[
    {
        "id": 210896,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 247,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "230\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nplague, the Hongkong Government cleared most of the district of Taipingshan. This had been the city's most congested area, and its removal displaced a large number of people.\n\nTo provide needed housing, Ho A-mei explained that the Fuk Tin Co was building houses across the harbour, where it was still rural. There would be fresh air, wide streets and better sanitary conditions.\n\nSome several scores of houses were almost completed and site formation for others was in progress. The houses were of brick with tile roof, two storeys high and with ample room between the blocks. The intention was to build several hundred. Built in bulk, the properties could be sold at a bargain price, at the same time the promoters could realise a substantial profit.\n\nThe hope was that \"many respectable Chinese will buy land and houses over the way as family residences and that thus many well-to-do Chinese who have houses in the interior will find it convenient and pleasant to 'pitch their tent' in the neighbourhood of this thriving colony.\" Nor need there be any anxiety about security as there were military personnel at the Chinese custom's station at Laichikok.\n\nBut looking ahead only a little farther, there was the prospect of the area becoming British, for as the interviewer stated, “such an extension of Hongkong has long been needed, and, I am glad to say, the day when it will be un fait accompli is now within measurable distance.\" The distance was three more years.\n\nOPIUM MONOPOLY AND HO CONNECTION\n\nSomehow Ho A-mei became involved in a Chinese scheme to solve the opium question. Some background will aid in understanding his role in the scheme.\n\nIn 1875 the British took the opportunity presented by the murder of a member of a British exploratory expedition in the province of Yunnan to press China for a treaty revision. As a consequence, the Chefoo Agreement was negotiated the following year.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215595,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 372,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "322\n\nracing through the Gorges make this section difficult and dangerous both at low and high water. Chongqing, the chief commercial port of western China and an important distribution centre, was opened to foreign trade by an Additional Article [1890] to the Chefoo Agreement of 1876. This stretch also includes the River down to Chongqing from its junction with the Min River at Yibin [Suifu].\n\nThe fourth and final stretch, the Upper Yangzi of 1,600 miles, is torrential almost from its source in Eastern Tibet far to the west, down to Yibin. It has several major tributaries.\n\nWe, however, are interested in the Gorges. They have long been regarded by Chinese junkmen and especially foreigners who had travelled through them as passengers on river junks, as one of the most difficult stretches of river navigation on earth, with a current in places running at 13 knots.\n\nOur story concerns two British expatriates in China who, as far as we know, never met as they were of different social circles. One is Archibald Little, a British Shanghai merchant, married to a British lady and William Mesny, a struggling entrepreneur also in Shanghai but married to a Chinese. Paul King wrote that 'One of the foreign tea-tasters who each year visited Kiukiang [Jiujiang] was Archibald Little, who was never very successful in business but found himself in Yichang in the uphill work of establishing as a fact that the rapids in the upper reaches of the Yangtze could be negotiated by steam craft. In my [King] time the Navy was represented in Yichang by H.M.S. Kinsha - the famous pioneer merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze owned and operated by the late Archibald Little.'\n\nThe first steamer to ascend the upper waters of the Great River, the Yangzi, through the Gorges above Yichang and as far as Chongqing during the low water season in the month of March 1898 was the 9-ton steam launch, Leechuen [Li Chuan], the property of Mr. Archibald Little who travelled aboard the steamer with his wife.\n\nArchibald John Little was born in London in 1838, and arrived in China in 1859 where he remained, apart from short visits back to Britain, until 1907 when he returned there and died the following year. He was a merchant, traveller and writer and is as well known to some as the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216440,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "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": 199,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "149\n\nNewchwang (Niuzhuang) and elsewhere - that might extenuate, but could not justify, Japan's action at Chefoo. The Japanese issued a statement, which ran as follows:\n\nThe status of China in the present struggle is unique. Nearly all the military operations are carried on within her borders, but she is not a party to the conflict. Nevertheless, her territories are in part belligerent and in part neutral. That condition of things is, as regards International Law, an anomaly and a contradiction, and in this case it was made the object of a special understanding ... and it seemed that any such occupation or use of neutral Chinese territory or ports by the Russian force would give effect to the proviso in the Japanese engagement which would justify her in considering ports so occupied or used as belligerent. From Port Arthur Russia sought in Chefoo an asylum from attack, which her home port had ceased to afford her. In taking that step, Russia was guilty of a breach of the neutrality of China... and with the termination of the incident the neutrality of the port was revived.\n\nChina augmented its force in the Shanghai river with a modern cruiser, with orders to arrest Russian vessels which had sought sanctuary at Wusong. They registered all the names, ages and official titles of the Russian naval personnel on the vessels at Wusong, and the list checked from time to time to ensure that none were missing. Russian warships which escaped from Port Arthur before its capture also took refuge in Chefoo where they were disarmed. These and other Chinese acts revealed their new-found courage and were, almost certainly, due to Japanese successes in the field.\n\nChinese reports of Russian violations and intrusions on neutral (Chinese) territory were frequent, notably in Kashgaria and other parts of Chinese Eastern Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang). They also frequently violated various parts of Mongolia and Manchuria west of the Liao River in direct contravention of the international agreement made at the commencement of the war by both belligerent powers.\n\nAt the end of January 1905 Russian forces suddenly appeared before Kashgar (Kashi), expelled the Chinese garrison, consisting of a Chinese major and some 200 locally-born Chinese soldiers in the old town, and the Tidu or Provincial Commander-in-Chief and five",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]