[ { "id": 204540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "16\n\nLINDSAY RIDE\n\nAs we leave the church level to visit the terraces below, it is worth noticing that the corner of the balustrade behind the chapel is adorned with an old piece of Chinese porcelain in the form of a large peach. It is about a foot in diameter and carries on top, another small, almost parasitic one, about two inches in diameter; both have a delightful bluish-grey underglaze. These peaches, Chinese emblems of longevity, are most fitting and reassuring adornments to the approach of a Christian burial ground.\n\nThe three most widely known personalities, and the most frequently visited memorials, in the cemetery are undoubtedly those of Dr. Robert Morrison, D.D., Captain Lord Henry John Spencer Churchill, R.N., the brother of Sir Winston's great-grandfather, and George Chinnery; but these people are so well known that they need neither introduction nor lengthy consideration. Chinnery will be mentioned again in connection with his portraits and we shall have to be content therefore with just one or two observations on the artist himself when we come to his memorial. The Memorials. The Upper Terrace contains forty memorials; thirty-eight of them are to be found on either side of a small central avenue, and the other two are at its far end; they are of Chinnery and Drinker. All these memorials mark the resting places of those most recently buried in the cemetery, from 1850 to 1859, as well as one relatively very recent one who unaccountably gained entrance in 1889, thirty years after the cemetery was closed!\n\nOn the left, as we move along the central avenue from the entrance, the memorials nearly all stand back under palms and shrubs near the retaining wall below the chapel. They include American naval and merchant personnel, an Armenian and a few British. The majority of the Upper Terrace memorials however are on the right, their backs to the Lower Terrace. They include more American seafarers both naval and merchant, missionaries both British and American, a member of Perry's historic mission to Japan, and Joseph Adams, the grandson of the second President and the nephew of the sixth President, of the United States of America.\n\nNames associated with early Hong Kong, for example Duddell of Duddell Street, will be found in this row, as will also that of a famous Danish family of sea captains; in fact Captain Ipland has two memorials", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n147 \n\nkept the raiders under fire from the slope behind, but they got away with their plunder, including some arms and ammunition. The Captain Superintendent of Police at the time, F. J. Badeley, a cadet officer, retired soon after, and the story went that the Governor, Sir Henry May, who came in July 1912 after about eight years as Colonial Secretary and two years in Fiji, took this opportunity to get rid of him because he was 'persona non grata' to him. (There were said to be several such in the Service). The Government took the hint given by the pirates and built a new police station on a much more commanding site well inland, surrounded by barbed wire.\n\nTalking of New Territory police station siting, the Tai O station was originally to have been built close to the village, but the local elders put up representations against it, and the presence of mosquitoes in the village may have provided an argument for its present siting beyond Shek Tsai Po. Silting of the harbour may also have influenced the Government. But I have heard that what influenced the villagers was the existence of gambling houses which yielded them a good profit, and they knew that with the police among them the hope of their gains would be gone. In 1925 they had their reward. A boatload of 60 pirates from the Delta landed at Po Chu Tam, marched along the creek-side road and plundered the village, murdering a woman and kidnapping two men. They got away without interference. Government promptly 'locked the stable door' by stationing an armed Indian police guard - later replaced by village scouts in a matshed close to the mouth of Po Chu Tam creek for several months, about 50 yards from the site of an old Chinese stone-built guard station dating from the era of Japanese piracy in South China. Apparently the Police knew nothing of the raid till all was over. I think all that happened was that the sergeant in charge was transferred to another station.\n\nWhen I first took charge of the District Office, the 'black gold' rush had been over for three years, the bottom having dropped out of the tungsten market with the coming of peace; but the lime-burning and sand-digging boom was in full swing because of the roadmaking and building then going on in Hong Kong and Kowloon. (These were times of anarchy in China). Thus I had to deal with one or two applications for land for limekilns. These kilns were thickest on Ping Chau; but Nei Kwu Chau and Tsing Yi also had kilns, and another was put up at Hang Hau. This distribution is due partly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210187, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "137\n\nRevd Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1865), Vol. II, p. 55; Robert K. Douglas, China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2nd Edition, 1887) pp. 280-1; Juliet Bredon and Igor Metrophanow, The Moon Year, A Record of Chinese Customs and Festivals (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh Ltd, 1927) pp. 314-5.\n\n26\n\nJ. W. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region op. cit., p. 210 note 87. A full account of the stakenet fishing is given in my forthcoming article on the coastal and inshore fisheries of Hong Kong Island and adjacent places in the 19th century and earlier, to appear in Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Asian Studies, 1986, Vol. I, China, Asian Research Service, GPO Box 2232 Hong Kong.\n\n27\n\nChina Mail No. 212, 8 March 1849, Witness No. 23 at the recorded Coroner's Inquest. Possibly also nos. 19 and 22.\n\n20\n\nA large scale map of Little Hong Kong at 80' to 1, in five sheets, showing the Old and New Villages and their fields (1892) is in the PRO of Hong Kong. In 1844 it was stated that the Wong Nai Chung fields measured 75.1 acres (CSO129/9807, p. 277).\n\n1\n\nIllustrated London News, 16 January 1858.\n\n10\n\nHong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860.\n\nRobert Fortune, Three Years Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China (London, John Murray, 2nd edition 1847) p.17. He qualifies his remarks slightly, but the substance is as stated. See also his general very favourable verdict on the Chinese people at p. xv.\n\n32\n\nK.S. McKenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London, R. Bentley, 1842) p. 160.\n\n33\n\nCaptain G.G. Loch, Closing Events of the Campaign in China (London, John Murray, 1843) p. 21.\n\n14\n\n35\n\nMcKenzie, op. cit., p. 163.\n\nDalrymple's Observations on the Southern Coasts of China and the Island of Hainan (London, 1806). After p. 20 in the text. This willingness to trade with strangers continued into the period of hostilities between Britain and China when the local people appear to have been very ready to supply the British forces and the civilian population with food and other necessities. Indeed this extended to such a degree that led Captain Elliott to state in one of his despatches to Lord Ellenborough, Governor-General of India, that the retention of Hong Kong would be \"an act of justice and protection to the Native population upon which we have been so long dependent for assistance and supply. Indescribably dreadful instances of the hostility between these people and the Government are within our certain knowledge; and they cannot be abandoned without the most fatal consequences.” Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 3 vols, reprinted by Book World Company, Taipei, Appendix I to Vol. 1, pp. 650-1. See also pp. 241-2 for local provisioning.\n\n34\n\nJohn Francis Davis. Sketches of China, Partly during an Inland Journey of Four Months between Peking, Nanking and Canton, bound in with Volume III of his A General Description of China and its Inhabitants (London, Charles Knight, New Edition, 1845), p. 12. See also Wright and Allom, op. cit., \"The Harbour of Hong Kong\" which speaks of the \"innate gentleness, and disinterested hospitality, of the farmers and the fishermen of Hong Kong\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212199, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "118\n\n1 left by steamer for Canton, the great southern Chinese town, which sprawls along the shore of the Pearl River; and spent a few days on the Shameen mud-bank, just off the city, where the small British and French Concessions are. The Concessions were untouched; but, across the narrow creek that separates them from the shore, the city had suffered heavily from bombing, and from the fires which raged furiously in the congested native districts after each raid. One morning I crossed to the South bank and took the branch line to Samshui on the West river, where I caught the steamer for Wuchow in Kwangsi province.\n\nAlthough owned by a Chinese company, the small river steamer flew the British flag. That was a phenomenon common enough on the inland waters of China. The foreign flag protected the ship from being commandeered by the local war lord. Sometimes for months on end steam traffic, on this water-way or that, would be completely disorganised. The Chinese ships would be impressed to carry the troops of the various armies contending for power. It was only under a foreign flag that they could find the security which would justify their remaining in operation at all. The British government did not welcome this use of the British flag, and introduced regulations to control abuse of the privilege. In order to qualify for British registry a ship must at least carry a British captain and a British chief engineer, and must comply with the Board of Trade regulations in regard to safety measures. But even so, the Chinese owners would make every effort to obtain British registry for their ships, thus in one direction taking advantage of the treaties between Britain and China while, in the other, probably contributing to the Kuo Min Tang party funds, which were used to denounce the iniquities of those very same treaties. In order to comply with the letter of the regulations, the particular ship I now found myself on carried three British officers, whose aggregate age exceeded 200 years. They were, of course, mere figure-heads, the actual work being done by the Chinese officers and crew. These river-boats kept communications open and provided a measure of security for travellers - owing to the presence of British gunboats these small ships moving on inland waters were seldom attacked by bandits which otherwise would have been lacking.\n\n―\n\nIn Kwangsi the road system had been extended to connect Wuchow with the other large towns of the province and I left by car for Kweilin, the capital. An American aviator, who had been down to Hongkong on a shopping expedition, travelled with me as far as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213365, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "171\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nNOTES ON CHEUNG PAO TSAI\n\nANTHONY SIU KWOK-KIN\n\nCheung Pao Tsai, also known as Cheung Pao Tsai, was the son of a fisherman living along the coast of San Hui county in the Kwantung province. He was kidnapped by Chang Yat, leader of the pirates of the Red Flag Squadron, at the age of fifteen. Because he was young and clever, he was forced to be a pirate. He managed all business very well, and was soon promoted to be headman. In 1807, Chang Yat died at sea in a great storm. His wife, Shek Yeung (also known as Chang Yat Sao by the pirates), and his nephew Chang On Bong led the Red Flag pirates. Chang On Bong was very timid. Thus, Cheung Pao became a good assistant to Chang Yat Sao. She appointed Cheung Pao to be the chief headman, and placed the whole crew under his sway, while she commanded all the squadron.\n\nCheung Pao was a good assistant of Chang Yat Sao. He was very faithful and obedient to her. He did everything only with her permission. She trusted him well, and his suggestions were generally approved. He could command the Red Flag Squadron with her consent. Thus, people at that time only knew the name Cheung Pao, and all the piratical disasters in the South China Sea were said to be done by him.\n\nCheung and his gang plundered along the coast of the Canton Delta from 1808 to 1810, concentrating on the Heung Shan, San Hui, San Ning, Pan Yu, and Tung Kwun counties. Of these, Heung Shan faced the greatest disaster. At first, they only robbed the merchant ships at sea. Later, being encountered by the Ching navy, they turned inland and robbed the villages they could reach by boats. Then, because of the strong resistance made by the villagers, and being defeated by the Imperial force for many times, Cheung was forced to surrender in 1810. He was given the title of a Shoubei or captain in the navy, and he helped to pacify the rest of the pirates in the South China Sea. He married Chang Yat Sao. Because of his bravery in the navy, he was promoted to be a Fujiang or major-general. He died in 1822.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215019, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "71\n\nMaj. Gray was sympathetic towards the Chinese and believed in fairness towards them. He said that they were strangers in a strange land and homesick. He suggested the Chinese carpenters build a small pagoda, about 15 feet high, near the entrance to the Hospital. They painted it in bright colours. When Gray was promoted Lieut-Col. he was inundated with presentations - the dressers [medical assistants] presented him with a scroll, the cooks, an honorific umbrella and two flags, the Sanitary Gang, scrolls, etc.\n\nStuckey's time in France ended on 16th March 1919, when he left Noyelle-sur-Mer for Liverpool to join an Australian Ambulance Transport ship, working his way as Medical Officer, arriving in Melbourne on 15 May.\n\nSir Douglas Haig awarded Stuckey a Mention-in-Despatches for his work at the Hospital and, on the recommendation of Sir William Lister, Captain Stuckey was awarded the Order of the British Empire, Military Division. He said that this decoration really also belonged to the three doctors of the Ophthalmic staff at the Hospital, namely Captain H. Tomlin, MD and Captain C. A. Hughes, MD, D Ch O. and himself.\n\nIn 1920, Stuckey and his family returned to China, with periods of leave in Australia, leaving in 1938, after 33 years in China, returning via Korea to the UK and then, in 1939, returning to Australia.\n\nNoyelles-sur-Mer\n\nThe HQ of the CLC was at Noyelles-sur-Mer. Being interested in the CLC and also curious as to whether there were any remains of the CLC camp there, my wife and I decided to visit this small village close to the River Somme and about one and a half miles inland from the sea.\n\nWe were very fortunate that, on our first day of arrival, we contacted Mr. C. Gallemant, the butcher and Mr. M. C. Landos, the baker [third generation], but we failed to locate any candlestick maker! They were very helpful, especially Mr. Landos, who, after enquiry, told us the locations of some buildings still standing used by members of the CLC. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any remains of the CLC camp site nor their hospital, prison or detention centre and other buildings, all having reverted to farmland.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "45\n\nChina, Hainan would appear to have been neglected. Before 1949 Hainan was an area which few foreigners appear to have visited, though for much of the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th foreign consuls, customs officers and traders endured their existence, particularly in the northern port of Haikou (Hoihow), the American Presbyterian Mission, the first body of missionaries, only began its work 'saving' Hainan in 1881. Despite the latter, there would seem to be no missionary writings describing the temples and \"idols\" as did Father Doré in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, Shryock in Anqing and others across northern and central China. The old church in Qingzhou Fu, some three miles inland and to the west of Haikou, by 1890 had been converted into a Temple of Longevity, and another church elsewhere in Hainan, had also become a Chinese temple known as the Temple of the Cross.\n\nIn 1882 Mr Jeremiasen, an independent Danish missionary, made an unmolested circuit of Hainan on foot 'proving the friendliness of the people.' He then crossed the island north to south and east to west. Westerners who travel through \"darkest\" China today and write or talk about being the first foreigners within some remote spot, forget or overlook such Christian missionaries who roamed across all areas of China more than a century and a half ago. Even today there are foreign tourists who regard themselves as among the first to set foot in the more remote areas of Hainan. However, what Jeremiasen and others have overlooked are the individual Portuguese and German missionaries whose graves, dated in the 1680s, have been identified on Hainan. Most foreign visitors today also forget or, more likely, have probably never even heard of the eminent Chinese banished to the island during the early days of the periods of forced settlement of the 13th and 14th centuries.\n\nAn aspect of journeys to Hainan a century or so ago, now also long forgotten, was the basic problem of getting ashore from the steamer from Hong Kong. This was often the worst part of the journey. The steamer from Hong Kong touched bottom some three miles or so out to sea leaving the trip ashore to the main port of Haikou by shallow draft sampan across mud flats under less than a foot of water. This required bargaining with the laoda [captain] of one of the many sampans which offered their services to tranship passengers ashore. The native boatmen in a very round-about trip through the intricate channels, sliding over", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216023, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 322, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "256\n\nMountain, a former small island now joined to the mainland by alluvium, referred to by Victorian travellers as a 'pyramidal rock'. This used to stand out in the Yangzi a mile or so upstream from the city of Zhenjiang, hence their use of its name generically for the city. There is a further island, Jiao Shan Scorched Island, an islet some mile or so downstream from the city with its own ancient temple, Dinghui Si concealed within its tree-covered slopes. It too has its own memorials from the era of the Six Dynasties - two or three ancient cypress trees, whose storm-riven and almost barkless trunks were in the 1920s still held together by iron bands. According to Allom, Silver Island [Mountain], the name formerly given by foreigners to Jiao Shan, is to the westward of Zhenjiang, within sight of the Gold Island [Mountain] [see illustration]. Legend has it that Jin Shan, Gold Mountain takes its name from the time during the Tang dynasty when a certain Bei Totuo was digging into the hill and found a pot of gold; this has long been denied by Buddhists who believe that the name of the hill has a Buddhist symbolic meaning. Although the British Concession was originally laid out with intervening ground between it and the old walled city it did not take many years for the new native city to encroach and reach the Concession boundary. This meant that foreigners wishing to leave the Concession had to battle their way through the main street of the new native city, facing filthy and disease-ridden beggars, open drains and past open spaces which were used as public conveniences, constantly patronised by squatting men.\n\nCaptain Cunynghame, serving with the British force sailing up the Yangzi and about to mount an assault on Zhenjiang, arrived off the city on the 18th of July 1842. The force had been proceeding with great care as it was the first opportunity that western warships had had to penetrate as far inland up the Great River. He described his first sighting of Golden Island as 'the most beautiful little fairy isle imaginable, covered with temples, whose gilt-topped pagodas shone brilliantly in the evening sun'. A week or so later, once the city had been stormed and he was able to walk through it and wrote that \"the walled portion of the town was reckoned about four miles in circumference. The suburbs, extending a long distance to the west, probably occupied an equal extent of ground. The former space was chiefly occupied by streets containing shops, with an occasional blank space of wall within which were the houses of the most wealthy inhabitants. A very large portion, however, was occupied by gardens", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216057, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 356, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "290\n\na chapel where they stationed an evangelist. By the turn of the century Zhenjiang had become an important Protestant missionary centre in its own right, with adequate missionary cover and the accessories for Mission work including a women's hospital, a girls' school and the large and well-organised men's college of the Methodist Episcopal Mission. China Inland Mission had by this time also opened a station in the city as well as their own hospital,\n\n4\n\nAspects of life which today sound strange were not uncommon, such as the missionary in Yangzhou, immediately across the wide Yangzi from Zhenjiang, having to cross the river with his bride for the civil ceremony at the nearest consulate, in Zhenjiang, before ferrying her back to their future home.\n\nDuring the 1860s and 1870s, the great famine in the Yellow River and Yangzi basins and the anti-missionary troubles across China, Hudson Taylor, who had founded the China Inland Mission in 1865, travelled widely encouraging his workers and authorising the expenditure of funds on orphanages and relief. In mid-March of 1877 he stopped over in Zhenjiang for a month, during which time a fire which had devoured houses all around the Mission premises had stopped short of the Mission, merely scorching one of its window frames.\n\nGunboat diplomacy was part of life on the 19th century Yangzi with recalcitrant mandarins being brought to heel when, for example, they ignored the cries for help of foreigners under attack from mobs or even encouraged such violence either openly or tacitly. In October 1868 a major confrontation in Yangzhou, the city immediately across the Yangzi from Zhenjiang, involved a large crowd of uncontrolled rioters bent on killing foreigners. They attacked the home of Hudson Taylor and his family, injuring several members of the China Inland Mission. HMS Rinaldo, a British gunboat, arrived and under its guns, the Viceroy in Nanjing agreed to terms demanded by the British Consul, Medhurst. However, the Rinaldo's captain fell ill and the gunboat had to be withdrawn. The Viceroy promptly repudiated the terms he had agreed and a further force of four Royal Navy vessels had to be sent to exert military pressure once more upon the Viceroy. Terms were again dictated and once more agreed. Meanwhile Hudson Taylor and his family had been accommodated in the home of the British Consul in Zhenjiang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216323, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "31\n\nright, presently near a road bridge spanning the river at this point, has the picturesque name now, as it did then, of \"Lady's Slipper,\" in Cantonese Ah Niang Hai. The merchant ships had to anchor here and report themselves to the Chinese force guarding the passage, and show their permits. This done, they were on their way upstream to the Whampoa Anchorage, twelve miles from Canton.\n\nThe Whampoa Anchorage (Plate 3) was the furthest point to which merchant ships could come. It was a trans-shipment centre, a very busy place, year in year out, for centuries. Its warehouses, docks and repair yards, its hospital, its cemetery, all point to a long existence as the place in which - more than Canton itself - the real business of the China Trade was carried on. That is, other than at Lintin (“Solitary Nail,” a reference to its single peak), an island in the outer waters of the Delta which, since the 1820s, had become an opium depot and the port for a large volume of illegal trading, the amount (astonishingly enough) tripling the authorized regular trading conducted through the Co-hong, and under the official regulations.7\n\nWhampoa was the Chinese countryside beside the river, lush and heavily populated. The Daniells, English painters who visited the Whampoa anchorage twice, in 1785 and 1793, particularly noted ‘...its sweet, romantic scenery. Nothing indeed can exceed the beauty of the country in this vicinity.’ Another visitor wrote in 1848: \"Whampoa was beautiful. The vessels were displaying their different flags; Chinese boats were crossing and re-crossing in every direction, and the setting sun was shedding its gilded light on everything around, giving to the low, flat island, covered with rich, green-like velvet, the pagodas and the foliage of the trees, a touch of enchantment'. Above Canton, it was much the same story. \"The river sides were planted with orange-trees, plantains, and lychees; while nothing but rice fields appeared inland'.10\n\nWhampoa's famous seven-storey pagoda, built in the late Ming period, features in many China Trade paintings, and in paintings on porcelains and fans. The pagoda itself attracted the more energetic visitors. A 16 year old American girl who accompanied her sea captain father on his China voyage in 1856, climbed up the pagoda and wrote in her journal, '(after you arrive at the top, I found I was repaid for my trouble. Oh! There was such a beautiful view, for miles and miles I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]