April 1917.\n\n37 Wei Yuk was appointed in 1891 and served until his death in 1929. He resigned several times in order to allow a newcomer to join the Committee but was soon re-appointed. Lau Chu-pak was appointed in 1902 and served until his death in 1922. Sir Shouson Chow was appointed in 1917 and was still a member in 1949, the year of the demise of the Committee.\n\n38 During the years 1929 to 1931 and in 1936 the Committee met four times a year at Government House. Lennox Mills states that members had the right to a guard of the District Watch Force on the occasion of weddings and other festivities'. The Secretary for Chinese Affairs tells us in his report for 1936 that through the kindness of His Excellency the Committee was able to meet the members of the Mui Tsai Commission on the occasion of their first visit to the Colony, 'All members attended and there was a valuable discussion with frank interchange of views'. When the Governor, Sir Henry Blake, left the Colony in 1903 on the day of his departure he inspected the District Watchmen. Clearly, everything was done by the government to give prestige and éclat to the Committee and the force.\n\n19 T. C. Cheng, op. cit., p. 18.\n\n40 Of the Chinese land population in the 1901 census 227,615 returned themselves as natives of Kwangtung Province, 179,296 of this number belonging to the Kwong Chau Prefecture, 28,844 came from Tung-kuan hsien, 28,587 from P'an-yü hsien, and 27,221 from Nan-hai hsien. The situation was substantially the same in the censuses of 1911, 1921 and 1931. In 1911, for example, 311,992 out of 350,418 Chinese in Hong Kong, exclusive of the New Territories, spoke Cantonese,\n\n41 Op. cit., pp. 399-400.\n\n42 Heung Shan, present-day Chung Shan, is the arid county on the west side of the Pearl River, stretching down to Macau. It was the Heung Ha, the Cantonese term for the province, district or village from which each person derives his ancestry, of many prominent Chinese, including Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang), Yung Wing (Yung Hung), Wong Shing (Huang Shêng), and Sun Yat-sen. Many Chinese merchants in Hong Kong came from this county; for example, Wei Yuk, Ma Ying-piu (founder of the Sincere Company), M. Y. San (before 1941 the largest biscuit manufacturer in China), Tsang Foo, Look Poong-shan (founder of the Bank of Canton). Su Chao-cheng, organiser and leader of the Seamen' Strike in 1922, came from this county; in 1928 Su was elected to the Central Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. The anarchist, Liu Ssu-fu, was also born there. In 1938 the Chung Shan Commercial Association had a membership of over 4,000 in Hong Kong.\n\n43 In 1905, for example, at least seven members of the Committee were compradores to important western firms; one was manager of a native bank; another of a prosperous pawnshop; a third ran a large export firm. Ho Kai was primarily a financier rather than an entrepreneur. See on this point the Chinese speculator Marie-Claire Bergère, \"The Role of the Bourgeoisie' in M. C. Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase 1900-1913, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968, p. 236.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206351, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "152\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nin 1859 and spread outwards through the self-governing and other territories of what became the Commonwealth and Empire. It extended to Britain's Eastern Colonies and to the foreign communities of the treaty ports of China and Japan where, from time to time, various alarms and excursions added self-preservation to the list of factors motivating the continuance or periodic resuscitation of volunteer corps.\n\nIn Hong Kong the Laws of the Colony early provided for their existence as a constitutional force. A succession of Ordinances established volunteers on a proper basis. The earliest of these was No. 2 of 1862, which was repeated with slight variation in No. 18 of 1882. An important re-modelling was carried out by No. 6 of 1893. This was followed by a Volunteer Reserve Ordinance No. 25 of 1910. Both these Ordinances were replaced by a further Volunteer Ordinance No. 2 of 1920, still modelled largely on the important 1893 Ordinance.\n\nVolunteer forces were the rule in the various foreign concessions in China, though save in the larger ones local volunteer forces tended to be formed and reformed whenever events seemed to warrant it. For example, the Shameen Defence Corps was formed after a serious riot in 1884 and was reformed from time to time, e.g. in May 1911 due to the unsettled state of affairs in Canton (see Diary of Events and the Progress on Shameen 1859-1938 compiled by H.S.S. and privately printed about 1938, pp. 19-26).\n\nThe largest of the China volunteer units was, in time, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. This originated at two public meetings held in April 1853 and its early doings are described in Chapter XXXV of Lanning and Couling's The History of Shanghai, Part I (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1921).\n\nInteresting details of its development are given here and there in Brigadier J. V. Davidson-Houston's Yellow Creek, The Story of Shanghai (London, Putnam, 1962). As in Hong Kong, the passing of the first emergency resulted in the demise of the Corps. \"Enthusiasm for the Volunteer Corps sank to a low ebb, members neglected to turn up for training and it was soon practically defunct\" (p. 58). The Corps was again raised in August 1860 with the onset of the Taiping rebels, when 107 volunteers came forward for enrolment (p. 65). However, after the successful operations against the rebels the Corps \"wilted and died\" and was wound up in 1867 to \"pay for its debtor's balance by selling its rifles\" although the rifle club continued to function (p. 90). The Corps was again formed in 1870 following the Tientsin massacre and continued in being thereafter, its numbers fluctuating between 250-350 for the rest of the 19th century (pp. 92-93). It then continued to grow in size, like the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to meet the difficulties of the troubled 1920s and the war with Japan.\n\nThe number of foreign residents in China is relevant to the size and location of Volunteer Corps. Some figures are given at pp. 292-295 of J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China, 4th edition, Hongkong, Kelly and Walsh 1903. There were, for instance, 4,424 foreigners in Shanghai (exclusive of those living in the French Settlement) in 1895 and 6774 in 1900. The Hong Kong Census of 1891 listed 10,446 British and foreign residents.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206356, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n157\n\nstatue now in Victoria Park at Causeway Bay which, up to 1941, stood in Statue Square, beside the Hong Kong Club in the centre of the city.\n\nContinuing with our survey, the period from 1893 up to the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914 was one of great activity for the Hong Kong Volunteers. It was one in which a great many important persons in the local community joined the Corps and when, reading between the lines, it was not only the 'done thing' to join the Volunteers but might be remarked upon if one did not. Pressure came from the Governor himself. When the Volunteer Reserve Ordinance of 1910 was in passage, Sir Frederick Lugard ended his statement by saying \"I think that every young Englishman in this Colony ought to join the Volunteers, and every Englishman who is no longer young ought to join the force which I hope will at once be enrolled when this bill has been read a third time.\"14\n\nThe Volunteer Corps' annual inspection reports for the period are available in Hong Kong. They were printed for tabling at Legislative Council, itself an indication of an important activity. They make interesting reading and show the vitality of the Corps and its impact on Hong Kong European polite society and on the Establishment.15 As stated, the Governors of the time took a keen interest in the Corps and it was Sir Mathew Nathan himself (Governor 1902-07 and formerly an officer of the Royal Engineers) who is credited with inspiring the formation in 1906 of the Mounted Troop—known irreverently as \"Mathew's Mounted Mugs\"16—and the institution of the Volunteer Reserve Association which was eventually embodied by Ordinance in 1910. Another, more temporary, inspiration in 1899 had been the calling out of the Volunteers to assist the Regulars in repelling an expected attack on Kowloon by New Territories' villagers in arms against the British take-over, and their part in the occupation of the Kowloon Walled City later in the same year.17\n\nMuch of this resurgence in the popularity of the military—a phenomenon which is usually held to be un-British—\n\n14 Han., 1910, p. 91.\n\n15 See S.P., 1894-1908.\n\n16 Vol, 1954, p. 50.\n\nwas\n\n17 See S.P., 1900, pp. 637-638, Y.B., 1940, p. 23, and Vol, 1954, p. 43.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206360, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n161\n\nmandant's annual report in the 1937 Year Book that there had been numbers of Chinese members serving in different units in the Corps before 1937.27 Some stimulus was required, and No. 4 Company's contribution to the 1938 Year Book tells us what it was. \"Encouraged by the records of the Chinese units in the Shanghai and Malay Volunteers, Headquarters considered that the inclusion of a Chinese unit in the Hong Kong Defence Force was fully justified.\"28\n\nThis was a real innovation, even if it was partly brought about by the preparation for war and the search for more men. All through the 19th century and early 20th century, though it far outnumbered the European community, the Chinese element in the Colony, was considered to be the shifting sector of the population with the European element as the hard core. The fact that Chinese were willing to serve and were coming forward in numbers on a voluntary basis is a significant development, not only in the history of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps but of the Colony itself. These men were not coolies and street traders, but belonged to the settled middle-class that had developed in Hong Kong Chinese society over the years since 1841.\n\nWar came to Hong Kong in December 1941. Including auxiliary units, the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force had a mobilised strength of 2,200 at the Japanese Invasion.29 It played a memorable, and costly, part in the defence of the Colony and its members suffered along with their Regular comrades and civilian internees during three and a half years of imprisonment that included, for some, transfer to Japan to work in essential industry, like coalmines. The story of these years has been told elsewhere,30 but the fighting and the period as prisoners of war cost the H.K.V.D.F. the lives of 172 officers and men killed in action or died of wounds, 39 missing, believed killed, and 78 died as P.O.W. The Force was awarded 1 C.B.E., 1 D.S.O., 4 M.B.E.s, 3 M.C.s, 1 D.C.M., 6 M.M.s, 3 B.E.M.s and 18\n\n27 Y.B., 1937, p. 6.\n\n28 Y.B., 1938, p. 47. There is, however, a reference to 'all races' volunteering in 1914-18 for the forces and to serve with the Volunteers in Endacott, p. 284.\n\n29 Vol, 1954, p. 112.\n\n30 See note 6 above.\n\n31 Vol, 1954, p. 111.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206381, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\nFrom a lecture by the Rev. JAMES LEGGE, D.D., LL.D., on reminiscences of a long residence in the east, delivered in the City Hall, November 5, 1872.\n\nEditor's note. The following article is reprinted from the pages of The China Review, Vol. III, (1874) pp. 163–176. Its subject, and its distinguished author, (1815-97, appointed first Professor of Chinese at Oxford, 1876) are of equal interest and require no introduction from me.\n\n[The lecturer, having stated that his main object would be to interest his hearers by a review of the progress of the Colony, almost from its commencement down to nearly the present time, and by some references to the changes which during that period have taken place in the relations of China and Japan with the Christian nations of the West, the old nations of Europe and the young nation of the United States, proceeded to say that wherever he might interject views of his own in the course of his historical survey, he claimed perfect freedom in doing so, and was ready to accord the same to others in estimating the value of his opinions. He then sketched briefly his arrival in the East in 1839, and a residence in Malacca of nearly three years and a half, which brought him to his removal to Hong Kong in 1843. From this point, he shall speak in his own person.]\n\nIn the month of May, 1843, I reached Macao, and, a few days after, came over with my family to this place. Our passage was made in a small cutter, chartered for the occasion, and I have not forgotten the sensations of delight with which, when we had passed Green Island, I contemplated the ranges of hills on the north and the south, embosoming, between them the tranquil waters of the bay. I seemed to feel that I had found at last the home for which I had left Scotland; and here has been my abode, with intervals occupied by visits to the fatherland, for nearly thirty years.\n\nThe hill-sides now occupied by the graceful terraces of our city then presented a very different appearance. But the small and rude beginnings would not have been what they were in the middle of 1843, if they had not dated from before the treaty of Nanking. The island had been ceded to Great Britain in January 1841, by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206384, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n175\n\non from them a little way was the Cemetery, still a small enclosed space, which, it had been thought, would be sufficient for the needs of the Colony. Hardly any one but myself, I suppose, ever thinks now of paying it a visit. Beyond that, hardly any buildings were met with, till we came to Spring Gardens, where two or three English firms had begun to occupy the ground on the left. Then came Hospital Hill, with diminutive buildings on it, devoted to the same purposes as the larger erections that now crown it; and Morrison Hill, where the school of the Morrison Education Society was in vigorous action, with the Hospital of the Medical Society, the foundations of which can hardly be traced now, but where I found hospitable quarters for several months. Arrived at the Happy Valley, there were to be seen only fields of rice and sweet potatoes. At the south end of it was the village of Wong-nei-ch'ung, just as at the present day, and on the heights above it were rising two or three foreign houses, with an imposing one on the east side of the valley, built by a Mr. Mercer of Jardine, Matheson and Co.'s House. All these proved homes of fever or death, and were soon abandoned.\n\nBeyond the Valley somewhere was a range of buildings, which had already become tabooed as unhealthy, and then came the offices of the great Firm, with the workmen still busy about them, and far from being what they are at the present day.\n\nIf I have omitted to mention in this retrospective view of Victoria as I first saw it any of the foreign houses then existing, they can only be a very few. When I contrast the single street, imperfectly lined with hastily raised houses, and a few sporadic buildings on the barren hill-side, with the city into which they have grown, with its praya, its imposing terraces, and many magnificent residences, I think one must travel far to find another spot where human energy and skill have triumphed to such an extent over difficulties of natural position. I sometimes fancy Britannia standing on the Peak, and looking down with an emotion of pride on the great Babylon which her sons have built.\n\nAlthough I was charmed with the general appearance of the place, and the energy that was manifest in laying out the ground and pushing on building, I found many of the residents oppressed with gloom because of its unhealthiness. 1843 was, no doubt, a very sickly year, more so, perhaps, than any one has been since. The left wing of the 55th Regiment lost a hundred men between", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "176\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe end of June and the beginning of September, and was then removed from its quarters of which I have spoken on board ship. Many civilians also fell victims to Hongkong fever. The mortality was mainly owing to the want of accommodation for the multitudes who kept pressing into the new colony, and to the miasma set free from the ground which was everywhere being turned up. I remember visiting officers who were living in small huts reared on the hill behind the general's house. It was no wonder that one after another they were seized with fever, and either died, or were invalided home. Then the drains were for the time all open, and an atmosphere of disease, which only the strongest constitutions and prudent living were able to resist, might be said to envelope the inhabitants day and night.\n\nI have intimated my opinion that there was no subsequent year of sickness and mortality so great as that of 1843; and nothing can be more delightful than the change in the colony in this respect. I do not think there is now a healthier residence on this side of Africa. This has been very gradually arrived at, by the increase of good houses, effectual drainage, the better supply of water, and the growth of trees and vegetation in general. There were other unhealthy years, and it came to be said that we might expect one of that character every seven years; but we have ceased to be troubled with the apprehension of such a periodic visitation. As to the healthiness from increased vegetation, I may mention that Dr. William Morrison, the colonial surgeon, who himself died from abscess of the liver, in October, 1883,* told me, some years before that event, that he had advised planting the ground on the south of the street behind the Murray Barracks with bamboos, as being of speedy growth. It was done, and soon the grove which every one of you knows, began to wave, and there was from that time a marked improvement in the health of the soldiers in those barracks.\n\nThe Colony, I have said, is now one of the healthiest residences, if not the very healthiest, in the East. The average of 14 years, reckoning back from the present, gives a rate of mortality for the foreign residents, not including the military, of a very little over 4 per cent; and in 1868, the rate was a trifle under 2 per cent, rather lower than the rate of mortality in Great Britain.\n\n* SIC: Morrison died later than the date given, but I have no reference books available at the time of writing. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206386, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n177\n\nIt ought always to be considerably lower than that, seeing the majority of our population consists of people in the prime of life, and we have hardly any of the deaths of the very old, and not so many of the deaths of children, which are the principal elements in the mortality at home. My belief, however, is that for young people coming out here, who will live regularly, and somewhat abstemiously rather than the contrary, the chances of their living out, and being uninjured by, the years of their sojourn, are quite as good as they would be in London.\n\nReturning from this digression on the health of the Colony, I may observe that before the end of 1843, I moved from the Morrison Hill to a house in D'Aguilar Street, that now forming the offices of Lapraik & Co. It was then a very different house from the present, and hardly half the size, but I had to pay $130 a month for it. Those were good days for parties who had houses to let. In the following year I moved to a house in Hollywood Road, which I had built, and which was subsequently for many years the Printing office of the London Missionary Society.\n\nFrom these two houses I used to walk to the Post Office which I have mentioned, when there was any arrival in the harbour by which I might expect letters. If there were any letters for me I got them; and then the postmaster would say, \"Here are letters also for so and so, and so and so, and so and so, in your neighbourhood. Please oblige me by taking them with you, and sending your coolie on with them.\" We used to get our home-letters then from Bombay by fast sailing clippers.\n\nIt was an era when the \"Lady Mary Wood\" came in with the Mail on the 13th August, 1845. She was the first of the P. & O.'s Mail steamers, and her passengers had been, I think, 55 days on the way from London to Hong Kong. And now have we not the same noble Company's steamers coming in twice a month in much shorter time, and the French steamers, and those of the Pacific Mail Company? Above all, have we not the Electric Telegraph, flashing news almost instantaneously from this to home, from home to this, Ariel-like putting its girdle round the earth? Verily the difference is great between that time and this.\n\nIn the early days there was next to no police guardianship; and the consequences were frequent disorders on the streets during the day, and many burglaries on a great scale during the night.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206391, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 208, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "182\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nI have drawn, you probably think, sufficiently long on your attention and patience already, and yet, that we may get a sufficient view of the growth of the Colony, I must ask you to go back with me to the time at which I had arrived when the unhealthiness of 1843 led me away into all these digressions. I will try, however, to be brief in what I have further to say.\n\nSir Henry Pottinger, I observed, was governor of the Colony when I came to it, and I was surprised to find that he was not by any means popular. He was a good man, people said, to conquer China, and a bad man to rule Hong Kong. The impression which I received from my intercourse with him was of a man condensed, reticent, powerful, who would have his own way, and was able to force it. Mr. Davis, afterwards Sir John Davis, arrived and relieved him in May, 1844; and his coming was hailed with eager expectation. He had been in China before in the East India Company's time, was a Chinese scholar, and had written a book on China, which is still the most readable and entertaining work on the country up to the time to which he was able to bring it down. He, it was thought, was just the man for the place. How it came about, I hardly know; but of all our governors he left his office under the greatest cloud of popular dissatisfaction. In his time, however, the Colony made very considerable advances. The arrival of Judge Hulme was almost contemporaneous with that of Sir John Davis, and a Court of Supreme judicature was constituted. Mr. May, whom we all know, arrived in March, 1843, and the police force began to take shape. Not long after, the tax on house property was proposed, and never was there a greater clamour in the place. It was argued that it was unconstitutional, an imperilling of that palladium of English liberty that taxation must go hand in hand with representation; and the revolt of the American Colonies in the last century was alluded to. It was not my lot, however, to be in Hong Kong during the greater part of Sir John Davis's administration. I was laid down with Hong Kong fever in the autumn of 1844, which returned with other complications in the following year, till I was carried on board ship on the 18th November, to make the passage round the Cape, my friends all supposing that Hong Kong had seen the last of me.\n\nTwo days after I had left, Ke-ying, the Chinese statesman, paid a visit to the Colony, and gave a grand entertainment to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206393, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "184 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe Colony, which his predecessor had not done, and which his successor was still less able to do. During all his time the Colony was in a dead-alive state. What trade had sprung up during its first years had rather decreased under Sir John Davis, and it was not till about 1854 that it received a fresh impulse. I remember walking, in 1849, one afternoon with old Mr. Holliday—so we should call him now with his stalwart sons among us—and having a gloomy conversation with him on the state and prospects of the place. Taking our stand at a point a little beyond what is now St. Paul's College, where we had a good view of the harbour, we counted 28 square-rigged vessels in it, storeships and all, with hardly a steamer among them. \"After all,” said Mr. Holliday, \"there must be some trade, else those vessels would not come to the place.\" By and by came the emigration to California, and afterwards that to Australia, but though these produced some excitement, they did little to the furtherance of trade. In 1850 the T'ae-p'ing rebellion began to be talked of, and, Sir George Bonham going on a visit to England, Dr. Bowring came down from his consulate in Canton to take his place, which finally became his own, when the other vacated his office in 1854, leaving his name in the Bonham Strand.\n\nAbout this time Yeh, whose name ere long became notorious all over the world, and who had for some time been governor of Canton province, was appointed viceroy of the two Kwang. The T'ae-p'ing rebels made themselves masters of Nanking, and the south and seaboard of China began to heave with rebellion. One body made itself master of Fat-shan, and Canton was threatened. Yeh, however, maintained himself there, keeping his executioners busy. The numbers put to death in 1852 and 1853 were very many every month, and they greatly multiplied, as the insurgents were gradually got under. It has always seemed to me that this was the turning point in the progress of Hongkong. As Canton was threatened, the families of means hastened to leave it, and many of them flocked to this Colony. Houses were in demand; rents rose; the streets that had been comparatively deserted assumed a crowded appearance; new commercial Chinese firms were founded; the native trade received an impetus which it had not lost till it was arrested by the superfluous vigour of some of Sir Richard MacDonnell's early ordinances.\n\nPage 210\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "# THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n# 187\n\nAs I walked out, after the service, round the wall of the city, I had a singular and pleasing rencontre with a countryman and fellow-townsman of my own. Passing the quarters of the English troops, near the Five-storied Pagoda, a fine-looking fellow of the Engineers came panting up the hill, and addressing me, said, “Are you Mr. Legge of Hongkong?” \"Yes, but I do not know that ever I saw you before.\" \"But you have,\" said he, bursting into the sweet Aberdeenshire Doric; \"I cam oot for the wark here, and we hadna time to land at Hongkong, or I would hae come to see ye. Dinna ye ken the sma toon o' Huntly in Aberdeenshire?\" \"I know Huntly well, and so, I suppose, do you. Are you from Huntly?\" \"Eh! aye. D'ye mind the Piries at the brig-fitt?\" All I could do, I could not bring the Piries to my recollection; but this was one of them, John Pirie; and seeing that he had the Victoria Cross on his breast, I touched it, and said, \"Weel, I see you hae na been disgracing oor sma toon; what did ye get this for?\" \"It was a sma matter, and nae worth speaking about.\" \"But tell me what ye got it for.\" \"Weel, ye see, I was in the Crimea in the attack on the Redan. You ken it was a failure, an' we had to retreat, and many o' oor men were i' the open exposed to the fire o' the Russians. I was wounded mysel', but nae sae sair that I couldna keep the field, and I thought I would try and bring aff some o' these men. An' I did sae, an' they thought it was a brave thing, and gied me this cross for it. But it was a sma matter; I couldna but dee't.”\n\nOn returning from Canton, I started for a short visit to England by way of Calcutta. I reached that city on the day that news came down to it of the taking of Lucknow; and a few weeks after I sailed for home in the same steamer with Sir John Inglis, and many officers of the garrison of Lucknow, and many widows also whose husbands had died there. You may be sure the passage was not tedious with such companions, but I have not time to dwell on my intercourse with them, and many of the thrilling narratives about the siege which I received from their lips.\n\nIn September, 1859, I was back here again, and found that Sir Hercules Robinson had arrived a little before me as our new Governor. The news also greeted me of the violation of the T'ëentsin treaty by the Chinese, and of the defeat of our fleet at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206398, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE COLONY OF HONG KONG\n\n189\n\ngood effects. It would have been more fruitful, however, if it had been better carried out, first by Sir Hercules Robinson, and then by Sir Richard MacDonnell. The materials supplied to them from home, in one relay of students and another, were excellent; but there should have been no diverting them away from their proper business of study, until they had given proof of their proficiency by actual interpretation in the Supreme Court; after which, every other office in the Colony, under that of the Governor himself, should have been open to them according to their aptitudes.\n\nTo Sir Hercules also we are indebted for the beginning of our Water Works; and if they were not constructed at first on a sufficiently large scale, where are we still, after so many years, and so continued an expenditure? With all their deficiency, they are a great boon; and when I have read the lucubrations of grumbling complainers, I have laughed in recollecting the scenes of early years, when, every night in the dry season, hundreds, of a small population comparatively, might be seen streaming on the hills with pitchers and buckets, searching for the precious element.\n\nIn Sir Hercules' time also it was that the present Gaol was built, to take charge of which there came out in November 1863, its model governor, Mr. Douglas. Then came gas to illuminate our streets and houses, and a commencement of the Public Gardens was made. The conception of the Mint always appeared to me admirable, and I thought there would be in it an institution that would greatly contribute to the prosperity and influence of the Colony. It has not turned out so. The refining of sugar is a good thing, but I had much rather that the buildings had continued to be employed for coining money.\n\nIn two only of his undertakings did Sir Hercules fail,--the building the prison on Stonecutters' Island, and his management of the newly-acquired territory on the Kowloon side of the harbour. I have heard that he could not get his way with that through the clashing of his views and those of the naval and military Authorities. However that was, the delay in offering the ground for sale to the public, which was done at last at upset prices absurdly high, allowed the ebbing of the tide of factitious prosperity to set in. Perhaps it was well. The impulse from abroad once removed, there was nothing in the Colony itself to sustain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206399, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "190 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe excitement and activity. Then came the close of the war in America, which had produced a feverish activity in the cotton market, ultimately disastrous to many. There followed, in 1866, the commercial disasters consequent on the fall of Overend and Gurney, and the panic at home, with the crashing of banks and the downfall of Houses which had been supposed to be firm as the foundations of the mountain behind us. It was a time of trouble and darkness. Sir Hercules came to the Colony when the tide was rising, and he had it at the flood for the greater part of his time. There remains the Robinson Road to perpetuate his name. When he went away, Mr. Mercer took his place as acting governor, an able man and accomplished, who would have done better for himself had he ventured to assume more responsibility. Then came Sir Richard MacDonnell to the helm at a time of great difficulty; but here I must bring my reminiscences of Hongkong to a close. The events of Sir Richard's incumbency are fresh in the memory of most of you, fresher, indeed, than in my own, for I was absent from the Colony during his administration for three whole years. There are none of us but would rejoice to hear of the reinvigoration of his health. In these recent years the capabilities of the telegraph wire and of the Suez Canal have come fully into play. Their effects on the Colony have already been great, and they will yet be greater.\n\nAnd now, as I draw to a conclusion, permit me to observe that the more than thirty years of my residence in the East have witnessed events of almost unparalleled magnitude and change all over the world. What wars and revolutions have taken place in Europe! in America! in India! in Africa! But great as they have been, they have not been greater than those which have taken place, here in the Far East. When I think of China opened as it has been, and of Japan pursuing with much more willing and rapid steps the career of progress, I can scarcely realize the contrast between the state of things in 1839 and 1872. We sometimes doubt if China be really moving, but moving it is; and if I sometimes fret at the slowness of its advance, and wish that there were more in it of the mobility of its neighbour, yet in the end that slowness tends to increase my respect for the country and its people. There must be a great future yet for the country. In Great Britain there is an area of 12,000 miles of coal fields,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\nNo one dissented, whereupon\n\n33\n\nMuda Hassim then drew forth his sabre, and raising it, proclaimed in a loud voice, that any one who contested the Sultan's appointment, his head should be split in two. On which ten of his brothers drew their krisses and flourished them\n\n+\n\nAs we have seen James Brooke acquired Sarawak as a private individual; but there is little question but that elements within the Brunei court, centered upon Hasim and Bedruddin, which came to be known as the \"English party\" wished to bring the British into an alliance with them to further their own political ends, and they saw Brooke as an agency by means of which this goal might be pursued. Although given a pseudo-political mission by the Singapore authorities Brooke undertook no official duties for Britain until 1844 when he was appointed \"agent near the person of the Sultan of Borneo\", a \"special and temporary office\", and was commissioned to find a site for a naval station along the northwest coast of Borneo.\n\nWhen Labuan was purchased from Brunei and created a British colony Brooke became its first governor in 1847. The same year he negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan and was named consul to Brunei. His dual appointment from the Foreign and Colonial Offices came largely as a result of the reputation he enjoyed in England as a result of his successful battles against Borneo pirates. Not only was he popular with officers of the Royal Navy in the East who aided him in his anti-piracy warfare on the coast. His exploits had also been well publicised at home. In 1847 he returned to England, the hero of the day. He was fêted, given the freedom of the City of London, presented at Court at Windsor Castle, where the Prince Consort found him an interesting conversationalist, and was knighted.\n\nAt the end of the 1840s, then, Brooke found himself the possessor of three posts. He was Raja of Sarawak in his own right, and an officer of the Crown as Governor of Labuan and Consul to Brunei. The nature of his responsibilities in the three positions very soon created a conflict of interest situation and in 1854 he resigned his crown appointments.\n\n5 Aberdeen to Brooke, 1 November 1844, Foreign Office Series 12, Volume 2 (FO12/2).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206492, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "34\n\n!\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nThe issue of Brooke's status revolved around, firstly, the question of whether or not a subject of the Queen could hold the position as a sovereign prince of a foreign state; and, secondly, whether Brooke was in fact an independent ruler or a vassal of the Sultan of Brunei.\n\nThe issue, however, was not a burning one in the ministries of Whitehall. Despite the fact that Borneo was of concern to Britain as the guardian of the eastern flank of the South China Sea route to the China coast, and was to assume, gradually, more strategic value as first France and later Germany began colonial operations in the area, at mid-century Britain possessed a colony and naval station at Labuan and a (“good strong”) consular treaty with Brunei which gave her a certain measure of control, if she chose to indulge it, in Brunei's relations with foreign states. Most of the Colonial and Foreign Secretaries in London, until the 1870s were not very interested in defining precisely Raja Brooke's status,\n\nFor the most part, Whitehall grudgingly approved of Brooke's “civilizing influence\" in Borneo. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in 1846, offered naval support for the suppression of piracy, and during a later term of office gave standing orders to the Eastern squadron to visit Sarawak at regular intervals. But the Foreign Office generally held to the view that \"it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government that British subjects should possess territory on the mainland of Borneo\".\n\nLord Clarendon, when Foreign Secretary in the mid-1850s, came close to disavowing Brooke's position in Sarawak. In 1853 the Raja took issue with a Foreign Office statement that seemed to assume that Brooke was a vassal of Brunei. Clarendon minuted,\n\nIt seems to me that the various documents tend to prove how cautiously the government abstained from recognizing his (Brooke's) independence although in various ways the anomalous character of his position has been admitted.\n\nBut Clarendon did not leave it at that. When in 1855 Spencer St. John succeeded Brooke as Consul in Brunei he suggested to the Foreign Office that he also be accredited to Sarawak as an independent state. The Raja agreed and insisted that the new consul must receive his exequatur from him. This act would render the desired\n\n6 FO to Admiralty, 24 July 1846, FO 12/4.\n\n7 Clarendon minute upon Brooke to FO, 27 September 1853, FO 12/13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206498, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "40\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\ngoverns it so well and cheaply for them, they will do nothing for him or Sarawak.\n\nWhen first France and then the United States and Germany showed signs of intruding into Borneo, or when they came close to a potentially threatening position over the important British lines of empire north and south through the South China Sea, or when the Foreign and Colonial Offices in London felt the hot breath of imperial competition, it was then that the offshore colony of Labuan and a by now weak little consular treaty with Brunei were found to be inadequate to justify, in the international arena, Britain's position in Borneo. Sarawak along with North Borneo and Brunei were incorporated into the British empire as protected states. Still for many years Britain assumed no responsibility for the internal administration of Sarawak, and adamantly refused any expenditure of imperial grants for the privilege of colouring these areas pink on the imperial maps of the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206516, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "58\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nRegistrar General's Department at that date was run by the Registrar-General and four clerks. Nevertheless, within five years of his return from Canton Lockhart had become the head of a key department, the Registrar-General's Department (renamed in 1911 more appropriately as the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs).\n\nDr. Ho Kai (later Sir Kai Ho Kai) in a farewell speech in 1902 on the eve of Lockhart's departure for Weihaiwei remarked that 'in 1882 Mr. Lockhart arrived here to find Hong Kong in a depressed condition, owing to the collapse of the great land speculation that occurred during the year previous; and he found also an embittered feeling between two important sections of the community. Young as Mr. Lockhart was then, and although occupying a minor position in the Government, he at once interested himself in the welfare of the Colony, and endeavoured to promote a better understanding between the Europeans and the Chinese. The leading Chinese citizens, who had hitherto been more or less apathetic towards public affairs, came forward in comparatively large numbers and took a keener and more active interest in civic welfare. They gave the Government their full co-operation and support and gave largely to the various local charitable institutions and took a more active part in their management'.\" Ho Kai was a very close friend of Lockhart's and, needless to say, farewell speeches are normally eulogistic—they are the expression of an understood social ritual in which white must predominate over black—but in truth Ho Kai had not exaggerated the part played by Lockhart over a number of years in drawing prominent Chinese into the orbit of Government.\n\nThere were several reasons for this: Lockhart always admired the Chinese; as an administrator he saw obvious advantages in securing Chinese support for government policies; he knew that Hong Kong was changing and that the style of governing had to change if only because a Chinese business and commercial elite had emerged, and because a segment of the population could be defined as permanently resident in the Colony; he knew, too, that the future prosperity of the Colony would come to depend more and more on a Chinese bourgeoisie. But the problems faced by Lockhart by the colonial government were not unique to Hong Kong of course; they were typical of some other colonial territories, notably in Africa.10 Hence, with the collaboration of a number of prominent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206527, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n69\n\ncentury in close proximity to Hong-Kong, and were acquainted with its methods of administration and system of law and police, many of them, indeed being engaged in trade or working as labourers in that Colony. In the latter case, the Chinese of Wei-Hai-Wei had never had any experience of British administration until the territory was leased in 1898, and were, therefore, quite ignorant of the principles underlying that administration. Again the Chinese of the new territory of Hong Kong did not enjoy a good reputation for orderly behaviour, whereas the natives here have shown themselves law-abiding, docile, and orderly. After due deliberation I came to the conclusion that the most effective and economic plan would be to continue the system of policing the territory through the headmen of the villages and to retain it so long as it continued to work satisfactorily, instead of dotting Police Stations throughout the territory in charge of Inspectors, who would be unable to communicate with the people except through interpreters, a system which almost invariably results in corruption and malpractices. That system, which is suitable to the whole of the territory, except the town of Port Edward and the island of Liu Kung, is based on the fact that the unit of society is the family or village and not the individual as in the west. Headmen are appointed for each village or group of villages and are held responsible for the maintenance of peace and good order in their villages. If any trouble arises, the headman reports the matter and aids in making any arrests that may be necessary.\n\nThe principal source of revenue, as in the New Territories, was at first the land tax. In Weihaiwei this was based on the old land registers handed over by the Chinese magistrates. For many years past, R.F. Johnston wrote, 'every village had paid through the headman or committee of headmen a certain sum of money which by courtesy is called a land-tax. How that amount is assessed among the various families is a matter which the people decide for themselves on the general understanding that no one should be called upon to pay more than his ancestors paid before him unless the family property has been considerably increased.'35 The Territory under Lockhart's administration prospered, for in four years the Imperial Grant-in-Aid was reduced to less than one-third of its amount at the time when he first took office; however, owing to the reduction of the British Fleet in China in 1906 and the less frequent visit of men-of-war to Weihaiwei, the business of Port Edward was\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206539, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n81\n\n21 'Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 32 of 1899, p. 13.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 36.\n\n23 Ibid., p. 65.\n\n24 Ibid., p. 69.\n\n25 'Report on the New Territory during the first year of British Administration', Sessional Papers, no. 15 of 1900, p. 252.\n\n26 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901', Sessional Papers, no. 22 of 1902, p. 4.\n\n27 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921.\n\n28 Alfred Hancock and his brother Sydney were partners in the firm of A. and S. Hancock of Queen's Road, Hong Kong. In 1906 Alfred Hancock had resided for over fifty years in Amoy and Hong Kong. In the 1920s the firm had moved to Des Voeux Road and the chief partner was H. R. B. Hancock, Lockhart's brother-in-law. The firm was still active in 1940.\n\n29 The walled city of Weihaiwei, captured by the Japanese in 1894, by the terms of the 1898 Convention was not under British jurisdiction but nominally under a Chinese sub-district deputy magistrate. The British sphere of influence extended for an area of 1,500 square miles east of the Leased Territory.\n\n30 On the Chinese Regiment see: Captain A. A. S. Barnes, On Active Service with the Chinese Regiment, London, 1902; C. E. Bruce-Mitford, The Territory of Wei-Hai-Wei, Shanghai, 1902, pp. 22-24; R. F. Johnston, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, London, 1910, pp. 82-3; and Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1906. The only servicemen left in Weihaiwei after 1906 were the small body of Royal Marines of the Island Guard,\n\n31 Johnston, op. cit., p. 82.\n\n32 L. K. Young, British Policy in China 1895-1902, London, 1970, p. 73.\n\n33 Johnston, op. cit., p. 80.\n\n34 The Weihaiwei School was opened with only four pupils in 1901 by a Mr. H. J. L. Beer. In 1903 a new school house was built near Port Edward, partly with the aid of a debenture loan subscribed by British subjects in Shanghai. The new school had dormitories for forty boys. The school, which took boys between ages of 8 to 14, was mainly for the sons of British expatriates. Pupils came from places as far apart as Mukden, Canton, Kobe, and Chungking. The school closed in 1925 when it became apparent that the rendition of Weihaiwei was close at hand. Weihaiwei's fine climate contributed to the school's success with expatriate parents.\n\n35 Johnston, op. cit., p. 96.\n\n36 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, K.C.M.G. (1874-1938). Johnston was educated at Edinburgh University and Oxford. He arrived in Hong Kong as an Eastern Cadet, fresh from Magdalen, on Christmas Day, 1898. In 1904, Robert Walter, Secretary to Government and Magistrate at Weihaiwei, was seconded for service as Emigration Agent at Ch'iu-wang-tao for the Transvaal Government and Johnston was appointed to take his place. In 1906 he was appointed District Officer and Magistrate and resided in the heart of the Territory. In 1919 when he took up his appointment as tutor he was Senior District Officer. In 1927 he returned to Weihaiwei as Commissioner. After the rendition of Weihaiwei in 1930 he became Professor of Chinese, University of London, and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Studies, 1931-37.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF\n\nHOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe pattern of residential development in Hong Kong today is the cumulative result of historical forces which began to exert their influence almost from the time when the colony came under British jurisdiction in 1842. It is therefore towards an appreciation of the current housing situation that this study outlines Hong Kong's efforts to provide homes for its people over the past 130 years. In tracing the course of history in this particular field it will be found that the dreadful living conditions which persisted in many districts in the last century, and even in more recent years, have been the combined result of an overwhelming demand for and critical shortage of accommodation; the general poverty of the population; the inadequacy of utility services; the exploitation of families desperate for a roof over their heads; and the difficulty of enforcing (and sometimes the lack of) suitable regulations governing standards of building construction, the provision of household facilities and overcrowding. However, on the basis of recent achievements the future seems much brighter.\n\nFounding of the Colony\n\nThe sea routes between Europe and China, first established by the Arabs in the 7th Century A.D., were reopened in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese who settled in Macau in 1557. Spanish, Dutch, English and French traders soon followed but during the eighteenth century the British merchants captured most of the China trade which comprised mainly exports of tea and silk. The East India Company initially held the monopoly of trade and Canton became the centre of business for the British merchants.\n\n*Dr. E. G. Pryor is Senior Planning Officer in the New Territories Planning Section, Crown Lands & Survey Office, Hong Kong. This monograph has been extracted largely from his Ph.D thesis, \"An Assessment of the Need and Scope for Urban Renewal in Hong Kong.\" The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Government of Hong Kong. Author's copyright.\n\nPlates 8-12 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206550, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "92\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nwith the law particularly, also, as the government lacked sufficient staff of adequate competence.\n\nThis situation became a source of some concern to Dr. Murray, the Colonial Surgeon, who in 1859 reported that:\n\nHong Kong presents no feature either in climate or position which should make it peculiarly unhealthy. Because of its situation, its natural advantages and its weather, Hong Kong should be the best drained, the best watered, and in every way, the best regulated of towns from a sanitary point of view.... Ordinance No. 8 of 1856 makes it unlawful to construct or reconstruct a house without a sufficient water closet and ashpit to the satisfaction of the Surveyor General. Houses recently built have been allowed to be erected without the slightest regard to any one of these particulars. The fact is there is legal machinery enough to enforce any and every reasonable requirement and to ensure the sanitary condition of the Colony but there exists an unaccountable objection to putting that machinery into action.\n\nIn 1860, the Kowloon Peninsula up to Boundary Street came under British sovereignty under the Convention of Peking (Figure 1) and this provided more room for urban growth which the prospering trade of the port had stimulated. Yet more Chinese came from the Mainland to seek employment in Hong Kong and, after a few years, to return to their families. Despite the continual outflow of people, the newcomers arrived in such numbers that by 1865 the population had increased to some 125,500 persons of whom 63% were adult males, which reflected the \"frontier\" character of the Colony. Demand for accommodation became more acute and, in the continued absence of the adequate enforcement of building regulations and the general lack of satisfactory water supplies and other public utility services, the general sanitary condition of the Colony became the cause of some concern particularly to Dr. Murray who, during his term of office from 1858 to 1872, repeatedly drew attention to the exceedingly unhealthy state of Hong Kong.\n\nMcCoy took over as Colonial Surgeon in 1872 but died soon after, and his place was filled by Dr. Phineas Ayres in November 1873. Ayres was outspoken over the state of the Colony's public\n\n1 Quoted in Wellington A. R., Public Health in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1930, p. 13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206560, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "102\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nthe Commission reported that \"there are many insanitary properties in the Colony, and dwellings which, in their present condition, are unfit for human habitation.\" The Commission came to the conclusion that it was unnecessary for the government to undertake widespread resumption but that it would be sufficient for various improvements to be carried out at the owners' expense. The principal improvements which were recommended were the provision of open spaces at the rear of premises and the prohibition of cubicles under certain conditions.\n\nIn the compilation of the Commission's report, the views of Dr. Ayres, the one-time Colonial Surgeon, were sought. He very observantly commented that:\n\nMany laws have been made in the 20 years previous to 1894 to remedy the insanitary state of the Colony, but most have remained dead letters owing to the difficulties of enforcing them and the prejudices of the Chinese especially and other sections of the community. The labours of Hercules in cleansing the Augean stables were a trifle compared with that the Government has to contend with in the near future in cleansing the City of Victoria and other inhabited portions of the Colony.14\n\nThe recommendations of the Commission were by and large incorporated in the Insanitary Properties Ordinance of 1899, the provisions of which, however, the then Director of Public Works regarded as a compromise designed to meet objections by the unofficial members of the Legislative Council and the propertied interests which they represented.15\n\nChadwick Returns and New Reforms\n\nDespite all the steps taken by the colonial government to come to grips with the problems created by the disorderly growth of the city, deep feelings of discontent were expressed by certain sections of the community against the inadequacy of the administration's efforts. In particular, the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce in 1901 went so far as to gather 1000 signatures for a petition to the Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies to set up a commission to investigate, report and make recommendations on the sanitary\n\n13 Ibid., p. 12.\n\n14 Ibid., Appendix 14, p. 52.\n\n15 Letter of 18th July 1901 to the Hon. J. Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 48.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206566, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "108\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nreduce overcrowding it was essential to provide more and better designed houses, to decentralise the population into new self-contained communities and to reduce building density. The commission also recommended the setting up of a permanent town planning and housing committee and the provision of more public parks. It made the further suggestions that the provision of adequate housing for the poorer classes should not be left to private enterprise without assistance and that consideration should be given to the financing of slum clearance and subsidised housing by means of a special tax, loan or issue of housing shares.\n\nThe tide of events again overwhelmed any intentions the government had for implementing the findings of the commission for in 1937 the Japanese declared war against China and this brought 750,000 refugees into the Colony. However, a Town Planning Ordinance was passed in 1939 to provide for the layout of new urban areas and the replanning of districts already developed although nothing was immediately achieved under this Ordinance as the Colony was engulfed in December 1940 by the Japanese conquest of South-East Asia.\n\nThe Past Meets the Present: 1945-1971\n\nThere was considerable damage to property during the war and a survey carried out in 1946 showed that almost 8,700 domestic units had been destroyed and some 10,300 damaged.23 The number of persons displaced as a result totalled 161,000 of whom 154,000 were Chinese.\n\nAlthough the population of the Colony had been reduced to 600,000 persons by 1945 as a result of Japanese deportations and voluntary movements back to China, large numbers of displaced people came back with the return of peace so that by 1947 there were some 1.8 million persons in Hong Kong. It is not hard to imagine the circumstances under which most families had to live in view of the depleted stock of housing and the limited availability of public services during the immediate post-war years.\n\nThe housing problem became even worse as a consequence of the establishment of the People's Republic in China during 1948-49 which motivated yet more refugees to seek shelter in the Colony.\n\n23 Building Reconstruction Advisory Committee, Final Report, Hong Kong, 1946, Appendix 2, p. 13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206567, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "REVIEW OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG\n\n109\n\nThus, by 1950 the population was estimated to be nearly 2.1 millions, and as the houses were filled to capacity people overflowed into the streets and erected virtually overnight large squatter settlements on the urban periphery, on the roofs of buildings and in sheltered coastal embayments on boats.\n\nYet a further problem which added to the burdens of the population and the administration was that in 1951 the United Nations imposed an embargo on trade to the Mainland due to the intervention of China in the Korean War. This action virtually eliminated the entrepot trade from which Hong Kong drew economic sustenance and a radical reorientation of productive enterprise had to be achieved through the development of manufacturing industry, upon which the Colony has since thrived.\n\nBy and large, the task of providing new housing during the immediate post-war years was left to private enterprise, but its resources were unequal to the task. In December 1953, however, a disastrous fire in a squatter settlement at Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon made 53,000 people homeless overnight and the government initiated an emergency programme to build basic resettlement accommodation. Since then, the resettlement programme has been greatly expanded and has been augmented by other forms of subsidised accommodation, about which more is said below.\n\nDespite the commencement of Government participation in the large-scale provision of housing, the rapid rate of population growth combined with low family incomes continued to create acute housing problems, the extent of which came to light as the result of a sample survey24 carried out by the University of Hong Kong in 1957 as part of a report by a special committee on housing.\n\nThe survey was based on a 1.6% sample of some 118,000 tenement floors and covered 1,265,000 persons comprising 267,000 households. It was found that roughly 70% of households had a living area of less than 120 sq. ft. each, and that of the accommodation occupied 49.2% comprised cubicles, 25% bed spaces, 24.7% rooms used for general living purposes, 7.6% rooms used other than for sleeping, 5.0% verandahs and 4.8% cocklofts. \"Doubling up\" of families was found to be widely prevalent, as indicated by the fact\n\n24 Maunder W. F. and Szczepanik E. F., Hong Kong Housing Survey 1957, University of Hong Kong contained in the Final Report of the Special Committee on Housing 1956-1958, Hong Kong, 1958.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206568, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "E. G. PRYOR\n\nthat 79% of households shared accommodation. Household incomes were generally low, with 79% of families earning less than HK$600 per month and 56% less than HK$300. The amount of money which could be spared for rent was also low, with 79% of households spending less than HK$100 per month and 66% less than HK$60, although it must not be overlooked that in relative terms rentals took up a significant proportion of household incomes.\n\nA number of far-sighted recommendations were made by the committee to increase the supply of low-cost housing and also to initiate a programme for the clearance and redevelopment of both underdeveloped and congested areas where conditions constituted a hazard to public health and safety. Many of these recommendations have since materialised in the form of expanded programmes for the provision of government housing and the commencement of urban renewal projects.\n\nWhilst the results of the Housing survey carried out by the University of Hong Kong showed that the housing situation in 1957 was of critical proportions, the 1961 census gave an even more alarming picture of the problem.\n\nTo begin with, the census showed that the population of the colony had increased by over 30% from 2.4 million in 1956 to 3.13 million in 1961. Over 83% of the population in 1961 lived in the main urban areas of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and New Kowloon, where the average density of population in the most congested area, namely the West census district, came to 963 persons per acre (616,320 persons per square mile), which finds few parallels in other Asian or \"Western\" cities. The census also showed that in the main urban areas, some 391,000 households (1.55 million persons) lived in buildings constructed of \"permanent\" materials but in which the accommodation comprised rooms, cocklofts, cubicles, bedspaces, basements, verandahs, and other such substandard living space in which common use had to be made of basic household facilities. It should be noted that this type of accommodation included the early types of resettlement blocks built by the Government as well as new tenement floors built by private developers. A further 93,000 households (421,000 persons) in the main urban areas lived in squatter huts and other types of makeshift accommodation. Altogether, there were 484,000 households comprising 1.97 million persons in the main urban areas that were inadequately housed. In", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206613, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n155\n\nwhich went into his own pocket. The accusations had, of course, been withdrawn because they were impossible to substantiate but doubts still existed on the expenditure of the money which had undoubtedly been collected—Caine's version was that it had been used to run a voluntary hospital for the women but the Hong Kong Register alleged that a sum of about $500 per month was still being collected. To make matters absolutely plain, the Register reported that Afoon had told them that the Compradore's 'squeeze' was known to the Chinese as \"Caine's rent\" or \"tax.\"20\n\nThe finger was pointing at Caine though it is fair to say that Tarrant, whatever his motives, merely recounted the alleged facts. It was the two newspapers which implicated Caine in the dealings of the two compradores, but it was only Tarrant who found himself arraigned, with Afoon, for conspiring to damage the reputation of Caine. He was committed to trial before the Supreme Court by a bench of Justices. As it happened, the three justices were all Government servants (Campbell, Hillier and C. G. Holdforth) and two of them held to be Caine's protégés. It is probably true that the public was taken aback at this and Tarrant had their sympathy. When his case eventually came before the Supreme Court in October, Tarrant being suspended from duty during this period, the Attorney General moved that the trial be postponed because of the absence of a material witness. Lo Een-teen, Caine's Compradore, had disappeared from the Colony. Tarrant was willing for the trial to proceed but the Chief Justice Hulme ruled that it should be postponed and when it came up again, the Attorney General (now Parker, acting) moved before Campbell, now Acting Chief Justice, that there was no case to answer and did not offer any evidence.21 But, although Tarrant was now a free man, he found himself without a job—during his suspension the Government had combined his post with another. He proceeded to petition the Secretary of State, Earl Grey but he was hampered by lack of evidence.22\n\nIt is at this point that we return to the account of transactions in the Central Market. On 23 November 1847, Hwei's interest in the Central Market ceased when it was sold by the Sheriff to Le Kip-tye, an interpreter in the Government's employ, in execution of a writ of fi. fa.23 in the suit McSwyney v. Hwei Afoon.24 His interest was said to amount to 5/13 of the whole and this must have been his interest under the deed of 28 June of the same year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206615, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n157\n\npay during his suspension to the date at which his post was abolished, but he could do no more. The injustice was acknowledged but, as the Friend of China put it, it was \"but miserable redress in a pecuniary light.\"32\n\nTarrant's connection with the Central Market ceased on 28 December 1849 when he assigned his quarter share of the profits to Chow Aqui, one of Hong Kong's biggest Chinese businessmen at that time.33 Chow had extensive property interests in the Lower Bazaar area, had run Hong Kong's first theatre and had had the opium monopoly for a few years. Curiously enough, allegations had been made a few years previously that he was able to use Government police officers to protect his monopoly and Caine was inevitably linked with the allegation. The lease of the Market came to an end in 1850, the term being expired but Chow was given a renewal for two years from 10 March 1851 at the same rent and the lease was further renewed on two subsequent occasions.35\n\n16\n\nThis account illustrates two quite diverse matters. First, it shows the extent to which Chinese in Hong Kong adapted themselves to the institutional demands of a British colony. Although the whole system of law was alien to them, the transactions memorialised in the Land Office show the extent to which the possibilities of English Law were utilised to their commercial advantage, even though on some occasions it is difficult to follow at this remove the complexity of their dealings. If they did sometimes find themselves on the losing side in the Supreme Court, there were a significant number of Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong itself whose names recur over the years and who were, presumably, successful. Several have been named in this article but there were perhaps about a dozen or so in this category.* They, in addition to the Europeans, learnt to take advantage of the British system.\n\n37\n\nThis account also touches on the problem of the integrity of the colonial Government of the time. While it is true that the Chinese who came to the island may not have expected what the European would have regarded as an incorrupt government, it is also true that the circumstances of the colony in its early days gave opportunities for corruption which some were not slow to use. Though there was little at this time or later that could definitely be proved against\n\n* On this subject see Rev. Carl T. Smith's article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" at pp. 74-115 of the 1971 Journal. (Ed).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206616, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "158\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nCaine, allegations were repeatedly made of his complicity with persons of ill-repute, in particular with Daniel Caldwell, for many years a Government servant and consort of the 'Jonathan Wild' of Hong Kong, a Chinese called Wong Akee (or Machow Wong).\n\nAfter this incident of the Market extortions, which most wanted to believe anyway, Tarrant turned his attentions towards the Press, becoming—how is unexplained—the owner of the Friend of China on the departure from the Colony of the editor who had taken his side in market dispute, John Carr. Tarrant was able to use the editorial columns to pursue Caine and his subordinates on every possible occasion but in the end it was Caine who won. In 1859 he was forced out into the open and instituted a Crown prosecution for criminal libel against Tarrant. This ended with Tarrant being jailed for one year. When he was released before the end of his sentence Tarrant was a broken man and left the colony for Canton, where he continued to publish the Friend. He paid a visit to Hankow in 1861 and settled later in Shanghai but his journal never flourished thereafter.\n\nIt is, perhaps, a pity that the issue of corruption in government in Hong Kong, some of which was so devastatingly exposed by Sir Hercules Robinson, a later Governor, in 1861 in his Report to the Home Government on Civil Service Abuses in Hong Kong, was so clouded by the personalities of those who concerned themselves with the issue. The undoubted corruption which government servants like Caine permitted, even if they did not actively participate in it themselves, could have at least received a check if the then Governor, Sir John Davis, had had the courage of his own convictions and the confidence of the public and ordered a proper investigation into the Market scandal. Instead, the rumours which had started in 1841 when Caine was alleged to have allowed piratical activities for a price, rumours fed by the Lock Hospital scandal and the Tarrant affair, continued unabated until 1861, by which time most of the objectionable public servants had left the service.\n\nNOTES\n\nA Friend of China, 19 June 1842.\n\n2 The Lower Bazaar, located in the present Bonham Strand area, came into existence when A. R. Johnston, who had control of the administration of the island when Sir Henry Pottinger was absent from the colony prosecuting the war against China, allowed Chinese who had helped the British", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206746, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "CHINA MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY\n\n17\n\nabout 96°, and likened by Alcock to the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle, or Barège in the Pyrenees. An analysis of three samples was carried out, and is recorded on p. 72-5 of the Transactions. As far as can be ascertained, there has been no later publication in western scientific literature on the mineral springs of Foochow, and very little on other Chinese spa waters, so this remains an important record.\n\nIt is interesting to speculate how Alcock came to be involved in this matter. His personal concern with health and sanitation derived from his training under the distinguished surgeon G. J. Guthrie at the Westminster Hospital, and later service as an army surgeon during the Peninsular campaigns of 1832-37. He was thus by training a medical man, though it is as a diplomat that Sir Rutherford Alcock is remembered today, finishing his consular career by appointment as British Minister to Japan, 1859-65. Alcock passed through Hong Kong in October 1844, and no doubt met some of the medical men during his brief stay in the Colony. Probably he remained in correspondence with some of them, for when writing in September 1845 he refers to previous letters of May and June between Dr. Hobson and himself. In appreciation of Alcock's contribution, the Society elected him to honorary membership (Transactions, p. 58).\n\nPerhaps of greater interest in the history of western medicine and medical education in China are the activities of the Society towards the promotion of a medical school for Chinese in Hong Kong. Foremost amongst the proponents of this scheme was Dr. Benjamin Hobson, whose letter on the subject dated June 15, 1845 appears on p. 16-18 of the Transactions. “If we are to effect any change in the low empirical state of Medical science in China,” wrote Hobson, \"it must be in my opinion by educating the Chinese in the principles and theory of the Medical Art, according to the more modern practice of the West. And in Victoria there are facilities and advantages to secure this interesting object of our hopes, which no other place possesses.\" Dr. Hobson pointed out that there were several hospitals, military, naval and other, where \"I am authorized to say, the Chinese Medical Student will be welcome to study not only forms of disease as they affect European constitutions, but their treatment and pathology.\"\n\nHobson went on to propose \"That the premises of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and the Medical School be (at least till farther", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206765, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "36 \n\nA. J. S. LACK \n\nAt the same meeting another unofficial member, Mr. Osborne,* mounted a quite blistering attack upon Government's past failure to provide adequately for the shelter of the boat people in Hong Kong. He referred to the typhoon of 1841 and to the storm of 1874 in which over 2,000 lives were lost within the space of 6 hours and 35 foreign vessels were wrecked or badly damaged. He claimed that the screaming of those in distress on the water could be heard in the mid levels of the town above the noise of the storm. He went on to refer to subsequent and more recent typhoons, one of which (1906) had exacted a toll of 10,000 lives in two hours. He demanded to know what it was that had been done with the lessons of previous years, and came to the reluctant conclusion that very little had been done. He castigated Government's lavish expenditure on various new public buildings, notably the Supreme Court, the Harbour Office, and the intended Post Office Building, as being quite beyond the bounds of what was required, and ended with these remarks,\n\nDuring a rather long residence in the Colony, I have had exceptional opportunities of coming into contact with the boat population. Though, like most humanity, their character is a blend of the good and the bad, there is one quality they possess in marked degree, which has always commanded my deep admiration, and that is their patience and philosophic bearing under circumstances of trial and suffering. In their name, Sir, and apart from the commercial aspect to which I have alluded, in the name of thousands who have already suffered in silence the misery wrought by these destructive storms, I appeal to your Excellency that there shall be no further delay in giving them the shelter which it is our clear and bounden duty to provide.\n\nThese words put the officials on their mettle. At the next meeting of the Council, the Director of Public Works and His Excellency the Governor were at pains to assure members that something was going to be done about the typhoon shelter: in fact, they had purchased a dredger on which to begin work on the foundations of the shelter. This provoked an unexpected row because some members considered that another dredger also for sale in the harbour at that\n\n* Edward Osborne, listed in Who's Who in the Far East as Secretary of the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Co., b. 1861, with P & O Steam Navigation Co. in London and Hong Kong 1880-1889. Director of Hong Kong Hotel, Dairy Farm, Steam Laundry, etc.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207044, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 115, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n109\n\nplexities of local settlement and the absorption of the aboriginal dwellers of the area in the past thousand years. For a general account, readers are referred to the works by Lo Hsiang-lin (1959, 1963), K.M.A. Barnett, (1957, 1967) and the earlier writings of Krone (1859), G.N. Orme (1912) and S.F. Balfour (1941) cited in the references to this article.\n\nIntroduction*\n\nFor present purposes the Hong Kong region is defined as the present British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (403.7 square miles)1 and the immediately adjoining parts of Kwangtung province with which there has been intermittent official concern following the establishment of Hong Kong 134 years ago. This takes in the districts round the market town of Sham Chun north of the present Sino-British frontier, occupied by British troops between 16th May and 13th September 18992, and the areas of Mirs and Bias Bays to the east of the Colony that were often visited by British naval forces in their suppression of piracy in local waters during much of the 19th century and well into the 20th3. (See map).\n\nAt the time the British occupied Hong Kong island in 1841, the whole of this area, less Bias Bay, formed part of the Hsin-an district of the Kuang-chou prefecture of Kwangtung province. The place names and geographical features of the region are shown in many contemporary and earlier Chinese sources, whilst the large scale European map produced in 1866 by Msgr. Volontieri, an Italian missionary of the Propaganda, provides rather more local detail4.\n\nIn time the British came to occupy a greater part of Hsin-an district. Their occupation of Hong Kong island in January 1841 was converted into possession by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842. British territory was extended by the lease in perpetuity of Kowloon under a deed dated 20th March 1860 and the cession of the same area by article VI of the Convention of Peking 24th\n\n1 CR1971, p. 204; this figure includes recent reclamations.\n\n2 See Groves, pp. 52-55.\n\n3 For the early period see Fox and Dalrymple Hay. Two expeditions to Bias Bay in March and September 1927 were noted in AR1927, K16: and as late as 1947 piracy in Mirs Bay kept Hong Kong fishermen in port; CR1947, p. 46.\n\n4 The KTTS of 1865 provides more detailed maps of Hsin-an and its adjoining areas than are given in the district and prefectural histories (HNHC and KCFC); see the general chart at pp. 1-2 of the opening volume. For the Volontieri map, which includes Chinese characters, see Ronald C. Y. Ng (1969) pp. 141-148 and Hayes (1970) pp. 193-196.\n\n* For the place names of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960: hereafter styled Gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207069, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "134\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nSung Hok Pang, 'Legends and Stories of the New Territories, Part III, Kam Tin', The Hong Kong Naturalist, in six instalments between December 1935 March 1938.\n\n'Ts' in Fuk (), being an account of how part of the coast of South China was cleared of inhabitants from the first year of Hong Hei (4) 1662 to the 8th year of Hong Hei 1669', The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol. IX, Nos. 1 and 2, November 1939, pp. 37-42.\n\nSzczesniak, Boleslaw, The Opening of Japan. A Diary of Discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856 (by Rear Admiral George Henry Preble. U.S.N.). Norman, Arizona, University of Oklahoma Press.\n\nTronson, I. M., Personal Narrative.... London, Smith, Elder, 1859.\n\nWaley, Arthur, Yuan Mei, 18th Century Chinese Poet, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1956.\n\nWilliams, S. Wells, A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1874.\n\nOFFICIAL REPORTS\n\nAnnual Departmental Reports from 1946 on, published by the Government Printer, Hong Kong. [ADR]\n\nAdministrative Reports, being annual departmental reports, 1909-1940, published by the Government Printer under this head, and bound together in series in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. [AR]\n\nEarlier annual reports by departments bound into Sessional Papers (Papers presented to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong), printed in Hong Kong by the Government Printer and available in the library of the Colonial Secretariat, Hong Kong. [SP]\n\nAnnual Colony Reports from 1946 on, published in Hong Kong by the Government Printer, [CR]\n\nHong Kong Hansard. The proceedings of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong were published in yearly volumes under this title from the early 1890s on, by a number of publishers, and the Government Printer after the Pacific War. [Hansard]\n\nIn Chinese\n\nChang lineage of Pui O, South Lantao, Hong Kong ********* * Family Record A. Copied in manuscript in the 1930s from an earlier version.\n\nChang lineage of Pui O, South Lantao, Hong Kong **4❀❀**❀ **, Family Record (not identical with the above as it came from another branch of the family) ✯✯✯✯. In manuscript. Last compiled in 1927.\n\nChin Wen-mo (preface) #. Gazetteer of the Hsin-an District ### 13 chuan, revised edition, 1688. [HNHC 1688]\n\nChou K'uang B, Ch'eng Yeh-chung and others. Summary of historical researches on Kwangtung ★★***. 46 chuan, 1894. [KTKKCY]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207072, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "HONG KONG PLACE NAMES\n\n137\n\nTan Ka175, three kinds of Hakka137 and Hoklo138, Pun Yue Cantonese is widely understood but less widely spoken, particularly among the old men and women whom one consults for place-names. To this difficulty, combined with a simple misprint, is to be attributed the map name of the mountain north of the Lam Tsuen140 Valley. It is Tai To Yan1—Razor Cliff. The Nam Tau dialect pronounces this Tai Tau Yang, which became Tai Tan Yang by misreading the final letter of Tau.\n\nEven with field workers who are fluent in the local languages, it is not easy to keep the record straight. Country people the world over take a delight in mystifying strangers. Add to this the Chinese convention against direct question and answer, and it will be seen that the chances of a surveyor, working against time, getting a correct list of the names of topographical features, or even of the chief villages, are not good. The wonder is not that there are so many mistakes, but that any of the names are right.\n\nFinally, the best maps (such as they are) are not readily available even to many public servants, and the mountaineer and hiker, from whom corrections might come, often has to content himself with an old battered copy of an extinct edition.*\n\nFor all these reasons I welcome Mr. Tregear's gazetteer as I welcomed his map. As far as I can see from a careful check of the draft, all the important names are there, and they are down correctly. Such omissions as there are result from the fact that some features have an English name but no Chinese one—or if they have, nobody can be found who remembers it.\n\nOne thing which has not been included is a translation or explanation of each name. The reason will become clear to anybody who cares to read the second part of this paper, in which I have listed the principal elements of local place-names, for the understanding of some of which we have to extend our inquiries back to the days before the Chinese came to these parts.\n\nBefore the Chinese\n\nIn a talk to the Rotary Club130 of Hong Kong on 8th November, 1955, I said:\n\n'Under our very noses, and separated from our time by not more than 600 years, we have a linguistic problem which no one has\n\n* The position is now greatly improved as a result of new and extensive re-mapping of the Colony. See JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 131-140.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207123, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "In his book on Plant Geography (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1903) A.F.W. Schimper produces a World Plant Map which is based on climatic conditions. It is interesting to see that, in this classification system, Hong Kong lies within the area of \"evergreen broad-leaved forest\" type of vegetation.\n\nThis classical type of forest, however, has virtually disappeared, largely as a result of human activities such as repeated cutting and the use of fire both intentional and accidental. Consequently, there are few areas of forest-type vegetation which could be described as \"probably indigenous\" left in the Colony today.\n\nThese remaining patches of forest consist generally of low scrub growth in ravines and relatively inaccessible places, together with isolated areas of woodland which are often quite dense and which, paradoxically, are located very near to villages and hamlets in the New Territories.\n\nThese are the so-called \"Fung Shui\" woodlands, and they provide a remarkable contrast with the adjacent hillsides which generally carry a sparse vegetation of grasses and shrubs with scattered pine trees of poor form and insignificant size. These \"Fung Shui\" woodlands may, in fact, give a fair impression of the character of the original vegetation of Hong Kong before \"Homo sapiens\" came on the scene.\n\nSuch \"Fung Shui\" woodlands owe their present existence to the protection afforded by the villagers in accordance with ancient traditions relating to the interactions of Wind (Fung) and Water (Shui) on the village environment.\n\nThe location of villages, and indeed of ancestors' graves, was decided upon after due consideration has been given to aspect, exposure, elevation, drainage, air movement, etc. A village which is favourably sited with regard to these considerations is thought likely to confer good fortune on its occupants, and this quality of site and environment has come to be known loosely as the \"Fung Shui\" of the village.\n\nIn China, the factors which collectively make up favourable \"Fung Shui\" were often \"assessed\" by an expert in geomantic art, whose advice was sought in the final choice of site for a village or an important grave.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207160, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n225 \n\nand half-caste parentage, and to board, clothe and instruct them with a view to industrial life and the Christian faith according to the Church of England'. (Resolutions of Jan. 18, 1870) \n\nAfter the reorganisation, the Committee came under male domination; local firms were liberal supporters. Some members of Jardine, Matheson and Company were on the Committee from 1869 to 1901, William Keswick serving the longest from 1869 to 1888, except for his absences from the Colony. Sir Catchick Paul Chater served from 1874 to 1925. \n\nThe school was particularly useful in meeting the educational needs of the increasing Eurasian element in Hong Kong and the China Coast. It educated many of the future leading members of these communities. In 1869, it was decided not to admit any more girls as boarders, though they could continue as day students. In 1892, the girls then in attendance were transferred to a Boarding School 'Fairlea' conducted by Miss Margaret Johnstone. \n\nBefore occupying a building especially erected for the school on a lot on Bonham Road at Eastern Street in 1863, the school had been at the Albany, a building loaned to them by the Government. The Bonham Road building was enlarged and improved over the years. In time, however, it became inadequate for the needs of the school, especially as a growing emphasis on the role of sports in the life of the school was frustrated by a lack of proper playing fields. In 1917, a definite decision was made that a new site be secured. The firm of Messrs. Little, Adams and Wood drew up plans for a new school in 1920, but negotiations with the Government for a site were not completed until 1923. Site formation began in 1924. The general strike of 1925 and the resulting financial recession slowed down the construction and necessitated the elimination of certain parts of the original plans. An imposing tower, a feature of the original plan, was never erected. \n\nThe buildings were occupied in 1926, but in 1927, the school somewhat reluctantly released the premises to the Army for a hospital for the Shanghai Defence Force. The school took up temporary quarters in a recently built block of buildings on Nathan Road near Prince Edward Road. In January 1928, the premises were returned to the school. The school faced another crisis in 1932 when suggestions were made that the Government resume the property in default of payments on the debt the School owed and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207244, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "and 1860s. Like Hung Shing, its image is taken out in procession on the major festivals and placed in the seat of honour at opera performances given on the island and in neighbouring Aberdeen. Members also visited a soy sauce factory, a shipyard specialising in fishing boats and a fishing store. In November, Miss Werle arranged another visit, to a ceramics factory at Yuen Long, and to the single lineage village of Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan, a joint excursion with the Hong Kong Ceramics Society. In January this year, I arranged a visit to the Sikh temple, with the kind cooperation of Mr. Pritham Singh, who is an active member of the temple. Sikh religion is a revisionist movement from within Hinduism, founded formally at the close of the seventeenth century as a reaction to what the Sikhs saw as the ritual and social excesses of orthodox Hinduism. There are some 2,000 Sikhs in Hong Kong. The occasion this time, we had a previous visit last year, was the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the last Guru of the Sikhs. Members of the Society attended part of the religious service at which members of the congregation came up to the altar to sing sutras, give comments or make observations relating to their religion, or play musical instruments and sing. We were then invited to the vegetarian curry luncheon prepared and served by members of the congregation for the congregation. Finally, in March, we were invited by our Council member M. Geoffroy-Dechaume, the French Consul-General, to his house in Old Peak Road. This is one of the few surviving old houses on the Island. Built in 1895 by Messrs. Leigh and Orange, still one of the large architectural firms in the Colony, on a piece of land acquired by Sir Paul Chater, it was named Victoria Lodge and has been the home of successive French Consuls since the earliest part of this century. Tea was kindly provided by Madame Dechaume.\n\nFILMS\n\nMost of our film shows were arranged by Miss Werle and shared with members of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, with which Miss Werle is professionally associated. In May, we had an evening of Japanese films, one on Noh drama, one on Kabuki and one on Japanese print-making, all in English and supplied by courtesy of the Information and Cultural office of the Consulate-General of Japan. A highlight of our film programme was a film made by Mr. Hugh Gibb, an old friend and member of the Society, whose", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207302, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "62\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nmucous and epithelium frequently appeared in the stools.* Additionally, painful swellings or buboes commonly developed in the groin, neck or armpits usually by the second day.\n\nEven though by the turn of the nineteenth century medical science had made significant progress, little was still then known of the manner in which the disease was transmitted. It was not until 1905 that it was finally established in Bombay by the Plague Research Commission of India that the bacillus, pasteurella pestis, commonly gained entry into the blood stream by inoculation through the bite of fleas which, in turn, were carried by rats. Scientific research into the causes of the plague in Hong Kong came close to finding this answer but the plethora of other more plausible-looking theories detracted attention away from the apparently harmless flea.\n\nThe Origin of the Plague in Hong Kong\n\nBubonic plague in China was thought to have first spread from Yunnan which, itself, is likely to have been infected by transmissions over the trade routes from India.\n\nAs a prelude to the outbreak of the disease in Hong Kong in 1894, it appears that it occurred in Canton in January of that year. By June, it had reached epidemic proportions and had accounted for some 80,000 deaths. At the outbreak of the disease in Canton, many persons (particularly the well-to-do) moved into the countryside and thereby created new foci for its dissemination. Simpson thus records that it is \"not surprising that whatever affects Canton is not long in making itself felt in Hong Kong. This year when cholera broke out in Canton there was only an interval of a few weeks before the disease appeared in 1894.\" Indeed, the spread of the disease to Hong Kong was accelerated by the unrestricted entry from Kwantung Province of many thousands of workers and also junks and river boats that formed an integral part of the colony's role as an entrepot.\n\nOn the 10th May 1894, Hong Kong was declared an infected port and within the space of a few weeks the administration was\n\n* Quoted in William Hunter, A Research into Epidemic & Epizootic Plague Hong Kong, 1904, p. 6.\n\n↑ W. J. Simpson, Report on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hong Kong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures, London, 1903, p. 22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207309, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "THE GREAT PLAGUE OF HONG KONG\n\n69\n\nthat \"Simond...... has given a great deal of attention to this subject (and) came to the conclusion that Indian rat fleas bite man and that rat fleas spread plague from one rat to another and also to the human species.\"* However, Hunter himself was not convinced of this theory and subscribed to the view that cockroaches picked up the bacillus and transferred the disease to food stuffs. Others shared his scepticism.\n\nFinally, studies undertaken in 1905-06 by the Indian Plague Commission in Bombay conclusively established that fleas were the principal agents of transmission. Of the 1500 species of fleas about 100 can transmit plague; the most widely disseminated is Xenopsylla cheopis which is equally at home on rats or homo sapiens. At one feeding on a rat, the blood of which contains 100 million organisms per millilitre, a flea will ingest about 5000 organisms which then multiply in the flea's digestive tract. Later, its proventriculus becomes plugged by gelatinous masses of bacilli and, as a result, the valvular action becomes impaired. Because of this obstruction, blood cannot be sucked into the stomach. The esophagus becomes distended and the elastic recoil of the walls of both pharynx and gullet when the flea stops sucking may drive back into the bite wound highly infective blood. An infected flea may regurgitate as many as 10,000 to 24,000 organisms at one biting. Many species of fleas, however, may become infected without incurring blockages and these may never become pestiferous unless they have fed on severely infected rodents.\n\nOnce a rat has become infected and subsequently dies the fleas carried thereon migrate to another host when the corpse loses its body heat. When the rat population has become decimated the fleas transfer their attention to human beings. This sequence of events thus explains the commonly observed phenomenon that plague in rats precedes plague among the inhabitants of infected premises.\n\nEven though the discovery of how plague was transferred from rats to man enabled more effective preventive measures to be taken to eradicate the disease in Hong Kong, it continued to afflict the colony until as late as 1929 when two cases were recorded. Virulent\n\n*W. Hunter, A Research into Epidemic and Epizootic Plague, Hong Kong, 1904, p. 32.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207332, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "92\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\ncolony of Hong Kong. In 1845, Charles May, a London police officer, was brought out to organise the new force. Most of the early police recruits were obtained locally from the army, navy, and merchant marine; but in time policemen were recruited directly from Britain or from other colonial territories. The quality and morale of the force was never high. Norton-Kyshe writes that in 1850 a European constable got only $15 a month,\n\nvery far below what the humblest in the Colony required, so that, in the case of steady men, they only accepted the position in the hope of something better turning up. But to this class, unfortunately, the chief objection was the readiness with which they yielded to the temptation offered by the many public houses about, and many of the deaths among the European constabulary were ascribed to their excessive indulgence in ardent spirits, a great portion of which, sold by the low tavern-keepers, was of the most abominable and deleterious description.4\n\nBecause of the demoralised state of the police, Sir Richard MacDonnell, Governor of Hong Kong, reported in 1869 to the Secretary of State that he intended to substitute Scottish for English constables. Altogether forty-five Edinburgh constables were enlisted in 1872. But the Scots contingent proved as susceptible as their English colleagues, for the next year several were dismissed from the force. As a group, they, too, had succumbed to the blandishments and corruptions of Hong Kong. In 1897 it was found that almost all the police—European, Chinese, and Indian—were receiving money illegally from Chinese gambling syndicates, including a British Deputy Superintendent of Police.\n\nBecause of the general shortage of European personnel in Hong Kong, police were often seconded to, or allowed to apply for, positions in other departments. The scarcity of suitable Europeans was, in the main, a consequence of the growing attractiveness of Australia as a land of opportunity, especially after the discovery there of gold in 1851, and of the rapid development of Shanghai, which soon became viewed as an arena more accommodating than Hong Kong for the adventurous and ambitious. Turnkeys at Victoria Gaol were often policemen; and the various Inspectors of Brothels (a post established in 1858), who came under the control of the Registrar General, were in nearly every case former police officers, for the principal duty of such functionaries was to detect", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207391, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n151\n\nBowen Road. This report was fortunately completed long before the Japanese on 9 June, 1945, burned the original case sheets, operation books and other records from which they were compiled. Also preserved were records of rations provided by the Japanese, of gifts from the British and other Red Cross Societies, of gifts from Local Red Cross sources and local well-wishers, and menus of our meals and special diets. I still have all this material and it provides the basis for the account I now write. I did not, unfortunately, preserve any copies of the propaganda leaflets dropped by the Japanese during hostilities or of the English language Hongkong News, published under Japanese auspices in Hong Kong during their occupation.\n\nThe delay of thirty years in writing this story needs explanation. When I first came home I shared the plight of thousands who returned after years when we were completely out of touch with the changes that had taken place in the world, ignorant of the details of war, of the changes in the country and in the services and of the way people lived. The vocabulary was new, the developments were enormous and we had much ground to make up physically. It was not too difficult to acquire a veneer; it was less easy to take our places with any assurance in the new world of 1945 and 1946. Much work was needed. When I resumed duty in the army, after my release, I was given a chance to play a part in the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank, in the postgraduate medical training of R.A.M.C. officers, and in expanding the training of specialists. I seized this opportunity eagerly for I was well aware of the defects in the training of myself and my contemporaries. My time became fully engaged in this work. Four years later a chance was offered to me to play a similar part in civil life on appointment as a Regional Postgraduate Dean, in the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London. The need for improved training was quite as urgent in civil life as it was in the army, the field was bigger, and it was not until I retired from that appointment many years later that I found time to return to the task I had wanted to tackle for so long. It seemed to me that an account of events in Hong Kong, as known to me, might provide a useful contribution to the history of the Colony, and that the achievements of the staff and the fortitude of the patients deserved to be recorded. I thought also that here and there perhaps, those serving today might discern from the story something of value to themselves and their Corps.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "154\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nconflict. I came to regret my thoroughness, for there was never time to use the equipment thus accumulated and this must have been splendid booty for the Japanese. There was also a full social life; many British women had enrolled for nursing and other essential duties and had not been evacuated. The Hong Kong Hotel was a gay place indeed, particularly on a Saturday night.\n\nIn October 1938, 35,000 Japanese troops had landed in Bias Bay on the China coast 35 miles from Hong Kong, and had then occupied Canton and had cut all communications between Hong Kong and mainland China. Patrolling Japanese ships thereafter made sailing from the Colony outside a circumscribed area very hazardous. In February 1939 the Japanese occupied the island of Hainan, 300 miles to the south of Hong Kong thus controlling the sea communications with Singapore. Curiously, after my arrival I do not remember taking part in any serious discussions with my friends about the prospects of a successful defence of Hong Kong. There were however plenty of rumours to fill the air. It was generally known that the strategic plan required Hong Kong to resist an attack for 90 days before a relief could arrive, a decision taken by the British Chiefs of Staff in 1937. In February 1940 the home authorities decided that food reserves should be accumulated for 130 days, while in August 1940 the Chiefs of Staff reached a further decision that in case of war with Japan, Hong Kong should be regarded as an outpost to be held as long as possible. After the war I learned from Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War, that in February 1940 the Chiefs of Staff concluded that the troops should be withdrawn from Hong Kong. Nothing was done to give effect to this decision. I have no doubt that the decision taken in February 1940 was the correct one which could with advantage have been taken much earlier. Ever since my arrival in Hong Kong in 1939 I believed that the Colony could not be defended successfully. The frontier, beyond which lay a strong Japanese army, was some 20 miles from Hong Kong harbour, the line to be defended, the so-called Gin Drinkers line was less than 5 miles from the harbour, the Japanese navy controlled the coast, our airport was tiny and the Air Force planes were few in number and no match in performance for their potential opponents. One and a half million Chinese civilians were crowded into Kowloon and Victoria. Roads suitable for wheeled traffic were few and open to close observation at many points. The whole picture left no doubt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207397, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n157\n\nIn the Colony trade went on and there was much talk of the value of Hong Kong to Great Britain as a provider of foreign currency through its commerce. The fine young men in civil life in Hong Kong, prevented from travelling to join the forces at home, like many others, found it hard to reconcile the argument in favour of acquiring foreign currency with their knowledge that a large proportion of the goods exported found its way to Japan. They were all keen members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. It may be claimed that our trading policy delayed Japan's entry into the war, but to many it seemed that economic and strategic considerations were at cross purposes.\n\nI came in contact with Indian troops in the Colony mainly in an individual professional capacity when my surgical services were needed, but I imagine they were subject to the same effects of garrison duty as were the British troops. Garrison duty has never in any army provided a satisfactory training for active service, and Hong Kong provided yet another example of the truth of this. Once the arrangements for manning the defences were mastered the Island and the New Territories gave little scope for the most ingenious commander or space in which he could exercise and retain the interest of his troops. This left sports to absorb, by no means completely, the youthful energies of strong young men. Many of these had been received as friends in families in Hong Kong, some had contracted stable relationships with women but many had little to occupy themselves when off duty. I well remember seeing men flushed from their games trying to get into the China Fleet Club on the Victoria waterfront. They were obliged to shoulder their way physically through the crowd of Chinese and Eurasian women seeking them as companions. Not all of these were attractive, but girls of these races are among the most beautifully shaped that, in a wide experience, I have ever met. Co-habitation with a high proportion of these girls led to venereal infection and some men sought satisfaction in their own sex. Alas, this did not safeguard them from infection. Another hazard was malaria. About October 1941 the army manned the defences in an exercise and following this a substantial number of soldiers contracted malaria and needed treatment in hospital. Before many had regained strength after the fever, the army was deployed during the phase which led to open war. I pay high tribute to the spirit and the readiness with which these men met the call. Everyone who was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207400, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "160\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nside used gas in our short campaign. In a later section I shall refer in more detail to the casualties. I have noted earlier that Shackleton's war-time command in the hospital was splendid. As in all beaten armies there were some less stout-hearted soldiers; some of these, uninjured, sought shelter in the hospital in the last stages of hostilities, but Shackleton overcame this hazard effectively as he did the many others that arose. He was never a man tolerant of weakness.\n\nThe nursing service was first-rate, led by the Matron, Miss E. M. B. Dyson (the Q.A.'s did not have service rank at that time), and the wounded enjoyed a splendid standard of care right up to the end when the hospital was practically in the front line. The members of the R.A.M.C., R.A.D.C., and attached R.E. stuck to their jobs manfully. The Chinese drivers of ambulance and other cars disappeared into the civilian population as our defeat came nearer, and none should blame them.\n\nIn the hospital, we heard Japanese shells fired from the mainland pass overhead and watched them burst on houses on the Peak. We saw boats bringing Japanese troops from Kowloon in broad daylight to land at North Point. They passed unopposed across the harbour, for apparently our guns could not be brought to bear on them while our defences in the North Point area had been silenced. I saw the harbour crossings made under flags of truce by Japanese officers carrying demands for the surrender of the Colony. These were rejected. In the last stages, we watched the Japanese shelling of Magazine Gap just above the hospital, and we had to keep under cover when moving about the hospital to avoid mortar and small arms fire. It is, however, one of my treasured memories to recall the reaction of Miss G. Colthorpe, one of the Reserve Q.A. sisters, to the surrender of the Colony. She would have hanged the Governor and the General Officer Commanding on the spot. The urgency of the surrender was soon only too evident, for we saw long columns of Japanese troops pass along Bowen Road immediately below the hospital, and the front line could not have been more than four hundred yards or so from the hospital at the time of our capitulation. I believe that it was the fact that we were not overrun in battle that saved patients and staff from the rape and murder which disfigured the campaign in Stanley, Happy Valley, and elsewhere.\n\nEarlier in this account, I said that the topography of the Colony left our troops little or no room for manoeuvre in defence. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207415, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n175\n\nat the corners of the mouth and scrotal oedema. During August 1942 only 17 cases of deficiency diseases were admitted as such, but the same signs were common among the dysentery and diphtheria admissions. We began an investigation into all the various manifestations and intensive treatment was started. These patients with deficiency diseases were to form a nearly immovable block in our patient population for a long time because improvement came about extremely slowly. An outstanding symptom was burning pain in the feet which sometimes required morphine for its relief. Many sought to ease the pain by plunging their feet into cold water and one patient had to be confined in a place where water was not available in order to avoid maceration of the skin. Some who had had deficiency diseases improved enough to return to P.O.W. camps. Others remained in hospital up to our release in 1945. These last had balancing problems, numbness of limbs and visual defects.\n\nThe hospital had admitted 1225 patients during 1942 and this figure included all patients transferred to us from all the other civil and service hospitals in the Colony. Of the total, 443 were admitted during the five-month period August-December and at 31 December 341 patients remained. Pressure on our accommodation had been severe, and repeated changes in the usage of wards were needed to isolate infectious patients and provide room for all who needed our care. The Canadian P.O.W. camp at North Point closed in October and the troops moved to Kowloon. Perhaps because of the rearrangements required by this move, but almost certainly reinforced by the well-known Japanese fear of infectious disease, we were not allowed to discharge patients whom we considered would suffer by a move to a camp. The pressure on our space and feeding arrangements was therefore intense and this did not begin to ease until April 1943. By the end of 1942, however, the heaviest burden of the infections had become lighter, though the long haul to cope with the deficiencies as the main load had already begun.\n\nThe year 1942 had weighed heavily on the spirits and energies of patients and staff. The departure of the women nurses cast a gloom over the hospital. The future seemed uncertain, the rations were poor, patients flooded in, deaths were frequent, but food gifts to the hospital from friends in Hong Kong and the arrival of a Red Cross parcel per head, to which I shall refer later, together with a natural resilience as the acute epidemics subsided towards the end of the year brought about some lightening of the clouds.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207431, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n191\n\nof course I was responsible. Only on one occasion was I accused of a misuse of stores myself. In a community the size of ours, in the disturbing atmosphere of the early year or two, I suppose I was lucky not to meet more accusations of my own shortcomings. Anonymous letters diminished and eventually disappeared as the policy of spreading responsibilities took shape and of course as conditions improved.\n\nIn this account I have given much space to the problems of general messing of patients and staff for this was the most important general matter which affected everybody. Ordinary complaints as to quantity and quality of food were openly and freely made and as speedily forgotten by most of our population. There were some, a few only, whose recurring complaints made life miserable at times for all those in the supply line.\n\nArrangements made by our friends in Hong Kong\n\nEven now I do not know the whole story about the food supplies which arrived at the hospital as gifts from our friends in Hong Kong. I repeat here the hope that Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke will find it possible to relate this in detail for it was he who originated the system. A short account of this remarkable man is necessary. He was Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong at the outbreak of war and was deeply committed to the welfare of Hong Kong Chinese citizens of all classes. He had reorganized the medical services in the Colony and had a formidable reputation as an advocate in any cause that he took up. He sought nothing for himself; he liked his own ways of doing things and often enough these did not commend themselves to others. Courage, pertinacity and not a little guile allowed him usually to carry the day. His wife and very young daughter were in Hong Kong with him, and were not evacuated to the Philippines and later to Australia with other service and civilian wives and families in July 1940. His view was that if the families of Chinese and other races for whom the Hong Kong government was responsible were not to be evacuated then his own family would also stay in the Colony. In this decision his wife backed him up fully.\n\nBefore the Far East war, following representations by the Japanese Foreign Office a Japanese doctor named Eguchi came to study on the spot the medical and health arrangements in the Colony. Colonel T. Eguchi next appeared as the Director of Me-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207499, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 267, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n259\n\narrived accompanied by interpreters and the Japanese sent in 3000 packets of cigarettes, 12 bottles of saki, 36 tins of coffee, 40 kilos of salt, 180 kilos of sugar, 240 tins of milk, 48 kilos of butter and a sack of coffee beans. We were now doing very well because Major Crewe a R.A.S.C. officer came from Sham Shui Po to learn what supplies we needed and brought with him 26 pints of fresh milk which we gratefully received. Mr. C.E. D'Almeida brought us a gramophone and records and other gifts from 10 Ice House Street, and promised us supplies of drugs free which he was going to send over. A refrigerator and five bread tins came from the Red Cross in Hong Kong and I was told that stores were arriving the next day from Sham Shui Po for us to split between internees, Indian prisoners and ourselves. The internees numbered about 300, including sick and about 30 children. I was able to meet a request from Sham Shui Po for various regulations including Kings Regulations and Financial Instructions.\n\nOn 22 August we arranged with Colonel Field for all our Q.A. sisters to return, and Saito and Sekiguchi came to ask what they could do. The Governor of Hong Kong had been removed from the Colony by the Japanese and Mr. Gimson who had been Colonial Secretary at the time of our capitulation came with Mr. Nakimura from the Japanese Foreign Affairs Department. Major Lamb R.A.S.C. had been appointed to take charge of supplies and his policy was for us to rely upon Japanese rations supplemented by Red Cross stores and to indent on Sham Shui Po for our additional needs. A radio, with some mugs and gifts of milk were gratefully received by us from Mr. C.E. D'Almeida and gifts also came from Messrs. Ruttonjee of 11 Duddell Street. Eight of our civilians left for Stanley with Mr. Gimson and were delighted to go. The radio was working well indeed and on 23 August I asked Dr. Selwyn-Clarke to get us some vegetables, fruit, invalid jellies and flour. I telephoned Nomura about our records and on 24 August I wrote to Colonel Tokunaga formally requiring the return of our hospital records. Mr. Campbell and I presented this letter to him personally at Japanese headquarters in the presence of Nomura. I said that we held Tokunaga personally responsible and he accepted the letter.\n\nA batch of 19 visitors arrived from Stanley including two children, and we had to put them up overnight because of stormy weather in the harbour. British headquarters now required us to set out prominently a sign, \"P.W.\" each letter to be 20 feet by 20", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207502, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 270, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "262\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nA R.A.F. sergeant got married on 28 August and Miss M. da Roza, a local lady offered her services as a masseuse for our patients.\n\nAt this time I had to deal with complaints arising from long standing antagonisms in P.O.W. camps now openly displayed after long repression. I am glad to say that this phase subsided eventually without overt official action becoming necessary. We also prepared a system of recording the medical condition of Hong Kong Volunteers before they were freed to their homes in the Colony. Doctor Newton, the deputy Chief Medical Officer in the civil medical service, took charge of the Internee Camp nearby and we were allotted a motor car which we shared with the Indian camp.\n\nIt was on 28 August that Saito came in with Hasegawa after 9 p.m. and told me formally that all our medical records had been burned about 15 August along with their own records which the Japanese were burning at that time. As I have reported earlier I got his written acknowledgement that these records had been destroyed and also that none of the plain clothes removed by him from us remained. My diary records that I spoke sternly on this matter, which must have given me some pleasure at the time.\n\nBy now a party was going each day from the hospital to visit relatives and friends in Stanley. The journey was made by ferry and took about two hours. On 29 August some planes came over just after 7 a.m. and some food and cigarettes were dropped later the same day in Sham Shui Po. Included in the drop were some medical boxes and my diary records that the contents of these came as a marvellous revelation to us. We were doing well about this time because the Japanese delivered about eleven thousand packets of cigarettes and jam to us and we heard that British warships and aircraft carriers had been seen off Stanley. On 30 August planes were flying over Hong Kong all morning and a B.B.C. radio report said that the fleet had come. Nomura asked for lists of our patients and I required him to come and get these himself. This action was possibly required of him by our relieving force.\n\nTrue enough a large fleet came into harbour on 30 August, which was 14 days after the Japanese surrender. This delay seemed a long time to us but the arrival of the fleet brought to an end a confused situation in which we were increasingly managing our own affairs. We sent our car for Admiral Harcourt to go to Sham Shui Po and he later went round our hospital with Mr. Gimson who\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207508, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 276, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "268\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nNone of the foregoing figures can be taken as more than approximately correct. A figure however for which I can vouch with certainty is the total number of wounded treated in Bowen Road. This figure was 646 and was carefully computed by me in the studies I made of our records during the months and years of captivity before the Japanese finally destroyed them. The Bowen Road figures include all who were seriously wounded during hostilities, because all wounded admitted to other hospitals in the Colony and who were unfit for discharge to P.O.W. camps after our surrender were eventually concentrated in Bowen Road by the end of February 1942. The last patients who suffered war injuries to be admitted came from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon when this closed on 11 August 1942. My record of the total Bowen Road casualties amounting to 646 is likely to be less than the actual total number of wounded, because when other hospitals were closing and evacuating their more seriously wounded patients to Bowen Road it is likely that a number of other patients had by then recovered sufficiently to be able to go to P.O.W. camps and it must be remembered that it was the Japanese who decided where these patients must go.\n\nThe official figures suggest that, excluding Indian casualties, some 855 soldiers were seriously wounded during hostilities. In Bowen Road we treated 646 of these. It is evident therefore that about 75% of seriously wounded other than Indians were evacuated by the medical services to hospitals. This represents a major success having regard to the conditions, and the system of evacuation and the skill and determination with which it was carried out must be judged to have worked well. The Field Ambulance commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ride, which achieved these results was responsible also for recovering Indian casualties, and I have no doubt that these were evacuated with the same degree of success as were the British casualties. Figures however are lacking since the Indian Hospital was overrun during the Japanese advance and records were lost. Readers will recall that early in the hostilities the Chinese ambulance drivers deserted, understandably enough especially to those familiar with the Japanese treatment of captured Chinese opponents. Thereafter ambulance cars were driven by Field Ambulance personnel usually drawn from the medical services. This makes their achievement all the more notable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 207725, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "98\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\nat the main mast of every war ship. . . . It was a pretty sight, very noisy and warlike.”* \n\nThe Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 16, 1881, published the announcement with the Chinese and English placed side by side:\n\nGOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION-No. 131.\n\nHis Majesty the King of HAWAII arrived in Hongkong on Tuesday evening, the 12th instant, and was welcome to the Colony by the Governor, in the name of Her Majesty Queen VICTORIA. His Majesty, the King KALAKAUA, was accompanied by His Excellency W. N. ARMSTRONG, Minister of State, and Colonel JUDD, Chamberlain,\n\nBy His Excellency's Command,\n\nFREDERICK STEWART,\n\nActing Colonial Secretary.\n\nColonial Secretary's Office,\n\nHongkong, 16th April, 1881.\n\n號一十三百一第報憲\n\n署輔政使司史\n\n爲篩論事照得現有\n\n浩德護送前來於本月十二日卽禮拜二晚抵港 夏威儀國大君主加拉嘉華隨帶宰臣士當及司儀長參將\n\n香港總督郎敬用\n\n大英后帝城克多壢阿名迎接登岸爲此特示俾衆週知\n\n一千八百八十一年 四月 十六\n\n示\n\nA tiffin (luncheon) party was given by Mr. Chater, a rich merchant.† Men of all nationalities came to meet the King and his party at this magnificent affair. The King asked Armstrong to take his place and propose a toast to the Governor who later asked Armstrong to write out the speech for transmission to the Home Government in London. Armstrong in his letters back to Foreign Minister Green mentioned, \"I must admit having a glorious time with Sir John Pope Hennessy, as he is a man of immense information, great experience, and liberality. . . . Governor Hennessy will\n\n* The Hawaiian flag was designed by Capt. Alexander Adams, Englishman, in 1810, with eight stripes for the islands and the British Union Jack in the upper left corner.\n\n† See Plate 16.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207831, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "204\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nConnected with the union there was an organisation which operated a kind of agricultural insurance scheme, making good losses by theft of crops and beasts. Again, the Luk Yeuk was composed of both Punti and Hakka.\n\n24. There are other 'numerical' yeuk-complexes: the Four (Sz) Yeuk of Tsuen Wan, the Six (Luk) Yeuk of Sai Kung, and the Nine (Kau) Yeuk of Sha Tin. In these three cases, however, we see the influence on rural organisation of an urban and administrative centre. The walled city of Kowloon was the only official seat in that part of San On to be converted into the New Territories. It held the yamen of a deputy magistrate and certain military officials, no doubt acquiring some of its importance as a centre of government in the second half of the nineteenth century from the proximity of the British Colony.\n\nThe Kau Yeuk of Sha Tin appears to have consisted of forty-eight villages, of which the five largest were Punti and the rest Hakka. The Ch'e Kung Temple (now the property of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in his part as a corporation sole) belonged to the Kau Yeuk, according to one account, but was taken over by the S.C.A. when a dispute was precipitated by a claim put forward by one village to control it.\n\nOn the Sz Yeuk of Tsuen Wan I have discovered little more than that it existed. Sung Hok-p'ang once told a Chinese scholar, who has since committed the statement to writing, that the area now called Tsuen Wan was in late Ming or early Ch'ing times known as Tsuen Wan Yeuk and that formerly all the villages in the area from Ting Kau to Kowloon City belonged to it.\n\nThe Luk Yeuk of Sai Kung, however, has left clearer traces. I cannot define its composition exactly, but I have been told that Ho Chung, Pak Kong, Sha Kok Mei, Tseung Kwan O and two settlements in Shap Sz Heung were the six yeuk. Once again, both Hakka and Punti were involved.\n\nThe three yeuk-complexes of Tsuen Wan, Sha Tin, and Sai Kung were in some fashion tied in with a council, formal or informal, in Kowloon City; and it appears likely that the local deputy magistrate used this organisation to make contact with the villages in his neighbourhood. In 1879 (according to its own records) there came into existence in Kowloon a body known as the Lok Sin Tong; members of the three yeuk-complexes were represented on it. Its primary object seems to have been to promote charity, public works, and education, while in character it would appear to have been an association of local gentry. The Lok Sin Tong still exists; indeed, it has grown", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 213\n\nto create local contacts; and some of the politicians are certainly not unwilling to be drawn into this, for them, new organisational version of kinship. In the spring rites in the main ancestral hall of one big clan there was represented this year a Hong Kong association based on the surname of the clan but largely recruited from among townspeople with no original New Territories connexions. One of the politicians of this same clan is the sponsor of an occult religious group which is a branch of a widespread esoteric religion in Hong Kong, the members of which are chiefly immigrants. At the only meeting of this group that I was able to attend the great majority of the people present, including all the specialists, were immigrant business men from the urban areas. It is not easy to disentangle the politician's motives in agreeing to sponsor the group, but it is at least clear that his own economic interests, on some of which I am informed, are likely to be served by the ties he has in this way created or strengthened. Indeed, the penetration of New Territories leadership by urban interests and residents, and the orienting of New Territories leaders to the city are a significant index of the way in which in recent times the once partly isolated back garden of the Colony has become a part of the city's organisational life. Many aspects of this increasing loss of autonomy by the New Territories need to be looked into, for, apart from anything else, it suggests that in the planning of research we can no longer assume that town and country can be treated separately.\n\n38. Between the abandonment during the first decade of the century of the idea that there was a regular and readymade system of leaders and tribunals for the Administration to make use of and the development after the Second World War of the institution of the Village Representative (based, it seems, on innovations made by the occupying Japanese), the elders and leaders appear to have been anybody whom administrators might from time to time place trust in and care to consult. The accessibility of the administrators was so high and their prestige so great that they came to assume a chief role in the field of social control. It was not simply that they were magistrates and land officers; their courts were informal and they were prepared to help settle disputes on an even less formal basis. (Present-day administrators lament the disappearance during the war of the New Territories Administration papers, for they look back on them as a lost guide to Chinese custom and its application. The social historian and the anthropologist should join in the mourning...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208125, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "148 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD \n\nto nearness to the market in Hong Kong, partly to the presence of coral in the shallow and then comparatively clean waters of the western approaches: in fact the sea near Ping Chau was officially divided into two Marine Lots, Nos. 1 and 2. Not long after, with constant raking of the sea bed for raw material, growing pollution of water from rubbish dumping by the Sanitary Department and increasing sewerage from Hong Kong by increase of the water carriage system, the industry declined for lack of coral to burn: complaints were made about this to me at one time. In Ping Chau this industry employed numbers of Hoklo lime burners and in 1925 they staged a clan fight which cost several men their lives. There was no police station on the island, so investigations were delayed and no evidence of murder could be got: so after taking a lot of evidence in my 'court' in the Hong Kong office, I simply bound everybody over, which at any rate gave a period of peace to Ping Chau. It must not be thought that the decline of lime burning ruined Ping Chau, for the islanders had thoughtfully provided themselves with a lucrative light industry in the shape of six or seven flourishing gambling houses, which naturally emptied whenever a D.O.'s or Water Police launch appeared. \n\nCommunications with the outside world were then pretty elementary. A junk left Ping Chau about 8 a.m. for Hong Kong and returned to the island in the evening; no more encouraging to anyone wishing to 'Come to sunny Ping Chau' than the clouds of smoke and lime dust that rose perpetually from the kilns. Another industry for which Ping Chau and the other western islands were well adapted was distilling, as their inaccessibility was a great assistance to undertakings wishing to short-circuit the revenue regulations. \n\nYet another industry flourished at one time in this group of islands. The small islet of Kau Yi Tsai, between Ping Chau and Kau Yi Chau, has a cleft in its granite cliffs which opens inwards into a cave of some size. About 1922 this was the scene of the greatest opium seizure in the Colony's history up till then: 8 tons of Persian opium came from the cave, and the crew of the sampan guarding it were put up for banishment. Only the banishees appeared before me, as I was then in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, but what became of them I cannot remember. \n\nThe increasing population and prosperity of the Colony caused similar developments at Cheung Chau: building land was greatly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208153, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 192, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "176 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\n(usually brought in by boat at extra cost) to some lofty spot to which the only access was by hill path and sometimes not even that. 23. Other visitors to the hills at the grave worshipping festivals include persons from outside the Colony who, on account of old and important ancestral graves located by geomancers in time past, have long been accustomed to make the annual pilgrimage. This tradition has been eroded by the establishment of the People Republic in 1949, though some persons have continued the visits intermittently. In one case known to me at Lo Wai, Tsuen Wan, where the grave was repaired in the Hsien Feng reign (1851-1861), and the people came from beyond Sham Chun Market in Po On county adjoining the New Territories, the family have not come for many years now. The geomantic name of the site is \n\nPre-Chinese Occupation \n\nNE \n\n24. Another aspect of the mountain is its pre-Chinese connections. These are now very difficult to ascertain and one would need to comb the hillside for evidence of pre-Chinese occupation such as field systems and irrigation works, and look closely into the place names of localities, fields and villages, to see which of them contain signs of pre-Chinese words, together with the nature and location of the earth shrines of the area. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett has done a lot of work generally on this subject and has prepared a name list for 150 words which he thinks descend from and relate to pre-Chinese languages in the Hong Kong area (see JHKBRAS 14 (1974), \n\nResources \n\n25. Resources of the mountain included mineral deposits — the largest prewar wolfram workings were at Shing Mun (Davis: 116) \n\nand kaolin clay used in the pottery kilns long established at Wun Yiu near Tai Po (JHKBRAS 15 (1975) 291-2). Other clay was specially used for mud bricks, notably at the village now known as Ta Chuen Ping near Upper Kwai Chung. Another resource, long since exhausted, was the forest trees used for charcoal burning, once a flourishing local industry all over the New Territories. The memory of both trees and of this old occupation remains at one of the place names at Shing Mun, known as Tan Chong (炭廠) or 'charcoal factory', in which there were some houses already abandoned from the early years of this century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "10\n\nCHAN KIT-CHENG\n\nhad, according to Hopkins, urged Britain on more than one occasion to give up Hong Kong as a gesture of “good will”. To this suggestion Eden, who had originally objected to agreeing to the return of the New Territories on terms after the war in connection with the extraterritoriality negotiations with China but eventually bowed to the majority opinion of the Foreign Office, returned a cold shoulder.41\n\nBritain's attitude regarding Hong Kong steadily stiffened in the course of 1943. She talked less and less about returning the colony on terms. It was partly because pressure from China decreased markedly since the beginning of the year, presumably because she assumed the retrocession of Hong Kong as a matter of course judging from Britain's behaviour in the extraterritoriality negotiations and at the Institute of Pacific Relations' Conference. More significantly, perhaps, Britain became increasingly confident in her relations with the United States and China with the improvement in the European war situation. By the end of the year a final Allied victory in Europe was no longer seriously in doubt.42\n\nIt was under such circumstances that Stanley Hornbeck's visit to London, as a return gesture to Ashley Clarke's visit to Washington the previous year, took place in November 1943. Hornbeck spent much of his time in London on consultation with the Foreign Office and other offices concerned with Far Eastern affairs. At the final conference at which most interested British officials were present, Hornbeck, “entirely on his own responsibility”,43 remarked as follows: \"I felt that we had covered much ground and had explored a good many subjects, [but] there was one additional matter to which we perhaps might need, not at the moment but as the situation unfolded, to give thought. That matter was ... the future of Hong Kong.\" \"The effect was electrifying\", observed Hornbeck. He immediately regretted it: \"I had had no thought of injecting a discordant note. I felt at once that discretion in that context would be the better part of valour.”44\n\nHornbeck's regret came too late. That very evening the British arranged that he would, before his departure for home, call on Churchill the following morning. At the meeting Hornbeck received a long and emphatic lecture from the Prime Minister on Hong Kong: \"What about Hong Kong? I will tell you. [The rest retold in Hornbeck's words] He then described the acquisition by Great\n\n+ + + +", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n13\n\nTaking advantage of the changed American sentiments regarding China and the allied victory in Europe, Britain began an active propaganda programme to influence American public opinion concerning Britain's imperial and colonial attitudes and policies and the British Empire's contribution to the allied war effort. The British Information Services, an agency of the British government in New York, published numerous booklets for the purpose.$7\n\nHong Kong naturally figured prominently in these publications. In the booklet entitled \"Britain and Japan\", for instance, it is thus stated: \"When the Island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain one hundred years ago, it was almost uninhabited. Since then Britain has built on that island the beautiful city of Victoria. By 1941 Hong Kong had a population of 1,650,000, mostly Chinese; it was a trading center and a port for commercial shipping which had enriched the communities all around it. Students from China came to the University of Hong Kong to get degrees in Medicine, Engineering, Science and Arts, which were recognized in Britain as fully reaching British standards. During the long troubles of China, the island of Hong Kong, and the city of Victoria, became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of distressed Chinese.\" The message was clear: if the British colony of Hong Kong had been beneficial to Britain, it also had been as much so, if not more, to China.\n\nMeanwhile, events were leading to the last stages of the Pacific War. In September 1944 the Americans and the British reached a clear understanding which laid down the general principle that in the British Far Eastern territories which were in the American command, the policies to be followed on the liberation of those territories should be laid down by the British government and accepted by the American force commander.58 Late in February 1945 the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, instituted in December the previous year for the purpose of coordinating the Department of State and the War and Navy Departments, directed that its Subcommittee for the Far East maintain, as a general guide for its activities, a master list of Pacific-Far Eastern problems, arranged in appropriate order of priority. Also, before initiating action on any one of such problems the subcommittee should submit in each case to the main committee a detailed recommendation showing “(1) a statement of the problem (2) the agency or agencies to be charged with initiation of the basic documents involved, and (3) the method of processing and coordination thereof, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208603, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\nNOVEMBER\n\n33\n\nPat Wong, an old Maryknoll friend from our first days in Hong Kong, and now visiting the Colony from his new home in Honolulu, took the new men to their first Chinese banquet with no casualties reported.\n\nThe Kongmoon contingent among the new men, with Father O'Melia as guide and teacher, take off for the Tan Chuk Seminary in the Wuchow Mission as the new site for the Language School; a safety precaution in view of the worsening conditions between the Japanese and the British-American bloc. Father Siebert, assigned to Kaying, will leave for there later on.\n\nThe Stanley staff went to the dock to greet the S.S. Van Buren and the other new missioners but they were not on board - a mystery!\n\nBrother William arrived from Shanghai where he has been staying with Father Whitlow for some time. He is unable to return to Korea at present.\n\nFather Don Hessler arrived from Kweilin by plane for a rest after his recent bout with typhoid. Father Barney Meyer goes to the Paris Foreign Mission compound, \"Nazareth,\" for a retreat preparatory to his coming jubilee. Father Feeney and Father Bauer arrive, the latter for treatment at St. Paul's for a bad case of dysentery. The end of the month brought Passionist Bishop Cuthbert O'Gara by plane from Kweilin.\n\nPART II: WAR AND OCCUPATION, DECEMBER 1941 -- AUGUST 1945\n\nWith the proximity of the Japanese across the border, the atmosphere in the Colony was rather tense. When Canton fell to the Japanese, there was a mass flight of refugees to Hong Kong. It was then estimated that some one hundred thousand came in 1939, bringing the population of the Colony at the outbreak of hostilities to approximately one million six hundred thousand, and it was thought that at the height of the influx, some half a million were sleeping on the streets.\n\nThen, on the fateful date of December 8th, the quiet of the Maryknoll House was rudely broken by the events of what was, no...\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208615, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n45\n\nthe road, and had showered down this debris. We halted not, but sped on, and finally turned into the lower road at Repulse Bay. Here Mr. Brown had some business to transact with his Chinese foreman and workmen who were engaged in demolishing the bathing beach matsheds, lest they be an obstruction to defending troops, or a hiding place for invading forces. Another dash up the hills and around curves brought us breathless but happy to Stanley, and Father Downs was indeed glad to get back among his confreres.\n\nArrived at Stanley Father Downs found the situation rather tense, though not quite so \"hot\" as at Hong Kong. During his absence he was told that Stanley was fairly quiet, except for occasional planes passing overhead, when they dropped a few bombs on and near the Prison, one also hitting Dr. Hackett's, the Prison Doctor's house, demolishing one wing of it. Of course, \"Big Bertha\"—a 9.2 inch gun at the fort on the promontory to the south of us—kept up an intermittent booming day and night, shelling enemy positions on the mainland. When \"Big Bertha\" spoke, she shook our building and made our windows rattle twice, but we did not mind that.\n\nLong before the outbreak of hostilities British Government and Army officials had visited Maryknoll at Stanley with a view to taking it over in whole or in part if any emergency arose. At one time it was intended to be a hospital, but the Army seemed to have prior rights and they decided to take over a part of our building. Accordingly when Japanese planes began flying overhead and Japanese troops began attacking His Majesty's Crown Colony of Hong Kong, His Majesty's Royal Engineers came out to Stanley and occupied the western end of our building: that is, the servants' quarters downstairs, with the classroom and room adjoining, the recreation room upstairs together with two small private rooms close by. Our Ford V-8 was immobilized, our garage taken over by a number of coolies, and the Engineers prepared for eventualities. They brought out with them quite a supply of food, in the way of huge sacks of rice, soya beans and large tins of army biscuits or hard-tack. The five or six Engineers and Mr. Brown ate at our table with us, and we shared their food, so that we were quite a family.\n\nAs in Hong Kong the delivery to Stanley of daily food, such as meats, vegetables, bread and so forth by the Dairy Farm and Lane", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208694, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "124\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nall-pervading air of suspense, and while we were quite free and unmolested on our trips to the City, we felt the heavy atmosphere that seemed to envelope the city. The crowds as usual milled about in the downtown section, but there was not the gaiety of former times, nor the life in the people. The city was still suffering and so were its people—from oppression and from starvation. Strangely enough at Bethany we were not bothered by inquisitive visitors; only occasionally would a Japanese soldier wander through the House and stare at us, and once a Chinese \"puppet\" detective paid us a ceremonial visit and asked us when we were going to Kwong-chauwan.\n\nDuring this time, many of the Fathers took advantage of the occasion to consult dentists and oculists, and Dr. Chawn, our Maryknoll dentist, was splendid. Realizing our financial straits, he very magnanimously waived payment of our debts to him until after the war. Others of our professional friends were equally kind and sympathetic.\n\nOCTOBER\n\nOne of the things we prized most at Bethany was the luxury of a private room. Having been packed in small rooms with from four to seven others for almost eight months was not a little trying on tempers, and to be able to go to one's own private room was indeed a luxury. For quite some time we had no electric lights in our rooms, as in order to save expense all extra light circuits had been cut out, but we did not mind burning our candles and vigil lights until time to retire. Later on, however, we had lights re-installed in our rooms. We also could sit on our spacious verandahs and watch the glorious sunsets on the South China Sea.\n\nAs mentioned previously, immediately on our release from the Camp, we had made out applications for permission to leave the Colony and had submitted these in proper form to the Foreign Office, of which a Mr. Oda was the head. According to usual procedure in the case of third nationals desiring to leave the Colony, it took about two weeks for the governmental machinery to work, and so when this time had about elapsed, Father Toomey asked Mr. Oda about our permissions. The answer came back: \"Decidedly no!\" We were enemy, and not neutral or third nationals, and under no consideration could we leave the Colony!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208930, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "60\n\nLEWIS M. CHERE\n\never nationality. It was this action which the Tsungli Yamen blamed for the troubles in Hong Kong when they refused to order Chang Chih-tung to republish the decree of censure. By October 3 trade was at a standstill and serious damage to the Colony's economy was feared. Newspaper accounts of the strike were at pains to point out that the boatmen really wanted to work but were being prevented by threats made against their family members still living in Kwangtung. A report of October 1 stated that there were three or four wei-yuen from Canton then in Hong Kong to support the boycott.15 The boatmen were supposedly even ready to return to work without a guarantee of their right to boycott French ships, but dared not do so. The theme of the unknown, but influential outside agitator is very common in the official and unofficial accounts of the troubles, just as it is in similar situations around the world in more modern times. It would be surprising if the officials and reporters of 1884 had not believed something of that nature to be true.\n\nOn October 3 the boatmen were ready to return to work. Though their reasons were probably economic, the newspapers do not support the claim made later by Charles Norman that the strike was broken by an offer to pay the Chinese double for working the French ships.16 No such offer was recorded, and the accounts quite plainly indicate that the boatmen were not prepared to return to work for the French.\n\nThough the boatmen were ready to return to work, opinion among their fellow Chinese ashore was against anything of the sort. Groups of cargo coolies tried to prevent the boatmen from returning to work. They also spread the strike to the chair-carriers and ricksha men. Violence broke out when the police attempted to stop the cargo coolies from harassing the boatmen. It was at this point that foreigners in general, rather than just Frenchmen, came under attack. A few traditional-style placards were seen denouncing foreigners in general. A very few appeared calling for the torching of the town. Most of the foreigners who were in jeopardy happened to have been unfortunate enough, or ignorant enough, to have gotten themselves into the wrong place at the wrong time and were swept up in the general disturbance,17\n\nIn an attempt to prevent further outbreaks the colonial administration banned the annual procession of the Feast of the Lanterns,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209204, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1930'S 93\n\nposition and their work often depended on the social and economic status of the person who had bought them.\n\nIn the nature of the case, some were sexually exploited by the male members of the family. Some were treated very cruelly by their mistresses. If they were attractive, they were often taken by the head of the family as a concubine.\n\nEveryone acknowledged that, like all social institutions, there were abuses in the system, but the traditional view was that its advantages outweighed its negative side. There were several arguments to support this view.\n\nOnly the poor sold their children. If they could not sell them, many would be killed off as infants. Their lot in a foster home was much better than it would have been in their natural home. They were fed, clothed, and when of proper age, a marriage was arranged for them with a suitable partner. Everyone benefited by the system: the child who escaped death or starvation, the natural parent who was lifted out of poverty, at least for the moment, and the purchaser who acquired a servant.\n\nIn Chinese society, it had long been an unquestioned aspect of the social order. The buying and selling of human beings did not sit well with the English conscience of the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, most colonists felt it was best to leave undisturbed the modus vivendi which had been established in Hong Kong between British law and moral standards and Chinese social practice.\n\nAfter some eighteen years on the bench in Hong Kong, Chief Justice John Smale, not long before his retirement in 1881, openly stated that, in his opinion, the practice of buying and selling children for domestic servitude was a form of slavery, and hence its continued toleration in a British colony was a blot on the honour of England. He received support from anti-slavery groups in England, but his views were not generally welcomed in Hong Kong, either by the Chinese or expatriates. There was some stir over the question for a short time, and then interest in it died away, not to be re-aroused until the question again came to public attention in 1917.\n\n1917 - The Question Raised\n\nMr. C. G. Alabaster, in defending a client charged with kidnapping, raised a legal point regarding the status of children purchased as servants. The report of the case focused the attention of the English", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209205, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\ncommunity in Hong Kong on the long established Chinese custom of buying children as domestic servants. This attention led to concern, discussion, agitation, the formation of societies and finally in 1923 an Ordinance in the Hong Kong Legislature to abolish the system.\n\nThe case concerned a man who had met two girls aged ten and thirteen on a street in Wanchai. They had gone out to buy sweets and had become lost. The stranger took them on a tram to the Yaumati ferry. They crossed to Kowloon and then returned. He left them for a few minutes to buy something in Wing On Store on Connaught Road Central. The girls came to the notice of the police and the man was arrested when he returned to where he had left them.\n\nMr. Alabaster claimed the two women who owned the girls did not have lawful care of them because they were bought to serve, and they were sold as slaves and slavery has been abolished (in Britain and its colonies) and it is not lawful”.\n\nOn being examined by the Chief Justice one of the mistresses gave evidence that one of the girls had been sold by her elder brother as she had no parents. The Chief Justice asked, \"Then as put by the learned Counsel for the defence, she is your slave?”\n\nThe witness replied, \"I do not know what you mean by slave. Once the girl is sold to me she is my property. It is the custom among the Chinese to buy servants.\"\n\nMr. Alabaster thanked the Chief Justice that the answer to his question had made it so clear the girl was a slave.\n\nHis Lordship then asked Mr. Alabaster, \"What is a slave?\"\n\nHe replied, \"I contend that a person who is bought by a master and may be sold by a master, who receives no wages, except clothes and food in exchange for work is a slave.\"\n\nMr. Alabaster admitted that sale of a child might be legal in China, but once it was brought to the Colony, it had the right to freedom.\n\nThe Chief Justice referred to the Proclamation of Captain Eliot to the Chinese of Hong Kong in 1841 that stated Britain would respect the religious rites, ceremonies and social customs of the Chinese. The Supreme Court usually took into account the question of Chinese custom. If the point in law raised by Mr. Alabaster were to be sustained by a Full Court it would have most serious consequences.\n\nThe question was not settled by the court but it provoked public", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209223, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "112\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nsystem must be abolished. On this there can be no compromise.\n\nAt the third reading of the Bill the Hon. Mr. P. H. Holyoak, elected representative of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce on the Legislative Council, also deplored the image of Hong Kong created by the discussion of the mui tsai question. He referred to the \"gross misrepresentations of fact made throughout the press at Home\". He described it as \"a malicious campaign that should not remain unchallenged in defence of the fair name of the Colony and the good Government which it represents.\"\n\nThe Hon. Mr. E. V. D. Parr referred to the united action of Christians and the labour unions:\n\nThe support of the Bill came from a most extraordinary combination of bodies. Anyone who knows anything of the inside history of the Colony could say perfectly well that support of the Bill is — I hesitate to describe it — perhaps it is best to describe it as a fake. There can be nothing in common or in sympathy between the labour unions and the YMCA and they join together on this occasion for reasons far different from any consideration for the welfare of the mui tsai.\n\nWhat these reasons were he did not state.\n\nThe Daily Press viewed these remarks in the Legislative Council as attempts to defend the Council and the Hong Kong Government for allowing the system to prevail so many years without taking any action either to ameliorate the practice or to abolish it. The speeches also clearly showed the real position of the Government to the Bill:\n\nIf we had ever entertained any doubts of the Government's real attitude toward the Bill which it has been obliged to father, it would certainly have been dissipated by the wonderful unanimity shown by Unofficial Members in attacking the measure and scoffing at its sponsors. The speakers imputed unworthy motives — including a desire for cheap advertisement, political intrigue and even malice to those who, without any hope of reward, sacrificed time, energy, money and even position, in order to help those who could not help themselves.\"7\n\nThe editor concluded that the views expressed by Chinese Christians and union members, rather than those of the elite establishment,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM\n\nIN THE SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL\n\nSETTLEMENT\n\nJ. H. HAAN*\n\nIn this article I shall examine the special governmental structure which came into being in the Shanghai International Settlement,1 and which was virtually unique among colonial or semi-colonial territories.\n\nPut succinctly, the Settlement had the following characteristics:\n\n1. It was a territory which had explicitly been set aside by the Chinese authorities (in 1845 on the basis of the 1842 Nanking Treaty) in order that foreigners might live in it and conduct their trade from it. For the rest it was surrounded by Chinese territory, different from, say, Calcutta, Bombay, Colombo or Batavia, which all lay in foreign-dominated areas, if not originally then eventually.\n\n2. It was never the possession of any one single Western power. In this it was distinct from, e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore or Macau. In practice, this meant that no single foreign country was ever able to convert the city into a colony of that country, or to claim sovereignty over it.\n\nIn the crown colonies, government was conducted by a Governor who was appointed by the home country, and he was assisted by an Executive Council, equally appointed by the authorities; furthermore, there was a Legislative Council which consisted partly of official, ex officio, members and partly of non-official\n\n* Mr. Haan is a student of the University of Amsterdam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209439, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "74\n\nELIZABETH SINN\n\nThe meeting not appearing to have achieved any great breakthrough, the Government and the Chinese merchants went their separate ways to try to resolve the situation. Later that same afternoon, the 4th, Marsh himself met some of the sureties of the boatmen and assured them of police protection if the boatmen returned to work. They told him they feared violence despite this, but Marsh got the impression that this was merely an excuse to avoid returning to work. He came away with a feeling that they were waiting for some secret order on whether to resume work or not. He also sent word around through Stewart Lockhart that if the people would resume work, the Government would consider as an act of grace any appeal which might be made for a remittance of the fines. No appeals, however, came forward.88\n\nThe Chinese merchants, too, continued for the rest of the day exerting themselves in an effort to end the strike. There is no documentary evidence recording specifically what they did, but we shall return later to discuss what had probably been done.\n\nEarly the next morning, placards signed \"All the kaifongs of the Colony\" were posted all along the Praya. They claimed that a meeting of those pursuing various trades in the Colony had been held, and the resolution was that all the cargo boats and coolies should resume work on the morning of the 5th October.30\n\nAt about 10 o'clock on the 5th, cargo boats started coming over from the Chinese side of the harbour. A crowd gathered on shore and, to forestall violence, a picket of soldiers was moved from the Tung Wah Hospital to the Harbour Master's office. The police read a proclamation calling upon the people to disperse and they did so. Though there were a few isolated cases of attempted interference with those resuming work, the general strike may be said to have ended.10\n\nIn fact, there was no serious disturbance after the 3rd. Yet despite this and the resumption of work on the 5th, the Acting Governor remained anxious about the angry and excited feeling among the lower classes of coolies and the large number of triad members he believed to have assembled in Hong Kong. The city was rife with rumours about imminent troubles, and a large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209462, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "97\n\n* For Fang Han-ch'i, see Note 10. Li Ming-jen\n\n\"I-pa-ssu nien Hsiang-kang pa-kung yün-tung\" (\"The Strike in Hong Kong in 1884), Li-shih yen-chiu (Historical Studies), 1958:3 (March, 1958) 89-90.\n\nLloyd E. Eastman, \"The Kwangtung anti-foreign disturbances during the Sino-French War\", Papers on China, 13 (1959) 1-31,\n\nLewis M. Chere, \"The Hong Kong Riots of October 1884: Evidence for Chinese Nationalism\", JHKBRAS, Vol. 20 (1980), p. 54.\n\n* Chinese Prisoners, Papers respecting the confinement and trial of Chinese prisoners in Hong Kong 1857 (155, Sess. 2) XLIII, Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1971) Vol. 24: China, pp. 151-188. For a narration of the event see James Pope-Hennessy, Half Crown Colony: A Hong Kong Note Book (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), pp. 55-58.\n\nMarsh to Parkes, 4th October, 1884, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., 2nd February, 1885: CO129/224. Marsh to Parkes, 6th October, 1884, Telegram enclosed in F.O. to C.O., 9th December, 1884: CO129/219.\n\nTsungli Yamen to Parkes, 10th October, 1884, enclosed in F.O. to C.O., 13th December, 1884; ibid.\n\n**For Paou-chong, see Ordinance No. 13 of 1844; for Tepo, see Ordinance No. 3 of 1853; for the Registrar-General, see Ordinance No. 7 of 1846. The Registrar-General's duties were redefined by Ordinance No. 6 of 1857, and again by Ordinance No. 8 of 1858.\n\nFor the Chinese elite, see Carl Smith's works cited in Note No. 59. See also his \"An Early Hong Kong Success Story: Wei Akwong, the Beggar Boy\", Chung Chi Bulletin No. 45 (December 1968), pp. 9-14; \"English-educated Chinese Elites in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong\", Symposium Paper, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, (November 1972), pp. 65-96; and H.J. Lethbridge, \"A Chinese Association in Hong Kong: the Tung Wah\", \"The Evolution of a Chinese Voluntary Association in Hong Kong: The Po Leung Kuk\" and \"The District Watch Committee: The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong?\" in his Hong Kong: Stability and Change.\n\n**Marianne Bastid, \"The Social Context of Reform” in Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker, ed., Reform in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 117-127; 118.\n\nLi Tak Cheong was a director in 1872, chairman in 1883, and a hip-li in 1873 and 1884. Ho Amei was chairman in 1882 and a hip-li in 1883. Leong On was a founding chairman, and chairman again in 1877 and 1887, and was a hip-li in 1872, 1878 and 1888.\n\n**Ho Kai's father, Ho Fuk Tong and his brother-in-law Wu T'ing-fang were both founding chi-shi.\n\nSee Note No. 34.\n\nMarsh to Derby, 24th March, 1886, Despatch No. 91: CO129/225.\n\n**This refers to a meeting called by Europeans in Hong Kong to discuss the rise of crime which they believed resulted from the leniency of the new Governor Hennessy. Some of the Chinese leaders however supported him and the meeting developed into a confrontation between Europeans and Chinese residents in Hong Kong. See James Pope-Hennessy, Verandah (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.), pp. 203-205. This was also fully reported in the Daily Press and China Mail throughout October 1878.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "218\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nSim-ple Assemblies for young he's and shees, Races, Regattas, Croquet, Sunday Teas. But, hark, the Prompters warning whistle blows, And bids me bring my prologue to a close.\n\nSome of the local references are lost to us today, but then they brought smiles, if not laughter. A history of the Amateurs picks up some of the lighter side of life in Hong Kong in the past.\n\nTHE CURTAIN RISES\n\nSoon after Hong Kong was established as a British military base in China officialdom encouraged amateur theatricals as a wholesome diversion from the tedium of military life.\n\nThe first attempt to bring drama to Hong Kong was to have been a combination of professionals and amateurs, but the project came to an abrupt end before it was well under way. A flamboyant Frenchman from Singapore named Gaston Dutronquoy announced in November 1842 that he had obtained the permission of the authorities to erect a theatre \"on a grand and imposing scale\" behind his tavern, the London Hotel, which was located on Queen's Road.\n\nHe informed an interested public that though the Theatre was not yet built, the actresses had already arrived. Backed by a claim of official sanction and available talent, Mr. Dutronquoy with his own flair for the theatrical announced \"to the nobility, gentry and clergy of this flourishing and opulent Colony that their Theatre is advancing rapidly towards completion. It is on a most splendid scale, and what with the pieces that will be performed, the scenery that will be produced, and the splendid assemblage of rank, beauty and fashion which they hope to be honoured with, there is no doubt but that the blaze of splendour will dazzle the eyes of all beholders\". He assured his public that the actresses' \"beauties and talents are only to be surpassed\n\n† As I wrote this paper more for entertainment than scholarship, I have not included documentation. The notices and reviews of the plays have been found in the local press: The Friend of China, The China Mail, The Hong Kong Register, The Daily Press, The Hong Kong Telegraph and The South China Morning Post. The appended list of performances and dates has been compiled from the same sources.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210336, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 307, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "286\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nThe Cheung lineage was not prosperous until the Tao Kuang (*) period. Ancestor Yao-chih (2) of the 2nd sub-lineage became a successful merchant, and through his generous donation, an Ancestral Hall for the whole lineage was built. The Ancestral Hall of the Ya-kang segment was built in the middle of the Chia Ching period by the effort of ancestor I-pi ( ), brother of Ah-lum's grandfather (see clan record, Tz'u yu pu (3) section, Tz'u T'ang Chi (2) sub-section pp. 1-4). Though the lineage had several National School students (B), no one succeeded in the official examinations until the end of the Ch'ing dynasty when they had three chüren (A). Two of them were Ah-lum's sons. Ah-lum's father was also a National School Student who earned his living by teaching in the villages nearby (see the biography of Ah-lum's father in the Clan record, Chi-ching pu (it) section, Hang Chuang ((HA) sub-section p. 5).\n\nThis man is not otherwise mentioned in the Clan record.\n\nAccording to Ah-lum's statement as given in court, \"he first came to the colony at only 18 years of age. He was first employed by Mr. Bigham, who went to California; after that by Mr. Franklyn; then by Murrow, Stephenson & Co.; then by Mr. De Silver, for whom he made biscuits, as well as did other business see: British Parliamentary Papers, China, no. 24: Hong Kong, P. 183. (= BPP 24:183).\n\nThe Russell was owned by Russell & Co., and the Shamrock by Mr. Xavier, c.f. BPP 24:170 and 173.\n\nSee BPP 24:164–184. The bakery had three machines making bread to supply most of the foreigners in Hong Kong.\n\nSee BPP 24:155-184, and Eitel op.cit. p. 311-313.\n\n10 The Arrow War. The anti-foreigner movement was supported by Yeh Ming-shen (), the Imperial Commissioner for Kwangtung, in Canton. See Wakeman, F. Jr. Strangers at the Gate. 1966, pp. 109ff. Also Eitel op.cit. p. 305.\n\n11 Eitel: op.cit. p. 312-313.\n\n12 According to Chen Kuan-ying (###), Ah-lum was chief of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. (TERA) in Vietnam. He owned a shop Hung Tai Ch'ang() in Saigon, and his son Ti-fu (#) was chief manager (*) of the Cambodia Opium Co. (12). Chen Kuan-ying (E), Nan-yu Jih-chi (12), (Diary of a Journey to the South), reprinted 1967, Taiwan, p. 19ff, 81-89. According to the Clan Record Tsa Chi-pu() section, Pa-yu (if) sub-section, p. 1, Ah-lum had businesses in Saigon, Haiphong, Comuponton, and in Nha Trang in Kwangnam (ÂM NHIỀU).\n\n13 According to the clan record, we know that one of Ah-lum's sons was buried in the free cemetery of Haiphong (), and another was buried in the free cemetery of the Canton City Association in Vung Tau, Vietnam (#).\n\n14 In 1884, when Chen passed through Vietnam, Ah-lum was chief manager (*) of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. in Vietnam. See Chen: p. 19.\n\n15 Chen: ibid.\n\n16 Clan record, Chi-ching pu (###) section, Ch'i-shou (##) sub-section, pp. 1-4; has two essays presented on this occasion by the gentry of Heung Shan, and by the merchants of the Canton City Association in Vung Tau, Saigon (F#城會館).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "54\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nwould engage a Taoist priest to come down to his junk and perform a ceremony known as Changing the Gods (woon shan). This, which involved spilling the blood of a domestic fowl, was believed to provide cleansing from pollution and open the way for good fortune.\n\nThe annual ritual cycle began with the New Year and proceeded almost immediately to the public festival for the 'birthday' of the local tutelary deity, Hung Shing Kung, on the 13th day of the 2nd lunar month. These two occasions were the ritual highlights of the year. Quickly in their wake came Ch'ing Ming, fixed by the Chinese solar calendar at a date corresponding with April 6th and falling therefore usually in the third lunar month. This was one of the two special occasions for the commemoration of a family's departed members. The third month saw also the festival to T'in Hau, the so-called Queen of Heaven, protectress of all seamen, celebrated biennially with Chinese opera at the neighbouring village of Lung Shuen Wan and annually in a large number of other places in the Colony.\n\nIn the fourth month there was a festival at the temple of T'am Kung in Shaukiwan to which a few Kau Sai people sometimes went to watch the plays, and on the fifth day of the fifth month the Dragon Boat festival. Kau Sai had once had a Dragon Boat of its own which, I was told, on one memorable occasion even came in first in the 'regatta' held in those days at Aberdeen and attended by H.E. the Governor. But that was back in the 'twenties. Later, Kau Sai people merely looked on at the Dragon Boat races held elsewhere, or sometimes 'fielded' a scratch 'team' for the fun of the thing at Sai Kung. All boat families also made offerings at the temple on the Double Fifth which was also widely used as a kind of dividing mark in the calendar: hired crew, for example, were usually engaged or laid off at New Year and the Dragon Boat festival.\n\nIn the sixth lunar month was held the festival for Koon Yam, 'Goddess of Mercy', observed in all her many temples but attended particularly by Kau Sai residents at the village of Pak Sha Wan, near Sai Kung. (The fact that this village was also the site of that Kau Sai New Village to which the landsmen were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210698, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "32 \n\nWALTER GREENWOOD \n\nKai, in 1886. Francis himself took part in the foundation of the College of Medicine for Chinese (one of the two original students of which was Sun Yat Sen). He was on the platform at the inaugural meeting in 1887 and was appointed standing counsel to the College and remained as such until his death. He contributed to prizes for botany and chemistry and attended the presentation of the first diplomas in 1892. In 1886 he made a presentation on behalf of the College to Dr. James Cantlie, to whom in great measure the foundation of the College was due, on the occasion of his departure from Hong Kong. He began his address by saying \"when I first came to this colony I was given to understand there was only one disease recognised by the Medical Faculty and that was the liver, and that they had only two prescriptions, one a blue pill and the other, if that did not succeed, a P. & O. Steamer\". In 1897 at a meeting for the election of the Rector of the College he made a speech pressing the Government for recognition and financial support. He alleged that the Government had ignored the College and wanted a medical school on government lines with the Colonial Surgeon at the head and government officers thick and thin all over from top to bottom. On his death the Court of the College (which may be regarded as the forerunner of the University of Hong Kong) passed a resolution expressing appreciation for his services.\n\nHis interest in education also included schools, particularly the Roman Catholic schools. After the founding of St. Joseph's College in 1875 he rarely missed a Prizegiving Day there, and usually donated prizes, including on one occasion, somewhat ironically, an inkstand. He also acted as an examiner at St. Joseph's. Bishop Raimondi said that he tested the boys thoroughly and cross-examined them as he would have cross-examined a witness in court. He advocated teaching English to Chinese children. He also acted as a steward at, and patron of, the Hong Kong School's Athletic Sports.\n\nOne of the obituaries of Francis recorded that he used to say that when he first arrived and stood on the deck of the troopship and gazed at Hong Kong he determined to be Governor one day. Whatever the truth of that there can be no doubt that, as was said in another obituary, he coveted a seat on the Legislative Council. He might have had a chance of nomination by Hennessy save that Hennessy was intent on nominating a Chinese (Ng Choy) and also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210699, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "33\n\nnominated E.R. Belilios. The only way in for Francis was by election by the Justices or the General Chamber of Commerce of which he was a member. He suffered a number of handicaps one of which was that he was not a businessman. He was present at a meeting of the Justices in 1884 to elect a member and expressed regret that Justices who were officials had, at the request of the Governor, declined to vote. He said they should either use their vote or, better, have no vote. In 1886 he was a candidate for the Justices seat. He published his interest in the newspapers saying \"I honestly believe I can do the colony good and faithful service and better than any other man. I am nearly one of the oldest residents. I came here in 1859. Since 1862 I have taken a lively and I hope intelligent interest in the affairs of the colony. I have some knowledge of business and its requirements and am deeply interested in the prosperity and progress of Hong Kong as a whole. It is my home, my life's work is here and I rise or fall with its fortunes\". He referred to his practice as a speaker and training as a lawyer and said he was thoroughly independent in all things. He said he was in favour of maintaining absolute freedom of the port and improving the harbour, changing the method of dealing in land and reforming the Legislative Council including increasing the number and powers of unofficials.\n\nAn editorial in the Daily Press said “false modesty is not a failing of our eminent counsellor any more than want of courage. However the Justices may require other guarantees from their candidate. They may also object that Mr. Francis whilst perhaps independent now has not always been equally so and the tone he now takes smacks rather too much of constant and indiscriminating opposition to the Government. There is some reason to doubt whether the best interest of the colony would be best served by a lawyer. Mr. Chater would be a better member\". Francis replied “unofficial members are permanently in opposition but obstruction for the sake of obstruction is a thing I hate and detest. I pride myself on having been in all things and at all times absolutely independent in thought and word. I have spoken and acted in support of what I thought right when it was in my interest in every sense to do otherwise\". The paper responded “Nine years ago Mr. Francis and two other barristers (Ng Choy and Hayllor) arrayed with the Governor against almost every member of the British and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210712, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "46\n\nHENRY THOMAS JACKMAN (1874-1928), ENGINEER, PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, HONG KONG\n\nSTEPHEN SELBY*\n\nH. T. Jackman came to Hong Kong in July 1903 to take up the post of executive engineer in the Public Works Department. Born in England on 4 June 1874, Jackman attended the Crystal Palace Engineering School in London from 1890 to 1893. He left the engineering school to take up three years' practical work on drainage and waterworks engineering with the firm of McLandsborough and Preston, where he was pupil and then assistant engineer. During that period, he was in charge of a new sewage works in Ripon. Following his indenture, he was appointed in 1897 as Assistant District Engineer for Sheffield, where he was responsible for electric tramways, drainage and highways works.\n\nThe early 1900's in Hong Kong were years of severe water shortage and sanitation problems. The total population of the territory stood at just over 300,000, about 94% of whom were Chinese. The first few years of the decade showed a particularly high death-rate from plague, although 1902 showed a slight drop. Severe damage was regularly caused by typhoons, particularly in 1900 and 1906: flash floods and strong winds brought down many of the poorly-constructed buildings in the “Chinese Quarter\" of the city, frequently killing or injuring the occupants. Shipping and small sampans on which whole families lived suffered huge losses.\n\nA report had been undertaken in 1882 by Osbert Chadwick on the sanitary condition in the Colony. The report resulted in the establishment of the Sanitary Board in 1883 amid some controversy over how far some of the report's more draconian recommendations should be implemented. The report was elaborated upon by Chadwick over the period from 1883 to 1903, and further recommendations were developed that works on sewerage, water supply and drainage should be put in hand forthwith.\n\n*Stephen Selby is an Administrative Officer in the Hong Kong Government and a member of the Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210734, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "68\n\nthereon.\" \n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU \n\nBy this time Ford's time had to be divided between running the Botanic Gardens, establishing the herbarium and collecting specimens for both of these undertakings. Realising his own limitation he asked for the appointment of an assistant and a Mr. Westland arrived in the colony in May 1883. Earlier in February of that year Ford, anticipating the arrival of an assistant and the possible rapid expansion of the herbarium, sent the following letter to Kew:\n\n\"Could you also please send me sample of cartridge paper which you use for herbarium sheets, 16” × 10½”, together with prices and name of supplier? The Crown Agents sometimes disappoint me by sending paper unfit for our use and not according to samples sent with order.\"\n\nFord met with a constant barrage of difficulties from Government officials particularly from the Surveyor-General, Mr. Price and from members of the finance committee. Fortunately the Governor, Sir George F. Bowen, supported Ford and a letter by Ford written on 9/5/83 confirms this:\n\n\"H.E. was very pleased with what he saw and he has been very good to my dept. since he came. He offered to let me have at once another $1,000 for the completion of our New Gardens.\n\n\"(He [Mr. Price] wrote to the Governor before the Governor had been a fortnight in the Colony and asked him to reverse Sir J. Hennessy's policy (which had, as you know, been confirmed by the Sec. of State) in reference to my and his departments. The Governor told him that he did not see any reason to disturb the arrangement which his predecessor had made. Sir George told me he had visited the Gardens and that they did me very great credit.)\"\n\nLater in the same year Ford again met official opposition, this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210882, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "216\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThen, \"while I was thus allowing my patience to be taxed and tormented for good news,\" an offer was made to become interpreter at Ballarat in the goldfield area of Victoria. He accepted.\n\nNot long after, news came that some of the men he had taken to New Zealand had struck it rich. The report caused a rush of Chinese from Australia to New Zealand.\n\nA-mei, however, had severed his connection with the emigrant shipping business when he became interpreter, so he did not realise the profit that might have been his if he had persisted a little longer.\n\nThe rush, however, was shortlived, although it lasted enough for over 1,000 Chinese to be added to the population of New Zealand within a year.\n\nAn invitation was extended to Ho A-mei to come over and accept a position as interpreter. The offer was declined, because, as A-mei says, “I knew I might be required to travel in the rigid winter of your country, which I was fully aware I could not stand.”\n\nFinding that he had been unable to save much money in Australia, A-mei decided to return to China in 1868.\n\nIn 1870 a new movement of Chinese to New Zealand was under way, this time largely from China. Because of his previous experience, Ho A-mei, who was in Hongkong at the time, was consulted regarding the chartering of vessels to carry the emigrants. He resumed his activity as emigrant agent, sending off three shiploads within a few months. This not only benefited him financially, but he felt his earlier efforts had been vindicated.\n\nHe says: \"Now, I may be proud to remark that the attempt which prompted me to introduce Chinese labour into your colony, and which was at one time considered so futile, has, at last, turned the right side up.\"\n\nIn the letter recounting all this, he signed himself: \"Ho A-mee, Pioneer.\" It was an apt designation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210892, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "226\n\nto Hawaii.\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nIn calling for support of the proposal, Ho A-mei reflected that when he was a boy there was little business in Hongkong, but after emigration started better times came. Further, while the Governor called the proposed Hawaiian emigrants contract labourers, A-mei suggested that most of the members present came out to Hongkong on contract.\n\nTo this observation there was a hearty \"Hear, hear!” from the taipan \"contract labourers\" present. The resolution was passed by the meeting.\n\nThere was still another matter Ho A-mei wished to present to the meeting. He proposed: \"That the manufacture of salt be allowed to be carried on in Hongkong.\"\n\nThe reason for this proposal was the Government's rejection of an application for the grant of a large waste tract along the shore near Stanley. The applicants planned to convert it into salt pans for the production of salt by evaporation of sea water.\n\nHo A-mei did not understand why the request had been refused, as he felt it would in no way interfere with China's salt monopoly and would give employment to about 300 workers. He mentioned that Hongkong was importing salt from Indochina, but he did not refer to the large quantities of salt which were smuggled from Hongkong into China. He assured the members that the venture would be of great benefit to the Colony. Furthermore, it was the duty of the chamber to encourage all kinds of manufacture.\n\n—\n\nThe chairman of the meeting, William Keswick, head of Jardine, Matheson and Co and a member of the Legislative Council and, as such, privy to certain Government decisions assured Ho A-mei that there was no more need to get sanction for the manufacture of salt than, say, for sugar. He suggested that perhaps the refusal of the land was not because of the purpose for which it was to be used.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210926, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 277, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "260\n\nCARL SMITH\n\ninconvenience of hawkers but hesitate to speak up for fear the authorities would deal too harshly. This fear seems to have been partially realised.”\n\nHe suggested that \"leniency combined with firmness and discretion will do more for the removal of this nuisance than harsh measures.” On the other hand, “a harsh policy will be at once an injustice to them and injurious to the Colony, as it will throw a large number of men out of work, and may be the means of augmenting the numbers of the lawless.\" If leniency was not shown and consideration given to Chinese views on the matter, Dr. Ho Kai feared \"that in the future the Chinese will be more backward than ever in stating their complaints publicly.”\n\nAll in all the deputation had the appearance of being an exercise in futility. This, at least, was a view expressed in the press. The writer felt \"some other influence besides a desire to inculcate in the entire community the true principle of decorum, piety and virtue, had been at work to manufacture the pretentious deputation.\"\n\nThe cynical conclusion drawn was that it took place because \"Dr. Ho Kai was anxious to deliver a prepared speech, and that the majority of gentlemen forming the deputation came for fashion's sake.”\n\nThe deputation, with all its troubles, was yet another step in the groping of Government and of Chinese to create ways of communication with each other. With every attempt some lesson was learned.\n\nHOW A-MEI RETRIEVED HIS PLACE AT THE TOP\n\nHo A-mei clashed with Dr. Ho Kai over the doctor's remarks about hawkers during the visit of a Chinese deputation to the acting Governor in January 1883.\n\nA half year later there was another encounter between the two over Dr. Ho Kai's representation of Chinese interests at a public meeting called to discuss a suitable memorial for the late Governor.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211142, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "178\n\nlocal population.”\n\nTo support this statement two examples provided by the Hong-kong Governor, Sir William Des Voeux, were related.\n\nWhen plans were being made for the Viceroy of Kwangtung to visit Hongkong, he stipulated that three hundred coolies should meet him at the wharf when he arrived and kneel down before him in the traditional kowtow.\n\nThe Governor explained that this could not be done because it was not according to the usage of a British colony. Hong Kong, however, would provide a guard of honour and treat the Viceroy with every ceremony and courtesy in keeping with his position. This assurance was not satisfactory and the plans for the visit fell through.\n\nOn another occasion, the vice-admiral of the Chinese fleet was in the harbour. He was invited to observe the celebrations in honour of the Queen's Birthday.\n\nAt such festivities, of course, there was a great crowd of curious Chinese spectators. Governor Des Voeux reported that when the time came for the salute, the admiral advanced four paces ahead of the rest of the party.\n\nThe Governor hurried to catch up with him, but only to have the admiral edge forward again, until both the Governor and the admiral were well in advance of the rest of the party.\n\nGovernor Des Voeux felt that the admiral was intentionally trying to upstage him, so that the Chinese present would think the salute was being paid to him as the representative of the sovereign power. The Governor was forced to tell him to take a place in the rear.\n\nThe question of the degree China could be regarded as a civilised country still entered into the arguments for and against the appointment of a consul.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211148, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "184\n\nhas never been a Chinese consul resident in Hongkong. The appointment, announced by Britain in July 1891, was cancelled before it could become effective.\n\nHo A-mei, however, continued his efforts to have an office in Hongkong that could watch over Chinese trading interests. In 1895, he took the leading role in the opening of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce.\n\nWHEN TELEGRAPH CAME TO THE SUPPORT OF A-MEI\n\nBy the time the translation of Ho A-mei's letter urging his countrymen not to attend the meeting called to protest against the appointment of a Chinese consul in Hongkong was published in the English press, word had been received that the appointment had been cancelled. The meeting was never held.\n\nThough Ho A-mei's endorsement of a consul did not receive the support of most of the European community, it did receive a favourable notice in the Hongkong Telegraph.\n\nThis paper was often found on the opposite side of any question under discussion in the press. It was the voice of minority opinion within the expatriate community. It was also generally sympathetic to Chinese viewpoints.\n\nWhen news of the appointment first broke in Hongkong, it humorously commented on the reaction of the daily press. It said that its competitor had earned for itself the name of \"granny.\"\n\nIn fact, to the Telegraph it seemed “the old lady was 'took bad' over the innovation of the establishment of a Chinese Consulate in the Colony”.\n\nIt called for a less emotional reaction and a sober consideration of the question. It maintained there was no reason for such alarm. Hongkong should have more confidence in itself.\n\nIt claimed that Hongkong had the ability and the means to control its Chinese population: \"No matter how his nationals may", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "186\n\ngence and capacity of the official class controlling this Colony at the present time of its existence, and when he comes to compare the same with the rigid system of qualifications exacted in his own country.\n\nIn fact, the critic felt that there was little to choose between the operations of Chinese or colonial administration.\n\nHongkong might even have the edge as far as incompetent administration was concerned, for \"much as China is abused for its inefficiency and jobbery, in these as well as in its feebleness and downright deceit and audacity the present one-horse administration of Hongkong well take the cake.”\n\nAnyone caring to look could easily see how Hongkong was mismanaged by ineffective administrators. With a Chinese official watching they might be shamed to mend their ways.\n\nThe editor claimed that China had no monopoly on the practice of \"squeezing.\" It was his opinion that \"we are all more or less tarred with the same brush in this respect.\" For the Chinese it is a part of their system.\n\nThe writer explained: “It is simply an incident peculiar to the Chinese system of taxation. It concerns themselves alone. They all do it, and submit to the system with universal complacency, if not with satisfaction.\"\n\nHongkong had its own problems to worry about and to correct without attempting to reform traditional Chinese procedures.\n\nIf the Telegraph was hard on Government officials it was equally critical of the manner in which the General Chamber of Commerce operated. It felt that the chamber was out of its province when it meddled in the political area.\n\nAll the rantings of the Hongkong merchants about decisions arrived at on a diplomatic level were characterised as an \"asinine exhibition.\" Behind it was the Chamber of Commerce.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211157, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "193\n\nThe new hall was a more impressive and comfortable meeting place for community leaders than the old Kung Soh which was not only rather small but was also beginning to show the marks of age.\n\nA famous Victorian lady traveller, Isabella Bird, has left an account of the Tung Wah hall which she visited in 1879;\n\n\"The building where the directors meet... (has) one side open to the garden. It has a superb ebony table in the middle with a handsome chair for the chairman and six carved ebony chairs on each side—a most stately 'board room'.”\n\nThe furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon. They had encountered financial difficulties and the Chinese Government had seized their property for debt and sold it at a public auction. In this manner it found its way to Hongkong.\n\nThe activities of the hospital committee in affairs affecting the Chinese community were viewed with suspicion by Europeans in Hongkong.\n\nEven before the hospital was opened, the committee came under attack for interfering in a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States.\n\nThe Daily Advertiser said that members of the board of the hospital \"appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the Colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some time in the future.” As indeed there was.\n\nThe committee which oversaw the affairs of Tung Wah Hospital was elected annually from the most prominent members of the community.\n\nOstensibly their duties were to manage the hospital. Its members, however, also served as temple and kaifong directors. The jurisdiction of these bodies was not sharply defined.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211181, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 242, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "217\n\nA letter appeared in the Daily Press endorsing the idea of a contribution to the Imperial Institute. The correspondent claimed that a contribution from Hongkong could benefit both the donor and the project: \"If Hongkong can help to prevent (the institute) being a failure, it would be rendering an invaluable service to the Empire, and a double service to the Colony.\"\n\nThe double benefit, for Hongkong would be that of promoting the Colony's trade and of “getting us out of our mess.\" The mess, of course, was the inability of the community to express common agreement on a memorial. It was making the people of Hongkong look foolish.\n\nHe suggested to the proposer and the seconder of the park project that they withdraw their motions, for surely “they will not miss the chance that withdrawing their proposal would give them of making a friend of the Queen as well as remaining (signed) 'Friends of the Governor'.”\n\nAgain, the proposal met little response, but Hongkong's lack of interest did not materially impede the project. Other sections of the Empire were more liberal and enthusiastic.\n\nIn May, 1888, the Queen granted a charter of incorporation to the Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies and India and the Isles of the British Seas. A building was erected in South Kensington.\n\nIt served as a centre for scientific research and a bureau of economic resources for the Empire. In 1962 a new building was erected and the name changed to the Commonwealth Institute.\n\nHOW SPORT CAME TO THE VALLEY\n\nIt was usual for a planning committee to predetermine the agenda for public meetings in the Hongkong of the nineteenth century.\n\nIt was decided that at the public meeting on March 2, 1887, to plan Hongkong's observance of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211184, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "220\n\nThe Government faced the vexing problem of compensation to the owners of the fields. This problem still troubles the Government. The compensation to people whose ancestral lands are resumed is a thorny issue.\n\nIn 1844 a three-member commission was formed to consider claims and recommend suitable payment for the land given up. It was composed of the Land Officer, Mr. Gordon, the Chief Magistrate, Major William Caine, and the Chinese Secretary, the Rev. Mr. Charles Gutzlaff.\n\nMr. Gutzlaff did most of the work interviewing the villagers and attempting to ascertain current land values.\n\nThe Colonial Office inquired of the Governor under what circumstances it had been necessary to purchase the land when, with the cession of the island to Britain, all land automatically had become the property of the Crown.\n\nThe Governor explained: “That Rule laid down since the occupation of the island has been that the property of those Chinese who were possessed previous to the cession of the colony should be respected, but none other.\n\n“The land in question is among the oldest under cultivation in the island, being a rich alluvial soil adapted to the growing of rice. It therefore came strictly under this rule.”\n\nThe committee determined to its satisfaction that the price of the second-class paddy land was between $20 and $40 a mow (a Chinese land measure). It recommended the average of $30.\n\nThrough a mistake by the committee in stating the number of mow in an acre, the Government almost blundered into paying three times as much for the land. Fortunately for the Government treasury, but not the villagers, the error was discovered before a settlement was made.\n\nIt took a year to complete the project. The land was surveyed. The owners were compensated and the drainage and undertaken.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211199, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "235\n\nAnother speaker rose to suggest that it would be appropriate to have a statue of one of the Chinese gods in the library. He suggested that of Tze Tso, the founder of Chinese literature. Ho A-mei objected. There were Chinese temples for the gods. The proposed building was not a suitable place for them.\n\nThe chairman of the meeting then suggested that as there seemed to be no opposition to the proposal, it be formally placed before the meeting.\n\nHo A-mei proposed: \"That the celebration of the Queen's jubilee, by the Chinese residents of this colony, take the form of the building of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Public Library and Reading Room.” Mr. Wei Yuk seconded it and the meeting unanimously approved it.\n\nA committee of thirty-seven was chosen. The president was Ho Kwan-shan (Ho A-mei), the vice-president was Wei Yuk, the treasurer Lee Yuk-hang (Li Shing), and the secretary Ho Yuk-shang (Dr. Ho Kai)\n\nThe meeting ended amid satisfaction over the harmony that had prevailed. With enthusiasm the committee set about its task of soliciting funds.\n\nCHANGING FACE OF CHINESE SPORT\n\nThe decision by the Chinese to mark 1887, the jubilee year of Queen Victoria, by building a hall for a Chamber of Commerce, as reported in the Daily Press, “really put an extinguisher on the projected Victoria Park.”\n\n\"The coup de grâce to the scheme\" came when the acting Governor informed the committee that he could not approve of the public taking up a project which had been accepted as a Government scheme by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.\n\nTwo letters which appeared in the press before the project had to be abandoned are interesting commentaries on life in Hong Kong at that time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211207, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 268, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "243\n\nMr. Macgregor then suggested that if Mr. Francis's interpretation was correct the original proposer should insert into his resolution the words, “in the Colony.\" This was done.\n\nIn what seemed a turnabout, Mr. Macgregor then moved an amendment that the words \"in the Colony\" be left out so that if \"this or any other meeting wished to vote funds for the Colonial Institute it could do so.” As the institute was Mr. Francis's scheme, he eagerly seconded the amendment. However when it was put to the meeting the amendment was defeated but the resolution was passed.\n\nThe chairman's irresolution seemed to be reflected in his remarks concerning the next proposition regarding the date of the observance of the Jubilee. He stated that though he had presented the resolution at the first meeting which set the date for November 9, he was not in favour of it.\n\nAs explanation he said: “It was given to me, and I proposed it as it was given to me.” Again his remarks were greeted with laughter. He even admitted that though he had made the resolution, he did not vote for it.\n\nAfter some haggling, the date was changed to June 21. The point had now arrived where at the previous meeting the park scheme had been adopted. The chairman asked for anyone who had a suggestion to bring it before the meeting.\n\nAs Dr. Manson's proposal had not been seconded, he would entertain Mr. Crow's suggestion. However, either out of politeness, obstinacy, or belief that he was adhering to proper procedure, Mr. Crow contradicted the chairman and said that Dr. Manson's proposal should have priority.\n\nThe chairman gave in and, since Dr. Manson was not present, asked someone to make the resolution. Again Mr. Crow stepped in and suggested it would be in order for the chairman himself to make the proposal. To this Mr. Ryrie gave the hedged answer that he had advanced such an idea some years ago in reference to the “Austin Arms” but nothing came of it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211265, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 326, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "301\n\nI understand that Mr. Ching is contemplating a book about the major families of Hong Kong, descended from successful men who came here in the 19th century with little more than their wits. On the showing of his first historical work, I cannot think of a more suitable person to undertake this task than Mr. Ching, and I hope that, warts and all, he gets all the cooperation and understanding of the requirements of the job from the families concerned.\n\nFrom there, or in the process, he could perhaps take up the true history of families great and small during the years of the Japanese Occupation of the colony, where the same rules apply. The job needs to be done, because of the way in which leading families have shunned the very mention of these years. Shanghai was not the only place where, as Mr. Ching writes (p. 458), the returning authorities looked down on those who had lived under the Japanese as tainted.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nMind Landscapes: the Paintings of C. C. Wang, by Jerome Silbergeld, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington Press (Seattle and London), 1987.\n\n132 pp. + plates, bibliography, index, US$40.00 (cloth); US$19.95 (paper).\n\nC. C. Wang is certainly one of the most intriguing Chinese artists in the later twentieth century. His life chronicles cataclysmic changes many Chinese have endured and his path — artist, collector, connoisseur, businessman and exile was rarely clear. He was called upon to continuously redefine his relationship with China and the West as he travelled, explored and matured.\n\nHaving been born into a Suzhou family of mandarins in Imperial China in 1907 and having had a traditional Chinese education till the age of 14 assured young Wang the basis for blossoming into a twentieth-century version of the literati. But young Wang longed for a Western-style education, into which he switched at age fourteen and from which he went on to study law in Shanghai at China's distinguished Suzhou Law School. But his art education, which started as he learned to read and write, was carried on simultaneously and ever more seriously. Over time he had many art teachers and, indeed, became a teacher himself at an early age.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211358, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "50\n\nBut Mr. Scholfield stuck to his opinion. \"I would not give a single thought to it. The only thing I would think of was the ten cents I would receive at the end of the day.\"\n\nWhen the resolutions proposed by Mr. Bowley were put to the meeting, only Mr. Scholfield voted against him. He told the meeting that if the suggestions were to be implemented it would mean money **and would depend on the maintenance of the opium revenue**. If that was stopped, what would they do?\" Up to that date Hong Kong had depended upon the income from the opium trade to finance itself, now there was heavy pressure from the Home Government to abolish the traffic in opium.\n\nThe editor of the Daily Press commended the small group of Hong Kong expatriates who were concerned about social problems, though his views were expressed in the colonial attitudes of the day.\n\nFar removed from the centres of civilization and surrounded by people alien to us in manners, customs and ideas, there is a natural tendency to lose that sense of communal responsibility which is steadily developing in the land from which we spring. It is well, therefore, that we have in our midst some whose interests are not limited by sport or commerce to remind us of the thoughts and aspirations of our more progressive fellow countrymen at Home.\n\nProposals of the Sanitary Board 1919\n\nMr. Bowley was a member of the Sanitary Board and used his position to try to get passed some regulations on child labour. He used a back door approach by proposing that the regulations be based on sanitary grounds. As the name of the Board suggests such concerns came within its province.\n\nOn the 19 March 1919 Mr. Bowley had posed the following question, **Does the Medical Officer of Health consider it desirable in the interests of public health of the Colony that the ages, hours and conditions of employment of women and children in factories, workshops and work-places in the Colony should be regulated and controlled?** The Medical", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211624, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "14\n\n48\n\nto have been a more junior soldier such as a drill or colour havildar who would have been ordered to hoist the flag. At the moment it is not possible therefore to say whether Mohammed Arab hoisted the Union Jack on Hong Kong or not, but what is undeniable is that by his death in 1878 Hong Kong had prospered and grown in importance to such an extent that he and the wider community in the colony considered that whoever had hoisted the flag that day had done something of interest to posterity. If it had been Mohammed Arab, it would have been a foretaste of the multiracial legacies that colonialism would leave to the island.\n\n49\n\n50\n\nThe other candidate for the honour of hoisting the flag is a far more conventional one. In his guide to Hong Kong of 1893, William Legge wrote: 'In January [1841] . . . the British Ensign was hoisted on Possession Point . . . by midshipman Dowell (now Admiral Sir William Dowell KCB)'. William Montagu Dowell was born on 2 August 1825 and was made a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1847, rising to be vice-admiral in 1880 and admiral in 1885. In January 1841 he would have been fifteen, so it is possible that he could have been a midshipman at that date and could have been among the group landing on Hong Kong to hoist the flag. More important than whether Dowell raised the flag or not is the fact that the author wished to associate a famous person with the act. William Dowell had been involved in the Second China War of 1857, he was at Shimoneseki in Japan in 1864 and he returned to the Far East as commander-in-chief of the navy in China between January 1884 and September 1885; his naval career had also included spells at the Cape of Good Hope, on the West coast of Africa and on the Egyptian expedition of 1882. By claiming an admiral and a knight as the perpetrator of the deed, the author may have been expressing a desire that Hong Kong's rise in importance should be seen to be mirroring that of Dowell.\n\n51\n\n52\n\nIt is extraordinary that historians have paid so little attention to the acquisition of Hong Kong and that so little effort has been expended in trying to establish the manner in which Hong Kong came to be possessed by the British, and contemporary reactions to that possession. Such omissions might perhaps have been more understandable had Hong Kong at this stage only been thought of as a temporary possession. But by the 1870s it was clear that Hong Kong had become a permanent and financially successful part of the Empire, and certainly by the twentieth century it could have been expected that there would have been considerable interest in constructing a colonial history. That such a history", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211702, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "92\n\nrecent concession) to the limited extent of replying to a message which must originate with a neutral. No communication with the various prisoners-of-war camps or hospitals in other parts of Hongkong was permitted, so that wives in the camp could neither send messages to, nor receive them from, their prisoner-of-war husbands. Some were unable to find out whether their husbands were prisoners or not. This seems a quite unnecessary cruelty.\n\nDr. Selwyn-Clarke. I have made a passing reference to Dr. Selwyn-Clarke (Director of Medical Services in the Hongkong Government), but he deserves more than that. The Japanese found it worth their while to allow him and his wife and a small group of British relief workers under him to remain outside the camp and they were primarily engaged on relief work in the Colony. But he had secured the confidence of the Japanese Military Authorities and was allowed to visit the camp frequently on the strict understanding that he gave no news and discussed nothing but medical and relief matters. He visited the camp once or twice a week, talked to the doctors and the Welfare Committee's representative, found out what wanted doing and then in Hongkong tried to get it done. Everyone in the camp knew that almost all the improvements in diet and other matters were the result of untiring efforts on his part, but not so many knew that he had been equally untiring in his efforts to relieve distress among the Chinese population of Hongkong whose plight was immeasurably worse than anything the Stanley internees had to endure.\n\nL\n\nCamp management, discipline, etc. When the camp was first opened, the Japanese put in a number of English-speaking Chinese as block supervisors. Their duties were never clearly defined, but they formed the only channel of communication between the Japanese and the internees. Then the internees elected Communal Councils (one for each of the three communities British, American and Dutch) and these Councils, working in cooperation, ran the camp and were recognised by the Japanese as the spokesmen of their national groups. Later a Japanese Superintendent was appointed (Mr. Nakazawa). He lived in a separate house in the camp and had two or three Japanese satellites. About the same time Mr. Gimson (Colonial Secretary) and Mr. Alabaster (Attorney General), who had hitherto been allowed to remain outside and to act as liaison officers with the Japanese, came into the camp. This brought to a head a conflict which had been going on subterraneously between the Hongkong Government officials and the rest of the community. For reasons which I need not go into here, the community", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211765, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "155\n\n27\n\nAs noted above, 20,000 people a month used the Miu Keng pass. Probably as many again used the road from Ping Che to Kan Tau Wai, or started their journey within Ta Kwu Leng. 40,000 users of the ferry a month is a likely figure. Probably 25% of them carried goods. This represents more than $50 a month income, or about $600 a year. Even depreciating heavily for the salary of boatmen and costs of maintenance, $400 a year clear profit seems likely.\n\nThe date of this war was probably in the 1860s, as Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., p. 104, shows.\n\n29 For the arrangement of the Yeuk, see map. The information in this section comes from Mr. Chan Yau-tsoi and Mr. Chan Wa-chun of Ping Yeung, Mr. Man Kam-muk of Ping Che, Mr. Yeung Choi of Fụng Wong Wu, Mr. Man Lei-wa of Tong Fong, and Mr. Hau Foh-tai of Law Fong, all very knowledgeable elders. I met them as a group, and include here only what they were unanimous in agreeing was the case. I would like to express my particular thanks to them for the several hours of discussion they had with me. As to Sai Ling Ha, this village, although it lay within the Ta Kwu Ling hills, supported Wong Pui Ling in the fighting, I was told. It had no part in the Luk Yeuk. However, when the Communists took over, most of the inhabitants of Sai Ling Ha crossed into Hong Kong, and set up homes in Ping Che. They were then allowed to become part of the Luk Yeuk, as part of Ping Che Yeuk. The account of the Luk Yeuk given here differs in detail from that given in Faure, op. cit., pp. 103-104.\n\n+1\n\n-\n\n30 The deaths are recorded in the \"Heroes Shrine\" () in the Tin Hau Temple at Ping Che, which was the community temple of the Ta Kwu Ling area. 23 names of the **Heroes who died in protecting the villages, who knew how to perform the duties of filial piety\", or the \"Heroes who defended the Yeuk\" as they are named in two inscriptions *澳四總鎮源樂友例段英雄履考之神位 and \"MX\") are recorded. Of these, 3 (all surnamed Chan) came from the Ping Yeung Yeuk, 4 (3 surnamed Tang and 1 surnamed Chau) from the Lin Tong Yeuk, 4 (1 surnamed Chau and 3 surnamed Lei) from the Lei Uk Yeuk, 4(2 surnamed Yiu and 2 surnamed Hau) from the Law Fong Yeuk, 2 (both surnamed Yip) from the Lo Shue Ling Yeuk and 4 (2 surnamed Wong and 2 surnamed Man) from the Ping Che Yeuk. One Law died he came either from Law Fong (Law Fong Yeuk) or Kan Tau Wai (Ping Che Yeuk). A Lau Ah-ngau (劉亞牛) also died -- he could have been from Wo Keng Shan (Ping Yeung Yeuk), where there was a tiny clan of Laus, or could possibly have been a servant, as his name suggests his name is entered last on the tablet. 23 deaths suggests very bloody fighting. It is unlikely that the population of the whole of Ta Kwu Ling in 1860 was higher than 1750 (representing an average village population of about 80, or perhaps 12 households), and the adult males could not have been more than a quarter of that (440). The young men of fighting age were probably no more than about 200. 23 out of 200 is about 11.5% deaths of those involved, which is a very high percentage. The population of the Ta Kwu Ling villages within the New Territories totalled 1441 in the 1911 Census (Sessional Papers, 1911, no. 17, Noronha & Lo, Hong Kong, 1911, \"Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911”, Table XIX p. 103 (32)).\n\n+\n\n-\n\nLoi Tung, with its lineage brethren of Lung Yeuk Tau, and the small villages between them, formed the Sze Yeuk (四約, “Alliance of Four''), which was, to a large degree, designed to ensure that the ancient enmity of the Tangs of Lung Yeuk Tau and Loi Tung with the Pangs of Fan Ling was tilted in favour of the Tangs. The Pangs supported the Luk Yeuk in its fight with the Cheungs this almost certainly means that the Sze Yeuk supported the Cheungs, as did Sheung Shui, the other ancient enemy of the Pangs. Man Uk Pin was a Yeuk of the Sha Tau Kok Shap Yeuk, as well as forming a part of the Sze Yeuk. The Shap Yeuk were dubious about the activities of the Luk Yeuk. Free travel between Sha Tau Kok and Sham Tsun was vital to the Shap Yeuk. With the Cheung Shan Kwụ\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212003, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 418, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "393\n\nforces were defeated. In 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. According to the Census taken on 15th May, 1841, there were sixteen villages, with 7,450 people, on the island,\n\nAt that time, pirates still caused great disturbance along the coast. Those of outstanding importance were Shap Ngai Tsai+ and Tsui Ah-po. In the 30th year of Tao Kuang (1850), piracy along the coast was suppressed by the combined force of the British and the Ch'ing navies.7 With this, the island gained its name 'Tai Ping Shan'\n\nwhich means 'the Mountain of Peace'.\n\nDuring the early years of British rule on the island, Chek Chu was considered as a suitable place for the capital city of the Colony.5 However, because it was subject to severe tropical disease, the British built the capital city between the Central and Upper Bays (Chung Wan and Sheung Wan :). It was named Victoria after the name of the British Queen at the time of the early colonization.\n\nFrom then on, development on the island continued. With political changes in mainland China,8 more people flocked to Hong Kong, and they helped to make the city famous in the world.\n\nConclusion\n\nHong Kong, an isolated island at the mouth of the Pearl River, was only sparsely populated with fishermen. During the Ming Dynasty, because of the cultivation of incense trees, which gave great profit, population increased rapidly. However, the Coastal Evacuation at the 1st year of the K'ang Hsi Reign obliged the people to retreat to the mainland. Fields were left barren, and houses were pulled down.\n\nWhen the Edict of the Coastal Evacuation was abandoned, people were encouraged to return to their old dwellings. Villages were rebuilt, people from the neighbouring counties came and settled in the Hong Kong region, too.\n\nWith political changes in mainland China, more people came to Hong Kong. They helped to develop Hong Kong into a densely populated commercial city.\n\nANTHONY SIU Kwok-Kin", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212031, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 446, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "421\n\nthey are not aware. Take, for example, his description (pp. 38-39) of the formalities and practices of marriage in Sung times in his opening chapter on the Sung poet Qin Guan, the subject of the first biography in the book. He cites his source and adds useful information (p. 473). When describing the arranged marriage that was the norm until recent times, and still lingers on here and there in and outside China, he adds that this is why the event was described as the family taking “a new daughter-in-law” rather than as “a son taking a bride” (p. 40). See also note 14 on p. 499 and note 12 on p. 501 together with the upper plate on the 10th page of illustrations I'm giving no clues, look for yourselves! In short, he illuminates as well as entertains.\n\nBy now, readers will have gathered that I like this book. Of course, in such a large work (528 pages) and in an academic field that is very demanding and exacting for those who write in it, there are bound to be places in the text where the reader's own studies may refute or add to it. Contrary to what Mr. Ching says in the prologue (p. 20), recent collecting and oral history projects in the New Territories have shown that most, if not all, Chinese lineages, including those comprised of the peasants who made up the great bulk of the population, have kept written genealogies, albeit few of them got published like those of the Qin and other major lineages or, until recently, found their way into the great library collections of the West.\n\nI understand that Mr. Ching is contemplating a book about the major families of Hong Kong, descended from successful men who came here in the 19th century with little more than their wits. On the showing of his first historical work, I cannot think of a more suitable person to undertake this task than Mr. Ching, and I hope that, warts and all, he gets all the cooperation and understanding of the requirements of the job he will need from the families concerned:\n\nFrom there, or in the process, he could perhaps take up the true history of families great and small during the years of the Japanese Occupation of the colony, where the same rules apply. The job needs to be done, because of the way in which leading families have shunned the very mention of these years. Shanghai was not the only place where, as Mr. Ching writes (p. 458), the returning authorities looked down on those who had lived under the Japanese as tainted.\n\nI\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212323, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 265, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "242\n\nChartered Bank\n\nUntil 1840 or so banking facilities in Hong Kong were provided by the large hongs, such as Jardine's, Dent's and Russell's. However, once the Colony was considered stable enough, bankers came here following the traders, and, after the establishment of the Treaty Port System, starting in 1843, a number of joint-stock banks with their headquarters in India or London opened. The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, one of the principal promoters of which was James Wilson MP, the founder of The Economist, and a successful businessman, was such a bank. It was established in London in 1853, and its first branches in the East were founded in Calcutta and Shanghai, both in 1858. Only six years after receiving its Royal Charter Makalee (F), as the bank is called in China (a direct translation of John MacKellar, the first manager in Shanghai), set up a branch in 1859 in Hong Kong.\n\nSince 1862, Jah Da (†) (as 'Chartered' is usually called in Cantonese in Hong Kong) has issued its own bank notes. It is at present the oldest foreign bank and was the first licensed financial institution in the Colony. Together with the Hong Kong Bank, the Bank of East Asia, and the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation, the 'Textile Bank' (yet another sobriquet for 'Chartered' because of its connections with that industry) was one of four overseas banks that was allowed to keep its branch in Shanghai after the People's Republic Government came to power in 1949.\n\nThe author recalls opening his first account with the Chartered Bank in early January 1955, not in the building that was demolished in 1986 (which was completed in 1959 and at the time was the tallest building in Hong Kong) but in the one before that. There was a colonial atmosphere about the place, with paddle-type fans suspended from ceilings. Few buildings in Hong Kong were air-conditioned then. The bank did not open its first branch in the Territory until early 1962. This was in Tsuen Wan.\n\nA time-worn adage had it, a little unkindly perhaps, that officers of Chartered were bankers aiming to be gentlemen, and that expatriates in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank were gentlemen trying to be bankers. In those days the Hong Kong Bank did not employ Chinese, other than in menial positions, and local staff were mainly Eurasians.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212328, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 270, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "247\n\n―\n\nand Godown Company. 'Monuments' still standing include the Helena May Institute (completed 1916), Saint Andrew's Church (foundation stone laid 1904) and Church Hall, and the Peninsula Hotel (official opening 1928) which — along with the Taj Mahal in Bombay, Raffles in Singapore and a few others was classified, before World War II, as one of the 'great hotels of the East'. Another of Leigh and Orange's edifices is the main, 'Renaissance' style, building at Hong Kong University which was completed in 1912 and extended in 1952. It has been gazetted as an historical monument. The now demolished Sir Paul Chater's 'Marble Hall', generally accepted as the most luxurious residence in Hong Kong before World War II, was another example.\n\nThe Colony's first, full-time, chartered accountant was Arthur Lowe, who came to Hong Kong in 1902. Joseph Bingham became his partner in 1905, and Frederick Mathews (Lowe, Bingham and Mathews) in 1909. There were other accountants in the Territory before 1902, but few had professional qualifications and auditing was usually a subsidiary activity to their main lines of business. For instance, Linstead and Davis were mainly property agents, but they also sold bicycles, and, up to 1926, they had an agency for Manila cigars. The partners audited the accounts of various companies. The senior partner of Gibb Livingston was one of the two Hong Kong Bank auditors, and so on.\n\nLowe Bingham (Lo Bing Ham in Chinese) became part of the international firm of Price Waterhouse in 1974,\n\nHong Kong and China Gas Company\n\nWilliam Glen, who had no knowledge of the gas industry in 1861, obtained from the then Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson (when the population was 123,281), a concession to supply gas to the city of Victoria. The company was incorporated on May 31st 1862: most of the shareholders lived in the United Kingdom, although 500 shares were offered locally.\n\nThen, on December 3rd 1864, Hong Kong was lit with gas for the first time by about 15 miles of mains and 500 lamps, in Queen's Road extending up the hill to Upper Albert Road. Previously, the only street lights had been installed voluntarily by residents, and burned peanut oil. The residents of Caine Road complained that they\n\n---\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212334, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 276, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "253\n\nOther firms\n\nAs mentioned earlier this article is by no means exhaustive. Other old firms still exist. They include Lammert, Atkinson and Company, which was founded by George Rhinegold Lammert, who opened the firm in Stanley Street. Lammert Bros. (as they are now known), present advertisements claim, have been auctioneers in Hong Kong since 1855, and in 1870 the firm was advertised as a naval and general store, auctioneers and commission agents. Some sales were conducted in the medium of Chinese, which was unusual at the time.\n\nAnother old, still-existing, establishment is George Falconer the Jewellers. The founder of the company had previously worked for Douglas Lapraik and Company, watch repairers. Lapraik came to Hong Kong from Scotland, in 1843, and before starting up on his own account worked for L. Just, watch and chronometer makers, in D'Aguilar Street. Lapraik started the Douglas Steamship Company in 1883. He also built the unconventional Douglas Castle, at Pok Fu Lam, now used as a hostel for university students.\n\nAnother early shop in the Colony was Kelly and Walsh, established in 1885. Kelly, the printer, was Irish, while Walsh, the bookseller and publisher, was Scottish. There were about 20 shareholders. The first shop was in Queen's Road. It then moved to York Building (Chater Road), then to Prince's Building (Chater Road), to Swire House, and finally to its present location in Ice House Street. There were branches in Shanghai, Singapore, Hankow and Japan. Their printing presses were in Shanghai and Singapore, and Kelly and Walsh published about 500 titles all told.\n\nLiquidated firms\n\nMany fortunes were made and lost in early Hong Kong, and some once thriving companies ceased business long ago. Not all taipans went back to Britain on retirement as rich men. Recessions can be traced at intervals throughout the history of the Colony and a number of firms were badly affected.\n\nOne of the most important houses to go out of business was Dent and Company (already briefly mentioned), which was founded by William Dent at the end of the 18th century. By the time the three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212408, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 350, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "327\n\nRussian empires came into conflict culminating in the Crimean War of 1854. This focused Hong Kong's attention on matters of defence. This concern was already heightened by pirates and elements in the local population which led the administration to review the consequences should the navy and military leave the young Colony unprotected. A pirate attack near Macao in May of 1854 prompted the then Lieutenant-Governor, William Caine, to address the issue of the unsavoury locals, \"The danger to be apprehended is that during an attack by an enemy or a gang of pirates, these vagabonds might form themselves into bands for the purpose of plunder, to be joined perhaps by others from this vicinity, and then immense loss of property and life might ensue through their progress; nor must it be forgotten with what facility the Chinese houses in some parts of the town may be fired by incendiaries to increase the confusion, and consequent facility to plunder. The existence of a reserve such as would be formed by a Colonial Volunteer Corps might stop such proceedings at the outset or prevent them altogether\" (p. 10).\n\nThis concern for internal security against the backdrop of patriotism led to the formation of the corps Caine advocated. The ability of the author to place the reader in the overall context of the times adequately is something often found lacking in history books. That Mr. Bruce has this talent is shown by the book's portrayal of the fears and aspirations surrounding each stage in the evolution of the Corps.\n\nHis profile of certain of the original 99 volunteers is particularly intriguing with such asides as 'Dent was the great rival to Jardine and that is probably the reason that none of the 99 were connected with the latter firm' (p. 15). In this first chapter we meet many of the characters who were the first Volunteers. These individuals reflect the frontier town atmosphere of the embryo port-city. There was Thomas Lane, clerk and shopkeeper who is remembered today in the name of one of Hong Kong's leading retail stores 'Lane Crawford' (p. 15). There was George Cameron who ran the El Dorado Tavern and, when he died in 1859 left it jointly to a friend and to the Chinese woman with whom he had lived for the previous seven years' and schoolmaster Joseph Thornton who must have known his way around the town's pubs as he eventually had to be dismissed for what were described as 'irregular habits' (p. 17), or when Alexandre Grandpre caused a stir when his wish to marry in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212470, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "themselves they had to turn to migration to urban centres and overseas emigration, and to nonfarm work in the villages.\n\nFollowing the path of the traditional junk trade, overseas emigration was common in southern Fukien (Fujian) and eastern Guangdong in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not spread to the rest of Guangdong until the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, when the European powers were initiating mining and plantation projects in Southeast Asia, and when the American continent was building transcontinental railways, China became a popular source for labour recruitment. There were three major emigrant areas in South China: first, southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong; second, the western part of the Pearl River delta and Siyi, namely Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Xinning (later renamed as Taishan); and third, northeastern Hainan Island. People from the first area were the first to emigrate because of the junk trade with Southeast Asia.\n\nThe Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty following the Opium War in 1842, which stipulated the establishment of treaty ports along the coast of China, broke the Canton monopoly. The newly opened ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy (Xiamen) competed with Canton for China's foreign trade. With the rich Yangzi River valley as its hinterland, Shanghai soon began to fulfill its extraordinary potential as a port of trade. By 1850 the volume of trade in Shanghai had surpassed that of Canton. Trade routes were diverted to these cities, causing a lot of porters and boatmen to lose their jobs. Canton was no longer a recipient of any substantial foreign investment. It went either to Shanghai or Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong with a shift of British interest from Macau and Canton also attracted many Cantonese merchants to search for economic opportunities. For instance, Cantonese traders, artisans, and laborers from all neighbouring districts followed the British merchants in flocking to the British colony. Moreover, Hong Kong had become a major centre of Cantonese emigration abroad. The high points of overseas emigration came between 1890 and 1904. Between 1885 and 1900, a total of 1,830,572 Chinese emigrants embarked at the port of Hong Kong.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of the Cantonese emigration came from the Pearl River delta region, particularly from the counties shown in figure 1. The Xinning, Xinhui, Kaiping and Enping were known collectively as Siyi while Panyu, Nanhai and Shunde were Sanyi.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212477, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "11\n\nthat all men must die and not knowing when I may be called away, I deem it right while still in bodily health and full possession of mental faculties to make my will.\n\nWei A Kwong, the father of Wei Yuk, had a typical story of success. He was a Zhongshan native; he left his hometown and worked in Macau as a teenager. His father was a comprador to two American merchants, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks and Oliver H. Gordon. It was known that Wei was forsaken by his family and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau. He was later sent to Singapore where he studied under the auspices of the Morrison Education Society in a school of the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions. This changed his life. He returned to Hong Kong and began his career. He served as comprador in Bowra & Co. and then in the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China until his death. Wei wrote his will in 1866. He prefaced it with a brief account of his life, particularly mentioning that he was the first student of the Morrison Education Society and that he first came to Hong Kong in 1843. He had \"ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government.\" Though we cannot prove to what extent his exposure to Western culture was related to his Christian education, he succeeded in becoming a leading member of Chinese society in Hong Kong. This contrasts with the will of Sung Chin Tseung, which reads.\n\nSung Chin Tseung, otherwise literary appellation Sung Ching, otherwise Ngok Shan, native of Kat Tai village, of Kong Sheung Division, Heung Shan District. I followed my deceased father, Mr. Shau U, to Hong Kong in 1842 to trade in foreign business as compradore. Further, in 1854, thanks to the kind support of Mr. Ryrie and others of Messrs. Turner and Co., Hongkong, I took over the office of compradore and up to the present thirty odd years.\n\nBoth Wei and Sung were natives of Zhongshan. They came to Hong Kong for business in the early 1840s when Hong Kong was already a British colony. Though they lived in Hong Kong, they maintained connections with their hometown, as Sung's father, Soong Ke, stated in his will written in 1864:\n\nIn the 21st year of Tao Kwong (1841), I came to Hong Kong and employed myself in business all the time with foreigners, always being diligent and making little profit sufficient to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213092, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "141\n\nwith some happier notes.\n\nJuly 23rd\n\nBy this time we had broken down the opposition and matters began to run smoothly\n\nAnd after a long gap, the final entry,\n\nSeptember 3rd\n\nI left for Japan about this time spending all September in Colony In Japan the guest of the Japanese Government and made a national hero Valuable presents numerous and suite of rooms in the Imperial Hotel\n\nThis red-carpet treatment must have been recommended by Kitasato in appreciation of the help given him by Lowson in making the discovery that earned him international fame\n\nHaving read the diary, I learnt more about the situation as it developed from day to day but it came as a surprise to me that so much had gone on behind the scenes arising from clashes of personalities The three important people whose responsibility in the fight against the Epidemic was no less onerous than that of Ayres or Lowson were called: fools, cowards and nonentities. They were the Governor, who was in overall charge as head of the administration, the Colonial Secretary, who was the Governor's principal assistant, and the Chairman of the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board which was set up to recommend on legislation Were the accusations justified? We do not know, but it would be interesting to find out something about these three.\n\nSir William Robinson was Governor of Hong Kong from December 1891 to January 1898. His governorship covered a most difficult period in the history of Hong Kong, during which 'misfortunes after misfortunes assailed the colony in swift succession', to quote from Sayers. The year 1894 was a particularly bad one for Robinson and Hong Kong. His wife died but not from plague. Two very severe typhoons struck Hong Kong in September and October, causing much devastation and many casualties. Above all, there was the Epidemic with its effect on the economy and other aspects of life in the Territory. Robinson reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that 'Without exaggeration, I may assert that so far as trade and commerce are concerned the plague has assumed the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "200\n\nnot have been written at all\n\n58 See the plan and cross-section of a typical 1853 Sha Tau Kok shop unit, taken from the drawings and descriptions of the Basel missionaries, in P.H. Hase, \"The Alliance of Ten\", in D. Faure and H. Siu, eds, Down to Earth, op. cit., and see also P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n59 D. Faure, A. Ng, B. Luk, eds, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280\n\n60 The Hong Kong Museum of History has a set of Po Tau equipment\n\n61 Julonghaiguan Barman Dashiji, op. cit., sub anno.\n\n62 P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n63 The Tai Po to Sha Yue Chung Ferry was also deeply involved in this trade. In 1939, the Customs came to an agreement with Tsang Sang, the leader of the guerrillas controlling the eastern side of Mirs Bay, that the Customs would treat as duty-free goods anything imported through Sha Yue Chung for the guerrilla fight against the Japanese, but, while this trade was, therefore, not smuggling, it still faced major problems from Japanese attack.\n\n64 Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong, 1899, printed by Noronha & Co, Government Printers, (Sessional Papers), \"Extracts from Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong. Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor: Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong\" (No. 9 of 1899), p. 190, notes this boatyard as a significant business in 1898.\n\n65 \"Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart\" (Sessional Papers, 1899), op. cit., p. 189\n\n66 For the Sha Tau Kok Branch Railway, see R.J. Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990, pp. 84-93\n\n67 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1925. I am indebted to Mr. J. Lanham for drawing my attention to this description.\n\n68 For the first two of these tablets see Faure, Ng, and Luk, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280, and Vol. 2, pp. 376-379. The third is unpublished, and is now at the Hong Kong Museum of History.\n\n69 A further, small, boatyard was at Kat Om in 1912: see Oime Report, op. cit., para. 76, p. 55\n\n70 See, for instance, details on shops in Sai Kung in D. Faure, \"Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 22, 1982, pp. 161-216, on Tsuen Wan in D. Faure, \"Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 24, 1984, pp. 46-104, and on Cheung Chau in J.W. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213163, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "213\n\nme. 'She sacrificed to have me well educated,'\n\nLater the young Lee returned to China, to attend the Canton Christian College, later renamed 'Lingnan'. He came back to Hong Kong every year by tram or ship, on holiday, at Christmas and for the summer. In Canton, he mixed with his American missionary teachers. He did not meet Europeans much in Hong Kong. A photograph in Mr Lee's home shows him, as a teenager, in a Chinese tunic buttoned up at the neck. There is also a group photograph of him as an American Army Cadet, taken in 1921. 'We used to drill,' he explained.\n\nHe recalls that he saw Sun Yat Sen, dubbed the 'George Washington of China', once when he visited Lingnan.\n\n'While attending the college we played basketball, soccer, volleyball and tennis,' Mr. Lee told me. He did not care much for the Chinese game of tek in (kicking the shuttlecock).\n\nOn completion of his Lingnan course, in 1922, he sailed on the *President Grant* for the United States to further his studies. There he befriended several 'Boxer Scholars'.\n\nResulting from the Boxer Uprising, China had to pay reparations for the damage done to Western buildings and for the Europeans murdered. These amounted to nearly a thousand million taels, repaid over 39 years. Later, however, to repay partly this large sum, the Americans, and later the British government, established a 'Boxer Indemnity' fund. The money was used for Chinese to study overseas. Most Boxer Scholars were sons of Nationalist Government officials. Boxer Scholars received tuition fees, board and lodgings and other benefits free of charge. They even received free spectacles,' Mr Lee exclaimed.\n\nThe young Lee studied chemistry at the University of Washington. He enjoyed it there, where he was boarded out with the Jacobs family. He completed the four-year course in 1926. Once his mother went to the States, by ship, for a visit. 'She did not speak English. It was too difficult for her to come and see me,' Mr Lee told me.\n\nHe came back to Hong Kong in 1927, when things had returned to normal in the Colony after the General Strike of 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213213, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "14\n\nheard that Petersen's barman had been discharged for neglecting his duties due to lack of supervision. The board commented that Petersen's more lucrative employment at the German Consulate led him to neglect his business. If he was to continue to hold his spirit licence, he could not leave the management of his business to others (DP 2 Nov. 1875).\n\nPeter Henry Schmidt was a German by birth but came to the East as a young man and married a Portuguese girl from Macao. For many years he was the proprietor of a licensed boarding house for seamen. Over the years he and Petersen built up a money-making business as shipping masters for the recruitment of crews. While Petersen worked his business through the German Consulate, Schmidt did the same through the American Consulate. In 1881, Mr. Smith - he had changed his name from Schmidt to Smith - brought action in the Supreme Court against the American Consul, Colonel John Mosby, for slander. The alleged slander were remarks published by the Consul concerning the involvement of Smith in the desertion of two seamen from the \"Belle of Oregon\". The Consul had been informed that Smith had harboured the deserters in his garden in Kowloon and that after the \"Belle of Oregon\" left port, he brought them to his boarding house in his launch. The testimony of Smith stated he had been in Hong Kong about twenty years and had held a licence for a seamen's boarding house for some eighteen years. \"During that time,\" he continued, \"I have done a great deal of business for the various Consuls. I and Mr. Petersen have done lately more than half the foreign business of the port. On December 24th, they (the two deserting seamen) brought permits to ship and I took them into my house. They were Scandinavian. I do work for the Consulate. I have done so for the last ten years, gave them board and lodging in the ordinary course of business.\" Smith then goes into some of the history of his connection with the American Consulate and its licensing of crews, \"Since Colonel Mosby has been in the Colony, I have not been an officer of the American Consulate nor in any way connected with it. Under his predecessor I had a desk and a clerk in the U.S. Consulate.\" Mr. Smith's assistant testified that Colonel Mosby had said, \"You can tell Peter Smith he is not going to ship any more men in this office. I shall tell all the American shipmasters not to have anything to do with him.\" The assistant also told the court that in his despatches the Consul had called Mr. Smith some very hard names. Mosby had attacked everyone who had previously been connected with the Consulate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "CHOK HUNG vs. LI FUI CHOI\n\n\"No enquiry has ever been made to ascertain what Chinese law is. It is an extraordinary fact that the Court of this Colony, in which the Chinese live and trade as freely as Englishmen and citizens of other countries, should do with regard to the Chinese what it would never dream of doing with regard to Frenchmen or Germans or Americans; and not only that, but that it should be entirely in ignorance of Chinese law on any subject which concerns the family life and family law of those who form the bulk of its inhabitants, which is so often before the Courts—its marriage law, and the rights of property it gives; its law applicable to children. We are in the dark as to the law of majority, as to the customary law of China generally, and above all as to its law of succession. The attitude of the Court has been to let the troublesome question wait until it is definitely raised by the parties. I myself have been guilty of this, though I have rebelled more than once or twice.\n\nPage 20\n\nDuring the last half century, there have been three such enquiries, of which the results have been published. I refer, of course, to the Report of the Committee appointed in 1948,1 Greenfield's article on marriage,2 and the report and recommendations on the same subject by the Attorney General and Secretary for Chinese Affairs in 1960.2 The latter two publications do not deal with any Chinese customary law of marriage particularly obtaining in the New Territories, but the first does deal with certain aspects of Chinese customary law peculiar to the New Territories.\n\nIf a search is made of the law reports, only two cases will be found where the particular Chinese customary law obtaining in the New Territories was considered. Prima facie, that is a remarkably small number for 57 years of law reporting, and it is worthwhile probing the reasons for this dearth of case law.\n\nFirstly, the Chinese much prefer to compose their disputes or to refer them to extra-judicial arbitration than to a court of law.**\n\nSecondly, in deference to this general desire of the litigants, the District Officers arranged for the bulk of the disputes which came before them, in their Small Debts Courts or when they sat as Assistant Land Officers to decide summary land cases, to be settled out of court, most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "60\n\nThe second hypothesis, on the other hand, is held by a few western historians. Writing in the 1930s, H.G. Jarrett claimed that:\n\n\"The Army was hard put to it finding suitable quarters for some time after the occupation of Hong Kong and the move from West Point was not made until some three or four years after the founding of the Colony in 1841. As the arrival of large numbers of soldiers and their quartering in matshed barracks (which the chronicles tell us were erected in the western part of the town) would naturally impress the Chinese and we easily see the connection between this encampment and the vernacular name, which, if any indication were needed, definitely established the area where the first barracks went up.\" (Jarrett, 1933-5, P.23)\n\nG. R. Sayer also said that:\n\n\"The latter (barrack) is known for obvious reasons as West Point and is destined to provide the name Sai Ying Pun, the Western Encampment to a large district of the town.\" (Sayer, 1937, P.99)\n\nOne way or the other, one thing is sure that the place name Sai Ying Pun was not provided by the British when they first arrived at Hong Kong in 1841. The reasons are not difficult to furnish.\n\nFirst, when the British first came to Hong Kong, they were not accustomed to naming the places in Chinese terms. For example, the British gave out names like Queenstown, East Point, Belcher's Bay. The British even cared to rename places like Shek Pai Wan as Aberdeen and Chek Chu as Stanley. There was no reason why the British had to name an area with only a few establishments as Sai Ying Pun. As a matter of fact, the British named the place West Point Barrack since the place was situated at the western extreme point of the British occupation at that time.\n\nSecondly, there are too many variations in the name Sai Ying Pun used by the British themselves to make us believe that the place was named by the British. If Sai Ying Pun is an original English place name, variation in the spelling of the words would not have existed. In early Government Gazettes, the place was called Sy-ing-poon. In an early city plan of Victoria, the district was named Sei Ying Poon. In G. R.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "218\n\nThe book is a remarkably accurate and sensitive account of life as a public servant in the Colony of Hong Kong (this term with its perceived pejorative overtones was de-emphasised in the eighties in favour of Territory; Now, of course, we have become a Region) in the decades after the Second World War. Hong Kong in the fifties, when James arrived, was far from what we know it to be today: still recovering from the ravages and privations of the Japanese occupation; swamped with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war and subsequent revolution in China; tuberculosis and other diseases rampant; people living from hand to mouth; the squatter areas - the list of maladies could go on. Amongst other things which come out vividly in this book is how well Hong Kong has done. There has always been a tendency amongst Westerners to compare the worst in Hong Kong with the best elsewhere, which is unfair. Hong Kong has had more than its share of problems but now has the money to minimise them. In the fifties and sixties, the wealth was simply not there.\n\nThe author came to Hong Kong as a “Cadet”, the rather noisome name given to members of the Administrative Service. As such, in James' words, he “…belonged to a grade of the civil service that was generalist in nature, whose members were moved around, filling middle and upper level posts in key departments and in the Government Secretariat.’ The Administrative Service is a proud, elite force which produces most of Hong Kong's public sector leaders but it is often criticised for this 'Jack of all trades, master of none' mentality; its members being likened by its more vocal critics to 'lighthouses in the desert' (brilliant but useless). This is going altogether too far. Like all organs of Government, the Service has had its share of incompetents, but James was demonstrably not one of them.\n\nJames also accurately describes the ethos in post-war Hong Kong and how it has evolved. Many, if not most, expatriates existed in small, enclosed, expatriate ‘rings’, almost completely cut off from the real Hong Kong. It was rather like living in a cocoon. To the modern-day observer, this lack of contact, other than professional, between the main ethnic groups seems amazing. But when you get down to it, have things changed that much? There was also, at any rate below the surface, a fair amount of racism, parochialism and delusions of grandeur around. It has been said more than once that many allegedly competent and successful, and certainly senior, British Hong Kong civil servants", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213762, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "85\n\nX\n\n\"J\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1913, pages N13-17, 1914, pages N12-N13, 1915, pages O18-O19, 1916, pages 15-06-1917 page 07-1918, page 09, 1919, page O10, 1920, pages O15, O21, O29-O30, 1927, pages O17-4, O16, O22-O23, O33-O34. Scholarships were offered from these aided village schools to the Government schools in the New Territories, and from the Government schools in the New Territories to those in the City, although very few were taken up in the first few years.\n\nSee RJ Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, (Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990), and Administrative Reports for the Year 1910, page R6, 1911, page R1. In 1911, the Sha Tau Kok light railway was opened only as far as Shek Chung Au. The extension of the light railway to Sha Tau Kok came in 1912.\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1910, pages P34-35, 1911, pages P40-41, 1912, page P51, 1913, pages 186-88, 1914, page P85-86, 1915, pages Q94-96, 1916, pages Q77-78, 1917, pages Q88-90, 1918, pages Q81-85, 1919, pages Q53-55, 1920, pages Q64-65, and 1927, pages Q77-78. A programme to build 6 to 8 feet wide footpaths/bridle paths had been begun in the New Territories in 1899. The footpath from Kowloon to Tai Po was completed in 1902, and that from Castle Peak Bay to Au Tau in 1911. The section from Au Tau to Fanling was completed (except for the bridge at Au Tau) by the end of 1914. No path was built between Castle Peak Bay and Sham Shui Po, or between Tai Po and Fanling in this period.\n\nThis footpath construction programme does not seem to have affected traditional village life significantly, although the District Officer felt the new footpaths had made the work of patrolling and administering the New Territories easier. However, the only specific use the District Office noted for the new footpaths, other than by Government officials, was by cattle drivers sending animals to the City for slaughter. The footpaths were \"justified by administrative and military needs” (the Orme Report, pages 30, 32-33, 36). The New Territories circular road was an upgrading of these earlier footpaths, where they existed, but included new construction where the earlier footpaths were lacking.\n\nPapers Land Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers), printed by Noronha and Co., Government Printers, Hong Kong, No. 9, \"Extracts From Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong, Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor. Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong,\" p. 187, remarks that, in 1899, the steamers from Hong Kong to Macao called intermittently at Cheung Chau. The Orme Report, op. cit., mentions that steam ferries from Cheung Chau used to carry the fish catch to Hong Kong early in the morning (para 65). See also Administrative Reports for the Year 1913, page J12, 1915, page J9, 1916, page J12, 1919, page J12, 1922, page J12.\n\n1 Including the choice of Cheung Chau as a place to spend weekends and the summer by numbers of European families, mostly missionaries from Canton. This began in a very small way in 1912, but only became a major feature from 1918. In 1919, a “European reservation” was formed, and a small year-round resident European community with an Assembly Hall and a 10-hole golf-course had become established by 1921. Administrative Reports for the Year 1912, page J13, 1914, page J11, 1915, page J10, 1917, page J11, 1918, page J11, 1920, page J12, 1921, page J13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "116\n\nIn the case of the New Territories, he observes that it was to a large extent introduced from outside and was in this process filtered downwards from the richer to the poorer villages over four centuries.\" According to Faure, such a pattern can be found in other parts of China, for example, a study of Anhui province shows that contemporary opinions before the Ming merely saw lineages as 'living together generation after generation', while Ming opinions show that from the sixteenth century onwards, ancestral halls became much more common, that written genealogies of the format advocated by Song dynasty proponents became more popular, and that the ancestral rites that the neo-Confucians considered fitting for the common people came to be accepted practice.\"\n\nOne is tempted to postulate that the worship conducted by lay descendants, of ancestors as ideally imperial degree holders / officials, was a practice adopted in the period when new ordination names ceased to be included in Hakka genealogies, and the new practice replaced the worship of ancestors as ideally immortals/ magicians, sometimes conducted by religious experts.\n\nThe same period may have seen other changes in village culture as the result of the adoption of what for convenience's sake can be called \"Confucian\" attitudes which probably come together with the new style of ancestral worship associated with claims of descent from official/scholars. Although a thorough test would take a separate article, this hypothesis helps to explain the mystery of the Mountain Songs often associated with the Hakka. It is a well-received idea deriving mainly from study of the texts of such songs and folklore studies under the influence of anti-Confucianism that, violating the \"Confucian ethic\", pre- and extra-marital love affairs are common among the Hakka. But as I have pointed out, among the indigenous Hakka people of the New Territories Mountain Songs were far less commonly sung than one would expect. My general impression is that Mountain Songs were more popular among the Hakka worker immigrant to the British colony than among indigenous Hakka villagers. Information about Mountain Songs in the village Luk Keng indicates that the lineage leaders who upheld a version of Confucian morality did manage to stop their womenfolk...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213810, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "134\n\njourney, and paid him 10 cash each for them, and then we came to the boat.\n\nIt was no easy thing to get on board, and as it was my first attempt at a Chinese craft, I was quite disgusted with the affair. After being on deck for a while, I found the two cabins which 5 men were to occupy. Each cabin was about the size of a chest of drawers, and cockroaches and smaller vermin revelled among the dirt. However, there was no help for it. Lechler, who has lived as a Chinaman and previously worn a tail for 10 years, took it all as a matter of course, and seemed quite at his ease. These boats are about 50 feet long, with the stern very high out of the water, and the bow very low. There is one principal mast and sail, which does all the work. In a minute the sail can be hoisted, and in 10 seconds can be lowered. Clumsy as it all is, it is surprising what good sailors Chinamen are. There is no danger if they are left to themselves. They can tack in less than no time. The \"shut kung\" calls out \"chun shun\" and the great sail sweeps round across the deck in a trice. All who are on deck must instantly stoop very low, or they will find themselves lying sprawling on the lee side.\n\nThe arrangements being made we started off in company with 8 other boats belonging to the same firm. Our ship was the chief one, and was named the \"Shoon-lay\" or \"good profit\"; all of them had names meaning gain and profit (all the Chinamen ever think about). We got out of the harbour by the use of the two immense oars or sweeps at the stern, which move the ship along tolerably fast. Then when we were clear of the harbour, we made for \"pirates bay\". The weather was delightful; the sea was very clear; and we went on charmingly with a brisk breeze. Hong Kong at a distance is certainly a fine place. The immense Peak behind the town is a grand spectacle, and the fast increasing colony, with its fine houses on the hillside are beautiful to look at, especially on a clear day, in the sunshine. We had no end of fun among ourselves, and kept a continual fire of jokes at Stringer's dog, which was condemned to be eaten on the voyage. I gave it to a Chinaman and told him to kill it and eat it; much to Stringer's dislike and our amusement.\n\nWe were each armed with a revolver, and each had a stick or something else in case of need; we had, moreover, two double-barrelled guns, with which we now and then let fly at the wild ducks. At three", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213853, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "178\n\nNOTES\n\nAbbreviation JHKBRAS = Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society\n\nThe present study is part of the research product of the Historical Fieldwork Project on Old Settlements in Tung Chung, Lantau Island, conducted by the History Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, in summer 1991, under the auspices of the Antiquities and Monument Office, Government Secretariat, Hong Kong. In the section on Tung Chung's socio-religious activities, Wai-yee Ho was one of the field interviewers and the major processor of interview transcriptions on the subject. The authors of this article would like to thank Mr Wing-kai To and Dr Cathy Potter for reading and commenting on the draft. Official geographical names are used in this paper although their romanization may deviate from the Wade-Giles system adopted by this journal.\n\nJ.L. Cranner-Byng & A. Shepherd \"A Reconnaissance of Ma Wan and Lantao Islands in 1794,” JHKBRAS, Vol. 4 (1964), p. 115\n\nAdministrative Report (1912), p. 110. VII-Crops\n\n* Stewart H. Lockhart, \"Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong,\" 1898\n\n* \"Table of Population Figures in the New Territories,\" Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1958)\n\n6 Interviews Cheng P'o (age 77), upper Ling Pei, Jun 15, 1991, Hsieh Ch'i (age 72), San Tau, Jul 7, 1991, Mr Wang (Age 30+), San Tau, Jul 7, 1991. Wang's father was known as the \"king of folk song.\" He used to keep some song books which are now lost.\n\nInterview of Mr & Mrs Lo # (age Mr Lo 69), Shek Mun Kap, Jun 18, 1991. Mrs Lo, who was a child bride, as were her sisters, mentioned that quite a number of child brides came from San Tau, Sha Lo Wan and the western border of Tung Chung. Interviews \"Uncle Cheng\", the Tung Chung Public School, Jun 24, 1991, Chang Yen, Ma Wan Chung, Jul 7, 1991. \"Uncle Cheng\" indicated that the price for a child bride was HK$20 or more fifty years ago, whereas Cheng Yen pointed out that the price was HK$50-60 sixty years ago.\n\nOn the Hakka mores of women labouring as farmers/housewives while their husbands and grown-up sons worked outside or overseas (mostly in southeast Asia), see Wu Tsung-chuo & Wen Chung-ho, Chia-ying-chou chih (reprint of the 1898 edition) (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen ch'u-pan-she, 1968), chuan 8, pp. 53-55. For this tradition, and the custom of child brides, see also Yang Hung-hai, \"Yueh-tung k'e-chia ti min-su t'e-se,\" in KROANKAHė K'e-chia wen-chin, ZRERE, Vol. 1 (1989), pp. 277, 281.\n\n* Interview of Cheng Man-hung W (age 63), Aug 8, 1991\n\n\"John Brim, \"Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong,\" in Arthur P. Wolf, ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 95\n\n179", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213978, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "12\n\nHealth were listed provision & operation of maternity homes, ante- & post-natal clinics and health visiting. Under Education came provision & operation of primary & secondary schools, adult education & evening institutes. Under Welfare were recreational facilities, youth clubs, community centres, sports facilities, public swimming pools, homes for the aged, infants' crêches, refuges for street sleepers, distribution of relief, entertainment (band concerts, Chinese drama & opera), pleasure grounds, playgrounds and bathing beaches. The Miscellaneous category added declaration of one-way streets, parking zones, closing of streets as playgrounds (after consultation with Police), traffic warden services, provision & management of car parks, amenity provision (eg public fountains & tree planting), museums & art galleries, and undertaking of functions (such as collection of water rates & various fees) as agents of the central government.\n\nThis list went much farther in involvement of representative bodies in the affairs which closely and legitimately concerned the ordinary man and woman in the street, as well as extending what was already delegated to the Urban Council into most of the colony's growth areas. Apart from suggesting that the list might be added to in the light of experience, the bold proposition was made that in future no central department should be permitted to establish new local machinery without proving that the activity could not be carried out by a Local Authority. The report stated that it was not envisaged that the new councils should be independent Education Authorities; but it was clearly hoped that in the fullness of time the Education Department would regard local authority schools as a main component of the grant-aided system, and indeed relinquish its own primary schools to the councils. Finally, as a carrot for those in the NT who might be willing to contemplate change, it was pointed out that rural district councils should take over agricultural extension schemes, forestry lots, fish-ponds, local public works (footpaths, bridges, piers etc), local ferries, village layouts & housing schemes, and local water supplies & irrigation.\n\nThis would all have to be paid for. Local authorities should have financial responsibility, including revenue-raising powers. Local accountability to tax-payers and freedom from stifling dependency on central grants (with their inevitable consequential frictions) were essential to success. New structures would increase the administrative costs of the colony overall, and it might well be that some areas would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214119, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "156\n\nwhich came out at the end of the last century (about Europeans living in the Colony), that (Spurr 1995: 48):\n\nThere was no real pleasure, nothing but a heavy and pompous extravagance, with no return on the large sums fooled away, an outstanding ignorance of all the surroundings, the Chinese, their language and their ways, or even of the very place itself.\n\nYet, having said that, today, as in the past, many Europeans do come to Hong Kong and, during their stay, they do learn something about local history, and Chinese customs and culture. This need will no doubt continue. In such cases the RAS can help.\n\nIn addition, a number of scholars visit Hong Kong or write to the RASHKB from overseas. Information has been requested on the pre-World War II Fox Hunt, held at Fanling in the New Territories, details regarding past Hong Kong personalities and wildlife sightings, to give but a few examples.\n\nHong Kong can be proud of its religious tolerance, with regard to temples, ancestral halls and the like, and, when the British took over the New Territories in 1898, on a 99-year lease, they promised that Ching dynasty laws would be retained and local customs respected (Endacott 1958: 38). Consequently, unlike many territories occupied by more oppressive colonial powers, in spite of the British and the Chinese keeping largely apart, an affinity of sorts developed between the two races. Governor Sir John Bowring, too, who chaired RASHKB meetings in the 1850s, disliked weaning the Chinese away from their own religious beliefs and practices (Spurr 1995: 51). A fair amount of local culture has been retained in spite of westernisation and the passage of time.\n\nThis retention of local culture in the Territory means that, if scholars want to study \"things Chinese\" which are closer to customs of the old China, and to visit locations where fewer changes have taken place, they are more likely to come to Hong Kong (or go to Taiwan). Here old customs and the modern can be seen side by side. This is less likely to be the case in the People's Republic where much has been disrupted by the influences of Communism over the past half century, including such events as the devastating Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "204\n\nIn the late 1860s the regular police came in for massive criticism because of claims of corruption and general inefficiency. As a result of public and other concerns, a Commission of Enquiry was convened in December 1871 to inquire into and report as to the present organization of the Police Force generally, and to suggest such improvements and reforms therein as may be thought expedient by this Commission.'10 Although the Commission's main raison d'être centred around the many defects of the Hong Kong Police, its ambit also included the District Watch Force. Thus, in the last days of his Governorship, MacDonnell tasked the Commission to 'report as to the expediency of continuing to maintain, with Chinese co-operation and pecuniary aid, the auxiliary force of District Watchmen,' and to determine whether the latter body 'has rendered any essential or useful service to the Colony, also whether, as at present controlled, there is any danger to be apprehended practically from allowing such a force to be maintained'. The pseudo-apologetic language used by the outgoing Governor suggests that the community still contained many who wished that the force of District Watchmen would just quietly disappear or at least be swallowed up by the Police Force.\n\nThe Commission's Report was finally published on 27 June 1872, by which time Sir Arthur Kennedy had succeeded MacDonnell as Governor. It was a lengthy document, and the District Watch Force seemed to be one of the least contentious issues, with the majority view holding that they were 'a useful body of men.' The Commission recommended that they should be left alone for the present, but, with the reorganization of the regular Police, 'they should be gradually disbanded or absorbed into the latter force.'11\n\nSanitary Matters and the District Watch\n\nMany books about Hong Kong have documented the problems which have existed in sanitary matters since the colony's earliest days. Indeed, the lamentable lack of adequate sanitation was one of the main reasons cited for the high loss of life in the military and the police. Throughout the years, the considerable growth in population was accompanied by a corresponding increase in waste materials of all kinds. Despite the directions of the Building Ordinance, No. 8 of 1856, that 'every house should be provided with a latrine, or privy and ashpit,' no adequate sewage system existed, and there was a general reluctance to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214391, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "215\n\nthy Murphy was seconded from the Police to take charge of the twenty-three detectives in the District Watch Force. The official report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs for that year enthusiastically noted that 'His work at once had the effect of inspiring the men to greater energy and of fostering co-operation with the Regular detectives' and 'A marked improvement in this department may confidently be expected under the new system.' In 1919 Sergeant Murphy, a Cantonese speaker, had sixteen years experience in the Hong Kong Police. The following year Murphy was promoted to sub-Inspector but despite his promotion he remained with the District Watch Force until January 1922 by which time he had attained the rank of Inspector. Of course detectives had existed in the District Watch Force before 1918. As early as 1894 a single detective appeared in the Registrar General's Annual Report. In 1910 the annual bill for allowances to 'Chief District Watchmen and detectives' amounted to $514 but it was not until 1911 that detectives' wages were listed as a separate item amounting to $1,212.\n\nTroubled Times\n\nIn 1922 the colony reeled from the disruption caused by a massive seamen's strike which spread to involve Chinese men and women in other occupations including the Governor's own domestic servants. The Governor, Sir Reginald Stubbs, commissioned Mr A.G.M. Fletcher, CBE, to investigate the background of the strike and to determine why the intimidation tactics of the strikers had been so successful. The resulting report together with a long covering letter from the Governor were forwarded to the Secretary of State in mid-March 1922. Stubbs was highly critical of the leading members of the Chinese community including members of the District Watch Committee who, he claimed, had not been of the 'slightest use' in either 'calming the fears of the ignorant populace' or obtaining information which would have enabled the Government to deal with intimidation. It was Stubbs' opinion that the information departments of both the Police and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs should be 'drastically reorganized.'20 Fletcher had harsh words for the District Watchmen and considered them to be 'entirely useless' when it came to collecting information about the causes of intimidation since the Watchmen 'must have had the amplest evidence available.' Whilst agreeing with Fletcher in principle, Stubbs downplayed the deficiencies of the Watchmen citing their lowly status as a probable reason for their poor performance. Given the critical tone", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214417, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 275, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "241\n\nthe freshness, the cleanness, the splendour constrain them; they seem like fish which, from a dirty, marshy river have been transferred to an ornamental pond filled with clear water: nowhere to hide, to shelter, to filch, to swindle, to get oneself dirty or to get one's neighbour dirty.\n\nHaving quickly walked round the whole quarter, we struck the mountain, which at this point was artificially cut away and consisted of a smooth, sheer wall; a new road was planned here. A whole regiment of labourers crowded around; they dug the earth, hewed stones, carted debris away. These were all immigrants from the Portuguese colony of Macau. No sooner had the English conceived the idea of a settlement here, and sent out a call, than Macau became almost deserted. Work, and consequently bread and money, lured up to thirty thousand Chinese over here. Instead of poverty in Macau, they preferred the endless labour and inexhaustible payment here. They were not frightened off by the epidemic fevers that raged in the beginning. Under the supervision of the English they began clearing and draining the soil: the epidemics abated and the migration increased.\n\nWe came down from the rise and entered the Chinese quarter again, passing, incidentally, a house where a bare-chested young Chinese stood in front of a window, strumming a meagre and monotonous tune on an instrument resembling a guitar. A number of women peered out of the window. However not all Chinese wander around the town near naked: it is only porters, manual labourers and shopmen. The higher classes are dressed decently; there are even dandies, in snow-white coats and wide satin trousers, in heavy-soled shoes and with a thick black shiny pigtail down to their feet, with a fine fan with which they cover their heads from the sun.\n\nThe more ordinary women walk around the town themselves whereas those who are richer or more important are led arm-in-arm. Their feet are all more or less maimed; and those who \"through ill-breeding, through parental negligence\" remained as nature had intended, fabricate another artificial foot under their real one, but one so small that they definitely cannot step on it and hence walk with the assistance of servant girls. In spite of the long garments in which Chinese women are wrapped from top to toe; I accidentally, with the aid of a puff of wind, discovered a bit of guile... Olive-skinned women with black, slightly narrowed eyes dress predominantly in dark colours. With hair-dos à la chinoise, and a splendid mass of black hair fastened at the back with a large gold or silver pin, they are not dis-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214425, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "between 1935 and 1937 consisting of three 9.2 inch?\n\n249\n\nAs part of a colony-wide reorganisation and modernisation programme of the armament, a new battery was constructed at Stanley with three 9.2 inch calibre Mark X guns mounted on Mark VII mountings. One of these guns came from the battery at Devil's Peak and the other two came from Mount Davis, as both of these batteries were being modernised. The gun shifts were difficult and complex operations as the guns were very heavy, the barrel and breech assembly weighing 28 tons. Everything was done by hand and the pieces, and all their mountings, were transported to Stanley by sea. The two lower guns (No. 2 & No.3) were situated on concrete emplacements now occupied by parabolic antennae dishes in the Cable and Wireless Ltd. Satellite Earth Station complex. These two guns could only fire out to sea and were later encased in concrete gunhouses or casemates by the Japanese who seemed to have kept them in service during the Occupation. The gun houses were demolished and the guns were cut up for scrap in 1952.\n\nThe No. 1 9.2 inch gun mounted on top of \"Gun Hill\" was equipped with all-round traverse, that is, it was able to engage any target, for it was mounted on a circular platform which was rotated mechanically. It was this gun which bombarded the Japanese almost continually from the 14th to 24th December, 1941, firing at the rate of three rounds per half hour at targets as far away as Kowloon City. The shells weighed more than a hundredweight each. The gun was able to fire at this great range due to its mountings which gave a thirty-five degree angle of elevation.\n\nAfter the completion of the new Stanley Battery, two 6 inch naval guns were installed on the Bluff forming a second emergency battery known as Bluff Head Battery. These smaller guns had an effective range of 9,500 yards and also seem to have been equipped with all-round traversers as they could engage land and sea targets. These two batteries were reinforced in December 1941 by two 3.7 inch howitzers in a position in Stanley Village with an observation post in the Officers Mess, and an anti-aircraft battery at Tai Tam Tau. The Japanese reported that \"long-range fortress artillery bombardments were extremely effective.\" Targets were engaged with clock code observation by the Infantry and also where possible by direct observation. In addition, many targets such as road junctions and bridges had been registered and carefully tabulated in the months leading up to the Japanese attack so that direct observation was not really necessary to know that the shells were on target. Japanese artillery set up at the captured", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214741, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "120\n\nexception was the Chinese translation of Walter Easey's Hong Kong Today published in 1977 (Easey, 1977).\n\nThe last seven years of the so-called \"transition period,\" i.e. the 13 years from the 1984 Sino-British Agreement on the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 witnessed another boom in literary output related to the fall of the Colony to the Japanese and its aftermath. The first work was Bruce's Second to None: the Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers of 1991 (Bruce, 1991). The second work was Rollo's The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong (Rollo, 1992). Next came a Chinese work on the communist guerrillas that operated in occupied Hong Kong, Tsui's Partisan Activities in Hong Kong (Tsui, 1993), published in 1993. The following year saw the work of Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: the Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese (Wright-Nooth, 1994). In 1995, two more Chinese works appeared, Ko and Tong's Hong Kong: Japanese Occupation Period (Ko and Tong, 1995) and Tse's The Fall of Hong Kong (Tse, 1995). Ruins of War; a Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites, written by Ko and Wordie (Ko and Wordie, 1996), was the major last work of this period. The publications in this period are generally less restrictive than earlier works in that they (a) give due credit to the Chinese defenders in the Battle and communist partisans, with their base in Sai Kung, New Territories, during the occupation; (b) spell out the potential and actual contribution of Chinese soldiers in the Colony; and (c) give sympathetic consideration to the Chinese civilians. The same is true of general history books on Hong Kong such as Cameron (Cameron 1991), Welsh (1997), Morris (1997) and Chan (1990).\n\nChurchill's Wisdom of Defending Hong Kong in Retrospect\n\nThe recurrent theme of unofficial publications is that the fall of Hong Kong was inevitable and its belated reinforcement by the two Canadian battalions was pointless. I would suggest that in this regard a more comprehensive view of the battle requires an appreciation of the post-war history of British Hong Kong. The books referred to above have not discussed the political consequence of not fighting an impossible battle.\n\nOne may speculate that had the British Administration given up the Colony without a fight, it would have lost the Colony forever. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214854, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "237\n\nFor the Colony it was virtually export or starve. But there was a wonderful pioneering, 'get-up-and-go' spirit. Yet life for many was hard,\n\nIn the '50s and '60s it was not considered infra dig to use the word 'Colony.' Not until early 1972, at China's behest, was Hong Kong removed from the United Nations list of colonies. The then new Governor, the late Sir (later Lord) Murray MacLehose, gave instructions that government servants would use the word '(Dependent) Territory' instead. 'Colony' was only to be used in an historical context. As a result the Colonial Secretary became the Chief Secretary, the Colonial Secretariat became Central Government Offices, and so on. At least as far as the Hong Kong Government was concerned. Nevertheless some people and bodies - the BBC for example - used the term 'Colony' right up to 1997 - which of course, strictly speaking, it was.\n\nSir Murray, nevertheless, and indeed the two governors after him, on ceremonial occasions, still wore the distinctive sola topi from which sprouted a peculiar crop of egret feathers. Later it became the subject of jokes and snide remarks, not so much from the Chinese who accept one should dress for the part, but more from younger Europeans.\n\nToday, it is fashionable to talk disparagingly of colonial things and ideas in spite of the solid foundations laid for the Territory in a wide variety of fields from law to administration. But of course, mistakes were also made.\n\nWhen writing of the very early 1960s I am of course writing of times when there were no cross-harbour tunnels, no service charges in hotels or restaurants, and no feeding hungry tigers (parking metres). The first flyover was not constructed until 1963. This was outside Saint Teresa's Church in Kowloon. There were few traffic lights then and the job was done efficiently by constables with fancy footwork and arm movements standing on picturesque traffic pagodas. These were originally designed by our old friend, Arthur May, who worked in the PWD. He came to Hong Kong in 1913 as a child. He died in January 2000. It was he who crept up the Peak on 15 August 1945 and raised the Union Jack to tell the people of Hong Kong the Japanese had been defeated. If anyone could describe himself as an Old Hong Kong Hand Arthur could.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215042, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 138, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "94\n\nWei, and saw active service in the Third China War, \"The Boxer Rising\" [10 June-31 December 1900]. In 1901 he was posted to South Africa to serve with the mounted infantry, taking part in operations in Cape Colony and the Transvaal [December] and the Orange Free State (January to May 1902]. From 1904 to 1908 he was appointed as Inspector of Chinese Labour in the Transvaal. He was the Military Secretary to the Governor of Madras in 1907, and in May 1914 he transferred to the Reserve of Officers with the rank of Major, but was recalled in August 1914 serving again with the DLI before being transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and then transferring back again to the infantry, commanding 17th Battalion of the King's [Liverpool] Regiment [Pals] before being severely wounded and gassed at Trones Wood in July 1916, being invalided home in early August 1916 aboard the Asturias. He was again gassed, after returning to France on the night of the 29th July 1917 at Guillemont. He established the HQ for the CLC at Noyelles in 1917, staying at the villa, with an unusual name of “Daisy Cottage\", serving as GHQ Adviser Chinese Labour, from 1917 to 1919. During World War II he was a Zone Commander for the Yorkshire Home Guard and died on 24 January 1950 at the age of 76.\n\n4 pai is a section and tou is a head or boss.\n\nDecauville was a French company that manufactured a portable light railway system much used by the military. It was almost a full-size [but narrow gauge] railway system which could be laid down and picked up like the old model toy train sets.\n\n• The difference between Male and Female tanks was based on the type of weapons they carried. Male tanks, like \"Fan-tan,” carried a pair of 57mm cannon, one on each side, together with two or three auxiliary machine-guns. Female tanks only carried machine-guns, two each side and one at the front which, in First World War terms made them more dangerous than their male counterparts. [The female being deadlier than the male!]\n\nNumbers after names or in the text refer to the man's service number.\n\n* Demeestrere, Matthieu : article in a French magazine\n\nth Mellor, Norman: With the Chinese Labour Corps - France 1918\n\n10 The CWGC, in a written reply to the author, stated that the fifth phrase used on CLC headstones is translated as \"True till death\", but the characters used would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215164, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 260, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "220\n\nA Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\nSidney was also a good ‘cadger'. Most of the many donations made to technical education in his time were largely due to his determined efforts. He had worked as a radio officer on a ship in earlier life. Every Monday morning he would lead a small retinue of staff around the College on a formal inspection just as a captain does on board ship.\n\nI recall when a newly appointed Hong Kong University member of staff came to see him, about the setting up of a University Extra-Mural Department. Burt told him frankly it was a waste of money. 'The Technical College provides all the evening classes the Colony needs', he insisted.\n\nThe Director of Education wanted Burt to move into the Departmental Headquarters to oversee technical education but he preferred to do this while serving as incumbent Principal at the Technical College. Because of this inherent stubbornness the development of technical education was probably retarded. There was no 'Senior Education Officer (Technical Education)' post in Headquarters until 1967 and no 'Assistant Director (Technical Education)' post until 1972. But Hong Kong owes Sidney Burt a great deal for laying the foundations of technical education.\n\nBut moving on: the Principal and staff of the College had long felt that a second Government institution was needed which, although bolstered by some technician programmes, would concentrate on craft courses. This was why the Morrison Hill Technical Institute came into being in 1969. In fact there was a school of thought which believed that the first technical institute should run craft courses only, but, as things have since developed, it would have been an incorrect move. One of our more advanced pursuits at MHTI, in addition to technician education, was technical teacher training. This was transferred away in 1974 with the establishing of the Technical Teachers College.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215278, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 55, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "3\n\nBefore 1932 a number of small factories had been established in the colonies. Cotton ginning factories, sugar cane crushing mills, fibre decorticating plants, tobacco grading and packing factories, saw mills and tin smelters had been constructed to reduce the bulk of primary products and make them more convenient for export. Other industries were started for the purpose of import substitution. In almost all the sugar producing colonies sugar refineries had been set up. Edible oil, lard and soap factories were established using local produce in Nigeria, Ceylon, Nyasaland, Trinidad, Jamaica, British Guiana, British Honduras and Fiji. Breweries had been established in the Gold Coast, Kenya, Cyprus, Malta, Jamaica and the Straits Settlements; match factories in British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad; a canned pineapple factory in Malaya. This is by no means an exhaustive list of industrial enterprises in the colonial empire in 1932. All these factories had been set up to serve the local market and had taken advantage of tariffs which had originally been imposed by colonial governments for revenue purposes. In some cases this level of protection was sufficient to make the factory viable. In other cases the company contemplating investment asked the governor for the tariff to be increased so as to exclude competitive imports or asked for a guarantee that no excise duty would be imposed or that any excise duty would be levied at a reduced rate.\n\nColonial governors showed no reluctance to grant these concessions in order to encourage the establishment of local industries in spite of the loss of customs revenue and the increased prices paid by the consumer for goods previously imported. Often governors neglected to seek specific permission from the Colonial Office to make such changes to the schedules of their customs ordinances. In a number of cases the Colonial Office heard of the new protective duties only when British manufacturers complained that they were being excluded from the colonial market. When an industrial project was referred to London governors used various arguments to support the protection of infant industries in their colonies: that the proposal was a legitimate development of local resources; that it would relieve unemployment; that a pledge of protection had already been given by government to the promoters; or that the proposals had the support of the unofficial members of the executive and legislative councils.\n\nNormally the Colonial Office did not refuse to sanction the grant of assistance to the new local enterprise. For example, in 1927 the legislative council of Jamaica passed an ordinance to increase the tariff on biscuits, soap, edible oils, cordage and matches and to remove the excise duty on soap, edible oils and matches in order to protect local industries. The Colonial Office sanctioned this ordinance without any adverse comment. Once an ordinance had been passed by a colony's legislature and had received the governor's assent it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215294, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "19\n\nvery useful in the depression, and the factory would provide employment for 100 Africans.\" Hong Kong was also seen as a special case where the decline of the entrepôt trade with China justified the policy of fostering industrial development. After much discussion the only specific recommendation made by the committee was that when a protective tariff was granted an excise duty equivalent to the import duty should always be imposed. The final report of the committee was never published and apparently was never considered by the cabinet.\n\nSo the Colonial Office continued to vet proposals for new industries according to the guidelines laid down in the 1934 Report, that manufacturing should not be 'artificially encouraged'. Officials were concerned to safeguard colonial revenues at a time when most colonies were in financial difficulties as a result of the world depression. The Colonial Office insisted that budgets must be balanced, to avoid the need for a grant from the British government and the consequent Treasury control of the colony's finances. The Colonial Office had no money available in its own account to subsidise ingenious schemes, such as a project put forward by an entrepreneur from Trinidad to produce newsprint paper from bagasse and to power the factory with anhydrous alcohol distilled from sugar cane juice.70 Governors could apply for funds from the Colonial Development Advisory Committee which provided £36,500,000 for development assistance from 1929 to 1939. But this fund was originally set up to alleviate unemployment in Britain and no application for industrial development would be entertained which would be likely to compete with British industry.? Officials believed that by discouraging uneconomic industrial development they were acting in the best interests of the native inhabitants. An assistant secretary minuted, 'Manufacturing industry, which can be established in a colony only at the price of a monopoly protected by a high tariff, ends in producing a locally manufactured article which is too expensive for the primary agricultural producers to buy.' Governors were more suspicious of the motives of Colonial Office officials. The governor of Sierra Leone complained that any industrial project was approached from the standpoint that British trade interests must rank first, dominions' interests second and those of the colonies last. Perhaps the fairest summary of Colonial Office policy was made by a junior official: 'Generally speaking we do not want to encourage industrial development in the colonial empire, but we are reluctant to go so far as actually to prohibit it.'\"\n\nWhy then was it that Hong Kong was able to develop a flourishing export-oriented industry without any subsidy or assistance from the colonial government whatsoever when in all the other dependent territories the development of manufacturing industry was derisory, and the few factories that were established were heavily dependent on protective tariffs, special", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215319, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 96, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "44\n\ncolonised by ethnic Han Chinese. It was occupied during the reign of Han Wu Di, a century or more before the Christian era, albeit for centuries merely in pockets around the seaboard with the non-Han ethnic groups, mostly Li and Miao, having been pushed back into the hinterland, the central mountainous area,\n\nBeing the southern limit of China the island of Hainan is semi-tropical with early settlers from the Chinese mainland tending to be involuntary settlers, not necessarily outlaws or banished political exiles but colonists despatched by the government who intermarried with the aboriginal Li. Ethnically the Han Chinese stock, referred to as Hainanese for Hoilam in Hainanese], came largely from the province of Fujian, speaking Qiongwen [commonly called Hainanese] a sub-group of Minnan3, though there are also many Cantonese and Hakka Han Chinese within the population and even pockets of pure Cantonese or Hakka Chinese. The result of the hotchpotch of immigration over the centuries is referred to as a whole as Hainanese, and their culture and social mores reflect elements from all of their original ethnic groups. Hainanese people, as would be expected, cannot be differentiated by foreigners from other Han Chinese. However, the Cantonese, the Chaozhou and Fujian Han Chinese are never slow to point a finger at the Hainanese who they claim to be clannish, insular and very suspicious people. Many go as far as to claim that they are slow, dim-witted and gullible, Certainly, they are different though to a non-Chinese the difference is not immediately apparent. My experience is that they are not only friendly but extremely welcoming to foreigners, and especially diligent as house-servants.\n\nHot and remote, it was pioneer frontier territory - far from the capital and major cities, used during dynastic times as a penal colony or at least a refuge for political exile for Chinese officials, a backward area with agriculture and fisheries as the only form of subsistence. The first official was exiled there during the Han, about the time of Christ, though the peak periods of such exiles were during the Song and Ming dynasties, with some like Hai Rui, Su Dongbo and Cao Yu, being renowned throughout China. Fortuitously their presence on the island accelerated the development of cultural life, and when joined by their families and entourages, they left their mark on the culture of Hainan,\n\nAlthough there are guide and travel books about most areas of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215532, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 309, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "259\n\n2. Hong Kong No.2A, piece of Botanical and Forestry Department ground at the junction of Kennedy Road and Garden Road 163\n\n3. Hong Kong No.2B, piece of Botanical and Forestry Department ground at junction of Upper Albert Road and Albany Road, 164\n\n4. Old Government Civil Hospital Site 165 (2,631), open space behind the Old Government Civil Hospital. 166\n\n5. Queen Mary Hospital Site (101), piece of ground on the east side of Pokfulam Road near the Maison de Nazareth. 167\n\n6. Aberdeen Site (98), on the north side of Island Road, 100 yards from the Aberdeen Industrial School, 169\n\n7. Island Road, 170 Shaukiwan Site (363), slopes on side of Island Road near its junction with Shaukiwan Road. 171\n\nFigures in bracket show the number of grave exhumations for reburial between April 1948 and March 1949. 172 The remains in these emergency cemeteries were reburied in the New Kowloon Cemetery No.8 (Diamond Hill Urn Cemetery).\n\nEarly Post-War Cemeteries\n\nThe first cemetery authorized after the Second World War in 1947 was a military cemetery for the burial of the servicemen who had died in the war. It was initially known as the 'Sai Wan Military Cemetery,' 173 which contained about 5.71 acres, situated East of Chai Wan Cemetery 174 and the extension thereof and to the North of the road serving Sai Wan and Cape Collinson in the Colony of Hong Kong.' 175\n\nThis was followed by a 'Prisons Cemetery' in the same year, which was 'being an enclosure of about 5,000 square feet lying 250 yards to the South of St. Stephen's College Preparatory School Building at Stanley,' 176\n\nIt was recorded that as early as 1940, the government had already intended to transfer the government cemeteries for Chinese from the urban area to new sites in the New Territories. However, due to the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215541, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "268\n\n38 Fortune, Robert (1935). THREE YEARS' WANDERINGS IN THE NORTHERN PROVINCES OF CHINA. Shanghai: The University Press, p. 22 (footnote),\n\n39 Inscriptions found at the entrance of the cemetery. However, in Barbara-Sue White's TURBANS AND TRADERS: HONG KONG'S INDIAN COMMUNITIES (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17, the year stated is 1854.\n\n40 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith.\n\n41 \"The cemetery can be found in an 1863 map, see Hal Empson, p. 132.\n\n42 Smith: A SENSE OF HISTORY, p. 401\n\n43 Ibid, p. 402.\n\n44 A HAND-BOOK TO HONGKONG BEING A POPULAR GUIDE TO THE VARIOUS PLACES OF INTEREST IN THE COLONY, FOR THE USE OF TOURISTS (1893). Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, p. 94.\n\n45 杜瑞樂 (Joel Thoraval)著(張寧譯)(2002):《葬禮與祈禱的安排:香港回教信託基金總會歷史概貌》(1850-1985),載陳慎慶編:《諸神嘉年華:香港宗教研究》(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, p. 392.\n\n46 Empson, p. 132. The cemetery is also shown in another 1866 map in the same book, see p. 49.\n\n47 Information provided by the Rev. Carl T. Smith. Details regarding the founding of this cemetery are not known as yet. In a 1863 map, at the site of the subsequent Muslim cemetery, an area marked as 'Indian soldier' can be found, which might be an early burial ground for Indian soldiers, but details regarding its founding is not known, see Empson, p. 133.\n\n48 The graves in this cemetery were removed to Cape Collinson Catholic Cemetery, around late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Father Louis Ha, long after the Bethanie had been purchased by the University of Hong Kong in the early 1960s,\n\n49 \"For the breakdowns of population figures, see Blue Books or HKGG of the corresponding years.\n\n50 The figure included that of 'British Kowloon,' i.e., the area south of old boundary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215567, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 344, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "294\n\nwere smashed by the mass of water being blown against them.\n\nThe Royal Observatory reported:\n\nGap Rock is lying very near the track of the worst typhoons that have been felt in the Colony, in an exposed position, and the conformation of the sea bottom, as well as the shape of the rocks causes the sea to be much worse than in other places (Bruce; 1990, 3).\n\nIt was reported in 1984, that the Royal Observatory and the Guangdong Meteorological Bureau had signed an agreement to set up a joint venture automatic weather station on Huang Mao Zhou, about two kilometres from Gap Rock so, presumably, the weather is as interesting today as it was in the 1890s (Bruce; 1990; 3).\n\nIt is obvious that lighthouses have to withstand immense force during bad typhoons. Consequently, they are designed circular on plan so as to offer the least resistance to both wind and sea. Lighthouses are expensive to construct. Nevertheless, like the cast-iron tower at Waglan, they can be reasonably pleasing in appearance.\n\nBefore December 1952, and from 1964 onwards, weather observations on Waglan were taken by Marine Department lighthouse keepers and transmitted by radio (Hong Kong Observatory; 1999). 33 The Observatory staff started taking weather observations on Waglan in 1952 and withdrew from the Island to the meteorological station at Cape Collinson Lighthouse in 1964.\n\nAs Waglan was no longer manned after 1989, the observatory constructed an automated weather station on the Island. The old weather recording station and a small store where equipment was housed were still there when the author visited in 1999, although the latter is no longer used. But the typhoon mast, where signals used to be hoisted, has been taken down.\n\nWater supply\n\nWaglan has no wells or springs. Keepers depended on rainfall for their water supply. Catchment areas consisted of roofs of a clutch", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 423, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "375\n\nANOTHER DONATION TO THE\n\nHONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL\n\nASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nOur Branch possesses a number of archives and artefacts, including photographs. Details of these are given in an article by Dan Waters entitled, Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: Possessions on Permanent Loan to other Institutions (JHKBRAS, Vol. 37, 1998, p. 177). In addition, 515 books and a number of items were kindly donated to our Branch by the late Arnold Graham. Please see Arnold Graham 1905-1996 by Dan Waters (JHKBRAS, Vol. 38, 1998-99, p.305),\n\nIn order to build up our collection, in February 2001, HKBRAS member Barbara Park suggested I write to Douglas Franklin who lives in Brisbane, Australia. Mr Franklin was very helpful and replied that he had some photographs in good condition and that he would be pleased to donate some to HKBRAS. We are extremely grateful to him for this donation.\n\nThe late Frederick Percy Franklin (father of Douglas Franklin who made the donation) emigrated from Bournemouth, England, to Sydney, Australia, in 1912. He joined the Australian army in 1915 and served in France. He first came to Hong Kong in 1922, when he was appointed Manager of the Hong Kong Telegraph. This was the daily afternoon paper published by the South China Morning Post.\n\nAs the Japanese approached the Colony all able-bodied British subjects were required to register for essential services. Frederick Franklin joined a British Royal Engineers unit. He was wounded on Christmas Day 1941, the day Hong Kong fell. His wife, two daughters and son, Douglas - who was 14 at the time - were evacuated on British Government orders to Sydney in August 1940, together with 3,000 women and children.\n\nWhen Hong Kong fell Frederick Franklin was captured and spent the whole of the war in the Argyle Street Prisoner of War Camp. After the war he returned to the South China Morning Post offices, then in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215941, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 240, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "174\n\nwhich the Police Commissioner handed over $20,000 without question when advised of the plot, though it was claimed that the bribe money came from the Shanghai triads leader Tu Yueh Sheng, then a refugee, albeit wealthy, in Hong Kong. Whatever the truth behind the story, it gained currency as it made the escape of General Yee and Admiral Chan Chak palatable to colonials by portraying it as an honourable act by the British to reward Yee for his assistance in saving them.\n\nIt was almost certainly also a smokescreen to disguise the removal from Hong Kong of something important to the British. MacDougall claimed in 1942 that he had not planned to go but had been persuaded at the last moment by senior government officials. MacDougall however was circumspect, careful not to betray sensitive information in an open letter. He could, however, say that during the last two years his work had 'become increasingly political in character. Officially neutral in the Sino-Japanese War, I had nevertheless behind the scenes consistently exerted what influence I possessed toward blocking and hampering the propaganda and other activities of the Japanese and the adherents of the Wang Ching Wei....I had worked very closely with Chinese organisations and did all in my power, consistent with the interests of the Colony, to aid them.' It should also be noted that he was not an officer of the colonial establishment but belonged to the Ministry of Information. He was to return to Hong Kong on liberation to reinstate the administration. While no high-profile officers escaped with the Chan Chak group, it is probable that some were carrying information. There were men from Army, Navy, and Air Force, and they were chosen for the mission, only one man being a \"guest.\"\n\n* xviii Major Goring was to spend much of the war attached to various strategic planning groups in the China theatre.\n\nThe extent of KMT activity in Hong Kong was considerable. Hong Kong was a sort of open house where all factions of Chinese politics from left to right could operate, as long as they were discreet. Overt acts of terrorism and subversion in other colonies, like the Malayan federation, were suppressed. The territory was also the port through which arms and armaments flowed into China. Technically this was in breach of the Hague Convention as Britain was supposed to be neutral, but there were ways of smuggling and circumventing the system. Baileys, the Hong Kong shipyard, built river gunboats that were outfitted with guns once they entered China. The same technology that enabled\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215942, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 241, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "175\n\nHong Kong shipyards to do marine engineering could also be used to make armour cladding for ships and vehicles. Hong Kong was also the base from which British aircraft manufacturers wanted to penetrate the Chinese market - the Far East Flying School wanted to train Chinese to fly so they would buy British rather than American or German planes. Hong Kong was also a centre for financial transactions both within and outside the banking system, a source for remittances and money transfers, more secure than Shanghai after the Japanese conquest. A large KMT community operated out of and lived in Hong Kong: almost a parallel government. While there was sympathy for the Nationalists, the colonial administration was uncertain how to maintain a balance between the Japanese and the Chinese Government. Riots against Japanese living in Hong Kong had been suppressed, and no protests made against Japanese attacks on the junk fleet. When the St Johns Ambulance wanted to send an ambulance to bombed Canton, the Colonial Office refused permission. Groups of Chinese 'terrorists' were arrested and deported from time to time. As late as May 1941 the colony's police force raided premises at 98 Robinson Road and destroyed a wireless transmitting station which had been operating for three years. The leader of this group was Chan So, an agent of General Wu Te Ching. When Governor Northcote sought guidance, the Colonial Office was advised by the Foreign Office that British policy had to vary according to circumstances, and support for China should be rendered 'compatible with the safety of Empire and avoidance of actual hostilities with the Japanese.'xix Nonetheless, there was a significant understanding between the Goumindang and the British when it came to matters of mutual benefit. When war officially broke out, their clandestine relationship could come out into the open. When Phyllis Harrop,\n\na civilian consultant working with the police reported for duty right after the outbreak of hostilities, she was assigned to work with the KMT who had already started to occupy offices with the police.\n\nThe Japanese were all too aware of the importance of Hong Kong to the KMT. The Japanese Foreign Minister had softly but firmly reminded the British Ambassador to keep the KMT under control. Even before their push to the south, the Japanese had identified KMT activists and targeted educated, articulate overseas Chinese as a threat and source of resistance. In Malaya and Singapore, they were to massacre thousands of Chinese in the wake of their advance, a fact obscured by the emphasis on the sufferings of Europeans interned in camps. In Hong Kong, on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215997, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 296, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "230\n\nChinese Son, pp. 115-116). For a fuller account of Taiping demonology, see the article on “Taiping Tiânguó de 'móguï'” (“The ‘Devil' in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom\") by Wang Qingchéng in his book, Taiping Tianguó de lìshí hé sixiang (The History and Ideology of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) (Běijing: Zhōnghuá Book Co., 1985), pp. 328 ff.\n\nFrom another perspective it must be remembered that Christian missionaries in the 19th century also regularly employed demonology to express their frustations with obstructive Qing officials, Chinese cultural attitudes, and opposing religious alternatives.\n\n46. Quoted in David Johnson, “Communication, Class and Consciousness in Late Imperial China,” p. 47,\n\n47. A helpful biographical account of Burns' career is written by I. Hamilton, \"Burns, William Chalmers\" in Nigel M. de S. Cameron, et. al., eds., Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), pp. 114-115.\n\n48. First published in Amoy (now Xiàmén) in 1853 and repeatedly published in various revisions in Hong Kong, Canton, and Shanghai for many years, the copy of this work I have seen is entitled Tianlu lichéng túhuà (Pilgrim's Progress in the Local Language [Cantonese]) (City of Sheep [i.e. Canton]: Huishi litang, tenth year of the Tongzhi reign [i.e. 1871]).\n\n49. This Chinese conception of conversion has also been discussed in Lauren Pfister's \"A Transmitter but not a Creator.\"\n\n53\n\n50. According to Paul Reuter, international standards and institutions for settling treaty disputes were first put into place in Europe in the 1870s, and so the only formal way of advancing political agendas at this time was through war. This single and often overlooked historical fact manifestly shaped the whole situation, so that local Chinese residents could only consider the foreign military presence as a preamble to a full invasion by an even \"more foreign\" power—the Manchurian elite. Consult the initial pages of Paul Reuter, Introduction to the Law of Treaties, trns. José Miro and Peter Haggenmacher (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1995).\n\nthan\n\n51. EMMC/MM (September 1857), p. 207, the quotations coming from the translation of a dictated document prepared by Ch'ea for Legge and Ho in May 1857.\n\n52. Legge himself had vomited twice from consuming some of the bread, one of the first to feel its effects because it was his habit to rise early and work on his project related to the Chinese Classics. See reports of the trial against Cheong Alum in the China Mail, a three-page \"Extra Edition,\" dated February 7, 1857, and Legge's own recollections in his public lecture (presented on November 5, 1872) entitled \"The Colony of Hong Kong.\" Legge's lecture was later published in the China Review 1:3 (1872-1873), pp. 163-176. An edited version of this essay was published as a centennial recollection in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1971), pp. 172-193. A helpful article revealing details about this event is \"Cheung Ah-lum: A Biographical Note”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 24 (1984), pp.\n\nand\n\n53. The last phrase is quoted in Helen Legge, James Legge: Missionary Scholar, p. 103, from an unknown letter she claims came from a missionary in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216101, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 400, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "334\n\nWhen I arrived in the mid-1950s, only one government department - Medical and Health - was headed by a Chinese. But he was not a local and came from Malaya. Today, of course, the boot is on the other foot. Only persons of Chinese nationality can become Government Secretaries.\n\nAlthough the Peak Reservation Ordinance was not brought back into force after World War Two, there was, nevertheless, quite a bit of covert racism - certainly among staff in the college where I taught. My old boss told me, when he learned I intended carrying on studying Cantonese, 'Only policemen and cranks learn Cantonese.' Immediately I thought, \"Yes, and I'm one of the cranks!\" One British colleague would openly say to other Europeans that he had lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and was proud that he could not count, in Cantonese, beyond three. 'After all, this is a British colony!' He used to say that no Chinese had crossed the threshold of his home as a guest. 'As a tradesman, yes. But not as a guest.' Another colleague who was not quite so racist frequently said, \"The Chinese are all right, but they need a European behind them.\"\n\nBut then I recall being stationed in the Suez Canal Zone in 1942 in, at the time, the largest military camp in the world. At Qantara railway station there were 10 toilets labelled as follows:\n\nOfficers European\n\nOfficers Asiatic\n\nOfficers Coloured\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants European\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants Asiatic\n\nWarrant Officers and Sergeants Coloured\n\nOther Ranks European\n\nOther Ranks Asiatic\n\nOther Ranks Coloured", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 406, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "340\n\nand the 1967 Riots. The former were sparked by a five-cent increase on the lower deck of the Star Ferry. Nevertheless, the root cause was largely the community's displeasure with social conditions, shortage of schools, housing, and the like. It was reported that in 1966 in the district of Tsz Wan Shan, in Kowloon, with a population then of 70,000, there was not a single telephone. The Kai Fong Association requested that at least a few public phones be installed. Soldiers marched down Nathan Road with fixed bayonets during the 1966 Riots. The protracted 1967 riots were a spill-over from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Firecrackers were banned from then on. The military kept in the background during the 1967 Riots because of fear that China might react. The riots badly affected community stability and, in 1968, office space in Chung King Mansions, in Tsim Sha Tsui, was advertised at 60 cents a square foot.\n\nThe 1966 and 1967 riots were really a watershed. From then on, the government started to listen to the populace more. Social conditions improved, and Hong Kong started a process of de-colonisation. In 1972, government servants were instructed to use the word 'territory' rather than 'colony', other than in a historical context. The Colonial Cemetery became the Hong Kong Cemetery, and so on. A Hong Kong identity and a larger middle class began to form.\n\nIt is interesting to recall that the sparks which ignited the 1956, the 1966, and the 1967 riots all occurred in Kowloon. Hong Kong Island has generally been a more peaceful place. That was why, when I came to the colony in the mid-1950s and there was talk of building a cross-harbour tunnel or a bridge, some Hong Kong Island residents expressed fear, if this happened, of being 'swamped' by 'hordes' from Kowloon.\n\nCorruption\n\nCorruption had long been a serious concern in Hong Kong, and, as the Territory became richer, the problem became more serious. When a colleague of mine said there was a price for everything, our old boss soon shut him up. That was part of the trouble. Most Europeans did not appreciate the magnitude of the problem. I recall a Chinese girl telling me, in 1955, that her grandfather had been caught by a policeman smoking opium. The old man gave the copper $20, and the whole matter was conveniently forgotten about. Squeeze affected the Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216220, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 519, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "453\n\nYET MORE THOUGHTS ON HAN SUYIN'S A MANY SPLENDOURED THING: CONDUIT ROAD AND ITS ENVIRONS\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nIn Volume 40, (2000), of the HKBRAS Journal, there were two fine articles. One was entitled Tea, Ivory and Ebony; Tracing Colonial Threads in the Inseparable Life and Literature of Han Suyin, and the second was Some Thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing. These were contributed by Teresa Kowalska and Peter Halliday respectively. I will continue from there and include also a little more history about the interesting district around Conduit Road.\n\nAs we read in the above articles, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden, was partly shot at 41 Conduit Road in the 1950s. This film was based on Han Suyin's autobiography, A Many Splendoured Thing, where Han's lover, a British correspondent, was killed in the Korean War. In the film, in addition to the slight change of title, the hero miraculously became an American. The Chinese-style pavilion out at the back, over towards Po Shan Road, which was used in the film, still stands today. A bit further away is a watercourse, which seldom dries up even during a drought. Water was piped from there for flushing toilets, at the old mansion at No. 41, right up until it was demolished in the 1960s. There was water rationing in those days.\n\nConduit Road itself really came into being as a result of Hong Kong's first water supply scheme, which resulted from the construction of Pok Fu Lam Reservoir. Water began to flow in 1864. Before then, the entire Island depended on wells and streams. Later, a water main was laid around the southwest slopes of Mid-Levels and a road was constructed at the turn of the century, which became known as Conduit Road. The well-to-do in the Colony liked the location and some built their dwellings there.\n\nA Chinese gentleman, Mr. Mok Kon Sang, in 1911 built a palatial residence at 41 Conduit Road where Realty Gardens stands today. Mr. Mok was a comprador for Butterfield and Swire (in 1974 the name was changed to plain Swire). In keeping with rich Chinese of his times, he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]