[ { "id": 204400, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n23\n\nFrom this time on discoveries were frequent. In 1885 two Nestorian cemeteries were discovered in Tokmak (Semirechinsk) with stones from about 610 graves, some engraved with the outline of the now familiar Nestorian Cross, associated with inscriptions in Syriac dating from A.D. 1267 to 1316.3\n\nIn 1890 stones engraved with Nestorian Crosses were found at Hsi-wan-tzu in Sui-yüan province, north-west of Kalgan.23\n\nBut perhaps the most important Nestorian relics in China, after the Tablet of Sianfu, are the T'ang dynasty manuscripts found in 1908 in the sealed cave-library at Tun-huang, commencing with the 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo' with its important List of Scriptures and Historical Note (probably dating from about A.D. 781), the 'Jesus Messiah Sutra' dated A.D. 641, the earliest Nestorian document preserved in China, and three other T'ang Nestorian manuscripts, written probably between that date and the period of the Sianfu monument (A.D. 781).24\n\n+\n\nIn 1919 two beautifully carved Nestorian crosses, with short Syriac inscriptions, possibly from the chancel of a church, were found at Fang-shan in a Buddhist monastery called to this day 'The Monastery of the Cross' + (perhaps the one where Mark and Barsauma dwelt) south-west of Peking.25\n\nIn 1933 several Chinese scholars sought for and found the ruins of a 'Ta-ts'in Monastery' ★ (Nestorian Monastery) at Chou-chih in Shensi province, described in poems by the famous Sung dynasty poet Su Tung-p'o in 1062.26\n\nIn 1935 gravestones engraved with Nestorian crosses similar to those from Fang-shan were found at Pai-ling Miao TEM in Sui-yüan province (on the edge of Mongolia).27\n\nIn a number of places, too numerous to note in detail here, stone tablets have been found engraved with dated edicts of Yüan dynasty times, sometimes in the Mongol language, sometimes in Chinese, and sometimes in both, for the protection of\n\n22 Saeki, Nestorian Documents and Relics, 2nd ed., 1951, Part II, chap. 4.\n\n23 Saeki, op. cit. p. 426.\n\n24 Moule, op. cit. p. 53; Saeki, op. cit. chs, III to XIII.\n\n24 Saeki, op. cit., p. 430, and Moule, op. cit., Fig. 12.\n\n24 Hsiang Ta, Tang-tai Ch'angan yû Hsi-yü wên-ming, App. II, 'Notes on the Ta-ts'in Monastery at Chou-chih' 向達著,唐代長安與西域文明, Yenching Monograph Series II, 1933.\n\n27 Saeki, op. cit., pp. 423-4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204424, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n47\n\n(in the big monasteries one had to get permission every time he left the premises). Talking was permitted during meals and people could go to bed when they felt like it. Some small temples were centers of institutionalized laziness--and worse.\n\nBut small temples were very necessary, not only to provide a break from the rigor of life in the big monasteries, but also as a link between the clergy and the laity. The big monasteries were often remote in the mountains, whereas in most Chinese cities there was a small temple “just around the corner.\" More important than this, however, was the fact that a monk could not accept tonsure disciples \"in his capacity as officer or resident of a big monastery, but only in his capacity as officer or resident of a small temple. The novice during most of his training prior to ordination could not live in a big monastery, but only in a small temple. Thus small temples were the channel through which all new recruits had to enter the Sangha.\n\n55\n\n**\n\nThe crowning stage of a monk's career was being the old monk lao ho-shang, a term usually applied to an ex-abbot. He lived either in his own small temple or in special quarters of the big monastery that he had headed. He had no obligations, although he probably still carried on with his work of teaching. In fact, this might be the most productive part of his life, when he had the widest following and exerted the greatest influence, particularly on the laymen who came in great numbers to listen to him expound sutras and to take the Refuges with him. It is extraordinary how old some old monks got to be. The most famous case of recent times is Hsü-yün, who died at the age of a hundred and twenty in 1959. Now we have T'an-hsü, who is eighty-eight and still preaches on the Surangama Sutra every Sunday evening at nine o'clock. I recommend that you go to the Buddhist Library, 144 Boundary Street, and listen to him some Sunday, for he is a wonderful person.\n\n77\n\nHere in Hong Kong, I have often wondered why certain monks lived to be so old. They would attribute it, perhaps, to the peace that comes with enlightenment. A more prosaic explanation might be that they have a low cholesterol count. Dr. C. A. Wang, who will return to Hong Kong in 1962, tested a number of monks two years ago and found that, presumably because they ate vegetarian food, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204656, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n123\n\nThe Peking government claims that even greater floods took place during the summer of 1954, but because of the reconstruction work carried out on the dyke system by the Communists, the damage was much less. The dyke system, they say, has been still further strengthened since 1954.\n\nIn spite of its great depth along much of its length, navigation on the Yangtse always posed special problems. The main channel changes course from time to time, while the strength of the current varies from season to season. Foreign steamers usually carried two pilots, but in spite of all precautions many steamers have been lost on the river. Towards the end of the era of foreign shipping, losses had been greatly reduced by means of more efficient pilotage, greater knowledge and better charts, improved lighting, and other aids to navigation.\n\nLife on the Yangtse was very different from that on the coast, and had a strong fascination for most of those who experienced it. The river steamers penetrated right into the heart of China, where conditions were widely different. Even in the 1920's and 1930's the countryside and towns bordering on the Middle and Upper River remained much as they had been in the previous five or six hundred years. Foreign trade and influence had barely touched the fringes of social life and customs evolved many centuries earlier.\n\nThe heyday of Yangtse travel was in the 1920's and 1930's, when it was possible to travel in comfort, and even luxury, although not always in complete safety, from Shanghai to Chung-king, and beyond to Chengtu and Sui Fu. At that period there were four large companies operating regular services along the whole navigable length of the river, with something like a hundred steamers between them. There were also several small companies operating a few steamers each. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with 31 ships had the largest river fleet, followed by the China Navigation Company and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company with 21 ships each, and then the Japanese Nisshin Kisen Kaisha with 15 ships. A German company had started a service in 1900, at the same time as the Japanese, but had been compelled to withdraw during the 1914-18 war, and had never resumed the service. At least four steamers left Shanghai for Hankow every day, where connection was made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n45\n\nis one important point to be cleared up. The Chinese are highly skilled farmers. Their techniques of land-winning and of irrigation change landscapes. So, alas, does their age-long war against trees. But since A.D. 900 the topography of this territory has been changed not only by human technique. There has also been a gradual, small, but identifiable and, I believe, measurable tilt of the surface of the earth along the axis of the four high peaks (the two on Lantao,37 Tai Mo Shan and Ng Tung Shan104) which has altered and is still altering the coast line. I leave it to geologists to say whether this is a necessary effect of what happens when the subsidence of a long straight shore meets a range of hills parallel to the shore (in which case it will be reproduced at many points of the Chinese coast), or whether it is a local peculiarity. It would also be interesting to fill in some of the chronological gaps and find out whether the two clear cases of recent river capture13 took place before or after the Chinese settlement. Until these gaps are filled up, I do not claim that the details of the shore line indicated on the map are authoritative, but they are not far wrong for the northwestern part of the territory, which was the part first settled by the ancestors of the Man94 and Tang.44\n\nYou will observe that the present Castle Peak and the mountain attached to it on the north42 were at that time an island, separated from the mainland of the New Territories by a sea channel which in A.D. 900 was probably very shallow but navigable. The traditions of the oldest villages leave no room for doubt that there has been a general uplift in excess of 5 metres in this area. The red line approximately follows the present 5 metres contour. The ground on both sides of the navigable channel was swamp, probably mangrove swamp, dotted about with small islands and intersected by creeks and streams. The first fort of which there is written record was known as Tuen Mun Chan141 and was almost certainly located at a point I have marked on the map,138 about three miles north of the present location called Tuen Mun.141 It would be an advantage if all doubts could be settled by excavation on the site, which can be seen even from the ground (and more clearly still from the air) to have contained old earth-works and possibly buildings.\n\nIt will be noticed that the present Sham Chun120 River had a much shorter course at that date, and the northern half of what", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204754, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "46\n\nK. M. A. BARNETT\n\nour map describes as Laffan's Plain27 was then a swamp, probably with one or two navigable channels; which explains why there is in that region a Tin Hau135 temple, which is now miles from the highest point which even sampans can reach.\n\n96\n\nAlthough the first fortification was dated A.D. 958, the name, if it means what it says, indicates that this channel or mun must have had a fortification on it before. Among all the channels which are called by this name mun— all the important channels are so called - no one is going to single out one to be described as \"the fort (or garrison) channel\" unless it previously had a fort or garrison. However, evidence is still lacking of the nature of this previous fortification. Here a word of conjecture may be permitted. The San On Yuen Chi123 mentions that in the year ✯✯ 6 (A.D. 331) of the Tsin158 Dynasty the hsien of Po On3 was first set up, to be abolished under the Sui22 Dynasty. Since it was in the Tsin158 Dynasty that the first Buddhist temple was said to have been built, the establishment and abolition of the hsien may indicate an unsuccessful attempt at settlement during this period, say from A.D. 330 to 590.\n\nFrom the Nan Han99 Dynasty onwards, it was settled government policy in these parts to encourage soldiers of each garrison to take up grants of land and to settle there after completion of their military service. The land they occupied was known as tuen-tin142 and was charged land tax at a lower rate than normal. Taxation at this favourable rate continued up to the last edition of the San On Yuen Chi123. The favourable rate was the same as the special rate for monasteries.\n\nIt is pretty clear from local tradition and from the location of the pieces of land which paid tax at the preferential rate that the reclamation of mangrove swamp in and around the present Yuen Long was done by these soldiers and their early descendants. The Man94 clan now settled at San Tin125 have been winning land in this fashion for 500 years on their present location, to which they moved from their first settlement at Lo Fu Hung85 about half way down what was then a creek. The latter lies between the original Tuen Mun141 fort and the present shore of Castle Peak Bay15. Just north of that location, at the foot of the small group of hills on one of which stands the present Ping Shanlit Police Station, there was a village called Nga Tsin Tsuen settled\n\nļ", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204756, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "48\n\nK. M. A. BARNETT\n\n17\n\nstrong corroboration of traditions, which might otherwise be thought apocryphal, of the disappearance of other villages, including the large village of Lik Yuen,84 half way down what is now Tide Cove.16 For all that, one cannot be absolutely sure. An old Hoklo155 boatman at Tai Po, who fortunately spoke reasonable Cantonese (for I cannot manage the Hoklo language) told me that \"fifty years before he was born, Hong Kong Island was joined to the mainland. It obviously was not. But remembering what has been observed by other field workers, that \"fifty years\" is commonly used to mean any time too long to be remembered, what the old man was passing on was clearly a tradition among the Hoklo that Tuk Ngo Kong45 a name for Victoria Harbour which apparently only the Hoklo language now preserves was long ago interrupted by a strip of land. It may well have been so, and I have provisionally marked it so. For if it were, it would tend to explain the curious demarcation of responsibility between the military commanders of Nam Tau and Tai Pang40 and the apparent fact that ships went through Sheung Sz Mun127 rather than through the present Hong Kong Harbour. It might also explain why Kwun Fu Cheung was more important for the collection of salt than for defence.\n\nThere is also some slight reason to believe that Ma Wan and Tsing Yi,13 which are now islands, were 1,000 years ago connected to the mainland and to one another, and that the channel between Chep Lap Kok1 and Tung Chung was considerably deeper than it now is.\n\nBut I must emphasize that the picture on the south and east side is still sketchy. It would greatly facilitate the work of the historian if his geological colleagues could be persuaded to take their eyes off remote aeons and fix them on to this comparatively recent period so as to obtain some degree of certainty regarding the position of the shore-line at the time of the first Chinese settlement.\n\nThe Missing Pieces. To move away from the shore up to the hills, the first thing that would strike the eye of any us, if he could be transported by time machine into the tenth century, would be the profusion of trees. A former Director of Agriculture told me that the remains of huge trees had been discovered some distance below ground during preparatory work for one of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204759, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE \n\n51 \n\nI will here jump ahead and say that one study which is urgently needed to restore one of the missing pieces in our puzzle before it melts away, is the collection preferably on tape recordings, of local stories, legends and above all, songs and rhymes. These were formerly widely heard, especially among the Tanka43 and Hokloss boat people and among the Hakka149 villagers of the high plateaux where they are called shan-ko.117 When I was District Commissioner, New Territories, I attempted to arrange a performance of some of these shan-ko for the then Governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, but the star performer, who was a very old man, was afflicted by stage-fright and would not sing a note until after the Governor had left; nor would he allow the songs which he afterwards rendered to be recorded. However, I am sure this kind of reluctance could be overcome, perhaps by a little alcoholic inducement, but the point I really wish to emphasize is that now everybody has a transistor radio, no one wants to listen to the old songs and they are remembered only by the ancient. The evidence which they enshrine of the origin of our local people may be of high importance, quite aside from the artistic and musical merits of the songs and stories, and I think a determined effort should be made to ensure that this evidence, which we have so outrageously neglected while it was plentiful, should be put on record before it is too late.\n\nTwo non-Chinese words are the word yong for a village and the word kan53 for a water channel; if only more studies of the Yao languages were available, the list could be much longer. The late S. L. Wong of Hong Kong University, previously of Lingnam University, who had done original research among the Yao of two districts of Kwangtung Province, including his own native district of Tsang Shing,159 told me many years ago that one thing to look for when testing whether a \"Chinese\" village was of Yao origin was to keep a watchful eye and ear for traces of the cult of Pan-ku.112 At the same time he warned me that where the memory of tribal origin still lived among village traditions they were careful to conceal the fact from strangers, so that any direct question would almost certainly meet flat denial. This, I need hardly say, is characteristic of rural communities the world over and I have encountered similar difficulties even in recording the local names of mountains and streams, including one instance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204766, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "58 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nfrom the point of view of my present subject, the event which ushered in the new age is the capture of Canton in +878 by the Huang Chao146 rebels. Between this event and the re-incorporation of Canton's territory into China in +971, by which time the earliest Chinese had already a firm grip on what is now Hong Kong, the Liu76 family gave five emperors to the Nan Han99 Dynasty at Canton. This family was allied by marriage with the Cheng163 and Tuen families which successively at this period ruled the powerful kingdom of Nan Chao;100 with the Ma89 family which ruled the kingdom of Tsu1 and no doubt, if the evidence could be pieced together, with many other peoples. For we are told that the emperor Liu Chang78 had a Persian princess in his harem, and among the many Arab travellers who visited Canton there must be some who left a description of these flamboyant half-Chinese rulers, with their eighty or more palaces, the walls of which were encrusted with pearls, their bloodthirsty exuberance and, what shines even through the disapproving accounts of the Chinese historians, their courage and administrative skill. The name Po On3 revived by the Republic of China as the name for the district of which geographically, Hong Kong is a part, was adopted by the Canton rulers in obvious reference to the pearls for which this district was at that period famous. The statement in the San On Yuen Chi123 that the name comes from the hill called Po Shan north of Nam Tau8 city is the \"cart before the horse\". The pearls were fished in great numbers somewhere near Tolo Channel, probably in Double Haven where the name Chue Tong Wat162 survives as a bay on Kar O Island.\" They were then transported overland along the route marked by a chain of forts over the pass northeast of Tai Po Tau34 village, through Kau Lung Hang, over the present golf course and skirting the Pat Heung2 marshes to the present Ping Shan, and across the creek to the fort of Tuen Mun4 which I mentioned earlier in this paper. The route, I would have you observe, almost at every point passes one of the chief settlements of the Tang44 clan who are, I believe, together with all the old Cantonese-speaking clans of this territory, the descendants of the soldiers stationed here in the Nan Han Dynasty and its successors for the express purpose of guarding these precious pearls. They were as I have said encouraged, when too old to serve with their arms, to settle down", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204772, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "64 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nNg \n\n103 Ngraahcrinn-chynn, \n\n104 Ngrhtrung-shaann, \n\nN. L. \n\n105 Ngrr-droi, £1 (+908—+959, with local variations). \n\n0 \n\n106 Obliterated villages:- Nai Tong Kok,101 Pak Hok Tuns and the original Tai Pak,35 some way from the present site. \n\nP \n\n107 Phuunniryh, #5. \n\n108 Preangzhaw, , an island five miles west of the western tip of Hong Kong Island. \n\n109 Preangzhaw, H, an island in the north-eastern part of Mirs Bay,41 \n\n110 Pre-Chinese languages: I should exempt from this stricture Professor Princeton S. Hsu,23 whose books, \"History of the People of South China”72 and \"A Study of the Thais, Chuangs and the Cantonese People\"133 are of great interest and should be read by anyone anxious to learn more in this field. But I think he goes too far in suggesting a Malay origin for the Tanka-or is it a Tanka origin for the Malays? \n\n111 Prengshaann, Ħ4. \n\n112 Pruunn-gwuur, 1. \n\nR \n\n113 River Capture. The break-through of the Kwun Yam Ho62 from the Lam Tsuen74 valley to Taipo:33 formerly it flowed through Fanling48 and Sheung Shui130 into Deep Bay;152 and that of the two streams which now flow into the sea at Sham Tseng,119 the headwaters of which used to flow through Tin Fu Tsai137 into Tai Lam.38 \n\n$ \n\nSei-braak, see 35, \n\n114 Shaahtraw-gok, YA★ · \n\n115 Shaahtrinn, 3⁄4w. \n\n+ \n\n116 Shaahtrinn-xoe, , still better known to the local people as Lik Yuen Hoi. \n\nShaamm-braak, E★ see 35, \n\n117 shaann-ghoh, Hakka saan-go, L. \n\n118 Shaannloo, \n\n#. \n\n119 Shamm-zearng, ##. \n\n+ \n\n120 Shamm-zeon, . The second word means an artificial channel with earth banks and suggests that the present river was cut to drain the swamps to the east and south-east of the present town. \n\n121 Shann Ngrrdroi-sir, ĦARK - \n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204826, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "108\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\no'clock on the morning of the 13 inst. We shortly after got under weigh with a fresh breeze from the north, and worked up with the tide to the point anchor in the plan, near the Nine Islands where we anchored. The weather was squally with rain and so thick that we could scarcely discern land. At day break we weighed and worked up to Lintin, where at twelve o'clock we anchored. I went immediately on board the Lion and delivered Your Excellency's Letters to Sir Erasmus Gower. As it rained hard and blew fresh, I remained there for the night, and at seven in the morning I returned to the Jackall, when as there was some appearance of its clearing up, Captain Proctor got under weigh, and stood towards the Island of Lantao. The soundings are expressed in fathoms in the plan, and they point out the track of the vessel. We inserted the rocks marked A.B. which we did not observe in any former plan. The weather continued so thick above, that we could not discover the Peak of Lantao, nor with any precision the land along the shore. At the point C the island marked Shatlapko in the charts, wore so favourable an appearance, that we stood towards it, although as it had been laid down between it and the island of Lantao, little hopes could be entertained of finding shelter for shipping from westerly winds. At one o'clock find that we suddenly shoaled our water, we anchored in 44 fathom water over soft mud at the inner point marked anchor. The uncertain state of the weather, and the short time it was probable we could allow for the examination of Cowhee, made it necessary to hasten from this anchorage. Whilst we took angles in the ship, the boat was dispatched to sound, with directions to stand over to the South East side, as soon as she should find, towards Shatlapko so little as three fathoms water. This she very shortly did and her track and soundings are expressed in the plan. The Island of Shatlapko we found to extend towards the shore of Lantao; by which it appears, that the whole of this bay is sheltered from westerly winds. The officer who sounded in the boat, reported his having seen boats pass through the channel marked D, that the land in its neighbourhood on Lantao was low and cultivated, as was that marked E which he discovered through the opening!\". The point to the north west of E, has been hitherto laid down as an island; as well as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204827, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n109\n\nthe thick weather would allow us to judge, we thought to the contrary, and it is sketched in according to the concurring opinions of the gentlemen on board\". Immediately after dinner we weighed and worked out of the bay, we anchored in the evening at the outermost anchor the weather again became thick and squally with rain. At break of day we weighed and worked over to anchor on the north shore which is laid down in the charts as a part of the main. It was now so thick that we could only see the Bottoe Islands12 at intervals, and very rarely the shore of Lantao. At eleven it cleared a little, we again got under weigh, and stood eastward along the shore, having a fine deep bay with a sandy beach to our left. We saw some large fishing boats and several huts, apparently the habitations of fishermen along the shore marked G. When we got off the point G we had irregular and very strong gusts of wind off the high land, and we could get no bottom with a hand line of 14 fathoms. Westward of the point H is a beach of about three quarters of a mile on which is a village consisting of ten or twelve houses13; some of these appeared very lately to have suffered from fire. On seeing the vessel approach, five or six men ran to the top of a small, but rather high conical rock, at H, as if for protection, here they remained till we passed them. The wind still blew fresh in puffs off the land, and we could get no bottom, at length however we got up to anchor eastward of H. and anchored in 13 fathoms hard gravel and shells, with 15 fathoms under the ship's stern. From the strength and irregularity of the squalls, the rapidity of the currents in this narrow channel, and the badness of the ground on which we had anchored, Captain Proctor wished to get away again with the vessel as soon as possible; we therefore went on shore on the island of Cowhee, agreeable to your Excellency's instructions.\n\nWe first stood over to the point I, we found no bottom with the hand line till very near the shore, where we had seven fathoms with a rocky bottom. We could not land here owing to the sea occasioned by the wind and current. We rowed eastward along the island six or seven hundred yards, where we turned a rocky point, close to which we had 34 fathoms with a rocky bottom, and a little way further out 17 fathoms. East of this is a small bay about 300 yards from point to point, and 80 or 100 yards in depth. In this bay we had 7, 6, 5 and 44 fathoms over soft mud,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204828, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "110\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nto within ten yards of the shore. We saw a hut on the beach, and six men at work with some bamboos. Here we disembarked and the sailors filled a cask with excellent water from a well close to the shore. The inhabitants who were fishermen were civil, but they appeared to be alarmed at our arrival14. Mr. Alexander and myself walked up to the high land over the point I, where we had a view of the island and of the north east end of Lantao, as well as of the eastern shore of the main as it is laid down in the charts. The general form of the island appeared to be triangular. Its length from north to south about a mile, and from east to west about three quarters. Its general surface is irregular, rising in unconnected hills or joined only at their bases, but these are smooth and thickly covered with grass of different kinds, some of which had been lately cut down. The soil is red, light and sandy; if we may judge from its verdure it is very fertile. Besides three or four other plants the gardener found some ginger, there were also some guava trees and wild figs15. The projection K is narrow but rather high, on it are five or six huts of fishermen, whose nets are suspended from different points, and hauled up occasionally by windlasses. Between K and I is a rocky bay, that appears to be very deep. South of the projection K we saw some trees, but there are not very many on the island17. About ten acres of land are under cultivation in two separate patches from the bay on the east shore where the land is low. The water on this side of the island is very rocky. Whilst on the hill we were visited by about fifteen persons, men, women and children, from these we learned, that the island is called Toong Shing-ow-a18.\n\nAs to its extent, its fertility and its situation, in a point of view merely military, it appears a desirable island, but perhaps it may be seen in a different light when examined as a situation for a settlement, intended to protect the large and valuable ships employed in the China trade. It appears incapable of future improvement to any very great degree as an harbour, since on account of the rapidity of the currents, the depth of the water and the badness of the bottom, large ships cannot lie with safety on that side of the channel next the island. A few may lie on the north shore, and perhaps but a few, and on this account it\n\n¡", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204829, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN \n\n111\n\nappears insufficient;* an objection however may be thought to arise from its not being independent of the Chinese, who might at any time destroy a fleet anchored here, by fire from the main, without a possibility of preventing it from the island. On the other hand it is well situated for defence against any foreign enemy, who would hardly venture any considerable force into so dangerous a passage under the guns of well constructed batteries. The opening to the eastward is not known to Europeans20, but it has much more the appearance of a passage from the sea, than of an inlet only. If it should be thought proper to fortify the island, it would of course be necessary to ascertain this. But at all events the east, west and south points are well calculated for works to any moderate extent, for the defence of the passages, and the support of each other. The island is commanded by the surrounding hills of the main, and of the island of Lantao; the former are too distant to be dreaded, that of Lantao is the most dangerous, but attention in the profile21 of the works, may in a great measure remedy this defect, and the difficulty of access to these heights renders it of less consequence. After having taken angles on the shore and hastily sketching in the plan of the island, we returned on board, sounding twice in 17 fathoms hard gravel and shells.\n\nand shells. We immediately after weighed, but being becalmed under the high land, and driven in shore by an eddy, were obliged to come to in 13 fathoms in the bay westward of the point H. A light air springing up, we again got under weigh and stood obliquely across the channel, having regular soundings from 20 to 12 fathoms, where as it was now dark we anchored. As this bay appears a very eligible situation on many accounts for any extent of establishment that might be proposed, it was to be regretted that the badness of the weather deprived us of the opportunity of examining it accurately22, but it was now the 16th of the month, we were to be at Whampoa by the 20th and to save the tide it was necessary to get under\n\n*It is said that the bay on the south west side of the island is very fit for the reception and security of 10 or 12 ships of the largest size, and that the small island to the south east of Lantao shuts it in from the south and makes it a harbour.19 If this should be thought sufficiently capacious, it appears to offer a good situation for defence. It is commanded by the island of Lantao but that appears very difficult of access and as the ships would lie under the guns of the batteries they would derive a protection that the south side of the island could not afford, since, as it has been observed, they must there lie on the north shore of the passage,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204831, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n113\n\nCaptain Proctor in his passage from Chusan in the Endeavour in October last, came through what is called the Cowhee Passage. It was then blowing hard from the south east. The pilot carried him to the westward of Cowhee, and he anchored for the night in 8 fathoms water, soft mud, off the point L. In the morning he passed to the southward of the Bottoe Islands, having 5 and 6 fathoms over soft mud all the way in shore.\n\nOn the morning of the 17th we got under weigh and passed close to the northward of the Bottoe Islands, we then stood over to the north shore, and worked up to the northward of the islands of Lonkoo25 and Lintin. The weather was so thick that we were frequently out of sight of land. At the turn of tide we anchored near some fishing stakes in 4 fathoms water, Lintin bearing SSE distant about 15 miles. On the 18th we weighed and worked up to Anson's Bay, and on the 19th we passed the Bocca Tigris, and reached the Indiamen at the second bar. The 20th in the evening the Jackall arrived at Whampoo.\n\nSigned: HENRY WM. PARISH\n\nLieut. Royal Artillery\n\nN.B. The soil in general is free from stone, but the surface of the hill on the north west side of the island is covered with stones of a moderate size, and proper for building.\n\nGeographical Comments\n\nAny note on the value of Parish's survey of Ma Wan (Cowhee) and Lantao Island must inevitably take into account the state of nautical knowledge of Hong Kong waters at the time. This was probably sketchy; indeed, Parish himself states that he made a major revision to the outline of Lantao. His own work was very accurate, and his records of depths and currents off Lantao and around Ma Wan are confirmed exactly on modern charts26. His constant harping on the difficulties of navigation, however, cannot be ascribed entirely to the awkwardness of the local topography; bad weather (of which he had plenty), and a clumsy square-rigged ship, cannot have helped to raise his opinion of the area.\n\nThe channels around Ma Wan and North Lantao contain some of the deepest and most dangerous waters in Hong Kong. Both on rising and falling tides, there is a concentration of currents of up to seven knots along both east and west coast of Ma Wan, and these converge in the channel between Lantao Island and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204832, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "CRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nthe mainland. In this latter passage, up which the Jackall had to sail so slowly, there are vicious back-eddies along both shores and there is often no appreciable period of slack water at the turn of the tide. After heavy rains in the Pearl River, the ebb tide from west to east along this channel is particularly strong27. The coasts in general shelve steeply, with few good landing places and often with cliffs plunging straight down to the sea. The only large coastal plain which Parish saw during this survey was at Tung Chung, on the west coast of Lantao behind Chek Lap Kok island (Shatlapko on Parish's chart see note 9) but weather and timetable combined to prevent him from getting a close look at it. There is a general absence of good anchorages, except in the shallow waters between Chek Lap Kok and the coast of Lantao, and there is an 8-foot tidal range. The steep hillsides produce fluky gusts of wind in all but the calmest weather. It is surprising that Parish made such detailed observations in the face of these navigational hazards.\n\nParish's comments on Ma Wan itself are also a fair summary of its geographical limitations. The island is geologically complex, with an interesting variety of soils. The underlying rocks, however, are not sufficiently porous to hold large supplies of ground water, and the size of the island (less than a square mile) is too small to form an effective catchment. Any trading post established on Ma Wan would have been severely restricted in size by this problem. The two small settlements on the island have probably not grown appreciably since Parish's visit28. Perhaps it was fortunate that impressions of Ma Wan were coloured by his attempt to land at the most difficult and dangerous point on the coast.\n\nThe general elevation of Ma Wan is much lower than the hills of North Lantao or of the mainland opposite, and the island is so badly overlooked as to be indefensible. Parish was quite right in rejecting it as a potential site for a large trading settlement, and it is a pity that his orders did not permit him to stay longer on the coast of North Lantao. It is invidious to speculate on the course of history, but if the weather had been better his initial impression of the suitability of the west coast of North Lantao for settlement would no doubt have been confirmed. Possibly the first British trading post would have grown up on Lantao instead of on Hong Kong Island, and the city of Victoria would have looked out over the Pearl River estuary.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205350, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\nJ\n\n105\n\nThis officer established himself at a place then called Shak-tse-kong, the present Nam-tou, a part of which situated on a hill was surrounded by walls. But it was found that this officer was unable to rule efficiently the whole of the district, and some men of influence, supported by the high mandarins at Canton, demanded that the part of the country which they inhabited should be made a separate district.\n\nThe Emperor Wan-lik granted this petition in the first year of his reign; the new district was called \"Sanon,” new peace; and the walled part of Nam-tou rose to be the district town of Sanon, and accordingly received the name of Sanon Yuen-shing 新安城.\n\nThe Sanon district included the islands of Lan-tow, Hongkong, and all the small neighbouring islands. The mainland portion of the district was bounded to the North by the districts of Túng-kun 東莞 and Kwei-shin 歸善. The northern boundary is formed by the Pik-tau River, which flows into the estuary of the Canton River, and is navigable for small Chinese sea craft (such as passage-boats) for about 8 miles; and several chains of mountains further to the East. This boundary, however, is very arbitrarily drawn, as sometimes villages in the midst of Sanon belong to Túng-kun. The borders of the three districts join together in the neighbourhood of the mart of Kun-lan, a place notoriously unsafe, as being the abode of thieves and vagabonds, who can with facility escape from the jurisdiction of one mandarin to that of another.\n\nTo the East, the Sanon District is bounded by the estuary of the Canton River. This estuary is divided by the Chinese into several parts with different names: the part to the south of the Bocca Tigris into which the Pik-tow River falls, is called Hop-lan Hoi; the bay named by the English Lintin is designated by the Chinese Nam-low Bay, after the city of that name; Deep Bay is called Hau-hoi or Back-water Bay*. This bay is generally very shallow, a deep channel however running down the centre; the navigation is rendered more dangerous by the many oyster-beds which exist. The bay terminates in a considerable creek, which is navigable at high-tide for three or four miles, as far as the important mart of Sham-tsuen.\n\n&\n\nPA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "140\n\nLIN SHU-YEN\n\nshallow canals, or small reservoir ponds, communicating with the sea of the bay at high tide. As shown in figure 1, the leaching vat (V) is constructed near the centre of the saline with the concentrating fields (C1-C6) situated on both sides, and the storage tanks (S) and the drying or crystalizing ponds (D1-D6) on the front side.\n\nL R せ R R R R D1 P2 P3 .| મ\n\nFigure 1. Diagram showing the arrangement of the different parts of a saline in which the salt is prepared by the leaching method.\n\n+ C1-C concentration fields; D-D6 crystalization ponds; R, reservoirs for sea-water connected by a channel to the sea; S, brine storage tanks; V, sarthern vat for leaching; HC, canal leading brine into the crytalization ponds; LC, canal leading brine back from the crytalization ponds to the two storage tanks; PSS, soil impregnated with salt; T, trough into which the concentrated brine is bailed from the two storage tanks.\n\nIn the preparation of the salt the surface soil of the concentrating fields, to the depth of about 1½ inches, is loosened by a man-driven harrow (figure 2) and then sprinkled with sea-water from the canals (figure 1, R), once or twice a day. The harrowing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205530, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "67\n\nFURTHER NOTES ON THE SUNG WONG T'OI\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nThe very interesting paper by Professor Lo Hsiang-lin on the Sung Wong T'oi and the travelling courts of the Sung Dynasty, in Volume III No. 2 of the Journal of Oriental Studies,† and the partial wrecking of the historic site by the Japanese in the war,‡ have prompted the writer to put on record some notes made during the years 1918 and 1937 on the earthworks, inscriptions and relics found by him on and near the site, which may help to supplement Professor Lo's paper. In what follows the hill is described as it was in 1937, as the writer has not seen it since 1938.\n\nIt is a crescent-shaped hill, convex towards the east, where it rises steeply from the beach to a height of nearly 40 metres. It commands a good view of the south slope of the Kowloon hills and the plain beneath, the east half of the harbour, and of Lyemun channel and the west end of the Fat Tau Mun channel beyond, except for a few hundred metres at its north side by Slope Island (see Plate 5). A watch-tower on its summit would provide an observation post well over 40 metres above sea level. The concave side, on which lies the main path to the top, is terraced for cultivation up to 15 or 20 metres.\n\nThe objects investigated on and near the hill can be classed in three categories, earthworks, inscriptions, and pottery and other objects, and will be dealt with in that order.\n\nThe Earthworks (see sketch plan at Plate 3)\n\nThere are signs that the hill was formerly fortified. On its top from the south end above the 20 metre contour as far as the great inscribed rock on the summit, there is a gentle rise from which the ground falls away steeply to the east, and rather less so to the west and south. At the south end of the ridge traces of a bank at the edge appear to form a rough semicircle, presumably as a flank defence, for a clearly defined earth bank about a metre high by three or four wide at the base runs northward from it nearly straight along the centre of the hill crest to a point near the south-\n\n*See biographical note at the end of this article.\n\n† Published by the Hong Kong University Press, May 1958. [See also Mr. Jen Yu-wen's article \"The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 21-38. Ed.]\n\nMr. Schofield writes in the present tense, Unfortunately the hill has now disappeared completely, what was left by the Japanese being removed for the airport extension about 1958. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206057, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "132\n\nHENRY D. TALBOT\n\nLo cheou-Lo Chau (Beaufort Island)\n\n=\n\nMers Bay Mirs Bay\n\nMew Is.-Mo Chau\n\nNako chau-Papai (Nei Kwu Chau or Hei Ling Chau)\n\nNine-pin-Ninepin Group\n\nPo-ke-long Point=Lei Yue Mun Point\n\nPsang-chau-Kau Yi Chau\n\nRagged Island Steep Island\n\nRat Island or Ling Ting-Ling Ting\n\nR. Povado or Iron River-Hebe Haven\n\nSin-can-hien-Hsin-an Hsien (San On Yuen) or, rather, the district city of Hsin-an\n\nSingan Islands-Siu Chau and Tai Shan\n\nShu-lap-ko Is.-Chek Lap Kok Island\n\nSui-pak Siu Kau Yi\n\nSoko Cheou Is. the Soko Islands\n\nSong-kco Sung Kong\n\nTa baco=Chung Chau\n\nTat-hong Moon-Tathong Channel\n\n=\n\nTay Pak Peng Chau\n\nTay-pak-hoe Green Island (or perhaps the sea between Hong Kong and Lantao Islands)\n\nTsa-cheou Is. =Sha Chau\n\nTsan-Cheou-Kau Pei Chau (off Cape D'Aguilar) Tysa=Small island 1⁄2 mile south of East Brother\n\nWang Laang-Waglan Island\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Cf. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books (London, 1961) Vol. 100, Col. 222.\n\nThe British Museum Catalogue of Printed Maps. Charts and Plans (London, 1967) Vol. 7, Col. 359,\n\nMorse, H. B. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834 (Oxford, 1926-29) Lists of Ships.\n\n2 Cf. Bonacker, W. Kartenmacher Aller Lander und Zeiten (Stuttgart, Hiersemann, 1966) p. 200,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206081, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "156\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\nbetween A.D. 785 and 805 by a Chinese called Chia Tan and which are published in the T'ang official history. The text concerning our region reads:\n\n\"From Canton travelling towards the South East for 200 li you reach Mount T'un Mun.\n\nThe name T'un Mun or garrisoned entrance is still given to the Castle Peak region. The landmark is in fact Castle peak itself. It must have been known centuries before the publication of the text we have cited and the foreign ships coming to and from Canton must have anchored in its neighbourhood in such numbers that a Chinese garrison was sent to control and protect them. This garrison was appointed during the Tang dynasty.\n\nThere is some difficulty in placing the locality of the anchorage. It may have been Castle Peak Bay itself, or any of the harbours between it and Fat T'ong Mun. The Arab Chain of Chronicles gives the following description of the route to Canton:\n\n\"Seven days are needed to pass through the Straits between the mountains. Then you reach fresh water and proceed to Khanfu.\n\n**\n\nThere may, of course, have been confusion in these accounts, and the area of approach to Canton also called by the Arabs \"the Gates of China\" may have been elsewhere than our region. On the other hand this description fits in with the nature of the passage from Fat T'ong Mun to T'un Mun in all respects except that it takes less than seven days to pass through. Perhaps, however, these seven days were meant to include the administrative delays which ships entering Canton were bound to encounter.\n\nThere is no local tradition or archaeological evidence of the passage of foreign traders past T'un Mun, or of the site of the garrison. One theory is that it was near Castle Peak Bay and at that period there was a channel connecting with Deep Bay which made the Castle Peak range itself an island. Amongst other things the garrison was in charge of the salt fields in the district, and it seems quite likely that at that time the salt fields covered this channel.\n\nThe mountain itself is supposed to have been visited by a Buddhist saint in 428 A.D., who journeyed across the sea in a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206105, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTHE J.O.P. BLAND PAPERS\n\nIntroduction\n\nOne day in September 1967, I received, quite out of the blue, a letter from my former commanding officer during the Second World War, Michael St. J. Packe, to say that he had been entrusted with J.O.P. Bland's private papers, with instructions \"to find a good home for them,\" and asking me whether I would like to have them. Before going further, let me explain that Mr. Packe is himself a historian and wrote an excellent biography of J. S. Mill.* We have kept in touch intermittently since we were demobilized from the First Airborne Division (British) at the end of the war, and I have been to visit him at his home on Alderney. This is the really fantastic part of this chain of coincidences. Here was Mr. Packe, living and writing on the little island of Alderney in the Channel Islands while a near neighbour of his was Mrs. Dolores Coombs, an old friend of the Bland family, who had often visited them at their home at Aldburgh in Suffolk. Bland himself died in 1945 and Mrs. Bland in 1953. His private papers were entrusted to his goddaughter, Miss Ailsa Cochrane, who was to act as his literary executor and to try, if possible, to complete the memoirs which he had begun before his death, and to have them published. Before she could achieve much Miss Cochrane became ill and in 1955 her brother sent these papers to Mrs. Coombs who, in turn, was to act as literary executor. Meanwhile Bland's books on China had been given to Trinity College, Dublin. However, a list of these books, preserved among his papers, shows that they amounted to a modest collection without containing anything rare.\n\nSometime in 1966 Mrs. Coombs was forced by illness to leave Alderney, and it was at this point that she entrusted her friend and neighbour, Michael Packe, with the task of finding a home for these papers. Thus for a period of over twenty years Bland's private papers disappeared from view while two successive literary executors struggled with the task of trying to complete and publish his memoirs. Bland himself, to judge from his instructions to his\n\n* The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: 1954).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206316, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n127\n\ncame from a few clearly defined areas in Kwangtung Province, because the great majority of the Chinese congregated in the urban areas spoke Cantonese4. Lennox Mills compares this situation in Hong Kong, which made government relatively easy, with pre-war Malaya. This homogeneity, he argues, ‘makes it possible to control them through the District Watch Committee. (On the other hand) the Chinese in Malaya are drawn from various provinces and are divided by provincial hostilities of long standing. The wealthy and educated Chinese in some districts come from a different province from the majority of coolies; and, in addition, the interests of the recent immigrants often differ from those of the Straits Chinese who are permanently settled in Malaya. A committee representing the Chinese of Malaya would necessarily reproduce the various schisms which divide them, and the members would in some cases have no influence over the coolies in their districts'4. In Hong Kong, however, the Chinese were not divided to any great extent by dialect or provincial hostilities, only by differences in wealth and status. The members of the District Watch Committee originated from a small number of hsien (counties) in the Canton delta, from districts and towns close to the Pearl River, the main channel of communication between Canton and Hong Kong before the completion of the Kowloon-Canton Railway in 1912. A high percentage of the committeemen were born in, or originated from, Tung Kwun (Tung-kuan hsien) and Heung Shan (Hsiang-shan hsien)42; and the merchants from these areas had their own district associations in Hong Kong.\n\nClearly, the members of the District Watch Committee had much in common: they spoke mostly the same dialect, they came from the same district or closely related districts in China and they were, if not merchants, then involved in some type of commercial pursuit—land speculation, owning and managing property, banking and insurance, finance, compradoring43. All in all, they formed a remarkably homogeneous group, united by many ties; and it would seem, rarely divided for long by political differences. Not surprisingly, some of them were inter-related through ties of blood and kinship44. There were few family dynasties in Hong Kong but a small number had children who served later on the Committee45. In the nature of things, members must have disagreed about some of the issues raised at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "186\n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nOn the 2nd July of that year, I was walking out on Caine's Road in the afternoon with a friend, when we saw a steamer coming through Sulphur Channel. At first we thought it must be the mail, but it proved to be the Shannon, with Lord Elgin on board. As she steamed into the harbour, and she and the Admiral saluted each other, and the thunder of their guns reverberated along the sides of the mountain, which were then all fringed with mist, I said to my companion, \"There is the knell of the past of China. It can do nothing against these leviathans.\" And so it was. I need not try to tell you how Lord Elgin's measures were delayed in a manner that contributed much, through his prompt and magnanimous decision, to the preservation of our Indian empire. All this and his subsequent proceedings in China may be seen in brief in the memoir of his Life published during the present year. It is only when he is gone that the public at large have the means of knowing what a good and great man Lord Elgin was,—bold, prudent, far-seeing, conscientious. I hope all my hearers, if they have not already read, will soon take the opportunity to read, that memoir, and especially the chapters relating to his two missions to China.\n\nThe Government at home was equal to the exigencies of the occasion as well as Lord Elgin. Fresh troops were sent out. He went to Calcutta, but was back from it in September. The war at Canton was brought to an end by the capture of the city on the 29th of that month, and Yeh was taken prisoner a few days after. The surprise and disgust of the Chinese in general were great, because he did not seal his loyalty to the dragon throne by at once committing suicide.\n\nIn January, 1858, I made a visit to Canton, and had the satisfaction of walking all over it, and on a Sunday opened the first house, that was set apart in it to that purpose, for the preaching of the gospel. My sermon was followed by one from a relative of the T'ae-ping king, who came subsequently to be well known himself at Nanking as the Shield King. Poor man! He had been connected with the London Mission here for several years, and was the most genial and versatile Chinese I have ever known, and of whom I can never think but with esteem and regret. Had he taken my advice, he would have remained quietly in Hongkong as a preacher, and might have been living with his head on him to the present day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SOME NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON AND THE FAR EAST\n\nP. H. COLLIN*\n\n(The text of a lecture to the Branch given on 15th December 1971)\n\nA small collection of mid-nineteenth century water-colours of the Far East recently came to light in a London dealer's. The paintings are mainly of China, in particular Canton, with inscriptions and dates in pencil or paint; at some later date, they have been numbered in Roman numerals in ink on the reverse.\n\nThe list of the paintings is as follows, showing the number on the reverse, the inscription on the face of the painting (in italics), and a brief description by the author. The spelling and punctuations are as in the originals.\n\nII Sumatra Straits of Sunda Nov. 14 57\n\nA view of islands, with a native dhow.\n\nIII After heavy rain. Straits of Sunda\n\nA sailing vessel.\n\nIV China Sea the green clouds are from nature\n\nSmall junk against the sunset.\n\nV North Wantong|Id. Bocca Tigris Decr 16th 57\n\nA fort with a red-coated soldier on guard and mountains seen on the far side of the channel.\n\nVII Canton Feb 58\n\nA view looking across roof-tops towards a pagoda and the west gate.\n\nXI Febry 58 Canton Bamboo grove beyond White Cloud Mountains The Jingal pic-nic Feb 20th 58\n\nSome soldiers and Chinese sitting by bamboos, looking across paddy fields to a clump of bamboo where a group of figures are visible. Mountains in the distance.\n\nXIII Canton 58\n\nThree horses and riders with, beyond rolling country, the pagodas of Canton.\n\n* Mr. Collin was formerly Lecturer in English at the University of Hong Kong and is now a publisher in London.\n\nPlates 32-33 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206655, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n197\n\nand his three small survey ships have given their names respectively to Sulphur Channel, Starling Inlet and Plover Cove.\n\nJ. R. JONES.\n\nCHINA'S EARLIEST PRINTING A NOTE\n\nLLL\n\nIn Volume 7 (1967) of this Journal I published a brief note entitled \"Printing, a new discovery.\" This told of a find in a stone stupa, standing in the courtyard of a temple called Pulguk-sa, in Korea, erected in 751, of a printed Buddhist sutra. The find was hailed by the Korean archaeologists as perhaps the oldest example of printing known, although the exact date of the printing still remains a mystery.\n\nRecently I have learned that the Chinese discovered another piece of printing as far back as 1944. (Somehow, perhaps because of the war, news of this had escaped my attention.) Known in Chinese as T'o-lo-ni ching chou (dharani sutra charm), it was unearthed in a T'ang dynasty grave site in Chengtu, Szechwan, inside the silver bracelet of a young woman. As Professor Max Loehr has written, it \"is a charm printed on a single sheet showing a six-armed Bodhisattva figure in the center of concentrically laid out Sanscrit words written in Lantsa letters.\" This is surprising, but not unreasonable. In the last half of the Tang, Chengtu happens to have developed into perhaps the chief center of printing, and, as everyone knows, by the middle of the eighth century Chinese civilization had reached one of its heights. It was the age of Li Po and Tu Fu, Wu Tao-hsüan and Wang Wei, and Buddhism was at the summit of its influence. With the demand for reduplication in every circle - Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist - and with all the tools and techniques at hand, the printing of a highly popular charm seems natural. So it came about that there have come to light charms, printed within a few years of each other, in Korea (751?), China (757), and Japan (764-770).\n\nBibliography:\n\nChung-kuo pan-k'o lü-lu, compiled by the Peking Library (Peking 1961), pl. 1, text Vol. I, p. 7;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206897, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "168\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDEEP BAY MARSHES\n\nThe photograph at Plate XV was taken in March 1973 by Mrs. F. O. P. Hechtel. It shows men and women collecting seaweed from an embanked pond at Deep Bay. They had come over from Chinese Territory by boat, bringing a punt with them on deck. The boat was anchored at the outer edge of the bund, left high and dry at low tide, and the punt was launched in the shallow pond and loaded with seaweed which was taken back for pig food. This is still a common practice, and has been observed by Mr. and Mrs. Hechtel on other occasions.\n\nThis brings in another feature of the marshes. Our printer, and member, Mr. Y. F. Lam of Ye Olde Printerie Ltd., tells me that when he went shooting on the marshes just after the war, his party used regularly to meet a person who came over from Chinese territory using a waak baan (★★) or mud scooter on which he travelled easily over the areas of foreshore and swamp. The man landed at Mai Po, left his mud scooter there, and walked to Yuen Long Market to buy necessaries, after which he would return to Mai Po, load his scooter and set off for home.\n\nThe mud scooter is also used by oyster farmers in Deep Bay and is an old form of local transportation. Two of them, one old and much used, and one made to order, have recently been obtained by the City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. Plate XVI is by courtesy of the Curator, and shows the used scooter.\n\nA very similar contrivance is used in the shrimp fisheries at Stolford on the Bristol channel, Somerset, England, C. M. Yonge writes: 'At Stolford where the nets are secured on soft banks of mud a mile from the shore, the fishermen use a type of intertidal sledge or \"mud horse\" which they push in front of them and which serves the double purpose of preventing them from sinking deeply in the mud and of carrying back the catch'. (pp. 321-322 of The Sea Shore, Collins, The Fontana New Naturalist paper back, 1963). There is an illustration of the \"mud horse\" at page 322.\n\nHong Kong. April, 1974.\n\nHON. EDITOR", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206951, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "16\n\nA. I. DIAMOND\n\nThe charge cannot be denied. To destroy any of the papers which form part of the body of archives, unless destruction is limited to word-for-word duplicates, is to place the peculiar integrity they had, as such, at risk, and the greater the destruction the greater the violence done to the principles on which their value for research is claimed to rest.\n\nArchivists have no defence in terms of theory for the destruction of archives, and it is only when the practicalities are considered that justification can be found for it. The volume of records generated by modern governments is enormous and growing greater year by year. It has been claimed that if all the records produced or received by the Federal and State governments of the United States in a single year were packed on shelving, that shelving would extend for more than fifty miles. Faced with archival accumulation on such a scale, what are administrators and archivists and scholars themselves, for that matter, to do, but to agree that a policy for the selective destruction of archives is unavoidable. The question, really, is not whether to destroy, but what.\n\nHaving said that, it might seem logical now to discuss criteria for the selection of documents for disposal. I have no intention of doing so. It is difficult to say anything in general terms on that subject which is not either spurious or self-evident. What should be preserved will always depend on the nature of the records being appraised and on their relationship, if any, to other records. And the answer may not be the same for similar records under varying sets of circumstances.\n\nIt would be more worthwhile, I think, to say a little about the mechanisms which are being developed in modern societies to conserve valuable archives and to channel them into the safe-keeping of archive institutions.\n\nThe archivist nowadays stands downstream of a veritable flood of papers, valuable and otherwise, and if he is not to be inundated, he must be granted some part in manipulating the sluicegates.\n\nIt is no longer enough for archivists to know how to manage records already in their own custody. They must be conversant also with the techniques and exigencies of records management in the agencies they serve. For it is only if archivists are knowledgeable in this field that they can anticipate problems arising for themselves and hope to enlist the aid of administrators in solving them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207077, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "142 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\nO.S. \n\nS.S. \n\n6 chun 圳圳畎: zeon \n\n7 chung 涌 chunq1 \n\n8 fan 填 frann \n\n9 ha 下吓 xraa6 厦 xraar \n\n10 hang 坑 xhaanq \n\n11 hon 旱 xrorn \n\n12 kan 簡 gaarn \n\n13 kang \n\n14 kau 潑 gaau1 \n\nMeaning or Remarks An irrigation channel. \n\nA stream, especially one from which the boat-people get water or up which they take boats. \n\nA grave-mound (i.e. not one of the usual graves cut from the hillside). Also read in names wan, wrann (110) and wang, wrang (111). \n\nVery common in place names, in most of which it cannot possibly mean 'below'. Sometimes seems to stand for hang (10). \n\nThis is the usual word for a river in use by land dwellers. It includes the valley in which the river flows. See also lek (32). Land for dry cultivation is xrorndrei and hill-paddy xrornwroh but in names of villages and localities this word (like ghonn) is usually tabooed in some cases being replaced by the word tso (102) (early) which is written with one stroke less: 4. \n\nA bamboo water-pipe for irrigation. This is a Yao179 word. \n\nMis-spelling of keng (19) \n\nA channel. Sometimes confused with au (2).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207168, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n233 \n\nThe fung shui name of the selected spot was known as \"Sleeping Beauty\" (*) Her legs were in the crossed position, and the selected point for the erection of the village was at her thigh. The village was to be pointed 256° at the west, to accept the incoming water from Kap Shui Mun, and would rest on a hill at the back (local name Lion Land *), with the hills of Tsing Yi Island to the left and Fa Shan to the right. The frontage of the village was to face the water channel. It was a glorious view showing the sun setting with the sails of homeward-bound fishing craft, especially in the Spring and Autumn seasons. When the sun is just lowering on the horizon, millions of golden beams reflect from the sea, shining at the village. It is really an excellent site for a village to be established. That is perhaps why Sam Tung Uk and Yeung Uk Village are facing west while the other villages in Tsuen Wan are facing in a south direction. A well was constructed on the right, apart from the north corner of the village, for drinking purposes, just below the Sleeping Beauty's lower part. This well never dries up even in the driest seasons. Even when the supply of water was given once in every 4 days in the 1963 drought, the water was still adequate for use by all the surrounding villagers. How wonderful to find that it is 95% full of water even in the dry season to-day.\n\nTo suit the fung shui requirement, all members of the family started to work jointly, after farming hours, to lower the site. This task lasted for several years, and was very arduous labour. They then began building the super-structures. Solid walls 16 inches thick were formed with a mixture of lime, clay and straw. The entrance to the Chi Tong (ancestral hall) was partly decorated with long hand-hewn granite stone blocks. Roof tops were constructed with wooden beams and clad with Chinese tiles. The entire structures in the village are approx. 17 feet high, of one storey. No height addition or alteration has since been made. Stone steps were laid to the door-way of every house. The structures proved to be strong and stable for nearly 200 years. There were three rows of houses built in the first instance and for this reason it was called Sam Tung Uk (A). After the construction work was completed, they moved in on a lucky day, in the 51st year of Ch'ien Lung (1786). The Chan Sze Pit Tong (), shown in the land record of District Office, Tsuen Wan, was formed by the four brothers at the time of village establishment. Another row of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207275, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n35\n\nbuildings and roads destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. Collaboration of this sort gave these merchant leaders a greater voice over taxation and other local public affairs.23 The same guild leaders joined charitable organisations because their larger numbers offered them a wider base of support.\n\nAs the merchants assumed a leadership role in providing social services and welfare, they gradually took over responsibilities and privileges which went along with their work. Because permanent charitable organisations could cut across guilds and sometimes Landsmannschaften, they claimed that their leadership was based on community-wide support. And since they were merchants, they should be identified as merchant leaders to whom matters affecting the merchants would be referred. Moreover, these merchants were elites in their own communities, and were regularly referred to as \"titled merchants” (shen-shang). Even as individuals, they had some political influence with the local officials. But unless they had begun as gentry or officials, such influence rested on no legitimate basis. When they organised themselves in institutions which had a communal purpose, they quickly used them to claim legitimate leadership.\n\nThis was what happened by the late nineteenth century. In Hong Kong, the board of directors of the Tung Wah Hospital quickly gained the right to present petitions to the Hong Kong government on all matters related to the Chinese community. Institutionally, the hospital was put under the jurisdiction of the Registrar General, after 1913 styled the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, who also served as its patron. By the early 1880's, the board opened up another channel when the Governor-general's Office in Canton began to correspond with it. There is some indication that the directors acted as a kind of information centre and advisory board for the Governor-general on matters involving the overseas Chinese.24 To this day, a seat on the board of directors of either the Tung Wah Hospital or the Po Leung Kuk still represents the government's recognition of each occupier's leadership status.\n\nIn Canton, charitable organisations, too, quickly became a regular channel of communication between the government and the merchants. In early 1886, when news of the San Francisco race riots against Chinese workers reached Canton and Hong Kong, the Chinese government wrote to the directors of the Ai-yü shan-t’ang", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EMPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN MILITARY TALENT\n\n121\n\nallies, for example, occasionally directed their military efforts against, rather than for, the dynasty; and even the Uighurs sometimes became overbearing and troublesome.42 There were, moreover, tensions between barbarian and Chinese officers, as well as conflicts between various competing barbarian commanders. But perhaps the most vivid illustration of the dangers involved in utilizing foreigners was the famous rebellion of the \"mixed-breed\" barbarian, An Lu-shan, which the Uighur heir apparent had helped combat in its early stages. Contemporary observers saw this uprising not as a civil war between the central government and a local \"warlord,\" but rather as a conflict between the Chinese and a barbarian. Chinese historians went so far, in fact, as to maintain that the rebellion occurred \"because An Lu-shan and other barbarians were given important military and political offices.\"43 Whatever the merits of this view, we may safely assume that An did not rate a biography in Li Te-yü's I-yü kuei-chung chuan; and although foreign troops and individual barbarian commanders assisted in the restoration of imperial rule, and helped sustain the Tang dynasty for nearly a century and a half after the revolt, resentment and distrust of barbarians became increasingly evident as neo-Confucianism rose to prominence.\n\nThe Use of Foreigners in Post-T'ang Times\n\nChinese anti-foreignism, already on the rise in the later years of T'ang, received reinforcement from neo-Confucianism, with its emphasis on the superiority of Chinese culture and the closer identification of Confucianism with that culture. At the same time, the stress on civil virtues and the growing importance of the vaunted examination system as a channel for upward mobility led to a general decline in martial spirit.44 Yet even as China turned inward, her ever-present need for foreign military and administrative expertise assured that outsiders would continue to find their way into the Chinese service. This proved true in the Sung, when specially trained \"barbarian troops\" (fan-ping) operated against internal and external enemies, and barbarian commanders (fan-chiang) such as Kuo Yao-shih (a surrendered Liao officer) rendered similar service. Kuo is particularly noteworthy for having led a military force known as the Ever-Victorious Army (Ch'ang-sheng chün) which, in some respects, resembled the contingent with the same designation raised by Frederick Townsend Ward in the latter stages of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).45", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n19\n\nof the army hindered the growth of nationalistic sentiment among Chinese soldiers. Locally raised, armed, and trained, most Chinese troops had little sense of national identification.44 The great majority of Chinese soldiers remained illiterate and uninformed.\n\nNot surprisingly, the Chinese military contributed little bureaucratic talent to the civil sector. In fact, the Manchus actively discouraged this tendency. With few notable exceptions (e.g., Liu Ming-ch'uan), the Ch'ing government avoided the appointment of military men to high posts in the bureaucracy. Throughout the nineteenth century, the virtually unchanged civil service examination system remained the accepted channel of bureaucratic mobility. Only after the Sino-Japanese War did this begin to change.45\n\nThe Ch'ing military did nothing to promote social change. Indeed, it tended to reflect the least modern aspects of Chinese society. Even in the new-style armies of Li Hung-chang and others, personal ties of blood, friendship, or local affinity often counted for more than expertise, thus helping to militate against the introduction of new ideas and influences.46\n\nThere is no evidence to suggest that the Chinese military contributed significantly to urbanization or to the cultural transformation of Chinese soldiers. Although some troops received exposure to limited Western influences through contact with foreign instructors or temporary residence in treaty port areas, the lifestyle of most Chinese soldiers changed imperceptively. Manchu troops remained isolated in Banner garrisons, and Chinese troops continued to wear Chinese uniforms and the Manchu-imposed queue. Ch'ing military forces ate Chinese food, lived in Chinese housing, and often even reverted to Chinese-style weapons.47 The existence of widespread corruption and opium smoking, coupled with the lack of modern medical and other facilities, neither improved the living conditions of the average Chinese soldier nor altered his expectations.48\n\nThe disastrous effects of the Sino-Japanese War on China are too well-known to require elaboration.49 Ironically, however, Japan contributed substantially to China's military modernization and political transformation in the post-war era, providing large numbers of advisers and instructors, as well as a variety of educational opportunities for Chinese students in Japan.50 Mutatis mutandis, we may say that Japan in late nineteenth century China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207674, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Teochiu ethnicity in urban Hong Kong\n\n47\n\nThere are no comparable local level organizations in the urban areas,* though the government has encouraged the development of local-level urban neighborhood associations (Kaifongs), which are presumed to reflect local opinion and to be effective in influencing government decisions affecting the local area. The Kaifongs in resettlement estates with which I am familiar currently fulfill neither of these functions and are hardly considered organizations worthy of much effort to control. Teochiu have primarily been \"isolationist\" in devoting attention and effort to developing their own associations into what are clearly the most active and representative organizations in the local area. The local Kaifongs have thus not become an important focus of interethnic competition. Kaifong associations in other areas of Hong Kong are at times more active in local affairs. They appear to be particularly active when organizing local protest against new governmental policy which would adversely affect local residents. Hong Kong's newspapers periodically carry stories telling of the efforts of particular Kaifongs to mobilize support of local residents against new policy.\n\nThe primary functions of Kaifongs have been to provide social welfare services, serve as a communication channel to government, and to provide prestigious positions for ambitious local leaders (Kan, 1970:95). Kan describes the general image of Kaifongs in the following manner:\n\nthe more 'generalistic' orientation of the Kaifongs is more amenable to the government than is the 'particularistic' orientation of the clan, district, and dialect associations. For this reason, the majority of the population as well as the government itself have believed that the Kaifongs may become the most effective intermediaries between government and people. (Kan, 1970:94).\n\n*The City District Office scheme, initiated in 1968, is intended to bridge the communication gulf between the masses of people in urban areas and government. City District Officers are charged with assessing the overall impact of government policy, and with maintaining contact with all local organizations. In effect, the purpose of the scheme is to \"provide the public with a local manifestation of the Government... (The City District Officer Scheme, 1969: title page).\n\nFor brief discussions of divergent government policy in the New Territories and urban area, see Report by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, The City District Officer Scheme, 1969; Wong, 1975; and Miners, 1975.\n\nSee Annual Departmental Reports of the District Commissioner, New Territories, for brief descriptions of the Rural Committees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "166 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nIn 1868 T. T. Cooper, a British merchant in Burma, came to Shanghai and attempted to improve on Blakiston's feat. His venture was partly financed by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. Cooper went up the Yangtze to Chungking, and then overland to Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan. Here he received permission from the Governor General to travel on through Szechwan and Tibet to India; but he met such determined opposition and hostility from the lamas on the Tibetan border, where he was imprisoned for five weeks, that he was forced to turn back. \n\nIn the following year, Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, sent Robert Swinhoe of the China Consular Service to investigate trade prospects on the Upper Yangtze. Vice-Admiral Keppel, R.N. was making a survey of the river, and Swinhoe's party, which included Alexander Michie and Robert Francis of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and two naval surveyors, travelled to Ichang on H.M.S. Opussum. This was the first time a steamship had reached Ichang, and the Chinese pilot refused to go any further. A junk was hired for the passage through the Gorges to Chungking, and soundings and surveys taken en route. The surveyors, however, gave an unfavourable report on the feasibility of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze. They particularly commented on the force of the current, lack of suitable anchorages, intricacy of navigation because of the changeable channel, and so on. They also thought descent would be even more difficult than ascent. The chief engineer of Opossum described a sample of coal obtained half way between Ichang and Chungking as resembling good anthracite in appearance, but requiring large furnaces and a long time for combustion. \n\nThis was the most thorough navigational survey of the Upper Yangtze, and many of the factors militating against steam navigation between Ichang and Chungking were investigated and made known. The bed of the river falls 470 feet in the 360 miles between the two places, and this fall of one and a third feet per mile is the cause of the strong currents and rapids in this section of the river. The most difficult stretch is the first half of the Upper River between Ichang and Wanhsien, where the most difficult rapids and gorges are encountered. The Ichang Gorge begins five miles above Ichang, and then come the Ox Liver and Horse's Lung Gorges, and the Hsintan Rapid immediately after the latter. The most spectacular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207823, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "196\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\ntime than I could give it; and I am aware that I raise more questions than I can answer.\n\n11. It seems to me, if I may interpret behaviour only intermittently glimpsed, that administrators in the New Territories today are often in the dark about the kind and extent of the influence wielded by the men known in official language as Village Representatives. Are they elders or do they in some sense stand in opposition to elders? Are they mere spokesmen or do they in fact exercise independent power? Are they supported generally by their 'constituencies' or do they represent factions? Are their motives selfish or are they attempting to maintain and improve the general welfare? Do they provide a satisfactory channel for the expression of public opinion or do they represent as a class some sort of New Territories elite cut off from the ideas and aspirations of the ordinary people? Of course, the New Territories do not, even traditionally, form a homogeneous area; leadership in one of the big settlements in the Yuen Long District must differ in its sources and expression from leadership in a small Hakka village in the east. If, in gross terms, villages differ from one another in their clan composition, their riches, their education, and their contacts with the wider world, then we may assume a priori that their leaders will be different kinds of person. Moreover, the situation becomes further complicated by the role of immigrants in supplying a source of support (or not supplying it, as the case may be). There can be no simple rule for determining that the New Territories will have such and such a kind of leader. The question then arises whether we can isolate some typical situations in which particular characteristics of leadership are likely to be found. Again, formal leadership as exemplified by the Village Representative cannot realistically be treated independently of other institutions in which, within local communities and groupings of them, interests are promoted, disputes settled, and political decisions made.\n\n12. Let us consider how the predecessors of present-day administrators saw and tackled the problem of leadership. To deal with the newly leased territory the Administration set up a land system, which was in its day a workable compromise between traditional Chinese land tenure and the requirements of a western bureaucracy, and, after an abortive attempt to systematise (in the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899) what it romantically thought to be the customary mode of local government and law, achieved a practical solution", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207836, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH In the N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n209\n\n30. Were they elders? In the situation found by the first British administrators I think we may distinguish four kinds of ‘leader', all of whom, at some time or other, might be labelled with the English word 'elder'. There were the gentry (shan sz) the titled scholars and their relatives, marked off definitely in their cultural and political status. They were of course few in number and distributed very unevenly among the villages. We come next to three groups to whom the term fu lo might be applied. There were village constables ('ti-pao') and the heads of such other official groupings as a particular magistrate might choose to recognise; these men forming the routine channel between state and people, were subject to the contempt of both and only in foreign eyes, and then only sporadically, might be seen to be such persons as merited the title of 'elder'.\n\n31. When we turn to the next group we are in the realm of clan organisation. In the language of anthropologists, the clan was segmented. That is to say, the clan as a whole was socially and ritually a unit in respect of the main ancestral hall, but within it lesser units crystallised about more immediate ancestors in such a way that, in the most developed systems, there was a complex of lesser units nesting within greater, each unit being in principle defined in terms of an ancestral hall and its associated estate. (This is a big subject which hardly bears summary treatment; for all the qualifications which I should ideally have entered here I must refer the reader to my Lineage Organization in Southeastern China, London, 1958.) Every unit defined in the hierarchy from household at the bottom to the clan at the top was headed, in theory at least, by a man who came to his position by his seniority in generation and age. The clan-head was the oldest man in the most senior surviving generation. (He might not be the oldest man in the clan, for he might be younger than a member of a generation below him; and in such cases his generation seniority might be waived in favour of the older man). Similarly, in the primary segments (fong) into which the clan was divided, usually on the basis of descent from the several sons of the founder, the heads were the oldest men in the senior generation. And likewise in the lesser segments (also called fong). These were the elders of the clan.\n\n32. But since they came to their position by the natural processes of biology and time, there was no safeguard against the accession", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207838, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 211\n\n35. Village Representatives differ among themselves in respect of the 'constitutional' conditions in which they come into office. In some communities, perhaps the majority, elections never take place, the Village Representative commanding enough general influence to enter unopposed. In others a ballot is held and then the question of the franchise arises, especially in regard to the newly immigrant population who can lay no claim to be established villagers and whose interests have nevertheless to be represented. If they are in fact given the vote then it must be because each candidate has decided that he can win their support. In the Tai Po District, and I suppose generally in the New Territories, the vote is given to the heads of households, so that the electorate may be said generally to represent mature male opinion.\n\n36. Who would be a Village Representative? He draws no pay and belongs to a body, the Rural Committee, which has no formal powers. But in fact candidates are forthcoming, and there is evidence that many men are willing to work hard in office. They gain prestige, and if they are ambitious enough, they may eventually reach the Heung Yee Kuk. Certainly, Village Representatives give the impression of being very busy men, running constantly to the District Office, mediating between the Administration and their constituents, and consulting with one another. From the Administration's point of view Village Representatives are what their name implies, but it is a matter of common observation that in their own communities they are called 'village heads' (ts'uen cheung). What power do they in effect have? They are not a sole channel through which relations between the villagers and the Administration flow, for any individual is free to approach the District Office or one of its staff in the field, and many exercise this right freely, especially in areas where communications are good. But a villager's claim on the attention of officials is presumably strengthened when he has his Representative (his headman from his point of view) to speak for or stand by him, and from this position the Village Representative is able to extract a power advantage which in reality raises him above the status of a mere mouthpiece for his constituency. Again, when he is called upon to represent to the Administration the state of opinion in his community on a particular issue or to aid in conveying to the community an instruction from the Administration, the Village Representative is able to some extent to manipulate the reactions of his people, perhaps sometimes for his own ends,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208210, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nNatrix aequifasciata Barbour\n\n233\n\nThe first specimen of this species known from Hong Kong was sent to me by the Police on 8 May 1978 for identification. It is a juvenile, having bitten the boy who caught it in a stream near Shing Mun Reservoir in the New Territories on 7 May 1978.\n\nA second specimen, also immature, was kindly given to me by Dr. Frank F. Reitinger. He had found it inside a tunnel in a catchment channel near Shek Kong Village in the New Territories while collecting at night on 17 June 1978.\n\nAccording to Pope (1935, p.95), Natrix aequifasciata is an inhabitant of mountain brooks and is known from various localities in Kwangsi, Kwangtung, Hainan, and Fukien in China. In a recent publication (Anon., 1977), it is listed also for Yunnan, Kweichow, Kiangsi, and Chekiang provinces in China.\n\nOpisthotropis balteatus (Cope)\n\nOn 25 May 1977 I received a live immature female of this snake from Mr. R. J. Clibborn-Dyer, who had found it early that day on the Ting Kok Road close to Shuen Wan in the New Territories. The place where this specimen was found was beside an abandoned waterlogged paddy-field, through which a stream flowed into the sea.\n\nOpisthotropis balteatus is known to occur in Southern China (including Hainan), Vietnam, and Cambodia. It frequents mountain streams, and Pope (1935, p.168) concludes it to be an inhabitant of low to moderate altitudes.\n\nOpisthotropis kuatunensis Pope\n\nTwo immature specimens of this little-known snake were given to me by Mr. Jerry K. S. Lee, who collected them in the central area of the New Territories mainland. The first was found at about midnight on 16/17 November 1974 in a catchment channel near Shek Kong Village. The second he found on the night of 13/14 July 1978 in a stream at an altitude estimated to be about 823 metres on Tai Mo Shan.\n\nThe type and fifteen paratypes of this species were collected by Pope in Chungan Hsien in north-western Fukien, China. In describing the habits of Opisthotropis kuatunensis, Pope (1935, p.170) remarks that: ‘... it inhabits the highest forest cascades of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208211, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 250, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "234\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nmountains about Kuatun and Sanchiang.... It is secretive, hiding by day in the beds of the streams and apparently prowling by night.\" The only other record of the distribution of this species of which I am aware lists it for both Fukien and Chekiang (Anon., 1977).\n\nDoubtless the specimen found in a catchment channel near Shek Kong had been carried down with water collected from a stream at a higher altitude, most likely from Tai Mo Shan.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAnonymous (Compiled by the Amphibians and Reptiles Research Department of The Biological Research Institute of Szechwan Province)\n\n1977 Systematic Keys to China's Reptiles. (In Chinese) Press, Peking.\n\nBoulenger, G. A.\n\n1912 A Vertebrate Fauna of the Malay Peninsula. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor and Francis, London.\n\nPope, C. H.\n\n1935 The Reptiles of China. Natural History of Central Asia, Vol. 10. The American Museum of Natural History, New York.\n\nSmith, M. A.\n\n1935 Sauria. Reptilia and Amphibia, Vol. 2. The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Taylor and Francis, London.\n\nHong Kong, 20 July 1978\n\nJ. D. ROMER\n\nTHE PUBLIC BOTANIC GARDEN OF HONG KONG\n\nSir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from April 1854 to May 1859, was a Governor with wide interests. In his History of Hong Kong, George Endacott relates (pp. 104-105):\n\nHe cared for cultural things; he set up a museum in one of the rooms of the Supreme Court to the annoyance of the court officials, and he was the leader of the local branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was also very keen to set up a public Botanic Garden, and lectured to the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong on its value in spreading knowledge of Chinese trees, woods and fibres.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208547, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 4, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n15\n\nurgent consent of the United States Chiefs of Staff to detach a British naval force from the British Pacific Fleet to accept Japan's surrender and assume full powers of military administration in the colony.63 The Japanese accepted defeat on 14 August. However, the British Pacific Fleet assigned for service at Hong Kong, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, did not arrive until 30 August. During this interval of a fortnight, the question of Hong Kong sorely tried the British government and placed the United States government in an uncomfortable position.\n\nHong Kong again became a serious point of contention between Britain and China. This time the argument was not whose sovereignty was to be set up but who was to receive Japan's surrender there. Despite the assurances given by Chiang Kai-shek on 16 August, and repeated on 24 August, that China had \"no territorial ambitions\" in Hong Kong and regarded it \"as a matter which would require eventual settlement through diplomatic channel\", the British Foreign and Colonial Offices insisted that Sir Cecil Harcourt receive Japan's surrender on behalf of Britain by virtue of her sovereignty over Hong Kong.64\n\nThe prime minister, now C.R. Attlee, appealed to the American president for assistance. Fortunately for Britain, Truman, who had assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April, was in favour of a cautious policy. While being conscious of his predecessor's views regarding the future status of Hong Kong, he, however, decided to adhere to the \"recognition of the established rights\", although he told both Britain and China that such recognition \"did not in any way represent U.S. views regarding the future status of Hong Kong.\" General Douglas MacArthur was therefore instructed to arrange for the surrender of Hong Kong to the British commander.65 Again fortunately for Britain, MacArthur was known for \"his support for the cause of the British Empire in the Far East.\" In fact in October 1944 he had specifically expressed that he \"fully appreciated the need for British forces to recapture Hong Kong.\"66\n\nChiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, insisted on his right to accept Japan's surrender at Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of the China theatre. He was therefore most distressed by Truman's agreement with the British. To avoid embarrassing Truman, Chiang now suggested that the Japanese forces in Hong Kong should surrender to his representative in a ceremony in which both", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208610, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "40 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nenough, but their range was inadequate and the planes flew just above their fire and dropped bombs upon targets with impunity. It was reported, however, that one plane was shot down with an anti-aircraft gun. Of course, there was not a single British fighter in the air to oppose the Japanese. The two or three antiquated crates that were seen occasionally flying around before the war were perhaps only trainers or observation planes. On the first and second nights of hostilities the drone of planes was heard around midnight, and a few planes were evidently taking off and landing at Kai Tak. Our first reaction to this was that they might be British planes arriving from Singapore, to aid in the defense of Hong Kong, but these sporadic flights soon stopped, and we learnt later that there were the ordinary CNAC or commercial planes which were being flown away to safer havens, and at the same time taking a few important people out of the Colony. The Japanese had the air entirely to themselves, and to my observation there were never more than ten to twelve planes in action at the same time. \n\nIn comparison with former days, there was comparatively little shipping in the harbor at the outbreak of hostilities. The few ocean freighters were either scuttled or set on fire in Kowloon Bay or in Lyemoon channel, by their captains. It may be that a couple were bombed, I do not know. There was a number of small river craft anchored near Kowloon, and of course the usual ferries, harbor tugs and a considerable fleet of Chinese junks huddled together in the typhoon shelters. At about the second or the third day of the war, every small ship and tug, including river passenger boats and ferries, got into motion and began moving slowly up and down the harbor fairway. Apparently this was to avoid being hit by bombs or shells. \n\nDuring this time I watched a small tug, perhaps a navy tug, calmly set out from Kowloon to cross to Hong Kong. As it pulled away from its anchorage a train of shells began falling in its wake. However, it kept on majestically and quite unconcernedly on its way, and though the shells fell closer and closer to its stern, it reached the navy yard in safety, and then as calmly turned out into the harbor again. At the same time, a small British destroyer, the Thracian backed slowly out of its berth in the Navy Yard, turned around and headed westward out of the harbor. No shells hit it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208697, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n127\n\nhave been uniformly courteous to us, except under the eyes of their masters and I think they realize that their position is a precarious one. They are, however, pretty cruel at times to the Chinese.\n\nExcept army trucks, there is no transport in the city. On the Pokfulam Road, however, the Chinese have resurrected a few very small wooden carts with tiny iron wheels which they laboriously pull along up the grades of the winding Island Road. Only a few bus routes are in operation. The Aberdeen route is running; the University route via Caine Road is in operation, and the Stanley run, with a bus every two hours, completes the service. The trams, of course, are running and quite crowded. Ferry service has been resumed, but on a very limited scale. I speak only for Hong Kong, as I know little about conditions over in Kowloon. As for purely private cars, practically none are seen in the streets, all having been confiscated and shipped to Japan. A taxi service was attempted but the fares were prohibitive.\n\nThe Dairy Farm is functioning under, of course, Japanese management and control. However, over half the dairy herd has been shipped out of the Colony to Formosa and Japan. A few British overseers have been retained. The milk is being sold for thirty yen a small bottle, but it is of very watery consistency. No butter is available.\n\nAs for the once flourishing harbor, it is now bare of shipping, save for an occasional Japanese freighter. Occasionally, a destroyer or two or a small cruiser are seen in the harbor, but they come and go. As will be remembered, the regular east channel leading to the harbor has been blocked with scuttled and burned ships, so all vessels now enter Hong Kong by the west channel, which passes just beneath Bethany, so we have a splendid view of all incoming and outgoing ships. Now and then we will see a steamer limping into port, disabled and apparently sinking. Once a convoy of some seven or eight ships entered and left the harbor, and on two occasions we saw a very large trans-Pacific liner like the Asama or Chichibu Maru enter and leave. On another occasion, a small destroyer engaged in maneuvers ran aground just to the south of Bethany on a point near the Dairy Farm, but was later pulled off by tugs. Before the war, the British were assembling ten thousand ton fabricated ships in Kowloon, and apparently the Japanese found one of these under construction, as later on we saw it under-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208698, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "128\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\ngoing its trial run. Quite a string of small landing barges were once seen leaving the harbor. At Aberdeen in the narrow channel there are a number of small river steamers sunk or scuttled, and the Japanese are attempting to salvage them. They have also succeeded in raising the river gunboat Moth, and its recommissioning was given quite some space in the local English paper.\n\nDuring our stay at Bethany we had a number of visitors: the Jesuits from Wah Yan College, as also from the Seminary at Aberdeen; Father Haughey from the Salesians, some Italian Fathers from the Cathedral and the French Fathers, as also a few laymen, friends of Camp days, among whom was our genial chef, Mr. Gingles, with his side-kick, Dr. Molthen.\n\nAcross from Bethany is Nazareth, the polyglot printing press establishment, and there we found the Superior, Father Biotteau, still holding the fort, along with one companion, Father Morel. Needless to say, the Printing Press is not now in operation, and the other Fathers normally stationed here left some time previous to our arrival for Indo-China. Later on, also, a number of French Sisters left St. Paul's Hospital for Indo-China.\n\nShortly after the occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese announced that they intended to build a large shrine just above the Botanical Gardens to commemorate the heroes of Hong Kong. They began surveying the site, beginning quite close to the Cathedral, and evidently it was to be a wonderful affair. Subscriptions were asked for from the local Chinese and everybody was expectant. However, as time wore on, the project seemed to have gotten out of the limelight, and now it seems it has been abandoned. However, a small monument was erected on one of the small hills facing the harbor.\n\nThe 25th of October was the Feast of Christ the King. On that day, there is an outdoor procession at the Cathedral to which the faithful come from the various parishes both in the city and from Kowloon. As we had received an invitation to participate, we started out for the city. As we neared the city we noticed an unusual number of Japanese planes in the air. This was not out of the ordinary as planes were more or less constantly flying about for various purposes, and we did not attach any special significance to this increased number on this glorious afternoon. As the Holy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209026, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "156\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nremoval to the housing estate, to ensure that a full scale excavation programme could begin in late 1980. Thereby, through uninterrupt-ed intensive work, we hoped to make up part of the lost time.\n\nIn the interim one other incident which showed the strength of village feeling about the fung shui hill occurred in November 1979. In this case, a demolition contract had been let for the houses in the old Chung Mei and Lo Uk villages. The Rural Committee and the village elders had agreed, but unexpectedly there was opposition when the contractor began to move his bulldozer into position to start the work. This time, it came from the young men of the village, and we were informed by the Rural Committee Chairman that they could not be persuaded to agree.\n\nUpon investigation I found that it was not (in the main) the demolition which was being objected to, but rather the route by which the bulldozer was to obtain access to the old village sites. This was over the face of the same fung shui hill that had been causing the prolonged delay, and naturally it was being objected to.\n\nI greatly wished the contract to proceed, on the principle that, when you are dealing with villagers, it is bad to go back on a deci-sion reached with their leaders, besides having to explain to the Finance Branch of the Government Secretariat the claims from the thwarted contractor. However, when I saw how things were, and being mindful of the wisdom of not interfering with the hill, I instructed staff to take the bulldozer by an alternative route. This would still open bare earth on the hillside but it would be out of the sight of the villages, which was what mattered, and it would be on a route to be formed for roadworks at a later stage. In a meet-ing held in my office, the twelve or so young men who had insisted on accompanying the elders, were perfectly agreeable to this solution and the demolition continued.\n\nThe end of the story is quickly told. The residents of the four villages moved into the new public housing accommodation when it was ready for occupation, the Project Manager (P.W.D.) was able to let his contract, and the successful contractor was at last able to carry out uninterrupted major excavation of soil from the hill-sides. There was trouble at the seashore where mariculturists had to be moved to enable a pier to be built and a channel dredged for the barges that would take away the soil to the Tsuen Wan Bay reclamation: but that is another story!\n\nHong Kong, June 1981\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209257, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "146\n\nWEI PEH-TI\n\nNavigation channels were so situated that the passage into Canton foreign ships had to take because of their deep drafts was well protected, Juan Yüan thought. \"The western channel of the Pearl estuary from Macau [where the barbarians live] to Canton is too shallow for foreign vessels because they have a deep draft. They, therefore, must use the Lantao Channel into the estuary, then proceed northward between Lintin Island and the Nan-t'ou Peninsula, straight up to the Boca Tigris and into the Pearl River.\"8\n\nJuan Yuan had found the military installations outside the Boca Tigris generally satisfactory. Fortifications inside the Boca Tigris, on the other hand, were found by Juan Yüan to be less than tolerable. Immediately upon his return to Canton, he sent a memorial requesting the Emperor's approval for construction of several forts. Apparently he was so impressed with the forts at Macau, especially Fortaleza da Santiago, built in 1629, that he copied its design for a fort on Tiger Island, situated at the entrance to the Bogue.\"Juan Yuan was proud of this fort, financed by the merchants of the co-hong to the tune of 60,000 taels, both for its strategic location and for its equipment.\"\n\nThe Co-hong (kung-hang) was a guild organized in 1720 by the hong merchants of Kwangtung and Fukien. It adopted a code of thirteen articles to regulate trade at Canton. After 1782, its members controlled the foreign trade at Canton altogether. Business firms engaged in foreign trade, the hong (yang-hang), as well as individual hong merchants (yang-shang), rose and fell during the era when Chinese foreign trade was confined to Canton.\n\nThe unique functions served by the hong merchants gave them certain privileges. These privileges carried with them certain obligations without necessarily exempting them from government prosecutions should they fall afoul of the law. Several hong merchants had been awarded honorary official ranks with all the attendant status symbols. In addition to subscribing to programmes usually expected of members of the gentry, these hong merchants had to assume financial responsibilities for other public projects during this period as well, such as coastal defense. Even more than the officials, they were subject to imperial pleasure and ire. The second merchant by the name of Howqua, also known as Puiqua, Wu Tun-yüan, for instance, enjoyed the honoraria of a third-rank official in happier days, including the status symbol of wearing the sapphire (clear, blue stone) button of the third rank on his hat.1 He had worked closely with Juan Yuan on several controversial cases involving jurisdiction over foreigners from 1820 to 1823. Even then,\n\n12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209265, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "154\n\nWEI PEH-T'I\n\nthe Chinese point of view, Juan Yuan reported Barrowcliff as the guilty party in his memorial to the Emperor dated 12 December 1820. It was at this time that he wrote the secret memorial proposing strong measures to control the British, and receiving in return instructions from the Emperor to hold to a more moderate line.**\n\nPerhaps Juan Yuan only displayed the willingness to make the best of a situation in the Barrowcliff case, the kind of co-operative spirit that led the British to refer to him as a “man of singular moderation and wisdom”35 only because no opium was involved. The next major crisis over jurisdiction took place not quite a year later. By then, the new Emperor had proclaimed a policy to strengthen the law prohibiting importation of opium and exportation of silver. In October 1821, Terranova, an Italian seaman serving on an American ship, the Emily, accidentally killed a Chinese boat woman. He was sacrificed to Chinese justice in order to prevent the Canton government from investigating further into the cargo of opium that was on various foreign ships in port at that time. This is a well-known case in the West and is often cited as an example of the barbarity of Chinese justice. Terranova, who had been turned over to Chinese officials, was strangled to death as punishment for having taken a life.\n\nThe incident arose when on 29 September, a boat woman, Kuo-Liang shih (surnamed Kao née Liang), who spoke \"pidgin\", sculled her sampan to the Emily, peddling fruit. Terranova, leaning against the railing of the ship above her, lowered her five copper cash in a basket. Not satisfied with the number of oranges and bananas he had been given by the woman, he negotiated further. Somehow, the argument became heated, ending with Terranova throwing a pottery jar at the woman, hitting her on the head, cracking her skull, causing her to fall into the water, and resulting in her death. This was a serious matter, for, in addition to murder, there were other violations. Terranova, as a foreigner, was buying goods from a Chinese directly without going through the regular channel of the hong merchants. The security merchant of the Emily was Exchin, but, as in other serious cases over jurisdiction, Puiqua, as head of the hong merchants, was also involved.\n\nJuan Yüan's investigations showed that the act of the jar striking Kuo-Liang shih on the head had been witnessed by another woman, Ch'en-Li shih, who had shouted for help. A worker for the Canton customs, Yeh Hsia, in a boat nearby, attempted a rescue, but failed. The body of the dead woman was not pulled out of the water until her husband arrived at the scene of the accident. The injury on the woman's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209621, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 278, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "256\n\n. \n\n! examinations in China in 1905, brought about a new situation in which command over the classical learning was no longer the channel to position and wealth. The official report on the New Territories in 1912 contains the following remarks: Roads and railways have indeed been made through the centre of the Northern district and country folks who used to require a full day to reach Hong Kong can now go in and out and do their shopping in the day. More and more of the young men from the country have been tempted into Hong Kong or abroad in quest of higher wages, and many have returned with their savings to their native villages: money has been brought into the country to purchase land required for roads and railways.\n\nThe increase in wealth led to a rise in the cost of living. The same report gave a list of the average prices of staple food in 1900 and 1911, showing that rice had risen from $4 to $8 per picul and pork from $15 to $25. The average increase was almost doubled. The only cost which remained almost stable, at least at Sheung Shui, was the school fees, which were in 1912 from $3 to $6 per annum for each boy. Thus, as the report says, \"In spite of the rise of cost of living, there is practically no family which cannot obtain elementary education for the sons of the family.” Yet, the same also meant a very low income for the village teacher. According to the recollections of a village elder whose father gave up teaching in 1913, the general income of a teacher was from $4 to $6 a month, with small presents in kind on feast days. But the income might vary with the come and go of the students. Thus, the standard of living of a teacher became in fact poorer than it had been in former days. This made the teaching profession much less attractive in the short run, and in the long run led to a lowering of the prestige of the village scholars as well as to a drop in the practical value of learning.\n\nIn Sheung Shui, where the lineage had long been known for its deliberate efforts in promoting education, we have evidence which seems to show that there may have been a decline in village school attendance after the turn of the century. The observation is based partly on the oral testimony of ten informants who were born between 1893 and 1903, reaching their school age", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "its street traders, and will continue working eastwards in preparation for the second book,\n\nOther activities\n\nApart from the more routine aspects of our work, this year has been a busy one for the Council in other respects. A number of new proposals took shape and have either produced results or show promise for the future. Perhaps the most successful has been a series of eight 15-minute talks on buildings of historical significance, broadcast on English Channel 4 of Radio Hong Kong in February and March 1984. The subjects included Government House, the Supreme Court, Flagstaff House (formerly the General's residence), the Bishop's House and St. Paul's College, together with a number of Chinese buildings, Sam Tung Uk Village, the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road, Tsang Tai Uk at Shatin and Tai Fu Tai at San Tin. With one exception, these talks were undertaken by Council members of the Society, and the fact that we were able to produce them upon request underlines the Council's combined expertise in this line. I should add that we received excellent support on the production side from Ms Tisa Ng, editor of the series and her staff. This venture has been taken a step further by a proposal to publish the talks in an expanded form with plenty of photographs, and the Hon. Editor has this in hand.\n\nWe have also been considering a monograph series of publications, reprinting with commentary basic interesting documents from the past, such as the 1899 Lockhart Report on the New Territories and the 1882 Chadwick report on the sanitary condition of Hong Kong. In this connection, we have hopes of entering into a project with Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, whereby we will produce a number of monographs for consideration with a view to yearly joint publications with the Press. Meantime the University Press has requested us to consider sending their annual catalogue of books on oriental studies, mostly on China and Hong Kong, to our members. On the basis of this expected cooperation, and in view of the OUP's prestige and impressive publication programme, we thought it sensible to agree to this proposal. It will benefit members, and all mailing costs are paid by the Press.\n\nxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209818, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "55\n\nwhich a piece of red paper is attached with the characters (*19**) are erected in the shape of a doorway, i.e., two uprights and one crosspiece. No feast or celebration is required.\n\n(e) \"Sheung leung\" (#) is the more important ceremony and involves the erection of the main ridge-pole of the roof. Several days before the actual ceremony, two unpainted wooden uprights are set up on the building site. On the lucky day chosen, a red painted beam which is traditionally of China fir is placed between two tables or stools. The applicant and his family will worship the centre of the beam, praying for prosperity within the new house. The youths of the village, most of whom will already be assembled, are then invited to hoist the beam up to the uprights and to lash it on. Meanwhile, drums and gongs will be beaten. When the beam is erected, red string will be used to attach the following to it: a piece of red cloth; some small taros (a big taro has many small ones round it), symbolising a mother with many children; two small bags of red cloth, one containing kuk and the other mai* (representing riches in much rice); a red bamboo sieve (the numerous holes represent mouths of a large family); two bundles of red chopsticks (the Cantonese faai chi for chopsticks is punned into faai chi, meaning quick sons); several onions (Cantonese chung is punned into chung meng meaning clever); several garlic bulbs (Cantonese suen tau is punned into, meaning ingenious); one pair of black trousers (Cantonese foo is punned into foo kwai †, meaning rich); two paper lanterns (Cantonese tang is punned into tim ting, meaning getting a son). A feast is then held, to which the applicant invites clansmen, friends and relatives, and specially baked cakes are distributed to children. In due course, the remainder of the house is built round the beam. The various articles attached to it are left hanging, except that for some reason the pair of black trousers is usually detached.\n\n(f) Tin Kei () represents digging the foundations. A small channel is first dug to one side of the building site and a number of stones or bricks are placed on top of each other inside the channel,\n\n(g) When the house is completed, a form of house-warming is held. Two red painted rice measures (tau) are filled, one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209859, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "96\n\nIn the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung.\n\nA very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down.\n\nTour of the Islands\n\nTo get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour.\n\nStonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau (\"High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think.\n\nTsingyi: (literally \"Green Clothes\": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka.\n\nIn 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch:\n\nIn proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209860, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "97\n\nin the N. E. corner. My pilot not being acquainted with the channel, I got a fisherman's boat to go up with one of the Chinamen I had on board, to see if he could recognise his property. He shortly returned on board, saying his boat was there, and that the other boats were pirates. I immediately stood in under easy steam, when the pirates seeing my intention, made sail, and ran through the channel towards Wanchowchow (Stonecutters). I fired a few shots at them, but they soon got under the cover of the land. Then sending my boats after them, and running round outside the Island. I had the satisfaction of driving them on shore, and destroying five, as well as liberating two market-boats with several passengers who had been in confinement for several days.\n\nThree captured men are sworn to by one of the owners of the boats, and I have sent them in irons to Hong Kong.\n\nThese piratical boats had all the rebel flag flying and fired upon our boats, without however doing any damage.\n\nMa Wan (\"Horse Bay\"). This island is low-lying, although the geological structure is the same as Tsingyi and Lantau. The east coast has a fine bay, almost unapproachable for rocks. The inhabitants are mostly Hakka. One of the Customs stations built for the so-called \"Blockade of Hong Kong\" during the 1870s and 1880s still stands on this island; it is now used as a school.\n\nThe waters around Ma Wan are known as Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\"). The name is apt since Kapshuimun has about the swiftest tiderip of any channel in Hong Kong. It is 25 fathoms deep. It is the track of all steamers from Hong Kong going to and from the Delta. Opposite Ma Wan, on the south shore of Kapshuimun, that is, on the northernmost tip of Lantau, are the only wolframite mines in the islands.\n\nLantau. This is our biggest island, two and a half times the size of Hong Kong Island. Lantau Peak is the highest peak in the Ladrones 3061 feet.\n\nThe northern end is almost deserted except for a few tiny hamlets round Yam O (“Hidden Haven\"), a perfect smugglers'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209872, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "109\n\nNam Tong Island (“Southern Hall Island\"). This island is large and mountainous. Military defence work is currently going on there. It was formerly cultivated, but in 1929 the cultivated area was abandoned. There is an Aga light on the southern point. The channel to the north of this island is \"Buddha's Head Pass\". The harbour within this channel is well sheltered: there is a big temple on the mainland to the north of the channel. The chief place of interest on this island is the old fort near the north point, with a south wall thickened, apparently for mounting cannon. This fort is probably Chinese, perhaps built by pirates.\n\nHere we leave the islands of the South District, and enter the North District as we pass into Port Shelter. The interest of this place lies in its extraordinary geography and geology, and its wonderful beauty. The surf which beats on the high pillared cliffs of High Island, Bluff Island, and Basalt Island dies away as your launch passes into the long calm channels, and under the hills of the mainland there is perfect shelter, though I do not think the anchorages are good. Grassy hills come down to the waters' edge, and near Saikung the sea is studded with diminutive islets.\n\nThe soil of these islands appears extremely barren, as the population of the islands is very small. Fishing seems the chief occupation. Settlements are few. Yim Tin is named after some abandoned salt fields a little to the south of the (Roman Catholic) mission church: Kau Sai (\"West of the Channel\") explains itself. There is also a group of settlements in the southern part of High Island. These have the remarkable names of \"North Fork\", \"Tribute Rice Junks Bay\", and \"White Insect Wax\",32 This group and Yim Tin are the only places in these islands where cultivation is of any extent. \"North Fork\" is a most remarkable place. Someone has lavished money on it, the houses and the ancestral temple are well built, a high platform held up by a big masonry retaining wall stands in front of them, and a small stream by the village is crossed by a fine three-span bridge all of stone: it is the sort of stream for which the rest of the Territory think six stepping stones are ample. I have no idea how these names originated, except that the bay may have been an anchorage for junks carrying the tribute rice north from Canton to Peking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209873, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "110\n\nThe very latest is that some enterprising folk of these parts have committed a piracy on a junk there, and five or six of them are up before the District Officer, South, on a committal charge.\n\nAt the northern end of High Island is the interesting feature called the Dry Channel or Kon Mun. It is a fiord formed by the sunken mouth of the valley running northwest by Lan Nai Wan, which is connected on the west with the other channels. Into it has poured the whole of the silt from the upper valley: and as this point is precisely where the two tidal waves sweeping round High Island meet, the silt is heaped up there without any chance of it getting carried away. Nothing bigger than a small sampan can traverse it, and then only at high water.3\n\nLeaving this fascinating island group by the often stormy route past Conic Island and Fung Head, we reach the mouth of Taipo Harbour, with Kang Chau (a little rock built up of volcanic ash beds), Grass Island, with the fishing village of Tap Mun on it, and Port Island. This last island is uninhabited.\n\nThe islands in Taipo Harbour are mostly of sandstone and shale, but are otherwise of little interest. They are Harbour Island, Centre Island, and lastly, the island near Taipo station where the District Officer, North, lives, though since the causeway carrying the road was built, this is no longer an island.\n\nGoing out again round Bluff Head, we come to another island-studded stretch of sea. Three large and sixteen small islands occupy it, and it is a most beautiful piece of water. Double Island, the first you come to, is in two halves joined by a low, narrow neck: the Crescent Island, beside it, is uninhabited, but Kat (\"Lucky Harbour\") Island, not being very lofty, has a good deal of its surface under cultivation.\n\nThere is yet one more island, and this is in some ways the most curious of all. It lies away across Mirs Bay, two miles from the Chinese coast, from which it draws a good deal of its drinking water by means of waterboats. It is called, very appropriately, Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). When I was there, I did not see any paddy whatever; all cultivation was dry, and often the fields were unterraced and sloping, quite different from other parts of the New Territory, yet the island is populous, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210212, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "162\n\nTHE PEARL RIVER\n\nESTUARY OYSTER INDUSTRY\n\nIN AND AROUND DEEP BAY\n\nR.A. BOWLER, D.S.C. YANG, A.J.E. SMITH*\n\nIntroduction\n\nAn environmental impact assessment (EIA) has recently been made of the dredging and land formation aspects of a proposed reclamation for a new town development at Tin Shui Wai located in the north-west New Territories of Hong Kong as shown in Figure 1 (Binnie & Partners, 1984). Some of the activities considered in the EIA may have an effect on the commercial oyster industry located in nearby Deep Bay (also called Shenzhen Bay) and, accordingly, information was sought as to the structure of the industry, its productivity and the cultivation techniques used. The information was obtained by many interviews with oyster farmers and related organisations both in Hong Kong (HK) and in the People's Republic of China and supplements an earlier review by Morton and Wong in 1975. Figure 1 shows the extent of the oyster beds in Deep Bay and the locations referred to in the paper.\n\nThe Pearl River estuary\n\nThe Pearl River system drains a catchment of 450,000 km2 of which 50% is above 500 m elevation and only 5% consists of lowland delta areas. The catchment is drained by three principal rivers: the Bei Jiang (North River), the Dong Jiang (East River) and the Xi Jiang (West River). The Xi Jiang is the largest, having an estimated length of 2200 km. About 54 million tonnes per year of sediment are released into the estuary and about 20% of this is retained by density-induced water circulation. A net northerly movement of sand up the estuary past the mouth of Deep Bay has been suggested (Binnie & Partners, 1984). Deep Bay is a large shallow bay on the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary adjacent to the deep flood channel of Urmston Road. The Bay has a surface\n\n* The authors work for Binnie & Partners, Hong Kong.\n\nSee Plates 4-6.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210233, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "183\n\nmarsh, which has been enclosed by bunds to form kei wais, (iv) a shallow channel running parallel to the outer bund; (v) a zone of mangrove plants some 15-25 m. wide with Kandelia candel, Avicennia marina and Aegiceras corniculatum as the commonest species, (vi) Deep Bay, which forms part of the estuary of the Pearl River and also receives water from the Sham Chun River and smaller streams. At intervals channels run through the mangrove zone to join channel (iv) beside the outer bund to Deep Bay; water moves along these channels during the rise and fall of the tide and thus the kei wais are filled.\n\nWithin the kei wais are small, irregularly shaped, muddy islands. Essentially all of our results were obtained from Mai Po kei wai No. 7 (total area ca 9.3 ha, area of islands 5.6 ha, area of open water 3.7 ha). This kei wai is 820 × 120 metres with its shorter sides parallel to the shoreline. It is surrounded by a bund which, on the seaward side, is pierced by a sluicegate with a concrete frame. The frame is about 2 m. wide and is usually closed by a gate consisting of heavy wooden planks, placed horizontally, which can be raised or lowered in slots in the concrete frame (Plates 7-9). The sluicegate is essential to the operation of the kei wai because it enables the operator to control exchange of water between the kei wai and the adjoining estuary. The kei wai, like others in the neighbourhood, was held on lease renewable every seven years.\n\nSource of Future Produce\n\nAs already mentioned, an important source of future produce is the adjoining estuary: fry and larvae are carried on the high tide through the open sluicegate into the kei wai where they are \"trapped\" when the gate is closed. Species entering in this way include marine fish, shrimps and crabs. In addition, the source of produce is supplemented and diversified by the operator, who may add fry of tilapia (Sarotherodon mossambicus, syn. Tilapia mossambica) and the brackish-water striped mullet (or grey mullet, Mugil cephalus). Small oysters (Crassostrea gigas) are bought from local fishermen and used to stock oyster beds set up in the vicinity of the sluicegate; their growth period is 1.5 to 3 years.\n\nThe basis of production of the kei wai is the usual two food", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210255, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "11. Fish harvest in progress. The kei wai is almost completely drained, and water is restricted to a pool in the vicinity of the gateway. The fisherman is arranging his net in preparation to throwing it. There is a small oyster-bed in the background.\n\n12. This scene is to the right of Plate 10. A channel runs along the margin of the kei wai and into the pool. A net has been erected across the channel to prevent produce from escaping.\n\n205", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210432, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "20 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\nspecial section of the cemetery somewhat isolated had been set aside for the burial of Japanese. The Japanese had no cemetery of their own. When their numbers began to increase after the turn of the century, the practices associated with their graves created annoyance among expatriates who thought such customs were not appropriate in what they considered to be a cemetery set apart for the burial of Christians. \n\nAs the years passed some of the wealthy Chinese increasingly desired a proper place for the burial of their dead. There were cemeteries for the Chinese, but wealthy members of the community did not regard the conditions of burial in such as suitable to meet their needs. In 1901 the Cemeteries Committee of the Sanitary Board moved to set apart a piece of hillside between the Aberdeen Channel and Deep Water Bay for wealthy Chinese (China Mail, 12 July 1901). For some reason this site did not meet the needs of the group for whom it was intended, for in 1909 a correspondent to the Daily Press claimed that \"The question of proper cemeteries for Chinese has not been approached courageously at all. The authorities for some reason or other seem afraid of it. When the better class of Chinese recently sought a burial ground for their dead, they learned that the Government did not approve of the site suggested at Pokfulam, but no reason was given. Surely the better class of Chinese, whom the Government wish to settle here, have some claims for consideration and respect.” (Weekly Press, 17 April 1909) Their cause was presented to the Sanitary Board by one of its Chinese members, Mr. Lau Chu-pak. In his view, \"the better class of Chinese who had made Hong Kong their permanent home had not a decent cemetery in which to bury their dead, and the Chinese had no control on what were called Chinese Cemeteries. These cemeteries were simply tracts of barren land set apart by the Government for the burial of the Chinese dead of any class. The Government reserved the right of resuming the land and ordering the remains to be exhumed and buried anywhere else the Government might from time to time be pleased to direct”. (Weekly Press, 17 April 1909) \n\nIn February 1909 an application was made to the Sanitary Board by a wealthy Chinese to use some land near Inland Lot", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "62\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nvisited the village only at long intervals. Travelling to and fro they usually hitched a lift to Sai Kung from one of the fishermen, and then went by bus. Their wives, on the other hand, hardly ever left the village, except perhaps to see an opera performance at one of the neighbouring festivals listed above. The 'headman' and his brother normally followed a slightly different pattern. Their shop, a new departure opened shortly before the time of my arrival, required the permanent presence of one of them. The 'headman' had his fingers in a number of enterprises on the mainland, but returned frequently to Kau Sai to deal in pigs (his own and others') and to keep an eye on the illicit still which was his main source of income. He owned a small transport junk. (The other, and larger, shop was owned by an ex-fisherman, at that time permanently resident on shore but sharing fully in the fishermen's ritual and recreational movements). Hakka men being seldom present were not often included in fishermen's sociable gatherings; their social life was elsewhere. The ‘headman', and more especially his shopkeeper brother who was popular, who were present, were exceptions.\n\nAn overview of the various patterns of movement yields two obvious inferences which are as significant as they are self-evident. First, although mobile the fishermen were far from footloose. Not only did many of them (particularly the purse-seiners) return constantly to one particular base, namely Kau Sai, but their movements away from there also took place within a definitely circumscribed area. This comprised, in effect, the waters of Port Shelter and Rocky Harbour as far as Basalt Island, Bluff Island and the Ninepins, with an outlying channel to Shaukiwan or Hong Kong island (from which it was only a 10¢ or 20¢ tram or bus ride to all the bright lights of the city). Only occasionally and for limited purposes did Kau Sai-based boats go beyond the boundaries of this area. It included two market towns, Sai Kung and Shaukiwan, and a number of fishing villages the main ones being at Yim Tin Tsai, Lung Shuen Wan, Kiu Tsui, Pak Sha Wan, Pu To Au).\n\nWith the obvious difference that it contained more than one market and was within fairly easy reach of a great international centre of commerce and industry, this area was closely similar to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211314, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "6\n\nher the confederation grew until, at its height in 1809, it comprised between 50,000 and 70,000 individuals and the 1,200 junks referred to in the introduction.\n\nThe Confederation in action\n\nBy mid-1808 the military success of the confederation was such that the Ch'ing government's policy of sea war had been soundly defeated. The deaths of the Brigade-General of the Bocca Tigris, Lin Kuo-liang, and the Lieutenant-Colonel, Lin Fa, coupled with their losses of material resulted in the reduction of the provincial fleet by half and an even greater penetration of the Pearl River Delta by the pirates.\n\nLin Kuo-liang's replacement, Hsu T'ing-kuei, was defeated in July 1809. Although he managed to destroy most of the White Flag Fleet in the process, he himself was killed and he lost ten of the thirty-five mi-t'ing or rice carriers in his war fleet. The situation was now desperate as pirates were able to destroy government war junks faster than the dockyards could build them, and most of the provincial fleet's auxiliary salt and fishing vessels were out of commission as well.\n\nPirates were now able to bring their penetration of the Pearl River to new heights as Black Flag Fleet leader, Kuo P'o-tai, set out at once on a six-week foray into the inner passage that resulted in the deaths of 10,000 individuals. On August 11, 1809, he burned the customs house at Tzu-ni, ten miles from Canton and sent messengers to the Governor-General warning that if ransom was not forthcoming, the city would be attacked.\n\nAt the same time, the Red Flag Fleet leader, Chang Pao, worked the **outer passage** or main channel of the Pearl River and destroyed two forts near its mouth. At the Second Bar, he sent a fleet of Chinese war junks running, destroyed towns and villages all the way to Pan-yu and Nan-hai counties, and defeated the government's newly-constructed vessels at Sha-wan.\n\nForeigners, too, were alarmed at the strength and audacity of the pirates, who, on September 5, 1809, simultaneously detained the vessels of the Siamese tribute mission in the mouth of the Pearl River and sent\n\nPage 30\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211683, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "73\n\ntwin Thorneycroft semi-diesel engines drove the craft at six or seven knots, a speed by no means excessive when we remember that during the summer the Yangtze ran five knots. Furthest aft were quarters and a galley for the Chinese crew, the “laodah” and his assistants in crime, the engineer, and two deck-hands.\n\nThree of us were now accommodated in the \"Hsun Si\", and settled down to pass the time of day, assisted by the Consul's gramophone, which we had had the foresight to borrow, and his tantalus, which it had fallen to our lot to escort. We did well enough so long as the weather remained calm, but the houseboat was top-heavy, and when the east wind got up against the flow of the river, raising a short choppy sea, the boat would roll alarmingly and bump heavily against the side of the destroyer. The first lieutenant would come along and throw a jaundiced look over the side at his paint, and order us off. We would have to turn out the engineer to start up the engines, and away we would scurry, slapping into the chop, heading for a bend some miles up the river where we could find a lee under the north bank.\n\nThe Chinese authorities on shore had issued orders that no Chinese subject was to communicate with the foreigners in their ships: but the Navy had left guards in the hulks, to which launches passed back and forth; and it was not long before contacts were again established through this channel. For seventy years Chinese and foreigners had lived next door to each other in peace and friendship, and the ties thus formed could not so easily be broken. They had traded together to mutual advantage, they had feasted and toasted each other, they had helped each other in times of difficulty; on either side were memories of pleasant days and kind deeds.\n\nSo at night sampans would creep out in the dark; little gifts of food would be sent off from the shore, and news would be given of the situation. How much damage had been done? Were the native banks still open? Were our servants being ill-treated? Had the Garrison Commander issued any proclamation?\n\nMeanwhile the Rear-Admiral, commanding the Yangtze British Gunboat Flotilla, had chartered a middle river steamer for the evacuees. The S.S. “Kiang Wo\" had sufficient cabin and dining accommodation to take us all, and anchored in the Yangtze for three months the foreign population of Kiu Kiang lived in what came to be known as the \"Floating", "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": 211886, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 301, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "276\n\nwas \"scarfed\" together and \"fished\" and \"dowled\", which operation has rendered it nearly as serviceable as a new one. We cannot use more than about a quarter of the sails yet, and it will take a long time to get the new masts up, and new sails made. Yet we are going along quite favourably considering, with a strong favourable wind.\n\nYesterday we were on the look out for St Paul's and Amsterdam, two small islands in the Southern Ocean. Through the chronometer's being out of order on account of the storm, we had made a wrong reckoning, and did not pass between the islands till after ten o'clock at night, when the captain came and told me to look out of my window and see them, as I was gone to bed. It was too dark to see more than the bare form of them. In fact Amsterdam was the only one I could see from my side of the ship. It is simply a rugged rock, about 15 miles long, and quite uninhabited except by sea-birds, of which a great number were soon flying round the ship.\n\nThis morning when I went on deck they were far out of sight. We ought to get to Java in 12 days if we were in good trim, but in our shattered condition we shall perhaps make nearly double the time. There will be a short stay also at Batavia to lay in stock of masts and spars to repair with. As yet we have been wonderfully favoured by the wind, and notwithstanding the storm and the fortnight tossing about in the Channel, we are four days ahead of the last voyage the ship made to Batavia. We shall now soon be going northward into warmer weather.\n\nThe captain was quite knocked up with the storm, and has not yet got over it. He does not take his meals with us yet, and Capt Moate and I are in no hurry for him to do so, for we get on far better by ourselves. In fact I may say we are good friends, and have been so all the voyage. We have never had a misunderstanding between us, and as long as he does not swear or talk improperly I do not much mind him as a companion, especially as he is a far better scholar than I am, and has resided at Hong Kong, so that I know by this time what I must expect when I get there. I have got him to read some good books, and now and then a little serious chat with him, which he submits to just to oblige me. I know all his personal history, and in fact could write an account of his life with tolerable accuracy. He is thoroughly disgusted with Capt Harper, who is quite an uneducated man, and thinks he is a perfect gent. For my own part, I never disliked anyone more than I do him. I can hardly be civil to him at times; for he acts in such a disgusting manner", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211899, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 314, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "289\n\nEvery few yards you see people bathing. Women come down and go out into the middle of the water up to their shoulders, and then dip and scrub the little brown youngsters and teach them to swim. In places the water is quite alive with them, men, women and children altogether. It is quite disgusting to see such scenes of indecency, but people there seem to think nothing of it.\n\nOn the second day of my walk, I went into town and found a French watchmaker, and got him to put me a new glass, in place of the one I broke in the Channel. I had to pay three rupees, (5/-) for it. Nobody there charges less, and they never do any job to a watch under five rupees. I had a good chat with the old fellow, and got him to repair the hands into the bargain. In his shop I found a young German who could speak almost every European language.\n\nDuring the time I was at Batavia the horse races came off. The plain in front of the Hotel was the race course. Although of course I had nothing to do with the races, I amused myself by looking at the people from the verandah. There was a motley throng of people dressed in their gay holiday clothes. The Malays of all descriptions were dressed in pink cotton clothes. The Chinese in white coats, light blue trousers and straw hats. The Armenians in long flowing robes of yellow or blue, the Arabs somewhat similar, with large turbans. The half-caste and Europeans were dressed as is the universal custom in white. Consequently there was a mixture of colours, as well in dress as in countenance. The fruit sellers were very busy, and seemed to be making a deal of money. The Chinese, with their usual carefulness and forethought, each brought a little bundle of fruit with them so that they might not have to pay through the nose for it. Of the races I can say nothing since I saw nothing; only it pleased me to see a tremendous shower come on in the middle day of the three, and put a stop to the day's fun.\n\nOne day I bought some clothes of the men who infest the place, viz. two kobias, a kind of loose white jacket to sleep in, and wear in the morning, and two pairs of perjaumers, or native loose trousers for the same purpose. Of course people here never think of using bed clothes, and these sleeping clothes are as thin as possible. I also bought a light silk coat, and a pair of white jean trousers.\n\nDuring our stay Captain Moate, unknown to me, got two quart bottles of gin, and got dead drunk. I could not have thought it of him,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211907, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 322, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "in our family prayers, as you sailed down the Channel and set out on your voyage to China. I hope this will find you arrived in Hong Kong, and we shall await with much interest your first communication. There will be just time to answer this before Mrs Smith and I embark D.V. on October 4th.\n\nI am glad to find that Mr Beach is likely to be in China on your arrival. He will kindly direct you until my arrival, as to your course, and I doubt not you will find in him a kind friend, and a prudent counsellor.\n\nMrs Smith if she were with me would write in the expression of our best wishes and kind remembrances.”\n\n(I must omit a lot for want of time.)\n\nI remain, my dear Mr Fryer\n\nYours very sincerely,\n\nG. Victoria.\n\nET\n\n297\n\n^His portrait hangs over the drawing room fire place. I often look at the old chap as he hangs there. From what I have seen and heard of him I cannot help really liking him. Everybody seems to love him and speak of him with the greatest respect and veneration.\n\n^Mr Beach is a good sort of fellow. As rough and blunt as you can imagine, but under the rough exterior I believe he has a manly warm heart. There is no \"gammon” about him. We agree remarkably well together, and he leaves everything to me, although I would rather he should not do so. For a clergyman and chaplain however, I think there is not anything like the amount of the elements of religion in him that are necessary. He is too much like a gay young man.\n\nA Mr Cleverly, the Surveyor General, is a middle aged man, and a thorough gentleman. He pleases me much. Mr Beach goes in a few days to Tien Tsin, where he remains, so that I shall be all alone. He will give up everything to my control, and I can do what I like till the bishop comes.\n\nI had no idea that the institution was so large, or that the duties required", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 415, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "390\n\nStaging this piece has atropaic effects, cleansing the site from harmful influences or malicious spirits. Because opportunities to see \"The White Tiger\" staged are rare, it was felt worth printing a photograph (Plate 23) of the piece as staged at the Lung Yeuk Tau rat siu opera matshed in 1983.\n\nIssei TanakA\n\nBRITISH CHINESE LABOUR CORPS LABOURERS BURIED IN ENGLAND\n\nProbably the only visible reminder of an episode in Sino-British military history in Britain is the group of six graves of Chinese labourers who died during or just after the Great War. Of the two thousand or so who died in Western Europe of the nearly hundred thousand Chinese shipped to France by the British only six lie in British soil, in the Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, which is situated beside the former Shorncliffe Military Hospital above the Channel port of Folkestone. They rest far from their native Shantung and Honan provinces, with no indication as to how they died. The proximity of the former hospital suggests that they may well have succumbed from injuries, wounds or epidemic.\n\n\"China on the Western Front\", by Michael Summerskill, published by Summerskill in 1982 which describes other military cemeteries, in France, where Chinese labourers are buried, is a most interesting description of the British Chinese Labour Corps with its officer cadre consisting mainly of missionaries and sinologues.\n\nDespite each of the thousands of Chinese labourers being awarded a war medal, it is worth noting that they are exceedingly rare and a much sought after collectors' item. It would be interesting to know where they all went.\n\nThe illustrations (Plates 24 and 25) are of Shorncliffe Military cemetery with the English Channel and Romney Marsh in the background; and of one of the six gravestones, all of which are well cared for in a tranquil spot under shady trees.\n\nKEITH STEVENS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212202, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "121\n\nday to Changsha. The capital of Hunan, the province with a long history of anti-foreign fanaticism, is situated on the Siang river, which flows down to the Yangtze above Hankow. In summer the middle-river steamers come up as far as Changsha, but in winter the level over the sand flats where the river passes through the Tung Ting lake, near its mouth, is so shallow that even the specially designed river gunboats cannot pass. One British gunboat generally wintered at Changsha.\n\nThere was no concession, and in the course of time the foreign community had congregated on a long sand bar, which made an island in the river, opposite the city. The few bungalows were grouped round the Club. It was a simple life with tennis and walks for relaxation. Normally Changsha connected with the outer world by ship through Shanghai, but now for over a year that channel had been closed by the war and the number of the foreign community, usually not more than a couple of dozen, was reduced. It did, however, include two British tank officers, loaned to the Chinese army, whom I had last seen in Nanking. They now depended for their supplies on the new railway to Hongkong. I left my car here and went on to Hankow by train.\n\nIt was nearly twenty years since I had last been in Hankow, years crowded with change, not only material but also intellectual. Hither junks from the far north-west of China, in Shensi Province, came down the Han river. From here they could sail a leg up the Yangtze, and proceed along the Siang river, until their mast-tops showed a view towards Kweilin. To the west, through the famous gorges, the small steamers fought the current to Chungking 700 miles distant; and 600 miles downriver, past Kiu Kiang, Wuhu, and Nanking, lay Shanghai and the sea. The railway in normal times ran north-east to Peking and south to Canton and Hongkong. On the opposite bank, a kilometre away, the provincial capital, Wuchang, showed; larger than Hankow and, across the Han, where that river made an angle with the Yangtze, the industrial town of Hanyang belched its smoke. Of the Concessions along the water front, only the French retained its status. The British Concession had been returned at the time of the Chen-O'Malley negotiations ten years previously; the German and Russian Concessions had reverted to China after the Great War, and the Japanese Concession had been evacuated soon after the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) incident.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212346, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 288, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "265\n\nKok and Ta Kwu Ling people had established a trust to collect cash and construct this bridge: Chan Sheung-yan (of Luk Keng in the Sha Tau Kok area), and Lei Tsok-san (of Lei Uk in the Ta Kwu Ling area) were the two Chief Managers of this trust, representing the totality of the people of the two areas.\n\nP.H. HASE\n\nI\n\nNOTES\n\n\"Cheang Shan Kwa Tsz. An Old Buddhist Nunnery in the New Territories, and its Place in Local Society”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29, 1989, pp 121-158.\n\nThe documents are contained in a recently recovered genealogy of the Chan clan of Luk Keng. I understand that a copy of this genealogy will be placed on record in the collection of Hong Kong historical documents held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in due course. I am indebted to Mr. Chan Wing-hoi for drawing my attention to these documents.\n\nII\n\nI am indebted to Mr. P.L. Lau for assistance in the translation of this document.\n\nThe Sha Wan River, unlike the main branch of the Sham Chun River, which flows in a deep and well-defined channel, was a shallow and ill-defined stream, which meandered through a broad valley which it often flooded. This river has now been dammed off to form the Shen Zhen Reservoir.\n\nSee the paper at n. 1 for details of the loss of life in this War.\n\nA VILLAGE WAR IN SHAM CHUN\n\nThe Rev. Carl Smith has drawn attention to the great wealth of material available in the Basel Mission Archive on the history of the Hakka people of Kwangtung Province. When looking through his notes and summaries of important documents I saw a summary of an important document on an inter-village war in Sham Chun (深圳). Through the courtesy of the Mission Archive, a photostat of the document was received, translated, and is published below.\n\nSham Chun lies at the centre of a broad and fertile valley, drained by the Sham Chun River. This river has four main tributaries: the stream which drains the Ta Kwu Ling valley (this stream is considered as the headstream of the main river), the Sha Wan River, which joins the first stream at Kim Hau (or) at the entrance to Ta Kwu Ling, the Sheung Yue (or Beas) River which drains the Sheung Shui/Lung Yeuk Tau area and which enters the main river", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212347, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "266\n\nabout a mile below the Sha Wan River, and finally the Ching Shui River which drains the northern part of the valley from Po Kat (Buji) down, and which enters about half-a-mile below the Sheung Yue River. The main river is navigable for small skiffs as far as Kim Hau, but for junks only as far as the confluence of the main river and the Ching Shui River. However, the river at the mouth of the Ching Shui River is not navigable for junks at low tide. Furthermore, the navigable part of the river is not wide enough for a junk to turn around in easily when under sail. The Ching Shui River, at the junction with the main river, splits into two branches, with a low, marshy island between them and the main river.* Junks could come up the main river, enter the Ching Shui River, pass behind the marshy island, and back into the main river via the second branch of the stream, thus turning round without cutting across the channel, using a \"one-way\" system. The landing place used by the cargo junks and ferry boats, therefore, was the channel of the Ching Shui River behind the island. Junks would come up the river with the tide, and would load and unload while at rest on the mud at low tide, and would cast off and go down the river with the next high tide. Three significant roads pass through the valley, crossing at Sham Chun: the Yuen Long to Wai Chow (Huichou), Nam Tau (Nantou) to Sha Tau Kok, and Po Kat to Kowloon roads.\n\nIn the Ming, this valley had a number of markets, of which Sham Chun was only one. There was another at Kim Hau, and others to the west, including one at Lung Tsun Hui (Longjinxu), which was part of the Fuk Tin (Futian) village cluster. By the nineteenth century, however, all these other markets had either become extinct, or else survived only in a very small way as satellites of Sham Chun. Sham Chun had developed until it had become a very large market, with probably 500 and more shops. The market was ringed by large villages of rich clans—the Cheungs at Wong Pui Ling (Huangbeiling) about a mile to the east, the Tsois at Tsoi Uk Wai (Caiwuwei) about half a mile to the south-west, the Wongs at Fuk Tin about a mile to the south-west, the Yuens at Lo Wu (Lohu) about half a mile to the south and the Hos at Sun Kong (Sungang) about half a mile to the north. These rich and ancient clans were almost perennially in dispute, as they jostled for power and position in the district.\n\n* See Map.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212356, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 298, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "275\n\nfew fishermens' houses, and a newly-built hotel.\n\nThis dispute in 1875 did not end the matter. It broke out again between 1902 and 1905. The documents which discuss this last conflict make it clear that the decisions of Tin On-pong in 1875 had not been fully implemented. In 1902, all the land behind the landing stage, which Tin On-pong had ordered to be sold by the Yuens to the Cheungs, was still in the hands of the Yuens. The right to collect toll, however, was wholly in the hands of the Tung Ping Kuk, and the Yuens were not collecting their four-tenths. Presumably the Yuens had passed this right to the Kuk, so long as their land-owning rights were left untouched. The Cheungs seem to have been left with nothing, other than what they could get by their dominance of the Tung Ping Kuk of the “Transit Toll\" income.\n\nBetween 1875 and 1902 conditions on the Sham Chun River had changed. Firstly, from the mid-1890s steam launches had begun to trade with Sham Chun. These vessels were less dependent on the tide than were the junks, since they were more manoeuvrable, so that they could turn within the river. They were, therefore, less dependent on the landing place behind the Ching Shui River island. They had come to dominate the local trade by 1902: by 1904 the Wa Lu company had achieved a virtual monopoly in the steam launch business here.\n\nIn addition, in 1898 the New Territories lease had included within the territory of Hong Kong all the waters of the Sham Chun River up to the high water mark on the north bank.\n\nThe Yuens saw in these circumstances the opportunity to regain their position. They sought a lease from the Hong Kong Government of a 2,000-foot-long strip of the main river bed on which to erect a wooden wharf. This would connect with their agricultural land by a wooden bridge which would pass over the wastes of the river banks, thereby side-stepping any claims to ownership of the tolls put forward by the District Magistrate on the grounds of imperial ownership of the wastes. The wharf so built would have blocked the exit from the channel behind the island at the mouth of the Ching Shui River. The Yuens produced this plan in conjunction with the Wa Lu steam-launch company. The plan would have ended at one stroke the use of the old landing place, and would have rendered all sailing junks using", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212357, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 299, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "276\n\nthe river more or less helpless unless a steam launch either towed them out, or at least assisted in turning them round. The wharf proposed was to be built very close to the Imperial Maritime Customs station: the Customs supported the proposal since it would make their anti-smuggling work in the area far easier.\n\n―\n\nA lease (for a smaller area of 850 feet not so obviously blocking the channel) was granted by the Hong Kong Government. The Tung Ping Kuk, however, (represented by two Cheungs and a Wong; by this date the Wongs were normally allies of the Cheungs, being united by their mutual antagonism to the Tsois whose land lay between them) complained to the San On Magistrate, who promptly had the Yuen elders imprisoned for the \"fraudulent attempt to divert the toll from the Kuk to themselves\". The District Magistrate also made a strong statement of the rights to take toll being a Government right, founded on Government ownership of the wastes of the river bank. The Kuk sent young men to tear the new wharf down. The affair then petered out - the Magistrate was willing to take a far more active role in 1903-1905 than in 1875 or earlier, and the opening of the railway a couple of years later made all discussions of rights to toll somewhat academic, since trade now began to flow in different directions altogether.\n\nThese documents show three points of interest: the ineffectiveness of the Magistrate in settling affairs of this sort in the mid/late-nineteenth century; the critical importance of control of markets, roads, ferries, bridges and other nodal points of the traffic system in local politics; and the blood-thirsty and implacable nature which inter-village disputes could assume.\n\nThe disputes over the ownership of the landing place at Sham Chun lasted some seventy years, from the 1830s to 1905. Effective action by the District Magistrate seems to have been limited to the period 1903-1905: the actions of the Magistrate in 1875 were ineffective in the extreme, and there seems to have been no action at all in earlier disputes. In 1875, it was only when the dispute had escalated to such a state that the army was forced to intervene that any effective Government action was seen but it came very late. In other inter-village disputes in the area in this period the same ineffective inaction by the District Magistrate can be seen. There seems to have been no action taken by the District Magistrate in the bloody fighting (about 1850-1860) between Wong Pui Ling and Ta...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212399, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 341, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "318\n\nThe origins of the Grand Council, which served as the highest executive body under the Emperor in the Qing government from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, are clarified for the first time. It was not created one day through act of parliament. Nor was it the accidental survivor of a military planning group as its Chinese name might suggest. Bartlett shows the transformation from direct imperial personal rule (Yongzheng's ad hoc arrangements of the Military Finance Section, the High Officials in Charge of Military Strategy, and the palace memorial system) to joint monarchical conciliar administration (Qianlong's regularization of the Grand Council). The development of an inner court to offset the rigidity and limitations of the outer court is traced, and we are shown how the Qianlong Emperor adapted to the increasingly complex demands of ruling China. The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) was brilliant, but could rely on raw Manchu force to rule; Yongzheng and Qianlong had to use more \"Confucian\" means, at the same time surviving the factionalism of the imperial family.\n\nBartlett has not simply used the Qing archives to sketch political events, or to mark the stages of development of the Grand Council. She has used provenance to enlighten us on process, and has gained an understanding of the whole range of communication that passed between Emperor, grand councillors and provincial officials. This system has been researched before, but no one has gone into such detail on the forms of communication and the act of decision making. The grand councillors knew that control of information flow led to control of decisions. As the palace memorial system expanded from a secret, personal channel between the Emperor and a few officials to a broader, prioritized but more impersonal avenue, the councillors and their clerks injected themselves into the process. Before long they perused memorials, drafted summaries and proposed imperial replies (see, for example, pp 98-101).\n\nThe tension between Emperor and officials, and among officials, was conceptualized by Joseph Levenson in his trilogy Confucian China and its Modern Fate. Bartlett brings Levenson's provocative concept down to earth, and shows the conflict and cooperation between emperor and councillor, and inner and outer court officials. On the dichotomy of an all-powerful Emperor and officials with independent legitimacy, we are told that the outer court ran according to an administrative code. Although the monarch could probably", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212548, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "82\n\ninternational considerations once again dominated Sino-American relations, but cultural relations this time occupied an important position. The administration saw clearly that cultural exchanges were a means towards a closer relationship. In the period 1979-1981, bilateral arts exchanges were numerous, showing the strong support of the administration for such projects. Carter personally, like Nixon, granted interviews with visiting Chinese artists and to China-bound American artists.\n\nThe framework of arts exchanges established by the Carter Administration had a far-reaching impact on the coming years. The impact was so strong that a substantial number of exchanges were still carried out when Sino-American relations were at a low ebb in the initial years of the Reagan Administration.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, cultural relations with China were handled at a lower level of management, as compared with the Carter Administration. Furthermore, the \"spirit of U.S. generosity, high expectations, and mutual understanding\" that had informed relations during the Carter administration had yielded to narrow calculations of interest, revived ideological enmity, and mutual suspicion. Nevertheless, the function of cultural exchanges as a foreign policy instrument was essentially the same - supporting general policy objectives. As the anti-Soviet strategic theme in Sino-American relations became less urgent, the United States began to pursue long-term American interests more vigorously and arts exchanges with China became even more politicized than in the previous three administrations.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, arts exchanges were made a channel to export to China American ideology and to consciously create a cultural imagery in China. To examine the nature of arts exchanges with China in the Reagan Administration, a good example might be an incident involving a show of modern American paintings from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.\n\nThe art exhibition from the Boston Museum was an official exchange programme initiated to implement the accord reached in Beijing in 1979. Before the opening of the show, Chinese officials requested that 13 abstract paintings be deleted from the exhibition. The American side, headed by Charles Wick, Director of the USIA (then called the United States International Communication Agency (USICA)), responded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212563, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "97\n\nconcerts in China were never mentioned in the Chinese press. Arts exchanges were treated more in terms of their symbolic significance vis-à-vis bilateral relations than as essentially cultural events. This situation has severely jeopardized the Chinese perception of American artistic achievement and contributed to the preconditioned over-rating of American cultural events. At the same time, it undermined the Chinese understanding of the cultural achievements of other countries.\n\nConclusion\n\nIn the 15 years under discussion, there were two tendencies dominating Sino-American arts exchanges: the artists' involvement in arts exchanges for art's sake and the hand of the state, both China and the United States, which at times pulled them back to serve political objectives except where the two goals were compatible. To political leaders, arts exchanges were means rather than ends. They were means to strengthen a relationship between the two countries and they were occasionally even used to alienate the other party. Arts exchanges were also seen as a channel and sometimes directly used by the American government to export American values and in like manner, they were used by the Chinese government for gaining economic cooperation from the United States. Plainly, arts exchanges were employed to serve foreign policy objectives. But what were the foreign policy goals of China in this period and the latter part of this period in particular?\n\nThough the initial stimuli of Sino-American diplomatic normalization and rapprochement was the need to counter Soviet expansionism, the goals Chinese political leaders persistently pursued were the establishment of a peaceful international environment and the fostering of foreign economic cooperation for her modernization programme. These two goals should, so Chinese political leaders expected, serve as a guarantee to China's stability and development.\n\nIn order to meet these two goals, China greatly strengthened relations with the United States in the first few years since 1978, viewing it as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and, as one of the few suppliers of modern capital and technology which could lead to the success of the modernization programme. Meanwhile, the rapid increase in contacts between the two peoples brought to China values which could not be accommodated in a short time or could not be accommodated at all. On the other hand, as the country which embraced China when China opened", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212667, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "202\n\ndisappear so quickly.\n\nHalsey would have no truck with the second-in-command who was then escorted back to the waiting plane. The Japanese commander eventually appeared whereupon the surrender was signed later in the presence of the British admiral aboard HMS King George V.\n\nAt dawn the following day the whole fleet was placed in ‘line ahead' and we sailed up the Lei Yue Mun Channel, between Hong Kong and Kowloon. As we approached a gun emplacement set high in the rocks was spotted with the Japanese flag flying. The Japanese could be seen quite clearly on the ramparts of the fort. The order relayed to the King George V battleship was 'range broadside!' I never saw a flag come down so fast.\n\nWe anchored in an orderly fashion off the City of Victoria and in no time at all found ourselves surrounded by sampans and all sorts of other small boats. Royal marines armed with machine guns were stationed round the sides of the ship. After all, we just didn't know what to expect.\n\nWhile preparations were being made for the first landing party to go ashore naval officers selected the men. They questioned ratings how they felt about the task. One or two were rather brash in their manner and replies. They were rejected. Asked if I felt afraid I answered that I was a bit scared. 'Good,' said one of the officers, ‘A frightened man is a careful man!'\n\nIn the early afternoon I and nine other men, armed to the teeth, went ashore in a motorised cutter. The landing stage was free of booby traps and obstacles. We came ashore near the Star Ferry. All was very quiet. Even the sometimes boisterous Chinese were not self-evident. The Japanese had destroyed all the dwellings and buildings along the waterfront so they had an uninterrupted view of the sea lane.\n\nI was on shore patrol when we came across a mob of Chinese and, on investigation, we discovered a Japanese soldier had been strangled by a Chinese. I was told the Japanese had molested and raped the man's wife during the occupation. The man was later arrested, charged and, I believe, subsequently let off.\n\nOn another occasion I noticed two bodies in the harbour being swept down the straits. Who they were or what was going on I didn't know.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "2\n\nof bonnes bouches relating to him and his family. The information, its presentation and language tell us more about William Mesny than about Chinese life. A considerable part of his writings consisted of piecemeal notes or essays written to emphasize, probably unconsciously, both his prominent standing with important Chinese and his foresight as a man of ideas. He played up so many of the episodes in which he was involved that it is difficult not to minimise and even to discount what in practice must have been his quite significant achievements. Three major subjects regularly featured in Mesny's Miscellanies, his economic and political foresight which was inevitably spurned by westerners and Chinese alike; his activities as part of the Chinese imperial military forces in Kueichou quelling a rebellious minority ethnic group; and his wives and women in general.\n\nIn one of his forthright, self-congratulatory moments he wrote, \"The Editor of Mesny's Chinese Miscellany feels that he has a sort of an inspired mission in China to set forth, preach and proclaim the inspiring and magic-working words of Reform and Progress to the inquiring multitudes amongst China's 400 million black-haired people.'\n\nWilliam Mesny (pronounced “May-knee' in Jersey), was brought up in the bilingual Channel Island community speaking English and French. He left home when he was nearly twelve to travel far afield but without ever losing pride in being a Jerseyman and British.\n\nMesny was born at La Croiserie Vingtaine in the parish of Trinity in Jersey on 9 October 1842, the eldest son of William Mesny of Alderney and Marie Rachel née Nicolle, second daughter of Philip Nicolle of du Nord, Jersey. Mesny's father was described in one place as a cobbler, a local preacher preaching several times a year in French and English Wesleyan chapels, and a member of the Royal militia (probably the Jersey Militia). Mesny writing elsewhere in his Miscellany described his parents as poor; his mother was 'bed-ridden' and his father, though a Wesleyan local preacher, was forced to work for a living in attendance on divers engaged in the harbour works, and often repaired his own shoes to save the expense of having them repaired at a shoemaker's. Mesny's father and his grandfather, Guillaume Mesny, were both said to be of St Martin, Jersey, whilst Mesny himself claimed that his roots lay in the ancient family of Megny d'Auregny [i.e. Auregny Alderney]. It has also been recorded that Mesny's father and grandfather had both been born and brought up in Alderney with the father moving to Jersey at some stage. Guillaume's brothers included the great grandfather of Miss Lucie", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212745, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "39\n\nShe was his maternal cousin, and his parents were keen that he should return from China to marry her. He said that he had made many lame excuses—which his parents had interpreted to be that his business was going so well that he dare not leave it [his usual ebullient tendency to exaggerate doubtless led them to assume he was making a fortune, and his brother, John, was therefore persuaded by their parents to travel out to China to let Mesny return home to marry]. However, Mesny's business was not sufficiently adequate for him to consider marrying anyone, not even the girl in Hankow, despite the Hankow girl having money of her own, and in addition, Mesny did not feel ready to marry and did not do so. He tells us that the Hankow girl went down to Shanghai, where she married a young man ‘whose name was still [in 1899] a household word, though husband and wife had long since been absent from the scene of their former experience in matrimony and other matters.'\n\nDespite the view he held about marrying a girl from his own country, he married Chinese women, one immediately after the other. The local girl back in the Channel Islands, his cousin, Lydia, whom his parents wished him to marry, appears to have dropped out of the picture in the late 1860s or early 1870s, when he married his first Chinese woman, probably by Chinese rites first, followed by a western marriage at the Hankow Consulate some years later. He was still sending verses to Lydia in 1868 and, incidentally, writing a letter a month to his old father in Jersey.\n\nWe have little idea what happened to either his first or second wife. We know that the second was legally separated from him and had taken half his worldly wealth with her. Why did he move back to Hankow for his last years? He left Shanghai in 1914... the unanswered question is whether his wife's obtaining a legal separation led to his move from Shanghai to Hankow? Another oddity involved his only son, who moved from Hankow to Shanghai to work, in his early thirties, at about the same time as his father moved back to Hankow from Shanghai. Mesny's son-in-law was a British businessman who, at some stage, lived and worked in Ningpo, not too far from Shanghai, and yet Mesny moved in the other direction to Hankow, where he had acquired a menial job with a long-standing British firm until he died.\n\nWe do not know anything about his relationships with his son and daughter, particularly in later years. At the time of his death, his only son would have been 34 and probably married. His daughter, Marie,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212766, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "60\n\nfor many years. Neither refer to Wm Mesny, though Sam Couling in 1917 in his Encyclopaedia Sinica does run to a short paragraph describing in very round terms, the then still living Mesny.\n\nNOTE\n\nTcheng Ki-tong. I have been unable to find the date of publication of his first edition of Les Chinois, Peints par Eux-meme; however, in the preface to the English seventh edition of Bits of China by Tcheng, published in English in London in 1890, Tcheng writes 'The friendly welcome accorded by the English Public to my Chinese Painted by Themselves has encouraged me to publish this translation of my last work, (from the French Les Plaisirs en Chine).' Mesny publishing this book crit as late as 1905 suggests an ulterior motive, perhaps no more than an instinctive urge to highlight yet again his tireless and tenacious claim to recognition as the foreign authority on things Chinese.\n\nAppendix B\n\nChronology\n\nas claimed by\n\nWilliam Mesny\n\n[Extracted from details within the Miscellanies]\n\n9 October 1842\n1847\n\nMesny born in Jersey\n\n?\n\n1850\n\n1850-1854\n\n1854\n\n1860 December\n\n1861 February\n\n1861\n\n1861-1862\n\n1862 February\nMarch\nApril 1862\nMay 1862\n\nDame School\n\nNational School St Anne's, Alderney\nLeft school\n\nWorked at brick making, stone cutting with a smithy and on Channel Island fortifications. He also worked in blasting and as an architect's assistant.\n\nLeft home, went to sea and sailed to Africa, Australia and the Americas\n\nArrived on the China coast and disembarked at Shanghai\nLeft Shanghai for Hong Kong\n\nRomantic interlude with Huang family in Hong Kong where he bore the name of Huang Chin-fu\n\n3rd Turnkey Hong Kong Gaol\n\nReturned to Shanghai aboard the SS Aden\n\nTravelled up the Yangtze and arrived at Hankow\nMaster of the Hat Liang-wang on the Yangtze based in Shanghai, running the Taiping blockade:\n\nWounded and captured by Imperial Chinese gunboats at Kuan Yin Shan on the Yangtze\n\nRescued by the gunboat HMS Banterer and secured the release of\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212768, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "62 \n\n1874 April \n\nJuly October \n\n1874 \n\n1874 December Late 1874 \n\n1875 Summer? 1875 Winter \n\n1877 February \n\nKueichou, but Mesny had already departed \n\nTo Ch'engtu (six month stay] \n\nVisited the temple dedicated to Tu Fu the poet in Ch’engtu Returned by very large houseboat via Sui-fu, Chungking and I-ch'ang to Hankow. Mesny entertained at the palace of General Viscount Pao Chao in K'uei-chou en route on the Yangtze. In Hankow he met Rev. David Hill \n\nPublished 'Tungking' [date in the book itself: Mesny however, claimed later that it was published in 1875] \n\nOfficially married Nien Suey-tsen in Hankow \n\nTravelled overland from Chin-kiang, through Shantung [Chi-nan], en route for Peking. Spent winter in Chi-nan at invitation of Ting Pao-chen, the Governor of Shantung, to whom he claimed he had been an adviser \n\nPeking \n\nReturned to Kueichou via Shanghai [November]. Hankow and Human [1876] Re-appointed Superintendent of the Kueichou Armouries, an appointment he held until March 1877 \n\nMesny entertained two British Protestant missionaries in Kuei-yang \n\nOverland Trek to Western China, through Burma to India and by sea to England \n\n28 May \n\nJune 1878 8 January \n\nNovember \n\n26 December 28 December \n\n1879 February \n\n9 March 4 June \n\nDeparted Kuei-yang for Szechuan [his third visit to the province (en route for England, via Tibet, Burma and India, with Captain Gill)] Arrived Ch'engtu \n\nArrived in England from Calcutta \n\nVisited Channel Islands \n\nReceived telegram from Chinese Minister in London desiring Mesny to accompany the returning Chinese Minister at Berlin to China: departed! Marseilles for Hong Kong aboard the Irrawaddy Arrived Hong Kong from England \n\nDeparted Hong Kong for Canton \n\nVisited Amoy \n\nDeparted Canton for Kueichou, via Kuei-lin (Kuangsi] Arrived Kuei-lin \n\n25 July \n\nArrived Tu-yun Fu \n\n4 August [1880/1881] \n\n1880 February \n\n15 March \n\nAugust \n\n1881 January \n\nFebruary \n\nArrived Kuei-yang \n\nPossibly visited Hanoi? \n\nGovernor of Kueichou province recommended Mesny to the Throne for the bestowal of posthumous honours for three generations [San-tai Erh-p'in Kao-feng] \n\nSet out for Lan-chou via Chungking [where he had remained six months] \n\nMesny spent the night at Ch'ien-hsi Chou, some 90 kms NNW of Kuei-yang, where he was attacked by an armed mob Departed Chungking [after 'delay due to unexpected contretemps\" which Mesny did not clarify] \n\nArrived Lanchou \n\nDeparted Lanchou, crossed Gobi to Ham taking six to seven weeks", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212807, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "101\n\neach harnessed and stripped to the waist, fighting the torrent.\n\nTreaty ports: Ports opened to foreign trade and residence under what the Chinese have always regarded as 'unequal treaties'.\n\nTsung-li Yamen : The Foreign Affairs Bureau of the late Ch'ing dynasty, established after the capture of Peking in 1860 by the Allied forces. It was the channel of communication between foreign Ministers resident in Peking and the throne.\n\nTsung-tu #: the Viceroy or Governor-General of one or more provinces within which he had the general control of all civil and military affairs and was subject only to the throne.\n\nWai-sing Lottery: lit: examination of names, a kind of sweepstake, once a very popular form of gambling amongst the Cantonese, on the result of the public examination for the second degree. The holder of a successful candidate's name being the winner of a greater or lesser sum according to position on the published list.\n\nWei-yuan A: a delegate staff officer, a special delegate or Expectant Appointee on ad hoc duty.\n\nWhite Lily Sect [Pai-lien Chiao] was a more serious rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century. This secret society, originally founded in opposition to Mongol domination several centuries earlier, had been revived in order to get rid of the alien Manchu rule of the Ch'ing dynasty. It broke out in western Hupei in 1796 and for nearly nine years taxed China's resources to the utmost. Although Mesny was not involved his and their paths crossed on occasion.\n\nYamen : The official and private residence of any 'mandarin', officials who held a seal, a government office.\n\nYing #: usually a battalion but not uncommonly, a force of a number of battalions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213268, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "70\n\nmountains it is possible to trace with the eye the paths where 'dragon veins' run.\n\nGeomancers are particularly interested in spots where hills and mountains rise from plains. In Hong Kong's case much of the level ground on the Island is reclaimed (many masters maintain that reclaimed land possesses no chi). Nevertheless, with the kind of setting that this part of Hong Kong Island has, with its 'dragon form', it is bound to be prosperous.\n\nVarious modifications were made to Government House shortly after Sir (now Lord) David Wilson, a sinologist, took up the appointment of Governor in 1987 (Mattock, 1994:133). The house today is hemmed in with tall buildings obstructing its original harbour view. One fung shui master, in the 1980s, suggested moving Government House to a more auspicious site. This was not then considered practicable. Consequently, remedial measures were carried out to improve the fung shui (Mattock, 1994:133). A fountain with a round pool (instead of a square one), to compensate for the loss of the harbour view, was constructed. A pavilion (an alternative would have been a pagoda) was built. Three additional trees and more bamboo were planted. Flowers are grown now between the two staircases, on the north side of the residence, replacing the water cascading down a channel away from the building. Some geomancers maintain that Government House represents a cat (the tower symbolises the head and the ballroom the legs). This now plays with a mouse in abstract form — namely the new pavilion. In the past, the 'cat' toyed with the Governor. These alterations were made specifically to improve fung shui. They helped to put the minds of Hong Kong people, notably staff who work at Government House, at ease, especially after the sudden death of Governor Sir Edward Youde in 1986. Meanwhile other Hong Kong inhabitants, including some who profess not to believe in fung shui, are inwardly relieved that the sharp edges of China's national bank do not point at, and threaten, their home.\n\nBut a Cantonese youth born in Hong Kong, who attended secondary school in England, put it rather differently. 'I do not believe in fung shui,' he insisted. 'The sharp edges of the Bank of China mean nothing to me. Nor do gold fish swimming in an aquarium.'\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213300, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "102\n\nas a barrier to progress, by, for example, not allowing a person to carry out a certain operation on a certain day.\n\nThe Hong Kong (British) Government has certainly not ridden roughshod over Chinese culture and it has given tacit approval to fung shui by paying sizeable sums as compensation when the 'dragon's vein' has been endangered by public works. Few other colonial governments would probably have been as considerate. Also, remedial structural measures have been taken to the residence of the British Governor to bring it into line with fung shui beliefs. Many western business houses take fung shui into consideration. Their managements maintain the investment is well worth it. Staff worries are allayed. It is good for business.\n\nAlthough some is undoubtedly superstition, nevertheless much fung shui is common-sense and practical, taking into account natural rhythms that form part of man's lifestyle. It is, it has been suggested, up to everyone to treat fung shui with an open mind and to decide what he or she is able to accept. 'Staples' include symbolism, coins, crystal, mirrors, lights and wind-chimes. Fortune plants, with their non-calcified, non-woody stems, serve a useful purpose in purifying the atmosphere. Colours are linked not only to one's year of birth but also to the Five Elements.\n\nEvery building has its own metabolism. One purpose is to channel chi to all rooms so as to improve the bond with, and the energy and performance of, the occupants. Westerners believe they are able and have the right to control nature. The Chinese view is more akin to living in balance with nature and taking a holistic approach. This outlook helps bring about harmony and peace in the home or workplace. And, as society becomes more affluent, so the Chinese have more money to lavish on things like fung shui. Also, with the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China and the resulting uncertainty, more people are likely to appeal to the supernatural, and to visit fortune-tellers and engage fung shui masters, to try to find solutions to their worries and problems.\n\nIt has been argued nonetheless, not without reason, that geomancy can be rather 'hit and miss', more resembling an art than a science tested by experiments and research. It has also been argued that fung shui can be 'self-reinforcing'. This means that whatever is forecast is likely to come true partly because it is often explained in such vague terms. The fact that a forecast may not come to pass for years is accepted. As a result, much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213811, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "135 o'clock we had our dinner on the deck. Such fun and such make shifts. Our stock of portable soup was very good however, and what with venison pasties and other items we got a very comfortable dinner, much to the amusement of the Chinese passengers, about 20, and the sailors. My servant came in very handy, as he was the only professional cook of the party. Our food was cooked in the Chinese way, in a little earthenware stove, and a camp canteen kettle. The deck all the while was at a very considerable slope, so that it was necessary to mind one's p's and q's, in order to avoid catastrophies. Then when we were done and cleared away, the Celestials came forward and took the deck and began their meal. Each passenger pays 30 cash (not quite three halfpence) for his meal of rice and fish and little nic nacs: and as they only eat two meals a day, you may imagine that there is not much profit to be got out of it. They did walk into the rice and no mistake.\n\nOne little boy I took a fancy to: he was a friend of the owner of the ship and his father a rich man at Sam-tsun the place we were going to. I had a long talk with him, and we read some of the Pilgrim's Progress. He had been to school 6 years, and literally knew nothing after all. The Chinese system of education is the greatest folly imaginable: No Chinaman, in less than ten years is supposed to be able to know the meanings of the characters. Many learn 5 years and only know the sounds.\n\nHowever this little fellow and I got on very well together. He was much amused with Stringer's dog, and asked dozens of questions about it. Then I offered to sell it for a dollar, but the youngster said it was no good only to eat,\" and therefore was too dear. So I joked him that he had not a dollar belonging to him, whereupon he produced a handful of dollars from his purse, and showed me a bundle of paper which he said had 7 dollars inside. He seemed to have perfect confidence in us that we would not try to rob him. It was hard to talk with him, through his dialect. It was like a Londoner and Yorkshireman. “Tea” he called \"Chay-yup\" and we call it \"Chah-eep.\" About four o'clock we entered the “Kup shui moon\" a channel opening into the \"Bogue” or as English people say \"Bocca Tigris\" or \"tiger's mouth.\"\n\nHere we passed the Canton steamer going to Hong Kong. The people stared to see Europeans on board a Chinese craft. Towards evening the breeze dropped off, and at sunset there was quite a calm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213879, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "205\n\ndifferent parts of China As the Manchu government was drumming up a \"commercial war\" between Chinese and foreign enterprises, overseas Chinese merchants were targeted by Beijing as a source of wealth for new industries.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the first groups of Hong Kong Chinese to respond to this reform were a group of newly returned migrants of Siyi and Xiangshan origins. They returned from America and Australia, where exclusion policies against Chinese immigrants had been implemented during the 1890s. Once settled in Hong Kong, they found themselves left outside the established leadership hierarchy in the colony (the Legislative Council-Tung Wah circle). They had to vest their interests in other institutions They looked northward and, immediately, they saw hope in China, where the late Qing reforms offered them ample chances for political and economic advancement. The Governor recalled with contempt the composition of the Siyi Chamber.\n\n[It is] composed of Californian and Australian coolies, artisans who though [they] could often talk fair English, could not write their names in any language\n\nThanks to this rhetoric of \"commercial war\", these overseas returned migrants penetrated into south China. They formed themselves into regional chambers of commerce and through which they raised capital for such large-scale investments as railways, public utilities and land reclamation in Guangdong. Among others, these enterprises included a Siyi Steamship Company, a Sunning (of Siyi) Railway Company and two companies, with respectively 500,000 and 580,000 silver taels in capital, for “port-building” against Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong. With the approval of the Qing government, these two port-building companies initiated two large-scale port and market development schemes in Siyi and Xiangshan which were intended to recover benefits lost to Hong Kong and Macau. The channel that these merchants went through was the following, the chambers of commerce submitted petitions to the Commissioner of Industrial Promotion and thence to the Bureau of Commerce in Beijing\n\nConservative in design, this late Qing reform led to revolutionary consequences. Among these policies of centralization was Beijing's attempt to nationalize economic resources in the provinces. It was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214057, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "92\n\nfrom which tunnels were excavated to locations under the floors\n\nA lady, appalled by the primitive standards of hygiene in 1879, wrote \".....no sort of effective drains or sewers have been provided whatever; sewerage finds its way [into rain-water conduits] is simply deposited along the whole harbour front, thus poisoning what else might be a pleasant situation........the arrangements for the daily (or among the poorer classes only bi-weekly!) removal of nuisances from every house (for subsequent conveyance to the mainland as an article of agricultural commerce) form a very unpleasant page in the sanitary statistics........\". Environmental concern clearly was not created in the late 20th century.\n\nMatters were not improved by Governor Hennessy (1877-82)'s deep conviction that for the local inhabitants their traditional earth system of sanitation was preferable to western flushing toilets. Even at the eve of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, the primitive system of collection and disposal of sewage was common, collection being based on an estimate of six taels (227 grammes) per person per day. In view of the above it is not surprising that a report recommended in 1882, amongst other things, that the city should be completely re-drained and a cholera outbreak in the following year gave timely impetus for new main drains and sewers to be laid. Nevertheless it was not until soon after the first serious outbreak of plague in 1894 that the main drainage system in the principal urban area had been practically completed. Legislation was then passed in 1896 making drainage for houses compulsory. Records indicate that the main storm-water drains around the turn of the century were formed with mass gravity retaining walls and incorporated a half-round dry-weather flow channel; where appropriate these drains were covered with simply-supported concrete or granite slabs.\n\nSubsequently more open nullahs were constructed, often running along the centre-lines of road reserves, for instance in Kowloon along Nam Cheong Street (Sham Shui Po) which was completed in 1912 and Waterloo Road (both of these now having been decked, mainly to effect much needed road improvements). As a result of continuing enhancements to the drainage system, in particular those relating to nullah and stream training works, plague was virtually eliminated by 1924 whilst deaths from malaria, although still numerous at the outbreak of the Pacific war, gradually declined.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214865, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 280, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "248\n\nCongratulatory Speech to be delivered by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department Representative at the Conference jointly presented by Leisure and Cultural Services Department and \n\nRAS 9 December 2000 \n\nDr Waters, Dr Sinn, ladies and gentlemen, \n\nI am greatly honoured to speak at this conference jointly presented by the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. I am also most delighted to celebrate with you the 40th anniversary of the Society's reconstitution. \n\nIn the Analects of Confucius, the master said \"At thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts.\" Stepping into the age of forty, the Royal Asiatic Society is no doubt a well-established cultural organization. I would like to express my deepest appreciation of the Society's great contribution in the promotion of the public's interest in and appreciation of Hong Kong's culture and heritage in the past few decades. \n\nWith its roots dating back to some 150 years, the Royal Asiatic Society is the oldest learned society in Hong Kong enjoying a very high academic status. Since its reconstitution in 1960, the Society has witnessed the remarkable growth of Hong Kong. It has also been playing a leading role in promoting the study of Hong Kong's history and culture through the organization of lectures and field trips as well as publications of high academic standard. It provides a very good channel for the people of Hong Kong, the expatriate community in particular, to acquire a better understanding of the arts, history, culture and customs of the territory. Nowadays, cultural tourism is much talked about all over the world. However, it is in fact nothing new, as the Society has been the prime mover of cultural tourism in Hong Kong since decades ago. \n\nAlthough the Leisure and Cultural Services Department is a relatively new government department, the Museum of History, Heritage Museum, and the Antiquities and Monuments Office now put under the Department already have a long and close relationship with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214902, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 317, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "293\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nGillian Bickley (2201), Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare, with a foreword by Arthur Gomes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 303 pages.\n\nA97NIGHTMARE\n\nIn 1897, a series of anonymous articles appeared in the China Mail. Together they constituted a story entitled The Back Door. This was a fictional account of a successful invasion of Hong Kong by the combined forces of fin-de-siècle aggressors, France and Russia. The inference is that the author was perturbed that Hong Kong's defences at the time were inadequate and so, in an attempt to galvanise the authorities, wrote this \"wake up call.\" Copies of the story ultimately found their way to Whitehall in London.\n\nGillian Bickley\n\nAs the title of the story infers, the superior invading forces entered Hong Kong by way of the south side of Hong Kong Island. There was the bloody Battle of Deepwater Bay, fought in \"the jungle\" around the Golf Club and on the beach. There was shelling of the Peak from the sea and the sea battle of Sulphur Channel. Matters neared their end when the enemy captured the Kowloon Forts and the dynamite and gunpowder stored on Stonecutters' Island were fired. At the last stand, on Stonecutters', the defenders were ultimately annihilated.\n\nThe Back Door evidently arose from the same anxiety that drove Britain's negotiations with China; concluded in 1898 when China granted the ninety-nine year lease of the New Territories, which Britain had requested as a protective buffer against attack.\n\nGillian Bickley discovered a copy of this story some years ago and it evidently fired her imagination, probably because as we all know, Hong Kong was invaded on 8th December, 1941, by the Japanese - also by superior forces - and ultimately capitulated on Christmas day. The Japanese, however, entered Hong Kong from the north, through the New Territories. Had the Japanese, she wonders, read The Back Door?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215016, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "68\n\nEmpress of Russia, arriving at Vancouver Island, Canada. During the voyage he discovered two cases of mumps amongst the 2006 Chinese which finally increased to eleven.\n\nDuring their stay in quarantine the Chinese were trained into disciplined coherent bodies. During this time, even though being well treated, food riots nearly broke out. A white cook was sacked for exorbitant charges on bread sold to the coolies, a gold dollar for an 8lb loaf, making a profit of 400%. He also excessively charged for apples and oranges. Two coolies were caught stealing and were publicly caned. On 8th April, his dressers [medical assistants] reported that trouble was brewing over an insult from coolies from Shandong and Tianjin; fighting broke out, being quelled by Stuckey. The leader of the Shandong men was caned publicly, to set an example.\n\nFootwear, issued in China, was proving unsuitable, so British Army boots were issued, which for some became a tradable item.\n\nThey left the quarantine station on 8th April, travelling by train, those with mumps being segregated, to St. Johns and Halifax from where they sailed on the Corsican, in convoy, to Liverpool, where they entrained for Shorncliffe, Kent and then across the channel by ferry to Boulogne and another train journey to the CLC HQ at Noyelle-sur-Mer. The officers returned to the UK to order their kit and uniforms, which cost Stuckey £45 at the Army and Navy Store. He returned to France as Eye Specialist in charge of the Ophthalmic Department of the Chinese General Hospital at Noyelles.\n\nThe Depot at Noyelles was already established as the central examination centre for all Chinese on arrival in France, before their allocation to various Labour Companies.\n\nThe first shipments of Chinese were routed via the Cape, but due to the long journey time and also the shortage of vegetables, leading to scurvy and beriberi, thus making the coolies of little use, the shipment routes were changed via Canada. On arrival in France, the coolies were again medically examined, especially for eye diseases, trachoma and conjunctivitis, usually in the open. Once passed fit they were drafted into various Labour units, consisting of five British officers, 19 British other-ranks and 476 Chinese, and kitted out. Those with eye diseases...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215018, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "70\n\nA Royal Engineer officer was posted to the camp to supervise the construction of permanent buildings for the Hospital and he also supervised the construction of an officers' mess. The joining fee was F Fr. 40 and a further F Fr. 2 per day. Friday evening was guest night. Stuckey's cubicle was also well fitted-out, made from timber scrounged by his servant, Wu.\n\nThe officers and Chinese were well fed, the latter tending their own vegetable gardens near the Hospital. Sir Sam Fay recounts an amusing episode:\n\n'Some genius reported that special food in the form of cuttle-fish and old time eggs were necessary for health. Three shiploads reached Liverpool, but due to the smell were ordered to be sent to Dieppe, where many Chinese worked in the bakery. Being Northerners, they laughed, as they were grain eaters despising southern China's delicacies. The specialities were quickly dumped in the Channel.'\n\nAnother story is told of the deputation to an officer from coolies working in an ammunition factory. They requested extra food as they did not have the same opportunity to steal food as did the dockworkers.\n\nIn August the Chinese at the Hospital celebrated the 'Eighth Moon Festival' with races and a football match, won by the white staff, 2-1. Favourite platoon officers were invited to partake of specially prepared food.\n\nIn September 1917, Mr O'Neil from Manchuria, a Chinese speaker, planned to run the YMCA hut for the Chinese, being available for white personnel in the evenings. In early November the Chinese staged a Chinese play as an \"opening ceremony\" for the new YMCA and a collection by them raised a sum of F Fr. 680, saying that they could not take the benefits freely without contributing.\n\nStuckey remarked that at least two coolies won the Distinguished Service Medal for conspicuous bravery, going through a barrage three times to get food for their company when its supply had been cut off by enemy fire. Occasionally the coolies fought the war their own way and after one German air raid, killing some Chinese, their friends then killed several German prisoners before the sentries were aroused.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215429, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 206, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "155\n\nimpressions and variations of this image circulated at the time in Europe; 26 the Jesuit fathers had actually been instrumental in introducing similar prints to the East. Apart from prints, Charles Boxer, amongst others, has remarked how the Portuguese had carried retablos with them to Japan.27 It therefore seems equally plausible that related altarpieces might have been present in the minds of the artists of the façade.\n\nBesides the mentioned attributes, the unknown programmer of the decoration also incorporated themes from St John's Book of Revelation 12.1 and 12.3 (John 12.2 was by now conveniently glossed over in artistic representations of the theme), as well as from other sources.\n\nSuch a sophisticated and theological knowledge of Marian themes reveals the mind of a programmer ingenious enough to merit a few words. Although the identity of its author is unknown, Carlo Spinola, the architect of Madre de Deus and the artist Giovanni Nicolao, director of the art school in Japan, come immediately to mind. But I think one should also consider Dom Diogo Correa Valente as another possible candidate for authorship, mainly on account of the contents of his library in the College of St. Paul.28\n\nThe Jesuit Diogo Valente was the learned but controversial Bishop of Japan resident at the College of São Paulo from 1619 to 1624, years when the façade was probably being redesigned and its construction begun. In 1624 Dom Diogo had to leave for Goa in a hurry under the shadow of the violent quarrels that agitated Macao because members of his own order had apparently partisanly elected him as Bishop of the city. But he returned again as Bishop in 1630 and so remained until his death three years later. When he was buried in the chancel of the church of Madre de Deus the decoration of the frontispiece must have been in progress. However, this is a question that can only be settled by future research.\n\nSymbolic Meaning\n\nThe interpretation of symbols relating to Mary (and the other images) is a fascinating but complex subject that cannot be discussed in detail here. However, it is worth considering some of those adorning the façade to get a sense of their poetic and mystical quality.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215472, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 249, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "198\n\nand rock falls. We saw one such team, hard at it, with a pot-bellied sergeant doing the important job of watching them.\n\nA dignified repast\n\nOn the far side of Haa we took the road up the valley to inspect a small village, Nagyel - we were even able to go inside one of the houses and poke around. Everything was, of course, wooden and very solid. But at 9,000 feet we were a bit puffed and in need of lunch - and so headed back down the valley again. Very soon we realised that we ourselves were the visiting dignitaries for whom the large table and chairs had been set up. We had not up to now realised, but in addition to our two minibuses and the smaller one for our baggage, there was yet another. This fourth vehicle contained the catering crew of three, who had gone ahead and prepared a splendid al fresco buffet lunch. What a treat! An excellent spread and served most professionally. And not over the top at all, now we realised who the diners were to be.\n\nThe second night's accommodation was waiting for us in the capital city, Thimpu. As that was four hours away we had no time to hang around, but we were able to stop for a treat along the way. This was the Napchong Hadang Monastery, where we found we were just in time for a puja for the water god. This ritual, dating from the 17th century, lasts for three days, the third day involving a long procession through the nearby villages. We were there on the first day, and were lucky enough to enter the temple and see two lines of red-robed monks, sitting cross-legged on the floor facing each other and eating rice from their bowls. At the head of the lines was the master. When he started chanting the rice bowls disappeared under the robes pretty sharpish as all were expected to join in. The older monks, sitting nearer the master, had drums whilst the younger ones had enough to do to try not to stare at 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society. To one side were two, as it were, oboists and to the other were two, as it might have been, bass horn players. The whole ensemble was absolutely magical, something I had never seen nor heard except on the National Geographic Channel.\n\nThe three further hours to Thimpu were spent in happy conversation on the bus, the subjects ranging from Tung Chi Wah's chances of a second term to African insects that lay their eggs under your toenails. I don't know how I did it in the face of such intellectual challenge, but I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215482, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 259, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "208\n\nHitting the highway\n\nDay 6, and the winding road, 1,000 feet up the valley side, that was taking us to the next item on our agenda, and along which no two vehicles could pass without one of them either reversing a few miles or risking an extremely rapid journey to the river, was referred to by the guide as 'The East-West Highway.' Along the route we had a brief but stunning view of Gunga Phunsum, at 24,614 feet the highest unclimbed peak in the Himalayas.\n\nAt about 11,150 feet Shingkar village was the highest settlement we visited and the most remote. Even our guide had not been before, but needless to say Brian had. With the assistance of some international aid money, each house had been fitted with a small solar panel, but it was not certain whether or not they were working. However, that was the only hint of modernity. The rest was pure Middle Ages England. The village straddled a stream, which flowed through its middle unchecked, running where it would. The water was only diverted at one point, through a narrow wooden channel into a small stone structure, by which time the water was rushing with quite some force. Was it used to fire a generator, or to turn a mill wheel? The very beginnings of a local industrial revolution? No. Of course, the water was being harnessed to turn a prayer wheel. We wandered along the village's stone and mud paths, between the widely spaced and randomly placed houses. Up here at the back of beyond these people have precious little, but what little they have is precious,\n\nOur itinerant chef, Al Fresco, once again conjured up a good and welcome meal of rice, vegetables, salad and chicken. This time we were watched by a crowd of inquisitive but well-behaved onlookers - a novelty compared to all previous outdoor lunches.\n\nA short distance down the valley was the village of Ura, at about 10,170 feet, special for having its houses huddled more closely together. For warmth? It was not clear. But it had been a feature of all other villages that we had seen that the houses had been widely spaced; unlike their Chinese counterparts, for example, Bhutanese village-dwellers usually like to have a bit of space around them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215522, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 299, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "249\n\nThree years later in 1885, five cemeteries were simultaneously set apart for the Chinese. These were described in a government notification as follows:62\n\nKAULUNG.— Situated on the North Side of the Road from Yaumati to the village of Mat'auwai, and near this village and within a short distance of the limits of British Territory. The site is an irregular figure bounded by Government ground, measuring on the North, 520 feet; South, 300 feet; East, 290 feet; West, 520 feet.\n\nSHAUKIWAN. Situated in the valley facing the East, lying between the Lyeemoon Pass, and the road from Shaukiwan to Stanley; is nearly triangular in shape, and bounded on the North, South-East, and West by Government ground, and on the East by the sea-shore, and measures on the North, 1,650 feet; South-East, 1,650 feet; West, 1,800 feet; East, 550 feet.\n\nSHEKO. Situated about 1/4 of a mile to the North-East of the northern portion of the village of Sheko; bordered by the Cliff facing the Sea on the East, and on the three other sides by Government ground, measuring on the North, 550 feet; South, 500 feet; East, 340 feet; West, 300 feet.\n\nSTANLEY. Situated about 1/4 of a mile to the South-East from the Stanley Barracks; bordered on the South-East by Tytam Bay on the North-West, East and West sides by Government ground, and measuring on the North-West, 480 feet; South-East, 520 feet; East, 560 feet; West, 500 feet.\n\nABERDEEN. Situated on the promontory 1/2 mile to the South-East of the village of Aberdeen, and bordered on the Southern side by the Aberdeen Channel, and on the North, East and West by Government ground, measuring on the North, 1,200 feet; East, 300 feet; West, 350 feet.\n\nIn 1891, two more Chinese cemeteries were added to the list:7\n\nMOUNT DAVIS.68 Situated on the West side of the Pokfulam Road and about one mile to the North-West of the village of Pokfulam, bordered on the North by Government ground, the boundary line being marked by granite posts, on the South-West by the Chinese Christian...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215526, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 303, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "253\n\n'106\n\nWestern side of Cheung Chau Island and about half a mile to the South-West of the village of Cheung Chau and containing about 5.19 acres, was authorized. This was the first cemetery designated on an outlying island and was later extended in 1921.107\n\n108\n\nIn 1912, two Chinese cemeteries were authorized. The first one was situated at 'New Kowloon Survey District 1 Lot Nos. 582 and 583,' very close to Sai Yu Shek Cemetery. The cemetery appeared in a 1924 map109 and was marked as 'Fukienese Cemetery.' In another 1940 HKGG Notification, the cemetery was also referred to as 'Fukienese Cemetery.' The second cemetery appointed, a Christian cemetery, was 'to be known as the Tsun Wan Christian Cemetery situate and being near Tsun Wan in Demarcation District No. 453 in the New Territories in the Colony of Hongkong, containing an area of 10,000 square feet,'111\n\nIn the following year, a site 'to be known as the Hau Pui Loong Cemetery situate and being near Hau Pui Loong in Kowloon in the Colony of Hongkong containing an area of about 19 acres' was appointed.112\n\nThe Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen\n\nAlthough a number of Chinese cemeteries were authorized and appointed since the 1870s, these cemeteries were not intended for the upper and wealthier classes. By the early 20th century, the absence of what were considered proper and decent sites for these Chinese who wished to settle in Hong Kong was apparent. In 1901, the Cemeteries Committee of the Sanitary Board moved to set apart a piece of hillside between the Aberdeen Channel and Deep Water Bay for wealthy Chinese as a burial ground.113 However, for some reason, eventually this site was not appointed. Eight years later, the issue was presented again to the Sanitary Board by Lau Chu-pak, a member of the Board and one of the most prominent members of the Chinese community in the Colony,114 Lau said:\n\nThe better class of Chinese who had made Hong Kong their permanent home had not a decent cemetery in which to bury their dead, and the Chinese had no control on what were called Chinese Cemeteries. These cemeteries were simply tracts of barren land set apart by the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 349, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "299\n\nBeing cooped up on a steep, precipitous, hummock of rock, which consisted of a small, high island and a second island forming, as it were, a long straggling tail meant there were limitations to physical activity. There is a sea-water channel varying from seven to nine metres wide separating the two islands. In a total area of approximately 11.75 hectares, there were obvious limitations to taking exercise.\n\nAlthough the overall length of the \"main\" island is only about 0.8 of a kilometre, like being on board ship there are certain things that an enthusiast can do. Some lighthouse keepers did not bother to exercise. Lai Tak-wah, however, told the author that he used to try to get in 30 minutes every day. Some of this would include climbing up and down the 224 steps which led from the new pier at sea level to the buildings at the top of the Island.38 Some keepers liked to swim. Others practiced Chinese martial arts.\n\nWildlife\n\nApart from higher up towards the crest, little vegetation grows on the main island. Except for a small sisal tree and a chilli tree which stood there in 1990, the author recalls there were no real trees although there are a few bushes. On the smaller \"tail\" island there is even less - just the odd patch of sparse grass.\n\nThe top part of the main Island is partly covered with vegetation, including a few plants and flowers, such as Chinese Hibiscus.39 For those interested in wildlife, when the Royal Asiatic Society members paid their visit in 1990, there was a colony of red-rumped swallows nesting in the cliffs on the leeward side of the main Island. However, on subsequent visits the author did not spot these birds, although there are usually a few swifts and the odd black-eared kite circling in the sky. But no matter whether a person is interested in wildlife or not, Waglan, with the waves breaking together with the foam, is a beautiful spot,\n\nNear the end of the low, straggling island, surrounding a cavern that goes right through the island, you can see two very large rocks. Using a little imagination, these, some proclaim, seem to be leaning over \"kissing.\"40 Yes, there is even romance at Waglan!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215814, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "46\n\nspeeds of at least 64 knots (1 knot equals 1.15 miles per hour). Unlike hurricanes in the Atlantic, Pacific typhoons can occur at any month, although most take place from May to October. Compared to the other weather factors that could influence a Hong Kong operation, a typhoon is more intense, more mobile, and more unpredictable. Even the USN lacked the means to predict the movement and intensity of a typhoon. If one was spotted by reconnaissance, the need to code and decode messages or to maintain radio silence meant that such information would be outdated by the time it was received. Typhoon tracking was very sketchy during the war, and remained so for decades thereafter.\n\n22\n\n'It is a memorable experience to watch a big typhoon, but it is better to do so from a well-built house than from a ship at sea.\n\n+23\n\nThe power of a typhoon is beyond the ability of most people to gauge. Its sustained winds can reach 130 knots, while periodic gusts can exceed 150 knots. Rain accompanying a typhoon strikes early (usually when the centre of the typhoon is about 250 nautical miles away), late (the heaviest rainfall occurs after the passage of a typhoon's centre), and hard. The last refers to the horizontal motion of typhoon rains, which hit like knives or bullets, and could cause damage, destruction, injury, and death. The energy released by only a small-scale typhoon during a 24-hour period is equivalent to that of almost 500,000 atom bombs, or about 20 billion tons of water.\n\n24\n\nTyphoons tend to weaken once they reach land, but that doesn't mean people are out of danger. On the contrary, for most people the danger has only begun. To give an example, in September 1937, Hong Kong was struck by one of the most powerful typhoons ever to visit the territory. Gusts of up to 145 knots were recorded, six inches (15 cm) of rain were dumped on the territory in just two days, and sea levels rose 15 feet (4.57 meters). Hong Kong's fishing community suffered the worst of it. Of the 3,500 junks and sailing craft present, 1,255 were sunk and 600 seriously damaged. The death toll from these losses totalled some 11,000.\n\n25 That was about one per cent of Hong-Kong's population at the time.\n\nIn the Tai Po area of the New Territories, the carnage was even more frightening. Tidal waves of up to 30 feet (over nine metres) in height formed at Tolo Channel, crashed onto its shores at adjacent Tolo", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215815, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "47\n\nHarbour, and engulfed everything in their way up to a quarter mile (400 meters) inland. At least 200 people were killed (a heavy loss, considering that the area was sparsely populated back then), and the Tai Po Road (one of Hong Kong's few major roads at the time) and KCR were temporarily put out of commission, which isolated the survivors from the rest of Hong Kong for two days.26\n\nIn Victoria Harbour (between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island), 28 of the 101 steam vessels present were stranded, resulting in five deaths. Shore facilities on both sides of the harbour were wrecked, including Kai Tak Airfield. Fortunately for this part of Hong Kong, which was and remains the most congested part of the territory, no tidal wave struck here because the eastern entrance at Lyemun Pass was too narrow for enough water to break through. But Victoria Harbour was still vulnerable to strong winds and rough seas, which were what caused all that damage in its vicinity.27\n\nThe implications that the \"Great Typhoon of September 1937” (typhoons didn't acquire female names until after the war) had on a potential Allied landing in Hong Kong were profound. First, all kinds of operations would be impossible during a typhoon. Everyone would worry about how to take shelter from the storm rather than fight the enemy. Given the expected relative positions of the two sides, the Allies were sure to be more exposed to the elements than the Japanese because they were on the offensive and had to establish LoC inland. Second, Hong Kong was intended to serve as a port of entry for LoC into China. With its extensive waterfront facilities, Victoria Harbour would have served as the primary berthing area for ships, and Tolo Harbour was considered a good secondary anchorage. Depending on the path of any typhoon that hits Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour may be afforded some protection by the mountains that surrounded it on the Kowloon side.28 Tolo Harbour (and neighbouring Plover Cove) was roomy and calm enough for ships - as long as there was no typhoon.29\n\nOnce a typhoon hits Tolo Harbour, as it did in 1937, this area is at a disadvantage. Typhoons usually approach Hong Kong from the east or southeast, and Tolo Channel and Tolo Harbour are in the eastern part of Hong Kong. The winds in a typhoon blow in an anti-clockwise direction, which is an arc-like motion from east to west when one is facing north. In the case of Tolo Channel (which is the outlet to the sea", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216024, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 323, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "257\n\nand pleasure-grounds, all of which showed evident signs of great neglect. The suburbs were one dense mass of habitations of two stories in height; the lower portions of which were devoted to the handicraftsmen, who employed themselves in them, or to store rooms, in which merchandise was deposited. There were numerous public buildings, most of them appearing to be of a religious character, either dedicated to Buddha or Confucius.\n\nMainly for safety reasons ships passing up and down the Yangzi tended to use the main channel which ran along the north bank of the Great River opposite Zhenjiang. Down the years spits have formed close to Zhenjiang, mainly off Ganlu Si [Consular Bluff] and Xiang Shan Bluff, whilst the Zhengrenzhou spit steadily advanced downstream from the west blocking off the approaches to the harbour. The flat sandy bottom, so the Admiralty Guide tells us, does not provide good holding ground, especially during autumn gales.\n\nThe channel of the Great River at Zhenjiang is some two miles in breadth and had long been a ferry crossing point over the Yangzi, linking Zhenjiang with the major city of Yangzhou, a short distance upstream of the northern section of the Grand Canal. The long-mooted bridge over the River has still to be built. In the early days of the opening up of China by the West the city was believed to be the furthest point upstream on the Yangzi which seagoing vessels of the heaviest burden could reach with comparative ease. When Hankou, over five hundred miles further upstream, was opened to foreign trade it soon became apparent that trade at Zhenjiang consisted of little more than being an agency for steamers using the port as a stopping point, and for the Customs House for Chinese merchants. So it was that when vessels had access to the fountainhead of trade at Hankou, together with the fact that the harbour at Zhenjiang having silted up, the importance of the port became in great measure superseded. Sadly, the dolphins which not too long ago frolicked in the Great River and were commonly seen off Zhenjiang have been fished into extinction with today's oily pollution preventing any return, though a very occasional porpoise may still be seen.\n\nA Victorian writer described the climate and temperature of Zhenjiang as 'little different from that in Shanghai, whereas the varied scenery and hilly surroundings of Zhenjiang were an advantage which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216049, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 348, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "282\n\nin 1896 took herself off up the Yangzi and later wrote about her six-month journey, including her stopover in Zhenjiang. She travelled on the steamer Poyang and...'after passing Silver Island [Jiao Shan], a wooded rock on which there is a fine temple, we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the Yangtze, and well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river. On my two visits I thought it an attractive place. It has a fine bund and prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a British Consulate on a hill above; trees abound. The concession roads are broad and well kept. A row of fine hulks connected by bridges with the shore offers great facilities for the landing of goods and passengers. Sikh police are much in evidence, the hum of business greets one's ears, traffic throngs the bund, the Grand Canal is choked with junks, ...and judging from appearances only, one might think Zhenjiang a busier port than Hankow, the great centre for commerce in Central China'. Mrs Bird then goes on to describe the passing trade including...'our German rivals have done a very neat thing' in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen, dextrously separated from the yolks of ducks' eggs, is made into slabs, which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the production of leather, and the printing of cotton, etc.'. She also commented on 'the beautiful Golden Island [Jin Shan], separated as recently as 1842 by the channel south of the island where there is now an expanse of wooded and cultivated land sprinkled with villages'.\n\nThe hulks were replaced many years ago, and yet again, since 1980, their wooden piers have been rebuilt into a row of some half dozen concrete piers. Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of Chinese Maritime Customs for forty-five years, referred several times to the hulks at Chinkiang, usually because the hulk owner, Bean in one instance, was involved in a law case with the local Customs Commissioner.\n\nIsabella Bird learned of a number of charities and organisations for the welfare of the poor from the British Consul, W R Carles, and from Rev. W W Lawton who had made careful investigations for the Christian Literary Association of Zhenjiang. She noted that there were an orphan asylum and a benevolent institute for girls in Zhenjiang as well as a benevolent institute with eighty boys. For adults there was a Bureau for Advancing Funds, of inestimable advantage to the struggling farmer or merchant. There were also two free dispensaries, with nine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "94\n\nconcerned that if there were no trials, it would aid and abet Khmer Rouge impunity.\n\nIn this sense, retribution operates both internationally and nationally. Retribution acts as a deterrent to those who may think of establishing regimes like those of the Khmer Rouge. But it also supports efforts to re-establish the rule of law within Cambodia itself by the example of punishing such grave crimes.\n\n4.3 Retributive Justice and Revenge:\n\nRevenge has been a constant in human history. It can be seen as a self-help response to an offence, in order to ensure that there is no impunity. Traditional literature has brought down to us many examples of the social obligation to revenge an offence, and the attempts to channel and limit that obligation through a legal system.\n\nIf there is no effective legal system to undertake the institutional revenge of a people, then the way is open for private revenge. Ultimately, this is socially destructive, and can lead to a never-ending cycle of revenge without closure.\n\n4.4 Retributive Justice and Individuals:\n\nTrials are focussed on individual perpetrators of guilt. In this way, individuals must accept accountability for their acts and omissions. One advantage of this process is that it avoids loading accountability on to a community or group, and avoids the stereotypes leading to ideas of collective guilt. These stereotypes are likely to lead to further violence, creating an unbreakable cycle of violence.\n\nWhile retributive justice is a key component of the legal system, it is insufficient by itself to lead to reconciliation. This leads us to two additional aspects of justice, restorative justice, and distributive justice.\n\n5. Restorative Justice\n\nRestorative Justice is concerned with restoring the parties, as far as possible, to their original position. In a sense, it is more about \"rights\" and less about “wrongs.”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216409, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 168, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "118\n\nIn addition to her usual cruising on the China coast the ship paid one visit to Nagasaki and, early in 1933, another to the Philippine Islands.\n\nOn 11 June 1933 the carrier EAGLE, Captain L.V. Wells, DSO, arrived at Hong Kong to replace her on the station. Accordingly the next day HERMES slipped for Singapore and after a pleasant passage reached Sheerness on Saturday, 22 July 1933.\n\nAlthough while in the East mention has been made above of the activity of pirates, actual direct involvement with any such deed had been about the only experience she missed between 1930 and 1933. She was to fill that gap during her following commission, also on the China Station when under the command of Captain The Hon. George Fraser.\n\nNOTES\n\n[Hon Ed.] HMS HERMES, a small aircraft carrier of some 10,950 tons, was the first purpose-built such warship in the Royal Navy. On 15th January 1918 she was laid down at the Armstrong Whitworth yard and launched on 11 September 1919. The yard was scheduled to close, and no great post-World War I urgency to complete her was perceived, so she was towed to Devonport for completion. There she was commissioned on 6th August 1923. Several of her pre-World War II commissions were spent on the China Station. At the outbreak of World War II she \"worked up\" in the English Channel, carried out one patrol, and then in October 1939 was ordered to Dakar to work with the French Navy on anti-enemy blockade runner and surface raider patrols. With the ship operating twelve Swordfish aircraft, generally speaking these operations took place out across the Atlantic towards the coast of South America. On 8 July, 1940, with the advent of Vichy then at Dakar, the ship launched a daring night-time attack first using her motor boat immediately followed by Swordfish aircraft torpedoes, crippling the new battleship RICHELIEU which was lying in Dakar Roads. Subsequently, when returning to Freetown, she was damaged in collision with the P & O liner CORFU, then an armed merchant cruiser engaged in convoy protection duties. She was repaired at Simonstown, South Africa. Following repairs she saw further service, enjoying some notable successes, in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.\n\nFrom Trincomalee late on 8th April 1942, the approaching Japanese fleet having", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]