[ { "id": 204462, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n83\n\ndivisions of the district, or tung, several of which were within the present boundaries of the New Territory.\n\nThere were also military officers in the district, a battalion commander at Tai Pang, who also had quarters at Kowloon in which he was more often to be found. He had subordinates with him at Kowloon City and also in the Islands, at Tung Chung and Tai O on Lantau, whilst there appear to have been other subordinate officers on at least Lamma and Cheung Chau.20\n\nIn addition to the military posts (Lockhart does not mention any naval forces) there were the police, of which there were two kinds. First, there were the chai or runners, of whom there were about sixty, stationed in Nam Tau under the direct control of the magistrate. “They are sent, as occasion requires, throughout the district for a variety of purposes, including the making of arrests, the collecting of the land tax, and acting generally as the eyes and ears of the magistrate. They receive no pay from Government, but manage to earn a fair livelihood by illicit squeezes,” says Lockhart. There were also village constables, from two to six, according to the size of a village, appointed by the village and paid by village contributions levied according to the size of land holdings. Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power of arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village.\n\n**\n\n7\n\n**21\n\n+\n\nThe elders played a great part in maintaining the status quo. Together with the headman of the village and the local gentry, they formed a local tribunal which dealt summarily with all minor matters in the tung and heung into which the district was divided.22 Inside the villages, the headmen and elders acted likewise. A form of genuine local self-government existed in 1898. Its raison d'être was probably nothing more high-flown than because the District Magistrate, traditionally an overworked official, would have been completely swamped with work of a trifling nature had they not existed.\n\nTo quote Lockhart,\n\n“The gentry and elders in the village council determined summarily cases of theft, disputes about land, domestic squabbles, and cases of debt. As a rule, the decision of that council is accepted as final. But if either of the parties to a case is dissatisfied, he can appeal to a council of the Tung,”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204464, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n85\n\nexamination by the District Magistrate at Nam Tau and by the Kwang Chau prefect at Canton, proceeded to the Viceroy's yamen in the same city where eventually a favoured few would manage to pass the first degree of sau choi. This in theory entitled the scholar to qualify for an official post. In practise there were many more sau choi than there were posts and a scholar had to pursue further study and pass other examinations before he stood a real chance of becoming an official. In every district there were sau choi who would never obtain posts. Many became local schoolmasters. Others by virtue of wealth and position became the local gentry who, by report, were sometimes a help to the magistrate and frequently a nuisance, both to him and to the litigant or criminal public. They sat on the local tribunals kuk and advised the magistrate on local affairs. Being literati like himself they had ready access to his yamen and to his ear. Sometimes they even outranked him. Elders, on the other hand, rarely sat on the kuk. Lockhart estimated that there were one hundred and fifty sau choi in the whole district.20 In 1898 the elders of important villages like Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan were literati. Several of them played a leading part in the planning of operations against the British take-over.27\n\n20\n\nSometimes the wealthier village elders enhanced their position by purchasing degrees. In the late Ch'ing period the sale of examination titles appears to have been considerable. Smith mentions it in his Village Life in China** and I have come across several such persons in villages in the Southern District of the New Territory. They were usually substantial villagers. Such a one was CHAN Tak-hang4 of Cheung Kwan O in Junk Bay who died in the seventeenth year of Kwong Shui (1892) at the age of sixty-four. According to his descendant, the present Village Representative, he was a man of substance who built a guest house in the village which is still standing to-day, gave money for the upkeep of the stone tracks which linked the villages of the area with Kowloon, and was well known locally. His portrait, painted at the age of fifty-seven, shows him in his borrowed finery as a kwok hok sang, for which he paid an unknown consideration to Government. A man such as this would obviously play a considerable part in the affairs of his immediate neighbourhood.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204470, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n91 \n\nwhich it had supplanted eighteen years before. Great hardship was encountered which is hardly surprising, and the people were eternally grateful to their benevolent officials and commemorated them in several temples dedicated in their honour. One of these was burned down in 1955 during the fire which destroyed Shek Wu Hui near Fanling, and others are to be found at Sha Tau Kok and Kam Tin, and Sai Heung in Chinese Territory. In addition a school was named in their honour at Kam Tin, and when it was repaired in 1744 the San On magistrate of the time composed a Confucian discourse which was inscribed on the wall of the restored building, to instruct the pupils and their parents. An interesting survival which still existed in 1898 was the appearance of an old beggar in the Yuen Long villages every Chinese New Year who brought statues of WONG and CHOW for the people to worship, and incidentally to supply him with food and money.'' To these men-become-gods for whom the construction of a temple was necessary to ensure their better worship and resulting favours, there must be added an equal and possibly much older faith in sacred tree spirits and the multitude of earth spirits known as pak kung ih, tai wong ★, and ordinary she taan 4, who look after villages and localities such as passes, bridges, and fords over streams.\n\nThis insurance with the spirits who ruled this world and would assuredly be encountered in the next was expressed in the continual reconstruction of temples. A great many of the temples in the New Territory to-day owe their present fabric, or a great part of it, to repairs made during the last fifty years of the Ching dynasty. It was evidently a highly necessary part of the proceedings that the god should be informed of the names of the contributors so that his benefits should not pass anyone by, since their names, and often the amounts they gave, were scrupulously inscribed on the commemorative tablet which was always let into the wall to mark the occasion. Sometimes over a thousand names had to be recorded in this way, most of them in respect of trifling amounts, even for a small and out of the way temple, as in the reconstruction of the Tin Hau temple at Cheung Chau in the second year of the last Ch'ing Emperor (1909).\n\nThe magistrate, too, was expected to play his part in warding off disaster. The District History mentions that CHAN Kuk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n95\n\n2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British\", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin.\n\nIt is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory.\n\nThe market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had \"seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc.\" Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs\". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there \"used to be over two hundred shops trading here\". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204477, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\napproval. This authority, with powers of discretion, was given to the D.O. to help preserve the traditional way of managing land within the clan, and to provide a cheap and impartial arbiter in case of dispute.\n\n13 In Shek Pik village the TSUI, CHEUNG, HO and CHI clans owned 1.1, 0.39, 0.55, and 0.04 acres of agricultural land in 1898. With the exception of the HO clan, they were intact in 1959. The TSUI tso probably dates from the fifteenth generation, and is therefore three hundred years old. The FUNG clan in Fan Pui owned 9.2 acres in 1898 but this was sold in 1953.\n\n14 At Fan Pui I dealt with a disputed case of ownership in which the defendant stated that eight lots totalling 9,581 square feet of agricultural land had been specially set aside as joss and oil fields (shen you tian). Fields are also set aside for the worship of earth spirits. At Cheung Kwan O village in 1898 the two clans of CHAN and NG administered 1.41 acres of agricultural land under the name of a to tei wui. The rentals were originally devoted to the maintenance of the to tei or earth spirit who looked after the village, but for many years the revenue has simply gone to the clans. Many other cases are known at Mui Wo and Tung Chung.\n\n15 See Chapter III (iii) and (iv) of H. B. Morse The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1908) which is based on an article by Byron Brenan \"The Office of District Magistrate in China” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society XXII, (1897-98), 36-65, and incorporates his own wide experience of China and her officials in the course of over thirty years' service in the Imperial Maritime Customs. Brenan himself (1847-1927) had served in China from 1866 and was H.B.M.'s Consul-General in Shanghai 1898-1901. Of the district magistrate Brenan wrote, \"The magistrate is the unit of government; he is the backbone of the whole official system; and to ninety per cent of the population he is the Government\"; op. cit. p. 37.\n\n16 Papers 1899 p. 583.\n\nThe text of the stone tablet outside the Tin Hau temple at Kat O, referred to elsewhere in the article, uses this picturesque phraseology. Contrasting their sorry lot beside the power of the yamen officials they had written in their petition to the Viceroy \"We, civilians, whose lives are cheap as ants... who are we to start a lawsuit against the district yamen's worms?\" An interesting feature of this inscription is that it follows the customary form of Ch'ing document in which reference is made in the text to other papers, by summary or quotation, instead of the western method of adding enclosures. See John K. Fairbank, Ch'ing Documents, an introductory syllabus, (Harvard University Press 1952) p. 21.\n\n18 When I asked an old gentleman who graduated sau choi in 1896 about extortion and venality among magistrates, he replied in distinctly extenuating tones \"Some did; but then they had so many people to look after\". He observed that there were some rich districts in Kwangtung in which a magistrate had to do nothing to obtain money as it came rolling into the Office in the way of presents, inducements, additions to land and other taxes etc., whilst there were others which were so poor that the magistrate could squeeze very little from them even if he tried very hard. This is curiously echoed in Morse, Trade and Administration p. 92 “In Kwangtung we (the Imperial Maritime Customs) have regularly applied to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n99\n\nthree districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally \"sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come\" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in\".\n\n12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited.\n\n20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station,\n\n21 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west.\n\n23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says \"The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety\". He calls him \"often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities\". His is experienced and impartial testimony.\n\n24 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. \"The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204481, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nthere are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence.\n\n53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years.\n\n54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies.\n\n55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away.\n\n56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204621, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n89\n\nIn the course of a tour of duty in the New Territories I became interested in the island community and, when opportunities offered, made enquiries locally for information which would shed light on its history in the period before 1898, when it was still part of the San On district. I was particularly interested in local source material which would provide a picture of island life and society in the fifty years (1850-98) before the lease of the New Territories to Britain, and this article is based upon information obtained from three commemorative tablets which date from these years, and on other information available locally relating to several district associations of long standing, besides supplementary material from a variety of different sources.\n\nThese tablets consist of slabs of slate-like stone, usually two feet by three feet in size, on which are cut characters a quarter of an inch high set out in two parts: an account of the origin and successful accomplishment of the scheme, followed by the names of all subscribers. Their object was to record the event; and to recognise the efforts of local persons, by recording the names of the donors for posterity. Tablets in this old form were quite common—they are found all over the New Territories—and could record any undertaking, such as the construction of a road or bridge, the repair of a temple, and so on. They were set up, no doubt, with the appropriate commemorative ceremony which is still current practice for such occasions. We have the well-developed Chinese sense of the historical element in everyday life to thank for the existence of such interesting records, which, by their nature, are immune from the ravages of white ants and the damp summer weather. They are not, however, free from the attentions of the man in the street as the present state of these three tablets show: in that the first was hidden by a double bunk, the second is exposed to the elements at a street corner and is often hidden by wood from an adjacent timber yard, and the third was serving as the back of a stove, part of which had to be demolished and the tablet cleared of a heavy deposit of soot.\n\nThe first of the Cheung Chau tablets is in the office building of the Tung Kwun association and records the repair of the Po On study or school in the 5th year of T'ung-chih (1866-7); the second, dated 4th and 32nd years of Kuang-hsü", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204622, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "90\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n(1878-9 and 1906-7), stands in the street outside the Fong Pin hospital12 telling how it came to be established; and the third, in an old house in Tai Shan Street, commemorates the establishment and repair of a defence office in the 2nd and 10th years of T'ung-chih (1863-4 and 1871-2).\n\nThe three tablets give information about the island population towards the end of the Ch'ing dynasty and, for instance, tell something of the various sections of the community, especially those where local leadership and authority rested; their links with other parts of the San On district and the Kwangtung province; their relations with the district government and other officials, civil and military; and the way in which such local communal needs as a hospital, schools, and a defence corps or local militia were met.\n\nThe nucleus of Cheung Chau society seems always to have been the community of fishermen and shopkeepers, the two being interdependent to a great extent though separated by many basic differences. There has, in addition, always been a farming community, but it has ever taken a third place. A hundred years ago it is likely that the majority of the land dwellers were connected with the island's shops, as proprietors or fokis, and in subsidiary trades and occupations associated with the three main sections of the community. Cheung Chau also served as the market town for over a dozen villages on the central and southwest coast of Lantau, the largest of which was Shek Pik with a population of 363 in 1911, and for the inhabitants of the outer islands. The Fong Pin tablet states that there were two hundred shops in the 1870's, from which it can be deduced that Cheung Chau was a flourishing commercial centre at that time. This is borne out by the house in which the defence association tablet was found, which is long, narrow and surprisingly large, with a small open courtyard in the middle. It has changed very little in the last hundred years, like many other houses in the town which date from this period and before.\n\nIn this urbanized community local power lay with two groups: the members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong*** of Nam Tau and Cheung Chau; and the larger traders and shopkeepers. The two were probably intermingled to some extent, in that some Tong members would be business men, but more investigation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204623, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU \n\n91 \n\nis needed on this point. The Tong's position commands a special mention. It is the family organisation of the WONG clan who are now in the 27th adult generation at Nam Tau, their principal seat. By allowing a twenty-five year generation period, this will place their origin in Kwangtung in the early Yüan dynasty (1280—1368). However, the introduction to their gene-alogical record was written by a descendant of the 10th generation in the eighth year of the Hung-chih reign (1492-3), so that it seems likely that the generation periods are slightly longer and that the family dates from late Sung times. The Tong itself stems from an eighth generation ancestor, WONG Hing-cheong, a scholar of the chin-shih ± degree who had six sons, giving the Tong six branches, of which the first and third only are now represented on Cheung Chau.\n\nWhen the Tong acquired the Cheung Chau property is not stated; but since it was the sole ground landlord on the island in 1898 and all the other inhabitants held their leases from it and not direct from the Crown,1 it must have been at an early date, and very likely before the formation of the Tong in the mid-fifteenth century. Whether the whole island was given to the Tong by one grant, or whether, having first acquired a substantial grant of land, it pursued an assiduous policy of aggrandisement which eventually resulted in total ownership, is not certain; but, if a grant, it seems to have been a not uncommon thing in the San On district or the Kwangtung province.2 \n\nThe island community was not as isolated as its geographical position on the fringe of an outlying district might suggest. It was on the main route between Macau, the West River, and Hong Kong which, as the century drew on, was a factor of increasing importance. Cheung Chau began to share in the prosperity of Hong Kong, though it would probably be going too far to say that it owed its rise to the increasing fortunes of its neighbour.3 Besides its original families it began to attract settlers in larger numbers, among whom were many persons from adjacent parts of the province, such as CHOI Leung, \"the kind-hearted man of Tung Kwun”, who originated the Fong Pin scheme in 1872. According to the tablet he had already been trading on the island for several decades before he began his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204624, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n14\n\nphilanthropic work, probably one of many such, since the Po On tablet (1866) also mentions that \"our Tung Kwun natives are flowing in for business\". The lists of donors on the various tablets in temples and old buildings underline Cheung Chau's business and kinship links with the outside world. The local members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong seem to have maintained close contact with their parent body in Nam Tau; and, in much the same way, persons who had come to Cheung Chau to farm or do business, and had prospered during their stay, kept in touch with their families and friends in San On, Tung Kwun, Wai Chau, or from whichever district of the province they happened to come.\n\nRelations with the minor officials in the immediate area also seem to have been close, as one might expect. The officers of the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the regular land forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts throughout the eastern half of San On, seem to have contributed quite often to various repair schemes, whilst the salt, stamp, and Customs posts on the island automatically became victims for the collection of funds.15\n\n17\n\n1G\n\nSome of these contacts were useful when it came to collecting subscriptions and also when it was necessary to contact or bring pressure upon the district government; in this case the district magistrate of San On, whose yamen was at Nam Tau, the seat of their own WONG Wai Chak Tong. Fortuitously, the tablet in the defence bureau provides an instance of an approach to the district government. Four graduates, three of them almost certainly members of the Tong, and the managers of four large shops, besides other persons, petitioned the district magistrate WU16 when piracy and lawlessness threatened the lives and property of island people in the Hsien-feng reign (1851-61). It is interesting to note that they did not request the magistrate for direct assistance, but asked only that he issue a public notice urging the people of Cheung Chau to unite and provide \"brave and strong village guards\" for the defence of their island. One of the reasons why the magistrate was approached when this security organisation was being debated was very likely because his permission was required to raise and arm any body of men for defence purposes.18\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106\n\n¦\n\nF", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204625, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\nChung\n\nTung Wan\n\nshekhau\n\nOne Mite\n\nHoi Ping\n\nNam hor\n\n(Han-bai)\n\n© Hak shan\n\nCanton\n\nFrench 1.\n\nSha\n\nShun tak\n\nWhampoa\n\nDanes\n\nTung Chaen\n\nSun\n\nOCheungShan\n\nHeung Shan\n\nPTại chân\n\nDan Ping\n\n(Tung kuan)\n\nPearl River Estuary\n\nMam-tav\n\nmoon\n\nLINDAI\n\nPo On District\n\n[Pao-an-hsien)\n\nCapsingmoon\n\nWhichow\n\nTar Pang Wan\n\n(Mrs. Bay)\n\nTrong Chun\n\nTai\n\nKowloon\n\n$\n\nکی همینه\n\ntaipa Coloane\n\nShek Pik CHEUNG\n\nHong Kon\n\nIsland\n\nCHAU\n\nLadrone\n\nLadrone is\n\n10\n\n20\n\n30\n\nMILES\n\nMap showing Cheung Chau in relation to other places mentioned in the article.\n\nLema Is.\n\nCHEUNG CHAU\n\n93", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "94\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nOtherwise, the local leaders do not seem to have requested the magistrate's permission to carry out their various projects or even to have invoked his assistance. In the case of the repair of the Po On study in 1866 they seem to have acted without consulting the yamen. Again, there is no mention of the district magistrate on the tablet commemorating the establishment of the Fong Pin hospital in the years 1872-78, though this act seems to have owed much to an enlightened and energetic military official LAI Chun-pin, who was commander of the Kowloon garrison at the time.19 According to the tablet LAI stated: \"I happened to be stationed in Kowloon in the ting-ch'ou year (1877-8) of the Kuang-hsü reign and was so pleased to hear about this man (CHOI Leung) that I paid a visit to him. I found him to be a merchant with an untiring devotion to philanthropic works, so I compiled a subscription book urging contributions by officials, gentry, scholars and merchants to help make this scheme a success.\n\nThe names of the donors on the commemorative tablet show that LAI had cast his net wide, but he did not secure the district magistrate, even as a subscriber.\n\nWhether the magistrate knew officially of these proceedings is not known, but perhaps the sponsors did not inform him. Had they done so, particularly in respect of schemes for a poor house-cum-hospital and a school, both public amenities for which he had a measure of personal responsibility by virtue of being district magistrate, he would probably have been obliged to show his interest in one form or another.\" Perhaps he chose to ignore them as it was likely that he had lost face by LAI's actions; or he may well not have known what was going on.\n\nA considerable degree of self-help seems therefore to have been both necessary and unavoidable in isolated communities like Cheung Chau. Whilst the district government might take an interest in local schemes, it could not be expected to do much more; partly because of poor or inconvenient communications, but principally because there was very little money available to assist deserving projects.1 Local communities were expected to help themselves, and to set aside the means whereby an institution could be perpetuated and the structure kept in good repair. Cheung Chau was no exception to this general requirement, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204627, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU \n\n95 \n\nthe tablets state that upon its establishment the Po On study was endowed with a shop and a house, both with their title deeds; and the Fong Pin hospital with two shops. \n\nThis abstention from many of the basic duties of local government on the part of the district authorities could lead to abuses when a powerful group of local leaders became unscrupulous through continued exercise of power, and lack of control and supervision from above. On Cheung Chau, as I have said, this group was represented by the WONG Wai Chak Tong, with whom the larger shopkeepers and important individuals were probably prepared to make common cause. The Tong owned all the land; its parent branch at Nam Tau must undoubtedly have included senior graduates and possibly retired officials; and the tablets show that some members of the Cheung Chau branch were junior graduates by examination or purchase.**\n\nThis group must have been able to exert a considerable pressure on the district magistrate and his secretaries regarding Cheung Chau affairs, and during their short three-year tour most magistrates must have felt that the Tong and the Cheung Chau people were capable of looking after themselves on what was, after all, a small and remote island, with a population less than that of many of the larger villages in the district. In short, Cheung Chau interests were well represented if the Tong was honest and well-meaning, but not if its members were corrupt and ill-intentioned. \n\nTurning again to the tablets, that relating to the Po On study is of great interest because of its connection with a prominent feature of Cheung Chau society which has so far only been mentioned in passing: the district association.**\n\n25 \n\nThe district association is a social and charitable organisation organised on the basis of mutual assistance from among natives of the same district when living in another place. In a mixed settlement like Cheung Chau, where Hoklo and Tanka rubbed shoulders with Hakka, Chiu Chau, and Punti from various districts of Kwangtung province, it was a distinct advantage to be part of a community which had troubled to organise itself for welfare purposes, as had several district groups on this small island a hundred years ago. These traditional media of mutual assistance warrant a closer look, especially as their existence is proof of the diversity of persons settling on Cheung Chau, its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204628, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "96 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\npopularity with businessmen and others, and of the degree of wealth and general prosperity there in the middle of the last century: since district associations, like present day Kaifong in the urban area, can only operate effectively (and, indeed, come into existence) inside a community which possesses prosperous elements. The district associations must also have been a useful counterpoise to the political dominance of the WONG Wai Chak Tong. \n\nThe association for natives of Tung Kwun is the largest, richest and probably the oldest of the Cheung Chau societies. It seems to have been established in the fifth year of Chia-ch'ing (1800-01) and in 1898 owned five shops, office premises and an ancestral hall which had been in existence for at least forty years, judging by an incense holder dated the ninth year of Hsien-feng (1859-60). Members and destitute persons of Tung Kwun origin could receive relief assistance from its funds and contributions, with which the Po On study, the ancestral temple, and later three large communal urn graves were also managed. Practically all the way from the cradle to the grave the member and his children could benefit from the operation of his association.26 \n\nThe association laid emphasis on social cohesion and the observance by its members of the customary proprieties. There was the traditional feast for all members every year at the lantern festival on the fifteenth day of the first moon, on which day the managers for the new year were elected, and the yearly worship of Kwan Tai, the god of war and patron god of the association, on his birthday on the thirteenth day of the fifth moon, when each subscribing member received a share of roast pork. Confucius' birthday and the two grave sweeping festivals were also celebrated by members gathering together. \n\nOther commemorative tablets existed until only a few years ago which would have provided useful information about two other similar associations of long standing; those of people from Wai Chau and Chiu Chau (combined) and from 惠州及潮州 Sei Yap. One in the Wai Chiu clansmen's office was turned out 27 during repairs after Typhoon Mary in 1960 and not replaced; and what was probably the foundation stone of the Yik Sin Tong, an association for Sei Yap natives, was taken down and \n\nT \n\nJ \n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\nnot put back when the house next door, wall, was renovated about ten years ago. of these tablets.\n\n97\n\nwhich shared a party There is now no trace\n\nHowever, two inscriptions still remain from these institutions. One, removed to the Wai Chiu section of the Kwok Man School in 1952, is dated the wu-shen year of Kuang-hsü (1908-9) and is an ornamental granite head-slab with two side pieces, all with carved and painted characters upon them, the gift of wealthy members or else a sign of general prosperity in the Wai Chiu community. The present leaders of the association say that the date refers only to the handsome inscriptions and not to the establishment of their school, which is believed to have been in operation for many years before. This is likely as the office building is an old one and was already registered at the time of the lease of the New Territories as the Wai Chau and Chiu Chau Club, and the association has a reputed existence of over two hundred years.\n\n24\n\nSimilarly a head stone is still in position inside an old building on the Praya belonging to the Sei Yap Yik Sin Tong, which records its repair in the 23rd year of Kuang-hsü (1897-8), the inscription being the work of WONG Wai Sum ✯✯✯, said to be a teacher in the Tong's school. This Tong has an interesting origin, if the tale told by its present managers is reliable, in that it arose from a shipwreck which washed up a body carrying money on one of the Cheung Chau beaches. The ship was supposed to have been carrying emigrants back to China from San Francisco. The body was given decent burial by some Sei Yap persons who hit upon the idea of forming a Tong for the unity and betterment of their fellow countrymen on the island, and with additional subscriptions the initial windfall was used to build or purchase the present building, which was the only property owned by the Tong in 1898. A feature of the building was the establishment of an altar on the ground floor on which were placed the tablets of the original organisers and principal subscribers, but these have now all gone, though a shrine remains.29\n\nThe fourth of these district associations of long-standing is the Po On which has no connection with the old Po On study run by the Tung Kwun association. Its leadership in 1898\n\n!\n\n1+L\n\nF", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nrested with the senior members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong, as it does today. It controls the old defence bureau which is rented out and the proceeds added to the association's funds. Very little information is at present available concerning its history beyond the fact that it existed in the Ch'ing period*1 and that it had a close connection with the members of the Tong, who were its principal patrons and sponsors.\n\nTwo other instances of communal enterprise remain to be mentioned. There was, before the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, an organisation of local leaders known as the Kaifong##, which is now represented in most things by the Cheung Chau Rural Committee. The Kaifong had an informal constitution and its leaders were generally those persons who were already playing a leading part in the affairs of the four old district associations. The Kaifong had a general concern in Cheung Chau affairs whereas the district associations may be said, in the best sense, to have had a sectional interest.\n\nThe history of the Kaifong is less easy to trace than that of the associations, very likely because it was a less tangible body. However, it seems to have existed before 1898 because the land registers list a club house or kung soA which was described as public property. This must have been built and administered by somebody and the Kaifong is the most likely candidate. In the early part of this century the building probably housed a school and is known to have served as a headquarters for the town's watchmen.* These were both likely activities for a Kaifong, and it is probable that it ran these and other central services before the British lease. Presumably, too, it administered CHOI Leung's Fong Pin hospital, which the registers describe as an asylum* and as public property. But whilst I am satisfied that there was a Kaifong on the island before 1898 which organised various functions on behalf of the whole community, there is, as yet, no information as to the date of its origin, though there is one clue which takes its history back another twenty years at least.*2\n\nThis was the provision of what are still known, to-day, as kaifong junks or kai to*. These are cargo vessels which are managed by prominent persons for a group of financially interested", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nNOTES\n\nThe notes are intended to amplify the text. The subjects of the longer notes are chosen rather arbitrarily and represent my particular interests,\n\nJ. W. H.\n\n1 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960) p. 88.\n\n2 Crown Rent Rolls, District Office Islands, New Territories Administration.\n\n* Under the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June, 1898,\n\n*Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, hereafter styled Sessional Papers. (Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., 1911) p. 103 (22) and (26). This article is mainly concerned with the land population, but for a good short description of the life, work and general background of the boat people, see G. N. Orme \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912\" in Sessional Papers 1912, pp. 53-55.\n\n5 The help of the Chairman, Vice-Chairmen and members of the Cheung Chau Rural Committee in tracing and gaining access to these tablets is gratefully acknowledged, and the great assistance given with transcription and translation by Messrs. LO Chi-chung, LEUNG Kun-siu and LEW Pang-fei, my former colleagues in the District Office.\n\n* I have translated shue-shat as study, rather than school, since it was intended for the private use of members and their children and not for outsiders. The association became known as the Tung Kwun Wui So on 16th September, 1926 (see Land Registers), previous to which it had been registered as the Po On Shue Shat. I have presumed that with such a name, a school was operated as well as the office and ancestral temple. (See note 26 and text to which it refers.) For the distinction between the names Po On and San On see Notes and Queries, p. 146 below. The character inscribed on this tablet is a simplified form of the character.\n\nLocal trades included shipbuilding: see Orme's report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 55.\n\n—\n\n* The number of Cheung Chau shops subscribing to the various schemes recorded on the tablets is as follows: Po On study (1866) 38; Defence Office (1863-70) 66; Fong Pin hospital (1878) 98, and Tin Hau temple (1879) 125, from the 200 odd mentioned in the Fong Pin preamble.\n\n* Many shops are mentioned on the tablets, but they are all listed by their business names and not by the names of the owners, in which custom the Chinese does not follow the English.\n\n10 The Tong has a substantial genealogical record, last produced between eighty and a hundred years ago and printed from stone blocks on hand-made bamboo paper. I am indebted to Mr. WONG Shing Yip of Cheung Chau who very kindly let me see his copy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204633, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n101\n\n11 \"The whole of the island (Cheung Chau) was adjudged to belong to the WONG family and it is let out to various tenants on leases renewable every five years. All these leases were registered in 1906\". Administra-tive Report for 1909, District Officer, New Territories. But see also G. N. Orme's unfavourable opinion of the initial survey and Crown rent roll in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46.\n\n12 For example, before its tax-lord rights were extinguished (along with others') by the Hong Kong Government after 1898 as \"not compatible with the principles of British administration\" (Orme, Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46), the LI Kau Yuen Tong of Sha Wan appears to have owned a considerable proportion of all the cultivated land on Lantau island under an imperial grant made in the Sung dynasty (see LO Hsiang-lin \"The Sung Wang T'ai and the location of the Travelling Courts by the sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung\", Journal of Oriental Studies III No. 2 (July 1956) p. 217, note 29). Nineteenth Century land deeds from the village of Shek Pik show that much of the village land paid tax to the LI family, a burden which was passed on to the purchaser when a \"sale\" took place. It is not known whether this Tong owned land elsewhere in the present New Territories but its main estates lay elsewhere. It is curious how the WONG Wai Chak Tong maintained its tax-lord position whilst the LI family's was extinguished.\n\nIt is a pointer to the island's increasing prosperity, as well as to its favoured geographical situation, that when the Chinese Maritime Customs first began to operate in the Hong Kong region in 1887 they set up a post on Cheung Chau. This had previously been operated by the Canton authorities as part of the \"blockade\" system set up in 1868-71. See Stanley F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1950) pp. 385-6, 584-6 and 708, and his earlier Hong Kong and the Chinese Customs (Shanghai 1930) which I have not yet seen. See also note 15. Old villagers on the Lantau coast opposite Cheung Chau can remember having to pass through the customs every time they came to the island to buy daily necessaries and sell their produce in the market.\n\nIt is not the place to discuss whether Cheung Chau's expansion was due to the rise of Hong Kong, or whether it was already in a flourishing condition by the time Hong Kong's expansion began in the 1840's, but available information points to a community which was already well-established and prosperous by the Hsien-feng period (1851-61), which would be rather early for Cheung Chau to owe its rise mainly to Hong Kong. The preamble to the tablet in the defence bureau mentions that \"our forefathers came and lived in Cheung Chau several hundred years ago\"; whilst the attention of pirates in the early years of Hsien-feng, also mentioned in the same tablet, seems more conclusive proof of the island's established prosperity than any other. A spate of repairs and expansion seems to have been going on apace in the T'ung-chih period (1862-75) when most of the island's temples were repaired, the CHU family ancestral hall enlarged, many old houses were built or reconstructed, and the public buildings erected which these tablets commemorate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n36 shops from Hong Kong, 28 from Peng Chau and 15 from Tai O contributed to the Po On study (presumably all or mainly of Tung Kwun origin); a few outside shops sent donations to repair the Tin Hau temple; hardly surprisingly no outside shops contributed to the Defence Bureau; but the subscriptions for the Fong Pin hospital came from a wide area and the list included over 20 shops and 40 individual persons (including 2 tongs from Tung Kwun and Hok Shan), from Canton, Pun Yue, Tung Kwun, Nam Hoi, Shun Tak, Macau, and other areas of the province,\n\nMost of the temples still contain tablets and other dated items which record their repair from time to time. However, the series is far from complete and many tablets have been lost. A typical instance is the loss of commemorative tablets from the Tin Hau Temple at Tai Shek Hau (the local place name). A prominent citizen remembers seeing a whole row of them fronting an outside wall when he was a young man, about thirty years ago, but they have now all vanished without trace.\n\n15 For mention of these Cheung Chau posts see the following tablets: salt (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), stamp (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), customs, e.g. tax on kerosene (Fong Pin). There was also a customs post on Lamma (Fong Pin), and there were various patrol boats (both tablets). The officer in charge of the military post on Cheung Chau is mentioned on the Tin Hau tablet, whilst the Fong Pin tablet lists eight officers of the Tai Pang battalion.\n\n16 Only the defence bureau tablet gives donors their official ranks, though comparison with others shows that some of the graduates are mentioned there without their titles, i.e., persons mentioned in these tablets may also have been graduates. A comparison of the Tong's genealogical record with the names on the tablets is at first sight disappointing. The genealogical record does not record titles for the later generations, i.e. those of the generation whose names appear on the tablets. An additional confusion is that the clan generation names may not have been used on the tablets where business or personal names may have been recorded instead. However, I think we can be fairly certain that most of the WONGS on the tablets belonged to the Tong.\n\n17 I have translated \"WU\" as \"petitioned the district magistrate\".\n\n18 See Kung-Chuan HSIAO Rural China; Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1960), pp. 294-306 for defence organisations in this period.\n\n19 His precise title was described on the Cheung Chau tablet as 城鎮 *which was probably the equivalent of colonel. A few years later he presented a large painted wooden commemorative tablet to the Hau Wong temple outside Kowloon City, on which his rank is described as tsung-ping or brigadier-general (see Ralph L. Powell The Rise of Chinese Military Power 1859-1912 (Princeton University Press, 1955) pp. 15 and 367). \"The brigadier-generals were semi-independent, yet their units were scattered and practically sedentary,\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204635, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n103\n\n20 See T'ung-tsu CH'U Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press 1962) chapter 9, especially pp. 161-164.\n\nI am indebted to Mr. W. Schofield, a former District Officer, and Cudet Officer, Hong Kong Government, for a reference to an inscription, now lost, relating to the foundation of the Lung Chun Yee Hok *** in 1847. The school, which is still standing inside the former Kowloon walled city, was opened by the district magistrate WONG Ming Ting after the sub-district deputy magistrate HUI Man Sham had reported that it was being built.\n\nOrme in his \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63, Appendix G, gives a school census for April 1912, by which time there had apparently been little change since 1898. There were 10 schools on Cheung Chau, average attendance 20, average monthly fee 38 cents.\n\n21 See HSIAO op. cit. pp. 235-240 and CH'U, op. cit., pp. 161-162. Occasionally government-sponsored schools were granted land for their maintenance. In the 28th year of Kuang-hsü (1902-3) four years after the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, land inside the boundary, previously used for the purpose of aiding a school still in Chinese territory, was sold by order of the Commissioner of Education for San On district. Part of the proceeds had also been used for offerings at the Confucian temple (in Nam Tau).\n\n22 The group of titles on the defence bureau tablet is another demonstration of the widespread sale of degree titles and positions in the late Ch'ing period already remarked in several places. (see HSIAO Kung-Chuan Rural China p. 415 and chapter 10 of CH'U's Local Government in China under the Ch'ing op. cit., pp. 168-173 and notes and, in more detail, Chung-li CHANG, The Chinese Gentry. Studies on their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1955) pp. 102-111. For contemporary notices see Rev. Krone \"A Notice of the Sanon District\" in Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong), Part VI (1859) p. 84 and Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier c. 1900 p. 121, amongst others.)\n\nNo fewer than twenty-one persons have titles prefixed to their names, many of them minor ones, of which three-quarters were probably purchased.\n\nthe first\n\nOf the purchased titles and posts five were chien-sheng degree by purchase, which was the prerequisite to purchasing any superior post, such as that of district magistrate or prefect. It was the most commonly purchased degree. Two others were styled chih-chien and chih-sheng. There were four chin-kung and four chih-yüan 職員。", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "104\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThere were also examination titles among the organisers and subscribers to the defence office. There were three scholars, who held higher grades of the hsiu-ts'ai or first degree by examination. One was a kung-sheng, another a sheng-yüan, and the third held the grade of lin-sheng, all normally obtained by additional examinations by a literary chancellor appointed from Peking to examine hsiu-ts'ai in the provinces, though occasionally granted for merit. Another was a wu-sheng ±, a military hsiu-ts'ai, an officer by examination, not purchase. These four were WONGs, almost certainly members of the Tong. A fifth, named TSUI, was a tu-szu or first captain and was probably a serving military officer in the locality. The final title is ching sheng #.\n\nOf these various degree and title holders sixteen were named WONG *. The coincidence is probably too great to be accidental and the number of purchases testifies to the Tong's wealth, whilst the presence of genuine scholars, probably from the Cheung Chau branch, and the genealogical record, confirm its gentry status in the late Ch'ing period. There is no doubt that the main Tong was well entrenched and able to exert an \"interest\" with the district ruler and perhaps also with the prefect and viceroy at Canton.\n\n23 HSIAO illustrates the slight degree of local control on another island, Ch'a K'eng, off the coast of Sun Wui district, Kwangtung, in Rural China, pp. 344-348. For his views on the effectiveness of imperial control see pp. 320-322 and pp. 316-320 for the role of the gentry in local affairs. CH'U, op. cit., chapter 10, also examines the problem in general. Krone's article (see note 22), apparently written from long, first-hand knowledge of the western part of San On shows that the district magistrate and his deputy and sub-magistrates had little control over the population (see especially p. 81), and perhaps wanted it less, e.g. \"... the Mandarin of Fuk Wing (a sub-magistrate) confided to me, in a conversation that I had with him that he had nothing to do but to eat, to drink and to smoke”, though over 200 villages were in his charge.\n\n24 The district association is of considerable antiquity in China. They were known in Sung times: see J. Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-76 (London, Allen and Unwin 1962) p. 222; see also Y. K. Leong and L. K. Tao Village and Town Life in China (London, Allen and Unwin 1915) pp. 78-9 for \"the guild of co-provincials\" and H. B. Morse, The Gilds of China (London, Longmans, Green 1909) pp. 35-48 for the provincial club with a mercantile bias.\n\n25 With consequent language difficulties. See R. A. D. Forrest (a former Hong Kong Cadet Officer) \"The Southern Dialects of Chinese\", Appendix No. 1 to V. Purcell The Chinese in South East Asia (Oxford University Press 1951).\n\n26 The word \"member\" may have too strong a connection with the modern club where one pays an entrance fee and monthly subscriptions. In fact, one was born into membership of these early district associations and participated in their activities by subscription, as required. Mr. LEUNG Yau (see note 28) confirms this for his own association, the Wai Chiu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204637, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHBUNG CHAU \n\n105 \n\nBecause of their loose organisation and lack of proper safeguards, these associations often ran into trouble over money. To quote an elder's reminiscences from the manuscript note book of the Tung Kwun association (which the present Chairman has kindly allowed me to see and use), compiled about 1928 but referring to the previous sixty years, \"in the past there were upright managers, but there were also embezzlers, who appropriated public funds without authority. When X was in charge of our association's funds he reported that he had lost the account books, so nothing could be audited. It was through my persuasion he produced fifty dollars to end the matter\". Similarly, he records how, on the death of a leading member who had been instrumental in purchasing new property for expanding the association, the members asked his family for the accounts and title deeds in his possession. The relatives refused to part with them unless a payment was made first. Members naturally refused, \"which is why no title deeds or accounts are available from the early period\". \n\nThe manuscript also contains interesting material which illustrates difficulties faced by conscientious managers, e.g. \"This house was originally the property of X. Unfortunately he was murdered and the body could not be found. His relative Y donated the house to the association. At first no tenant would take it and the fabric deteriorated. In the second year of the Hsuan-t'ung reign (1910-11) repairs were suggested, but there were no funds. Loans of five and ten dollars were raised from district members at 1 per cent interest. I loaned over a hundred dollars interest free, but it was still insufficient, so the association joined a ten dollar (share) money association and drew the necessary balance. \n\nThe repair then started and the front is now let for $5.50 per month and the rear for $4 per month.\" \n\nThere was also the lighter side. Speaking of the annual dinner party on the 15th day of the first moon an elder recalled \"this year there were 28 tables with over 220 people. The caterer was X and the cost was $7.20 per table. The food was no good and those present were dissatisfied and there was a lot of grumbling.\" \n\n27 A search was made for this and the Ser Yap tablet but, though hot on the trail of the first named with what appeared an infallible clue, a digging party regrettably drew a blank, \n\n28 In the Crown Rent Rolls the association is termed kung sor 2 in Chinese and \"club\" in English. An inscription on one of the stone lions outside the Pak Tai temple, the largest on the island, states that it was donated by the Wai and Chiu Chau community in 1861. Mr. LEUNG Yau \n\n, born on Cheung Chau in 1875, attended the Wai-Chiu school, in the association's premises for two years (1885-86). \n\n2o There was also a shrine in the Po On study. The tablet states that \"a small fixture, known as the Tun Sin temple ('promote charity') has also been placed at one side of the hall, where wooden tablets bearing the names of the organisers are placed therein in commemoration of their devotion to the cause, irrespective of their parentage and place of origin.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204638, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "106\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n30 The Tung Kwun association note book says that there was a Po On Wui Sor ★ ★ ƒ in the Ch'ing dynasty, but since this had always led to confusion their association (the Po On Shuc Shat) was renamed the Tung Kwun Wui Sor in the 12th year of the Chinese Republic (1923).\n\n31 A tablet (1953) in the Free School says that this institution dates back to 1921 and local leaders say that the kung sor was rebuilt at this time. The old kung sor was also known as the hon kaam lau ★ ★# or watchmen's building.\n\n** On the other hand it is unlikely that it predates the defence bureau (1863-70) as this would have been a suitable subject for the Kaifong to organise (there is no mention of it on the tablet).\n\n33 Mr. LEUNG Yau recalls that there were two Kaifong junks operating a daily service between Cheung Chau and Hong Kong before the lease (1898). One left Hong Kong (Sai Ying Pun) at 11 a.m., whilst the other left Cheung Chau at the same time. Both were sailing junks and took three hours to make the journey under good conditions and the whole day if otherwise. They were subscribed and run by a number of local gentlemen for public use. A steam Kaifong vessel was bought with public subscriptions in 1910. Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories, 1910.\n\n&\n\n34 There are now eight district associations on the island for natives of the districts of Po On; Tung Kwun; Wai-Chiu combined ✰✰ *#; Sei Yap (\"The Four Towns') i.e. Toi Shan 4, Sun Wui. Hoi Ping, Yan Ping; Ng Yap ♣ (“The Five Towns\") i.e. Hok Shan plus the towns of Sei Yap, Shun Tak: Chung Shan ✈ and Chiu Chau (separate), the four last named formed since 1945, all offering a variety of social, educational and charitable services to members.\n\n35 HSIAO, in his interesting and lengthy study of rural China in the 19th Century, does not deal specifically with the internal organisation of the market towns. The market town of Tai O at the south west end of Lantau island (land population 2248 in 1911) would provide an interesting local comparison, though material is not so readily available as for Cheung Chau. I hope to write a similar outline account at a later date.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204795, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "86\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nHowever, the Cantonese, Hakka and even Hoklo fishermen lived on land and were still landsmen who could live in both worlds. The first two, if not always the third, could cut their own firewood, and grass for breaming, whereas I am led to believe that in the anchorages, which were nearly always in populated places, the Tanka fishermen had usually to buy these necessities from the villagers. The reason usually given for this is that the villagers had planted the trees which supplied the firewood and paid rent to the imperial government or, more often, to some powerful clan.42 A less striking, but equally practical reason, I was told on Peng Chau, was that fishermen did not wish to carry the grass or poles used in breaming their craft, in order to save valuable space. Breaming facilities were not always charged for, it seems, though on Peng Chau a breaming charge of 20 cents per boat was levied by the personnel of the military post before 1899 — the sort of \"squeeze\" by which soldiers supplemented their pay. The military post seems to have been a late innovation, prior to which no breaming charges are believed to have been levied by Peng Chau's land dwellers. On nearby Cheung Chau the WONG clan owned the main breaming beaches in the main anchorage and in a secondary one at Sai Wan, also much used by the boat people. They charged a fee for their use, part of the proceeds going to the upkeep and ceremonies connected with the clan's main ancestral grave on the island.43 Of course the boatmen could go to some deserted beach, but they were hard to find since villagers were well distributed in the coastal areas and islands by the nineteenth century and there were few areas capable of returning crops left undeveloped.44 In any case, there were no amenities, such as shops and temples, to tempt fishermen to such places; whilst, as Miss Ward remarks in her study of the Kau Sai fishing village in the Port Shelter area of Sai Kung, boat people are not the sea rovers drifting from place to place they are commonly imagined to be, but have been linked to a home base over a long period.45 This seems certainly to have been true of Peng Chau in the period under review.\n\nIn a mixed community of the small size of Peng Chau it is hardly surprising that no district associations similar to those of Cheung Chau and Tai O were established.46 The Cantonese residents were relatively few in number, whilst the Hakka clans had their own family ties and, at the grave festivals and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204796, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "FENG CHAU\n\n87\n\nChinese New Year, were accustomed to visit their parent villages, which were in any case not far away. However, there seem in mid-century to have been close links with the Tung Kwun association of Cheung Chau. Fifteen Peng Chau shops47 subscribed to the repair of the association's premises in 1866, and Peng Chau residents may have been members of the association, as is the case with several of the Cheung Chau district and other organisations today.\n\ntoday. The extent of the help given on that occasion may be attributed either to this, or else to some very energetic canvassing by the Cheung Chau organisers.48\n\nHowever, the gradual expansion of the local community did bring with it various manifestations of communal endeavour. There was an interesting building, now in ruins, known as the Yee Chee, which was a poor house rather on the lines of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau. It was a substantial structure constructed from the dark grey-blue bricks of the region, and rather like a temple in appearance. There were three rooms: one for sick persons, one for the dying and one for the caretaker. There were idols inside, the principal one being that of the God of Ghosts. The Yee Chee is said to have been constructed by the island Kaifong from funds specially raised for the\n\n# purpose and was maintained by them as occasion required. It was intended for use by destitute persons in poor health and as a place where they could die in peace. No one with relatives able to support him would ever let himself be taken there. Free coffins were provided by the Kaifong. It was available to all, land and sea dwellers alike. The caretaker was supported by collections and was allowed to cultivate land under the control of the Kaifong. The building was not in particularly good repair when Mr. CHUNG was a boy, and its origin can therefore be dated with confidence to 1850 or before.\n\nThe Peng Chau Kaifong mentioned in the previous paragraph had premises on each side of the Tin Hau temple. They were renovated in 1876-77 about the same time as the temple. Present elders clearly recall a tablet in the office building to one side of the temple which said it was enlarged. The annexe on the other side served as a school or guest house as the need arose. It is not certain when the Kaifong began,50 but it appears to have existed before this office was repaired and it has been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204799, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "90\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nIt is hoped that this account of Peng Chau will demonstrate the diversity of settlers and enterprises which appears to characterise even the smaller settlements of this part of the Kwangtung coastline. Peng Chau is a Cheung Chau in miniature, and because of its smaller size a wider treatment than was possible for Cheung Chau can be given, in an article of this length. Again, my intention is to provide no more than an outline, and an indication that, despite their size, such communities could be complex settlements in which traditional lines of division were blurred by proximity and a common environment.\n\nNOTES\n\nAny statements in respect of Peng Chau and its people which appear to be unsubstantiated are based on information supplied by various elders. I am most grateful for the assistance given by the Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, Mr. LAM Shue-chun#, and Mr. LO Chi-chung# of the District Office, South,\n\n1 See \"The pattern of life in the New Territories in 1898\" pp. 75-102 of this Journal, vol. 2 (1962) and \"Cheung Chau 1850-1898\" in vol. 3 (1963) pp. 88-106.\n\n2 See Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong—hereafter styled Sessional Papers (Hong Kong Noronha & Company, at yearly intervals, in this case 1905) p. 144 in the Report on the work of the Land Court for the New Territories for 1900-1905.\n\n3 See G. N. Orme, “Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, pp. 56-57, for significant changes in wages and the cost of living.\n\n4 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer 1960) p. 83. In this article characters have not been given for any place names which appear in the Gazetteer,\n\n5 Schedules to the Block Crown Lease for Peng Chau, District Office, South, New Territories Administration. Hereafter styled BCL.\n\n6 Under the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June 1898,\n\n7 Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103(22) and (26). This figure is broken down into 434 males and 208 females, children included. The preponderance of males is noteworthy and may be due, in part, to the number of single men employed in the limekilns. The boat population are not specified separately in the Census returns and cannot be separated from the 4,442 contained in the Cheung Chau district figure. Cheung Chau with Peng Chau and Nei Kwu Chau formed a census district in 1911, but whilst the land population for each place is given separately, the boat populations are not so specified.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n91\n\nThere are said to be over 230 islands within the Crown Colony of Hong Kong. See Hong Kong Annual Report for 1962 (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1963) p. 319.\n\n? I am not well acquainted with the Chinese records, but there seems to be little information on Peng Chau available in the San On Gazetteer, or Gazetteer of the San On District, last edition 1819, but reprinted by Kwangtung Printers, Canton, 1933.\n\n10 A lucky day of a winter month of the third year of Chia Ching.\n\n11 A lucky day of the third winter month of the 57th year of Chien Lung.\n\n12 It is customary to do so: in fact the 1878 tablet states whether subscribers are local or from various other places. I base this statement on experience of many such tablets, but there are always exceptions to disprove the general rule. Tablets may be considered generally to be reliable, but are subject to occasional errors and omissions.\n\n13 A lucky day of the third winter month of the year, third year of Kuang Hsü (January/February 1878).\n\n14 The nineteenth day of the seventh Moon of the fifteenth year of Tao Kwang. There is nothing on the tablet to indicate that it was the only one erected. If it was, it confirms the island's importance as a fishing centre,\n\n15 This date and the number of boats stated cannot be confirmed. It is given in a short manuscript account of Peng Chau in Chinese, available locally, compiled anonymously a few years ago,\n\n16 On Cheung Chau a Peng On Tong existed in 1898 when, together with two other Tongs, it held a lease of land for a boatshed. These appear to have been organisations of Tanka fishermen. The Peng On Tong and its boatshed still exist, though its affairs have been managed by several generations of a prominent Punti family since at least 1910 (BCL and Land Registers).\n\n17 For some information on the origins of the Tanka see K. M. A. Barnett \"The Peoples of the New Territories\" in Hong Kong Business Symposium (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 1957) p. 261 and his Introduction, pp. 2-3 to T. R. Tregear's Hong Kong Gazetteer (Hong Kong University Press, 1958).\n\n18 The local name for trawlers is ... The smaller types of Tanka fishing craft using the anchorage in 1898 are described as * and *. Then there are Hoklo boats of a similar type: one usually equipped with cars and styled #, and a variant called, literally \"chicken hair claw\", which was the type of boat used by Mr. CHUNG and his fellow Hakka fishermen. I am told that the first are principally shrimp boats and the latter mainly used for catching fish. There is a good description of such craft on p. 53 of Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912 quoted above, which is also useful for a contemporary account of the boat people. A list of the various types of local fishing craft (modern) is given in Table I, pp. 45-51 of Stanley S. S. Yuan's paper on Fishing Junks, which was read to the Engineering Society of Hong Kong in the 1955-56 session and published in January 1956 in volume IX no. 2 of their Proceedings. A diagram showing six local types is on p. 55. For an interesting account of the Hong Kong fishing fleet before the Japanese War, see Reports on the Fisheries Industries of Hong Kong by S. Y. Lin, apparently written between 1938-48, of which there is a typescript copy in the Library, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204803, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "94\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n96\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nSince writing about Cheung Chau I have discovered that the Kaifong there were responsible for a large communal free grave dated the sixth month of the twelfth year of Tung Chi (summer 1873) and repaired in 1901, which takes its history further back than I had imagined; whilst at Stanley * on Hong Kong island the present Kaifong occupies the premises of its predecessor the Sin On Kung Soi2 which were repaired for that body in the twenty-seventh year of Tao Kwang (1847) according to the inscription on the granite lintel over the entrance and a tablet set in the wall outside of the same date.\n\n51 See Administrative Report 1925 of the District Officer, New Territories for a later example,\n\n52 See the Cheung Chau article p. 92, and my earlier \"Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898\" pp. 86-88 and note 29. In the latter for \"HO family\" read \"CHEUNG family\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204804, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "FENG CHAU\n\n95\n\nfrom his own or adjoining villages worked with him. The Shek Pik people were therefore closely connected with the sea despite the fact that their fields were extensive and well-watered. Elsewhere on Lantau, an old account book of the Hakka CHEUNG Kung Tak Tong at Pui O, which is dated 1897-99 (Kuang Hsu 23rd-24th years), shows that the Tong had a regular income from a fishing sampan.\n\n41 It has been shown that the Peng Chau shopkeepers always contributed to the temple repairs. A more illuminating instance of merchants' concern for the safety of local waters is to be found in the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau on the south-west tip of Lantau, facing Macau and the mouth of the Delta, a remote area two hours' walk from Tai O Market. Here tablets survive from the Chia Ching and Hsien Feng periods (1796-1820 and 1851-61) and contain the names of many Tai O shops. One imagines that few of the donors would ever visit the temple, but they were obviously intent to ensure Tin Hau's benevolent care.\n\n42 Information received from CHEUNG Kai Chun of Ham Tin, Pui O, Lantau (born 1886). But this was not true everywhere. At Shek Pik several families of Tanka used the anchorage for at least fifty years. There was no remembered animosity during this time and these fishermen were allowed to cut grass and firewood without charge. However, they rarely strayed far from the beach and the two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with each other, except in casual contact at the main festivals and when villagers bought fish from them at the jetty, which was over a mile from the village. The fishermen would not go to the village to sell their catch.\n\n43 Information received from the present leaders of the WONG Wai Chak Tong ✯ of Cheung Chau.\n\n44 This statement is based on close knowledge of the Southern District of the New Territories and of the District land registers.\n\n45 Barbara E. Ward \"A Hong Kong Fishing Village”, Journal of Oriental Studies (University of Hong Kong) volume 1, no. 1 (January 1954) pp. 195-214, especially p. 211. See also note 42.\n\n46 See my Cheung Chau article for the Cheung Chau district associations before the British lease. At Tai O in the same period there appear to have been associations of Tung Kwun and San On origin, each with a club-house.\n\n47 The number is wrongly given as 28 in note 14 to the Cheung Chau article.\n\n48 A tablet in the Pak Tai temple at Cheung Chau dated January, February 1906 (a lucky day of the first month of spring of the thirty-second year of Kuang Hsü) shows that Peng Chau people also contributed to its repair.\n\n49 See the Cheung Chau article for this institution.\n\n50 The Kaifong of the Hong Kong region, and their like, are local institutions with a fairly long history. The Peng Chau Kaifong is quite likely to have an early date in relation to the age of the present settlement.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "96\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nSince writing about Cheung Chau I have discovered that the Kaifong there were responsible for a large communal free grave dated the sixth month of the twelfth year of Tung Chi (summer 1873) and repaired in 1901, which takes its history further back than I had imagined; whilst at Stanley * on Hong Kong island the present Kaifong occupies the premises of its predecessor the Sin On Kung Sor2 which were repaired for that body in the twenty-seventh year of Tao Kwang (1847) according to the inscription on the granite lintel over the entrance and a tablet set in the wall outside of the same date.\n\n51 See Administrative Report 1925 of the District Officer, New Territories for a later example.\n\n52 See the Cheung Chau article p. 92, and my earlier \"Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898\" pp. 86-88 and note 29. In the latter for \"HO family\" read \"CHEUNG family\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204870, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "148\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nabandoned, broken-down, and over-grown with trees and scrub, probably because it lies in a more remote and less populous part of Lantau, so that there would be no use for it after the garrison left.\n\nAn interesting feature of the Tung Chung fort is the presence of six old muzzle-loading cannons on its walls, each fixed to a cement base. (There are now none at Fan Lau). How these were preserved at Tung Chung is told in the following extract from the 1918 Administrative Report of the District Officer, South:\n\nMiscellaneous Receipts show an increase of $5,000 odd, due to the sale of old cannon for $5,265 which had previously remained neglected in the district. In this connection, it may be noted that any specimens of interest were retained, and that six guns were selected for mounting upon the wall of the old Yamen — the present Police Station — at Tung Chung, Lantau. So the guns at Tung Chung may not always have been there, but may have come from elsewhere, some perhaps from Fan Lau.\n\nThe cannons vary in weight from 1,000 to 2,000 catties, i.e. between 12 and 24 cwts., and are quite large. An interesting comparison is the Ming cannon dredged from Kai Tak Bay in 1956 during the construction of the new runway, which weighs 500 catties and is now mounted outside the Colonial Secretariat. All six pieces carry inscriptions, of which only four are now legible. A typical description reads as follows (though there is room for dispute as to the precise translation):\n\nCannon; weight - 2,000 catties (23-8 cwts.) YIK, Border Pacification General by Imperial Appointment. CHAI, Minister of Constant Support, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi.\n\nLEUNG, Assistant Minister of Defence and Governor of Kwangtung.\n\nLAU, Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture.\n\nCHEONG, Hoi Fung District Magistrate, on Reserve, supervised its manufacture in the 21st year of Reign of To Kwong, 10th Moon (1842)\n\nby Cannon Artisans LI, CHAN & FOK.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204871, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n149\n\nAn expert could say what the ranges of such cannons were, but after you have landed at the pier and walked to the fort, you will appreciate that it is 1,200 yards from the coast. It is unlikely that guns in the fort could be really effective at this range, so that one questions the wisdom of its planners in placing it so far from the sea, if it was meant to be a work of coastal defence.\n\nWhat of the garrison? In the later Ching period there were at least three military installations on Lantau at Tung Chung, Tai O and Fan Lau, another on Cheung Chau, and a considerable number of troops in the Kowloon Walled City. These were all sedentary garrisons drawn from the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the Chinese regular forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts all over the eastern and southern part of the Sun On district, of which the present Crown Colony of Hong Kong formed the major part. The garrison at Tung Chung was commanded by a subordinate officer and probably consisted of a score or two men who were very likely without modern weapons. Writing in 1903 Dyer Ball said of the Chinese military forces that \"matchlocks, gingals, bows and arrows, spears and lances are still the weapons of many\". Their military efficiency was probably very slight. A missionary, who wrote an interesting account of the San On district for the last number of the transactions of the old Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1859, has an amusing description of the guard post at the Shatin Pass. However, they probably had a deterrent value, but owing to the poor state of local communications at that time, they were much too far away to assist if anything happened elsewhere on Lantau, particularly on the south side, though their influence was felt there. When the local leaders of the Pui O community (South Lantau) rebuilt the Hung Shing temple there in 1875, they persuaded the garrison commander at Tung Chung to make a contribution. In the commemorative tablet recording the event he is styled Fu Ye, a respectful form of address for this subordinate officer.\n\nTo bring these rather rambling notes to a close, the fort was used after 1898 as a police station. The District Officer who recovered the cannons for the fort has left a vivid picture of his occasional magisterial visits there about 1920:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205340, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 95\n\nHe also had land interests on Lantau outside his own village and entered into a business speculation with two other persons, who were probably his fellow merchants in Tai O. Land was purchased wherever it could be obtained by sale, or mortgage leading to possession, from needy farmers some of whom were very likely their customers - and registered in the name of a Tong (). In 1899, this Tong owned over twelve acres of farmland in various parts of the island and still exists today. An account book for the years just before the Japanese war is extant and shows that the Chans' share of the rents was forty per cent of the whole. Their shares were sold by degrees during the Japanese Occupation after being in the family for about a hundred years.\n\nIn due course Chan Fu-shing's growing wealth enabled him to devote himself to public duties such as the management of village affairs, the arbitration of local disputes and the organisation of small public works. One of these was the repair of the village temple in 1852. A tablet commemorating the work shows that he donated a considerable sum to its repair, in addition to being the leading spirit in the work. This self-made man set the seal on his position by purchasing the title of chien sang () or \"Student of the Imperial Academy\" for which he would have paid the Provincial Treasury upwards of 100 ounces of silver. This title would have given him standing among the gentry of the San On District, and enabled him, if so inclined, to mix on favourable terms with the civil and military officers of the local administration. This bears out Professor Ping-ti Ho's estimate that \"in late Ming and the entire Ching period it may be said that men of above average economic means almost invariably purchased at least an Imperial Academy studentship... by which they could acquire the right of wearing students' gowns and caps and exemption from corvée, thus differentiating themselves from ordinary commoners\". If, however, chien sang were two a penny elsewhere it was not so on Lantau. The island was a poor place and there were very few other chien sang to steal Fu-shing's thunder there.\n\nCHEUNG KWONG-CHUEN ()\n\nThe second of these local notables, Cheung Kwong-chuen (c.1850-1916) was a Hakka from one of the smaller villages of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205341, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "96\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nthe Pui O group in South Lantau. Unlike Chan, who had been a newcomer, Cheung's family had been settled in the area for upwards of two centuries before his birth and his father possessed a small number of fields which had descended from his ancestors. The Cheung clan, too, was the most powerful in the sub-district. Its members were settled in five of the nine small villages of the group and included one or two degree holders by purchase among its immediate forebears.\n\nHowever, like Chan, Cheung went into business, but not in the market town and not as an errand-boy, but locally and on his own account. He opened a shop in a small house situated outside the main village of the group and stocked it with goods which he brought over by sampan from the nearby island of Cheung Chau, the local market centre and a fishing port. Again like Chan, Cheung had a good head for business and used whatever money he obtained from his shop to loan sums to other villagers. As usual the loans were made for interest at high rates or in return for mortgages of land. The deeds relating to about a dozen of his mortgages have survived in an old account book. One of them, relating to the year 1898, shows that he was capable of lending what was then, to a farmer, the considerable sum of 120 dollars, the equivalent of 90 ounces of silver in one single transaction. As happened more often than not in deals of this sort, this land, consisting of an acre and a quarter of good paddy fields, was sold to him seven years later.\n\nCheung's career developed along much the same lines as that of Chan Fu-shing. He settled disputes over a considerable area, including villages outside his own group, and helped to arrange various public services, including a regular ferry to the nearby market town of Cheung Chau. Again, he also took the lead in managing the affairs of the local temples and in repairing them when this became necessary.10 It is not certain whether he purchased a degree, but he may well have done so because, as has been said, this was the normal thing for a prospering villager to do at this period.\n\nKUNG FONG-CHAI (***)\n\nThe third member of the trio, Kung Fong-chai (c. 1850-1922) was a Hakka from a village a few miles from the market town of Tai O. Like the Cheungs, the Kung family had been settled on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205342, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 97\n\nLantau for a long time. He had a better start in life than either Chan or Cheung. His father was a schoolmaster with a business turn of mind who, besides owning land in his own village, had built up a small estate in a neighbouring settlement of Shek Pik where he had taught for many years.1 After being educated by his father at home he was sent to the District City to continue his studies in the academy there. However, despite this favourable beginning he does not seem to have obtained the first degree by examination after all, and had to purchase the title of chien sang later on.\n\nBeing literate and neither a shopkeeper nor a farmer he probably possessed more of the external attributes of a gentry member than the other two. He was well known in the area as a scholar and calligrapher, and his services were in demand for writing presentation scrolls and for composing suitable inscriptions for temples, monasteries, and private houses. He was also a geomancer or expert on “fêng shui” and was often called in by local people when they wished to site a new grave. All these were gentlemanly occupations. Kung was also a teacher and taught for some years at Shek Pik like his father before him. Later on, he also taught in the school run by one of the district associations in Tai O Market. However, he did not forget the business side of his life, on which his superior position depended, and continued to act as a money-lender and land-broker. At the time of the lease of the New Territories, he owned or managed eight acres of land in the Shek Pik valley and was recorded as holding mortgages on 30 plots of farm land there. It was left to his nephew, who succeeded him in the property, to dissipate the estate which had been built up by Kung and his father. This man was known locally as a gambler but when I saw him in 1962, aged seventy-two, three weeks before his sudden death, I was impressed with his appearance and manner, and could well imagine that his uncle and great-uncle had been public figures in the area.\n\nCommentary\n\nWhat points of general interest can be made from what is known of the origins and careers of these three men?\n\nIn the first place, it is interesting that two of them were Hakka at a time when Cantonese must have formed the great majority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205346, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 101\n\nLockhart calls them in his 1898 report on the New Territories.18 He states that the council for the Eastern Tung embraced most of the leased territory and sat in the market town of Sham Chun just north of the 1898 boundary. One imagines that men such as the three who form the subject of this paper might have been members. Here I have had the benefit of conversations with a former mandarin, now deceased, who served as a Chou and then as a Fu magistrate in Hupeh for some years before the Revolution of 1911. He told me that the councils of the poorer districts were augmented by prominent non-literati of the type to be found on Lantau, the normal restrictions on scholar membership being waived in order to secure the presence of persons who carried weight in their localities. If practised in San On this realistic approach, in part occasioned by the need to obtain their help in chasing in and securing the payment of the land tax, would probably have brought in local leaders like Chan, Cheung and Kung.\n\nI must record that this is conjecture since no information on their participation in the council, their work there, and their relations with the district magistrate and the true gentry of the District has yet turned up though I am by no means sure, given local conditions, that it ever will. However an account of these men would be lacking unless one hinted at the possibility of their participation in local councils, especially as it is probable that the rural gentry of Lantau and similar fringe areas in South China and elsewhere in the Ching period were similar in origins to these three men.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The New Territories were ceded by the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June 1898; for the text see The Hong Kong Government Gazette for 8 April 1899, pp. 552-553—but were not occupied until the following year. The boundaries were not discussed until March 1899, and some hostilities took place in March and April of that year when the Hong Kong Government took possession of the New Territory. See Sessional Papers 1899, No. 32 \"Dispatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong\" and No. 35 \"Further Papers relating to Military Operations in Connection with the Disturbances On The Taking Over of the New Territory\".\n\nThe Romanisation used in this article is in the Cantonese form. For place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205348, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 103\n\nmany Punti villages from \"squeezes\" formerly levied on them, \"especially the Hakkas\".\n\n13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63.\n\n14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist.\n\n15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration.\n\n16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98,\n\n17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon,\n\n18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century.\n\nWhere no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries,\n\nAddition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's \"The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911\", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205550, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n87\n\nUsing the Ching dynasty maps from the District Gazetteers and the Provincial Gazetteer, I identify the places on the Chu Kong estuary section on the Mo Pei Chi charts as follows: (see map 4)— Po Toi Shan 蒲胎山 an island south of Hongkong. Now written 蒲台\n\nTung Keung Shan 東姜山\n\nYung Hai Shan 翁鞋山\n\nFat Tong Mun 佛堂門\n\nPak Tsim 北尖\n\nLang Tin Shan 小溪山\n\n+\n\n++\n\nTam Kon islands 檐桿\n\nYung Hai 湧鞋 or Hai Chau 鞋洲 retains the same name, Fat Tong Mun 佛堂門 retains the same name, Pak Tsim 北尖 as the \"outer Lintin\", Ngoi Ling Tin 外伶仃\n\nas the \"inner Lintin”, Ting Lin 伶仃\n\n\"Lantau\", Tai Yu Shan 大嶼山\n\n\"Fan Lau\", Kai Yik Kok 雞翼角\n\nNam Tin Shan 南停山\n\nTai Kai Shan 大溪山\n\nSiu Kai Shan 小溪山\n\nKwun Fu Chai 宮富寨\n\n+ present day \"Kowloon City\", Kau Lung Shing 九龍城\n\nTung Kwun Sor 東莞所 District of Tung Kwun, Tung Kwun Yuen 東莞縣\n\nHeung Shan Sor 香山所 District of Heung Shan, Heung Shan Yuen 香山縣\n\nThe absence of any mention of the San On district (新安縣) on the charts is significant. It is highly improbable that the compilers of the charts would have deliberately omitted or accidentally overlooked that district. Now, we know that the San On district was detached in 157310 from the Tung Kwun district to form two separate districts, the Tung Kwun and the San On districts, a circumstance which confirms the suggestion that the Mo Pei Chi charts were drawn at least before the creation of the San On district. If this were the case, the Kai Yik Kok fort must also be dated before 1573, which would make it a Ming dynasty fort.\n\nBetween 1805 and 1810 control of the Chu Kong estuary slipped from the forces of the government. A new pirate leader, Cheung Po-tsai 張保仔 became master of the seas around Tai Yu Shan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205757, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n57\n\nas leaders during the fighting. Ten of the 63 leaders are identi-fiable as members of the gentry, in the sense that they are men-tioned in the documents as having degrees obtained either by purchase or by examination.\n\nexamination. Most of the remainder could be termed 'local notables'. Some were substantial owners of agricul-tural land and village houses. Other owned shops in their local markets. It is probable that they were often --as was Man Cham-tsun managers of corporately-owned lineage property. The available information about these men is summarized below.\n\n—\n\nTable II\n\nLEADERS IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT\n\n(By Marketing area, District & Village, Surname)*\n\n \n Marketing area\n District, or other Association of sharing gradu-ates\n Village, or Surnames\n No.\n No. of leaders\n \n \n Yuen Long\n 5+\n \n \n \n \n \n Ha Tsuen\n \n Tang\n 12\n 2\n \n \n Ping Shan\n \n Tang\n 11\n 1\n \n \n Kam Tin\n \n Tang\n 10\n 2\n \n \n Pat Heung\n \n Tang\n 2\n \n \n \n \n \n Li\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n Lai\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n Tse\n 1\n \n \n \n \n 1.\n \n +3\n \n \n \n \n 15\n \n \n \n \n \n Shap Pat Heung\n \n Chu\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n Ng\n 2\n 2\n \n \n \n 15\n \n \n \n \n \n Tai Po\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Tun Mun Ts'at Yeuk\n \n Tang\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n Lo\n 1\n \n \n \n Tai Hang\n \n Man\n 3\n 1\n \n \n \n 71\n \n \n \n \n \n Pan Chung\n \n Chan\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n Mak\n 1\n \n \n \n \n -\n \n *\n \n \n \n \n +3\n \n +\n \n \n \n \n ++\n \n 7\n \n \n \n \n \n \n **\n \n \n \n Fan Leng\n \n Pang\n 1\n \n \n \n Sha Lo Tung\n \n Li\n 2\n \n \n \n \n \n \"\n **\n \n \n \n \n \n *\n *\n \n \n \n \n 2\n \n \n \n \n \n Cheung Shue Tan\n \n Chan\n 1\n \n \n \n \n 7:\n \n \n \n \n \n \n *\n \n H\n \n \n \n 3.\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Hang Ha Po\n \n Lam\n 1\n \n \n \n Tai Po Tau\n \n Tang\n *\n \n \n \n Shek Wu Hui\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Lung Yeuk Tau\n \n Tang\n I\n \n \n \n \n ++\n \n +1\n \n \n \n Sheung Shui\n \n Liu\n 1\n \n \n \n Ping Kong\n \n Hau\n 2\n 1\n \n \n \n **\n \n \n \n \n \n Sha Tau Kok\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Sham Chun\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Wo Hang\n \n \n \n \n \n \n San Tin\n \n Li\n 4\n \n \n \n \n \n Man\n 1\n \n \n\n* All romanisations are in Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205761, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "33 Ibid., p. 113.\n\nMILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n61\n\n34 This event has a tangled academic history. The establishment of the association by the twenty-four villages was originally reported in the Chinese Repository (IV, 1836, p. 414), and is quoted by Wakeman (op. cit., p. 63) from that source. It is also quoted by Hsiao (op. cit., p. 309) as an example of inter-village co-operation for the purposes of defence and the maintenance of order. Skinner (op. cit., p. 39, n. 80), quoting from Hsiao, argues its significance for the analysis of standard marketing communities.\n\n35 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 39.\n\n36 Skinner, G. W. \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China Part II\". The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXIV, no. 2, February 1965, pp. 207f.\n\n37 Only those aspects of the New Territories most relevant to the argument will be discussed. There is a growing literature about the area which, taken together, gives considerable detail. Freedman, op. cit., p. viii, provides a bibliographical note on published works.\n\n38 The land frontier of the territory begins just north of the Sham Chun river and runs eastward from Deep Bay to the market of Sha Tau Kok. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, the then Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong, was deeply opposed to this boundary. \"It cuts in two the rich valley of which Sham Chun is the centre, and, while excluding that town, divides the villages in the valley hitherto linked together by family ties and common interests; all these villages regard Sham Chun as their central and most important market, where they dispose their goods and make their purchases\" Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Extracts from Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1899, Hong Kong, 1900, p. 196.\n\n39 Ibid., p. 187. Stewart Lockhart's population estimates cannot be regarded as very accurate. By 1900 he thought the number of villages to be 597. Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1900, Hong Kong, 1901, p. 252. The Hong Kong census of 1911 gave the total population of the territory as 104,101. In the Northern District alone, 398 villages were enumerated. Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1911, Hong Kong, 1912, pp. 103ff. On the other hand, as guesses go, Stewart Lockhart's count is by no means disreputable. His estimate of 100,000 is not all that far from the 1911 census figure cited above. Other examples could be given which suggest that his estimates are sufficiently accurate to indicate general magnitudes of population, if not precise numbers.\n\n40 Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Extracts..., op. cit., p. 188.\n\n41 This discussion will be confined to that part of the territory which used to be known as the 'Northern District' and will not consider the markets at Sai Kung, Tsuen Wan, Sham Shui Po, and Cheung Chau island. For brief accounts of these, see Hayes, J. W., \"The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898\"; \"Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 11, 1962, vol. III, 1963.\n\n42 Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1911, op. cit., pp. 103f.; Correspondence (December 15, 1903, to February 27, 1907) Relating to the Proposed Canton-Kowloon Railway, Eastern No. 88, Colonial Office, London, 1907, pp. 85ff.\n\n43 For example, the marketing schedule of the two Tai Po markets was 3-6-9. That is to say, the markets met on the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 13th, 16th, 19th, 23rd, 26th and 29th days of each lunar month. The same principle applies to the schedules of each of the other markets. Normally, in specifying a schedule, only the first three days are given.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206268, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n79\n\nauthority and its geographical location made it a base for pirates. One of the stories about the origin of the name of the Tai Ping Shan District on Hong Kong Island is that a pirate named Cheung Po-chai used it as his headquarters. He finally went over to the authorities and left the island. In relief the local population named the mountain side on which he had dwelt \"Great Peace Mountain\". Since it was easy to slip away by boat if government officials came to check on inhabitants, the islands on the edge of San On District were popular haunts for outlaws and the criminal element.\n\nAt the time of the establishment of the British claim to the island, The Canton Register under date of 23 February, 1841, predicted that under British jurisdiction the island would become even more popular with these classes: \"Hongkong will be the resort and rendezvous of all the Chinese smugglers. Opium smoking shops and gambling-houses will soon spread; to those haunts will flock all the discontented and bad spirits of the empire.\" Future developments substantiated this forecast.\n\nFACTORS WHICH IMPEDED THE EMERGENCE OF RESPONSIBLE LEADERS IN THE CHINESE COMMUNITY.\n\nSamuel Fearon, the Census and Registration Officer, in his report dated 24 June 1845, describes the origin of the first settlers of Hong Kong.\n\nThe arrival of the British fleet in the harbour speedily attracted a considerable boat population, and the profits accruing from the supply of provisions and necessaries at once raised many from poverty and infamy to considerable wealth. The shelter and protection afforded by the presence of the fleet soon made our shores the resort of outlaws, opium smugglers, and indeed, of all persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the Chinese laws, and had the means of escaping hither. In course of time the demands for labour, for the public and other works, drew some thousands to the island, the majority of whom were Hakkas or gypsies; people whose habits, character and language mark them as a distinct race. Careless of the ties of home and of those moral obligations, the observance of which is deemed absolutely necessary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206273, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "84 \n\nCARL T. SMITH \n\ntherefore in the hands of shopkeepers, compradors and pedlars of whom there are many, though their transactions when considered as a whole are but trifling.' \n\n12 \n\nIn his remarks on native trade, Gutzlaff states that an attempt had been made by a Cantonese capitalist to establish himself in Hong Kong. He is referring to Chinam, alias Chan Akuen, who with three other partners operated under the firm name of Tun Wo *. The Colonial Treasurer, R. M. Martin, also refers to him in his report: \"One man of reputed wealth named Chinam, who had been engaged in the opium trade, came to Hong Kong, built a good house, and freighted a ship. He soon returned to Canton, and died there of a fever and cold contracted in Hong Kong. It was understood, however, that had he lived he would have been prohibited from returning to Hong Kong\",13 \n\nIn June, 1843, Chinam bought Marine Lot 54 from Richard Oswald paying $8,000. At the time it had on it a Singapore frame house14 with brick enlargements. On the lot Chinam proceeded to build a large Hong in the Chinese style, but before the building was completed, he died in July, 1844. With his death the firm closed down its operations in Hong Kong and most of the Hong stood unoccupied for a number of years. One of Chinam's partners, Chan Chun-poo, was appointed his administrator, but due to irregularities in his handling of the estate he was imprisoned in 1854, and remained in prison for two years. He petitioned the Government for his release on the grounds of his advanced age. The property of Chinam's firm was sold in 1854 to Ow Yeung Sun, a trader from the San Wui District in Kwang Tung. \n\nAnother Canton firm that established itself in Hong Kong in the early days was Akow and Company. It was not in the same class as Chinam's Tun Wo firm, but its position was above that of the shopkeepers and tradesmen concentrated in the Bazaar areas. The company was granted Inland Lot 22 located at the corner of Queen's Road and Pottinger Street in the European section. The firm consisted of five partners, of whom Cheung Kam Cheong was resident in Hong Kong. He began to speculate in real estate and bought several lots at Government land auctions. His land investments were not successful and \n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee \n\n131 \n\ntoo sharply between them all. High government officials, such as the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and the Colonial Secretary, were likely to meet this cluster of Chinese constantly, if not at formal meetings, then socially, ceremonially, ritually. It follows that before the war Hong Kong had an oligarchical political structure in that a small number of entrenched and established Chinese shared political control over a largely immigrant and migratory population together with a small number of officials and taipans.\n\nThe pre-war European community in Hong Kong had no official committees of its own, although Europeans tended to predominate on certain committees such as the Labour Advisory Board and the Licensing Board60. Thus Europeans lacked the equivalent of the eleven officially recognised all-Chinese committees, the names of which were enshrined annually in the Civil Service List. The government felt no need either to sponsor or promote a system of counter-balancing European committees because of course the administration was controlled at the top by European colonial civil servants and only a few thousand Europeans were resident in Hong Kong.\n\nBut it is of some significance that in the face of growing Chinese working-class intransigence in the 1920s, illustrated by the spate of strikes, beginning with the mechanics' strike of 1920 (the first major industrial strike in Hong Kong) and culminating with the great strike and boycott of 1925-26, Europeans set up their own 'district' associations. The Kowloon Residents' Association was formed in 1922 and the Peak dwellers, the leading European residents, formed theirs a little later in the same year like the European residents on Cheung Chau, a favourite summer station with missionaries; and in 1925 the Mid Levels residents also formed an association. None, understandably, was given statutory or official recognition by government. Such associations were unnecessary for the District Watch Committee was hyper-active during these turbulent years and as keen to protect the European minority and thus help sustain the economy as were Europeans themselves. The Committee worked hard to bring the general strike and boycott to an end by mediation with strike leaders and holding talks with interested parties in Hong Kong and Canton, the strikers' base; and the District Watchmen were active in preventing intimidation of shopkeepers, fokis, artisans", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207052, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n117\n\noverlooked in 1898 when only the inshore islands were included in the territory that Britain requested be leased to her at that time.\n\nWhat were the islands like? I have spoken with several old men who now live on Lantau but were born on two of the eight or more islands in the Lo Man Shan group in 1891 and 1893, and with several younger men. Their accounts show that there were long-settled villages there, with padi and sweet potato fields. There were also flourishing inshore fisheries using the largest types of stake net.1 These were owned by village families, and the catches were salted and taken to Macau by a public ferry operated by local people. Salt, which was needed in large quantities for the stake net fisheries, was bought mostly in Cheung Chau, where it was said to be cheaper than in Macau. This was the position in my informants' youth, early in this century. Some of the islands belonged to Hsin-an Hsien, others to Hsiang-shan, but this allocation for administrative purposes was less important than the economic and other ties which dictated the connections favoured by its inhabitants. Wind and sea also affected links in the different seasons of the year.\n\nHsin-an and the outlying islands were thus part of the historical, strategical, social and economic life of the Canton Delta in the late Ch'ing period. The safety of their seaways was likely always to have been an important consideration with the provincial government. This contrasts with the relative unimportance of Hsin-an's history and record of scholarship when compared with the older hsien of the Kuang-chou prefecture.\n\n2. The principal events in the local history of the Hong Kong region since the establishment of Hsin-an hsien in 1573\n\nAs already mentioned in the Introduction, the Hsin-an district, to which the Hong Kong region belongs, was established as a separate administrative division of the Kuang-chou prefecture in 1573. The area was then separated from the old Tung-kuan district in response to problems of defence. It followed upon a petition from local persons which complained that because it was 100 li from Tung-kuan City, ‘barbarians and dwarves’2, had been able\n\n1 The village representative of Shek Pik on Lantau island (b. 1899) and friends of the same age had found regular work there in their youth.\n\n2 HNHC 14/2. I have followed Peter Y. L. Ng's rendering of the character, pp. 143-144.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207167, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "232\n\nSam Tung Uk\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe Sam Tung Uk (village), is a small, square-walled lineage village dating back to the 18th century. It was settled by the Chan (陳) family.\n\nBefore the Ch'ien Lung period of the Ch'ing Dynasty (清朝), the Chan clan lived in Ning Fa District, Ting Chow prefecture in Fukien Province (福建省). One of the branches then moved to Lo Fong, of Po On District* in Kwangtung Province (廣東省). Later Chan Yam Shing (the 13th generation) came to Tsuen Wan (old name Chin Wan meaning shallow bay) with four sons. Guided by his uncle (ancestor of Kwan Mun Hau Village, Tsuen Wan), they took up farming. They worked very hard, put up sea walls, reclaiming much land, and were content. Straw huts were built firstly at Lo Uk Cheung (羅屋丈) (where Block 2 of Tai Wo Hau Estate, Tsuen Wan, is now located) in the 22nd year of Ch'ien Lung, (1757). The elder son, Kin Sheung (堅常) was a herbalist doctor, renowned in fung shui and possessed a wealthy home. The other sons, Ying Sheung (應常), Wai Sheung (維常) and Cheuk Sheung (卓常) were farmers, living moderately.\n\nKin Sheung, after settling down, searched around Tsuen Wan hoping to find a suitable site to establish a village. He found that a piece of land situated on the right side of Ngau Kwu Tun (牛牯墩) (present site of Tsuen Wan Government Secondary Technical School) would be the best, but it belonged to the Sun clan of San Tsuen at that time.† His brothers were told to contact the Sun family, hoping for a possibility to purchase it. One day a member of Sun clan turned up being, at that time, urgently in need of money. He offered to sell the much-desired land but no decision could be made as Kin Sheung was not at home. Mr Sun then said that he would go to Shing Mun to consult with other rich men who were likely purchasers. The brothers debated what should be done but in their elder brother's absence were unable to make any decision. When their elder brother returned home and heard of the Sun Clan's proposal, he was delighted and rushed to Wo Yee Hop (old name Woo Lee Hop meaning Fox's Valley), and the bargain was made.\n\n* Strictly speaking, San On (新安) at that time.\n\n†新村孫旗", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207551, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 319, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n311\n\nFukienese communities but also on the Yangtze, possibly in at least two areas, and is not only the patron of most entertainers (musicians, boxers, wrestlers, actors etc.) but also has the secondary function as a health and fertility god, possibly performed by the middle brother.\n\nMersham, Kent, 10 February, 1975\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nCHANG YU-TANG AND AN OLD HANGING SCROLL FROM CHEUNG CHAU\n\nThis note relates to an interesting local figure and Kwangtung worthy. It is thought that readers will be interested both in the content and style of writing of such literary pieces.\n\nIt is not known where the following material (First and Second Accounts) was obtained, nor why there should be two similar pieces in the Hong Kong Wai Chau General Association Bulletin. There are no biographies of Yu-tang in the Kwei Shin district gazetteer (last edition seems to be Ch'ien Lung 48, which is, of course, too early) nor in the Kuang Hsü 7 edition of the Wai Chau prefectural gazetteer, the most likely sources for biographical aid. (Information supplied by Mr. Arthur Lai Shue-tim of the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong, who kindly checked them at our request).\n\nFIRST ACCOUNT [translated from the Chinese of p. 109 of the Hong Kong Wai Chau General Association Bulletin, 1964 by Francis Sham Shui-yu].\n\nGen. Cheung Yuk-tong* was appointed as the Kowloon Deputy Garrison Commander at Taipang (A). Under his charge, the inhabitants along the coasts enjoyed security and peace. Later when the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to Britain as a colony [in 1860] he contributed immensely to establishing the demarcation line which forms the Boundary Street of today. The relics in connection with him which are partially left behind are what is called the \"Spare-the Waste-Paper Pavilion” (***) as well as his fist-writing (*) of Chinese calligraphy. One can hardly refrain from sighing with admiration whenever we think upon the historical relics.\n\n* Cantonese romanization.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207617, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "165\n\nOriginally, many Sai Kung villagers owned their land only indirectly. In a system of multiple ownership, the Lius of Sheung Shui and the Tangs of Lung Yeuk Tau, as registered land-owners, collected rent in many places in Sai Kung. Sai Kung villagers who paid rent to them nonetheless held their right to the land in perpetuity, and the registered land-owners merely paid the tax and kept the balance from the rent. When the land was registered by the Hong Kong Government, the Lius and the Tangs lost their tax collection rights, and the Crown Rent that was collected by the Hong Kong Government was usually smaller than the former rent that had been paid. For many villagers, then, this must have meant an increase in income.12\n\nElderly villagers in Sai Kung still remember the \"taxlords\". Eighty-seven year old Mr. Wong of Tam Wat had heard of the \"great red hats\", and Mr. Lam Kaap Shau of Tai Long of the \"Koreans\" who came here to collect the tax. Mr. Cheung Kau of Ping Tun had heard of the Sheung Shui people collecting rent here, and elderly Mr. Cheung of Tai Po Tsai (near Tai Mong Tsai) of the Lius and the Tangs doing so. Mr. Cheng Yung of Uk Tau called them the \"Heung Shui Lo\", and knew that they collected rent in his village in his grandfather's days, while Mr. Yau T'aam Shang of Wong Keng Tei actually saw his father among a group of villagers who drove out the rent-collectors from Sheung Shui after the villagers started to pay Crown Rent directly to the Hong Kong Government.13\n\nYet another influence that affected some villages, although it left no impact on Sai Kung District as a whole (except in the field of education), was the introduction of Christianity. As early as 1861, a Roman Catholic priest had reached Wun Yiu in Tai Po. In 1873, the records of the Roman Catholic Church noted that a priest from Sai Kung visited the San On magistrate. In the 1870's, Sai Kung was noted as one of three centres of the Church in the New Territories, the Sai Kung church being responsible not only for the eastern New Territories but also for Wai Chau and Hoi Fung. By 1934-35, Roman Catholic communities were established in Sai Kung Market, Yim Tin Tsai, Wong Mo Ying, Pak Tam Chung, Long Ke, Leung Shuen Wan, and Kei Ling Ha. There were also converts in the 1930's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207618, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 6, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "166\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nin Sheung Yiu, Tsak Yue Wu, Tai Mong Tsai, She Tau, Shek Hang, Tai Long, Wo Mei, Nam Wai, and Ho Chung.1\n\nFinally, the pirates must not be omitted in any discussion of the early history of Sai Kung. It would seem that, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the pirates were most rampant in the outer reaches of the region. Seung Sz Wan and Hang Hau Village kept two guns on the two arms of the bay to be directed against pirates. Madam Lau of Seung Sz Wan remembered that the pirates once came into the village, and took away the villagers' pigs. In Tan Ka Wan, there were bandits in the late 1920's and 1930's, and the young men had to keep watch regularly.1\n\n15\n\nUp to the early 1900's, despite the economic development, Sai Kung was not yet in any strict sense a \"district\". There is no indication that the villagers of the time thought of the area that is now Sai Kung District as a single territorial unit. Crucial to the creation of the district was the founding of Sai Kung Market.\n\nSAI KUNG MARKET AND ITS TRADE\n\nThe San On Gazetteer of 1819 did not consider either Sai Kung or Hang Hau to be a market. Unlike other markets in the New Territories, periodic market gatherings were not held here at any time. As Mr. Yau T’aam Shang explained it to us, \"Sai Kung in those days was not a market; it was a moorage inlet.\"10\n\nIn 1835, Lai Tak Yau, a Tanka fisherman who sometimes served as pilot for Western sailing boats, took by force some four thousand dollars from one that was hit by storm. Out of this, he spent over a hundred dollars to settle his debts with the general store San Ue T'aai on Leung Shuen Wan. He went on a shopping spree, and spent more than a hundred dollars on Peng Chau and Cheung Chau, buying silk goods from the shops in the latter place. He left most of the balance with a certain Wong Yau Kwong, of Kowloon, a Tanka boatman who owned a large fishing boat and moored at Fat Tong Mun. Wong, in turn, went to San Ue T'aai, and purchased four hundred and fifty dollars' worth of provisions, and then, because he thought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207821, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "194\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nsummer); Miss Jean Pratt from Cambridge, who studied a Hakka village in the neighbourhood of Tai Po; and, most recently, Mr. Jack Potter, from Berkeley, California, who has just completed a study of one of the major Tang settlements in Yuen Long District. All these may be called community studies, for they attempted to give rounded accounts of the lives of the people they investigated. The results of the three studies, when they are fully published, will provide a useful sample of traditional communities in the New Territories, for they cover both fishing and agriculture and range from relatively unsophisticated Tanka, through a small, and in some respects isolated, Hakka settlement, to one of the old centres of Punti power. In addition to these field studies the work of another anthropologist, Dr. Marjorie Topley, has dealt with the New Territories in a general way in regard to aspects of their economic life.\n\n7. The gaps in knowledge and understanding of New Territories society are in part filled by the results of investigations carried out by other kinds of scholars. I have in mind particularly the work done by geographers and historians. The field studies by Dr. T.R. Tregear and Dr. C.J. Grant are too well known to call for my comment. At the moment further geographical field studies are in train; for example, Mr. Ronald Ng, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, is engaged in an investigation of the Tung Chung valley which promises to bring in much new material on the social aspects of agriculture. As for history, I may mention the work of Mr. J.W. Hayes, formerly a District Officer in the New Territories; he has produced two studies, one dealing with the New Territories as they were just before British rule, the other on Cheung Chau, which illustrate very happily how the work of the social historian and that of the anthropologist can complement each other.\n\n8. But when the fruits of all this work are put together they will still leave out of account much that is important. The New Territories can no longer be regarded as simply a rural appendage to urban Hong Kong, an area where traditional Chinese village life has, because of the accident arising out of diplomacy in the nineteenth century, been fostered by British administration, a museum conveniently arranged for the benefit of antiquarians. The population has changed to what extent is demonstrated by the admirably conducted and analysed census of 1961. Modern industry has not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208122, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n145\n\nand might bring anything from a complicated murder to a petty assault case: the former, with its formalities, always ticklish for an inexperienced lay magistrate. The next job was to interview people sent for by the D.O., deal with any disputes brought up by the parties or the Police, and hear any land cases fixed for that morning. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons the longer cases could be heard: failing these, there were always land deeds and registers to sign, files to deal with, or minutes to write. At the end of the day the ledger, cash books and receipts would come in for checking.\n\nIn my time most of the cases that came to my office were from the nearer islands, New Kowloon, and the Tsun Wan district. Another class of case nearly always taken there was Resumptions, which I always considered the most distasteful and unpleasant task a D.O. can be expected to perform: for though resumptions in 1917 were usually paid for at cent a square foot, and those in 1926 at 34 cents a foot, I never felt that money could in any way make up to a peasant for the loss of most or all of his land. Nearly always they wanted land in exchange, which it was rarely possible to find. I may remark here that when Mr. Ruttonjee started the brewery at Sham Tseng about 1926 he secured the land for it partly by leasing a piece of foreshore from Government and reclaiming, and partly by leasing agricultural land from the villagers who were mostly surnamed Fu (— should be a Chinese character, possibly 祖 or 夫, but as per rule 1, it is preserved as is, assuming it was (4)) for a fixed term at a yearly rent, thus giving them a regular income and a right of re-entry on their land in default of payment, which seemed to me a very fair arrangement, though the raising of foreshore levels made a terrible mess of the fields.\n\nMy first spell at the D.O. South ended in about four weeks; but in March 1923 I left the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for good, and became 'Lord of the Isles', and not a mere substitute. This gave me the chance to carry out researches without applying for Police launches, so I expect the appointment pleased the Water Police! It was the custom for the D.O. South to hire a big launch from a Chinese firm to take him, his bailiff, and his Chinese demarcator to Cheung Chau and Tai O on alternate Wednesdays if business there demanded his presence, or there were enquiries to make, or local applications for land to consider. For this he got a large travelling allowance, I think $1200 a year, which I believe I nearly used up every year, though I don't remember asking for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208123, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "146\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nsupplementary votes. Some D.O.s seemed to pride themselves on saving as much as possible of this vote, but I always thought it a D.O.'s duty not only to see as much of his district as he could, but to let its inhabitants see him.\n\nOne of the first questions I had to deal with was a request from the Sheung Tong villagers to make a grant from the small public works fund of $400 at my disposal to enable a footbridge to be built over the deep ravine dividing one side of their valley from the other. This was to be of granite beams, quarried in the Shap Pat Heung, and carried up over 1000 feet to Sheung Tong. I was anxious to get the village to contribute to the cost, as my vote for small public works was only $400 a year, and the cost of the three granite beams, and their transport by coolie up the mountain, would have come to about $160; and a good slice of the vote was usually granted to the Cheung Chau Residents' Association for upkeep and extension of paths there. The villagers could raise no money; they could not furnish coolies for transport; and they would not consider laying anything so ill-omened as an even number of stone beams: so to my regret I felt I could do nothing for people who could or would do nothing to help themselves.\n\nIn those days the Cheung Chau ferry was a large one-deck launch and passengers paid 3 cents each for a passage, but for 5 cents the Kaifong committee who ran it, largely in the interests of the fish industry, would give you a bamboo chair on the foredeck to sit on and this ferry was what drew missionaries to settle on the island from about 1907 onwards and build themselves bungalows for summer holidays, so saving the high cost of a Hong Kong apartment. Its timetable rarely suited my official arrangements, as by it I could never spend more than an hour ashore unless I got a night's lodging on the island; so I generally used my hired launch. In the thirties a guest house was opened for visitors in a large bungalow not far up the hill from the police station, and after 1934 I went there two or three times with friends while working on archaeological sites on Cheung Chau and the nearby coast of Lantau. This police station was not built till 1913 or 1914: before then the police had used a large house near the Kaifong pier, about 150 yards south of the later concrete pier, as their station. In 1912 a junk came to the pier by night, the crew and passengers landed, and carried the station by a sudden rush, as they were an armed pirate gang. The sergeant in charge and some police escaped and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208126, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n149 \n\nin demand, part of the foreshore was reclaimed, and houses of reinforced concrete began to appear in the village, modelled on Hong Kong tenement houses. A great difficulty with this development was the problem of ensuring proper inspection of buildings of this type, as the Buildings Ordinance of 1903 did not apply, and there were one or two rogue architects about who would run up such houses cheap, and make their profit by deviating from plans: swindles that can, as I saw in Hong Kong later, cost lives. The best way of controlling knavery of this sort is to refuse permits to erect any more houses to the architect responsible: that, I was told, is London practice.\n\nThe Cheung Chau Kaifongs, who in my time were led by a Mr. Lo Yip, a prosperous shopkeeper, were certainly enterprising, and had not only started a ferry to Hong Kong on the funds obtained from the Pak Tai Temple at the north end of the town, but had renovated the Temple and set up an electric light installation for the village on the raised ground in the middle of the isthmus. The Ferries Ordinance was passed about 1917 and replaced the ancient launches plying to Yaumati and Kowloon City by much more suitable craft — some of them second-hand Star Ferry boats — far less likely to turn turtle than the overloaded, overcrowded craft which daily imperilled their passengers in the old days, the disasters to which brought about the new legislation. About 1925 the Ordinance was applied to the New Territory, which meant that the existing ferries had to be thrown open to public tender and their boats brought up to a higher standard. The Cheung Chau Kaifongs were encouraged to bid, and as theirs was the only one, and not unreasonable, they got the concession. The old pier by the former police station had sometime before been supplemented by a new wooden pier some 150 yards further north, and this was the Cheung Chau Terminal of the ferry. The concession expired in 1928, and under my successor, Mr. Wynne-Jones, new ferry concessions were made, which according to Mr. Lo Yip had caused great trouble to the Kaifongs. The timetable was certainly improved from the Hong Kong point of view, and day trips to the island became possible. I once discussed with the Kaifongs the question of making the ferry call at Nei Kwu Chau or Ping Chau, but they never agreed to letting the boat go there or to any other island, though a call at Nei Kwu Chau would have solved the education question there by enabling its children to attend school on Cheung Chau. I once spent a\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208127, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "150 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nmorning visiting Nei Kwu Chau to discuss the problem of their fifteen children. They had been taught by a private teacher in the ancestral temple: but he had left, and the Education Department were asked to find someone to replace him. They had replied that the children would have to go to Cheung Chau, thus raising in an acute form the problem common in villages all over England to-day. Few if any teachers would volunteer to teach fifteen children in so poor an island as Nei Kwu Chau in those days. The problem of providing one was then found insoluble, and as the only means of transport to Cheung Chau was by junk or sampan, I fear the rate of literacy on Nei Kwu Chau must have declined badly.\n\nAnother event which affected life in Cheung Chau in 1925-6 was the change of Governor in November 1925, during the great Communist-inspired but mainly Nationalist strike which started in June that year. Sir C. Clementi increased the D. O. South's public works vote from the absurdly small figure of $400 to $1000 or more. This made it possible to repave some of the chief streets of the village with granite blocks set in concrete, which cost about $800. He also paid a State visit to the island in the summer of 1926. Flags and decorations were put up, and practically all the proceedings were in Chinese, including a lengthy prepared speech by H.E., written out in characters by (I believe) Mr. Sung Hok Pang. He walked through the main streets, keeping up conversation with the Kaifongs, and showing that despite a long absence in British Guiana and elsewhere his Chinese scholarship had undergone no observable decline. The chief impression of the day that remained with me was the heat!\n\nWhile I was District Officer South I attended two other functions of importance, both in the Northern district. In 1925 the Government had had the imagination and sympathy to restore to the Tang clan the village gates of Kam Tin, removed in 1899 because of the clan's opposition to the original leasing of the New Territory and taken, as I heard, to Sir Henry Blake's estate in Ireland. The ceremony of reopening the restored gates took place in May, just before the big Strike began: its central point was to be the opening of the gates to admit H.E. Sir R. Stubbs. As he rose up from his seat the local band struck up, and this so startled a small pig rooting in the moat that he fled for shelter over the causeway to his sty in the village, just getting ahead of H.E. and bursting through the gates! The reward for the Government's attitude was seen in the autumn", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208130, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n153 \n\nOccasionally the D.O. was called on to do special jobs outside his district. One such job I did at the Land Officer's request in 1930 or 1931 was to enquire into the holdings in Stanley village, to discover who the various lot owners were; this meant a good deal of domiciliary visitation in searching for lot boundaries, and looking for owners who might turn out to be in Macao, Australia, or Panama, and were not infrequently in their graves. This was necessary because the Land Office had no demarcators, and the Land Officer knew law but not Chinese: and the village was to be replanned and modernised. I hope the right people got the compensation, whether in land or cash: I never heard anything over the arrangements.\n\nThe collection of revenue from the District, excluding lots held directly from the Government as Inland Lots granted through the Land Office, was always a most important duty of the District Officer. The Crown rent was collected both at the District Office and at various outstations, chiefly Tai O, Cheung Chau, Tsun Wan, and the small police quarters at Yung Shue Wan on Lamma. The outstation collections were done by a shroff accompanied by an Indian constable, and in the remotest places the Water Police gave their assistance. As a rule I believe the Water Police brought back the shroff and the money, though I think the ordinary ferry conveyed him to the scene of action. The collecting was done at the local police stations. It always began about the end of July, after the first rice crop, and went on at full blast till about October: defaulters were dealt with early the next year. Licence fees for forestry, squatters' fees, and pineapple plantation licence fees were usually paid before midsummer at the District Office.\n\nIn 1925, the year of the big Communist-inspired Nationalist general strike, the office shroff was transferred on promotion. His substitute was a young fellow fresh from the Treasury, who took advantage of the disturbance and the preoccupations of his superiors to embezzle part of the receipts, and finally absconded three months after the strike began. A former District Officer South remarked to me later that he had always been worried by the possibility of this kind of thing happening to him, and the almost total impossibility of keeping a tight check on shroffs when frequent absence from the office, sometimes all day, is part of the D.O's duty. Luckily his security just covered his defalcations: and another shroff in the same racket was caught out by me and part of his loot recovered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208132, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n155 \n\ncrews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. \n\nOne of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. \n\nAs I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap \n\n* Public Works Department.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208133, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "156 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD \n\non the ridge.* Further afield, on the Hang Hau peninsula, is the paved road referred to above, which runs as far as Ha Yeung: and on Nam Tong, commanding the strait, is the robbers' stronghold with its gun platform. Porcelain near its gate looked fairly modern, from what I remember. Remains of a similar kind can be found on the other islands of the Southern District. Just above the village of Shek Sun at the west end of Lantau stands a Dutch fort built about 1610, rectangular in plan. A few cannon balls and other relics have been found in it, but it is very overgrown and needs clearing if any research is to be done there, or sightseers enabled to visit it. The old fort and cannon protecting the small yamen were repaired when E. W. Hamilton was D.O., I think between 1927 and 1929: I remember that one room in the yamen was inscribed shu shat (library). Another relic of old coast defences, close to Tai O, is the old Chinese guard station already referred to, outside Po Chu Tam creek, and quite ruined. On the south coast, near Shek Pik, a very ancient rock carving on a cliff was found quite recently. In the outlying islands are three interesting structures: one is on the North Soko island, where in a small valley on its south coast are two converging lines of megaliths. The other two are on Sha Chau, one a stone burial chamber on the south isthmus in the form of a 'kistvaen,' the other a ruined guard station on the flat area northwards of the chamber, with an earthwork protecting the landing place to eastward.\n\nNo doubt there are many other places of interest, especially temples and their contents: one of the finest is the Pak Tai temple in Cheung Chau, with its coloured relief showing the local ferry boat nearing the pier in Hong Kong harbour. Lastly, there is one place of much interest with which I had to deal in 1917 or 1918. The Tang grave at Hau Tei, beside Tsun Wan, made in the Sung dynasty, was naturally affected by the new Castle Peak motor road and a projected reclamation of the shallow sea area beyond it. The Tang elders come to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, where I was 2nd A.S.C.A.,† and partly I think on my suggestion the hill of the grave was made into a public park, so as to preserve its surroundings and outlook. The grateful elders presented me with a 'fung shui' map of the grave site for my efforts on their behalf; and the good influence of their virtuous ancestor continues to augment the prosperity of their descendants, and of Hong Kong generally, if there is anything in 'fung shui'!\n\n* See Mr. Schofield's note in JHKBRAS 9 (1969): 154-156.\n\n† Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208500, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "208 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nThe westermost cannon has an inscription showing that it was cast in the 1st moon of the 10th year of the reign of Chia Ching (1805), weighing 1,200 catties (嘉慶十年正月造,重一千二百斤). Again, this cannon and some others were probably cast for the defence of the region against pirates.4 The cannon which lies next to it had been severely weathered, and the inscription is illegible. \n\nTwo cannons on the east wall bear the same inscriptions. These read as follows:-- \n\nCannon: weight 2,000 catties. \n\nYik: General of Border Pacification, by Imperial Appointment (欽命靖逆將軍奕(山)). \n\nChoi: Minister of Constant Support. Kay: Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi (太子少保廣東總督都堂祁(墳)). Leung: Assistant Minister of Defence, and Governor of Kwangtung (兵部侍郎廣東巡撫部院(寶常)). \n\nLau: Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture. Cheong: Reserve Magistrate of Hoi Fung District, supervised its manufacture (海豐縣丞即補縣昌、監造). \n\nIn the 10th moon of the 21st year of the reign of Tao Kwang (1841) (道光二十一年十月吉日). \n\nCast by Cannon Artisans Li, Chan, and Fok. \n\nDuring that time, British influence in this area was strong. Viceroy Lin Tse-hsü ordered the casting of cannons from Fat Shan for the fortification of the coast of Kwangtung. These two cannons must be two of those that Viceroy Lin had ordered to be cast, and they were placed in this region for defence purposes. \n\nThe cannon which lies next to these two is again illegible, because of severe weathering. \n\nThese six cannons were selected from elsewhere, some perhaps from the Kai Yik Kok Fort, others from the Shek Se Fort, and were mounted there. Though they were not cast at the same time, they had the same purpose: they were used to defend the region against pirates and foreign invasions. They are now preserved at Tung Chung and help to commemorate these events.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208772, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsister, now a spirit, had proffered good advice, he built a folk religion shrine in her honour. Her cult thrived, so much so that her image is revered by Ch'aochou emigrants in most areas of South Thailand and, so the story goes, also in Singapore and in Nakorn Sri Thammarat.\n\nThe Bangkok god carver claims that Miss Lin is the only Chinese deity with a special urn donated by the King of Thailand who is well known for his tolerance towards and encouragement for other religions. He is said to have bowed in her honour before her image which consists of a simple, seated country girl with bare feet and large hands, dressed in working clothes Plate 3. Her festival is celebrated in her temples each year on her birthday, the 15th of the first lunar month.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nMarch, 1980.\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nTHE TEMPLE OF THE SUPREME RULER,\n\nNEAR SUNG WONG TOI, KOWLOON*\n\nIn the thirteenth century A.D. the Southern Sung Emperor Tuen Chung was attacked by the Mongol Conquerors of the North. Driven from his provisional capital at Hang Chow, the Emperor retreated southwards through Fukien and on to Kwangtung province, stopping temporarily at more than 30 places on his way. Besides the well known Palace at Ngai Mun in the San Wui district of Kwangtung, that at Sau Shan by the Pearly River has been fully described in the Imperial Records which were published in the Yuen Dynasty. Such buildings provide evidence of the efforts of the Sung Emperor and his ministers to make that stand against their enemies which has long been cherished in the people's minds.\n\nIn the spring of 1277 during the second year of his reign, the Emperor left Kam Tsz Mun of Wai Chau district in Kwangtung and reached Mui Wai. In the fourth moon he arrived at Kwun Fu Cheung, a district which included present day Kowloon, the New\n\n*This heading and the following text are taken from a memorial tablet erected in the Urban Council's Rest Garden at Lomond Road, Kowloon, site of this former old temple. A Chinese tablet is also provided.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209012, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "142\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDuring the early Tang Dynasty, the importance of Tuen Mun increased. Thus a garrison of two thousand men was posted1, and Tuen Mun became known as the Tuen Mun Military Zone19 5. The garrison was led by a commander known as Sau-Chuk-Si 守捉使 belonging to the Annam Military Zone 安南都護府. Its headquarters were at Nam Tau, later the district city of San On. The area of present day Hong Kong, including the islands, the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories, was under the protection of this garrison.\n\nIn the Sung Dynasty, the Tuen Mun Military Zone was turned into the Tuen Mun Ngam19. However, the number of soldiers and the rank of the officer in charge are not certain.\n\nDuring the early Ming Dynasty, the Tuen Mun Ngam was turned into the Nam Tau Walled City, and the garrison was commanded by a Cham-Cheung or Brigadier. Later, in the 17th year of the Hung Wu Reign (1384), Fa Mau✯✯, Commander of the Nam Tau Walled City, asked the Imperial Court to strengthen the garrison of the coastal area. Tuen Mun lay between the areas protected by the Tung Kwun Battalion and the Tai Pang Battalion. Thus, a watch-post was built, and a guard-station under a Pa-Tsung(4) was established. In the 9th year of the Chia Ching reign (1514), the Portuguese entered the Tuen Mun Bay. They took over the adjacent lands and built forts. They even established a monument. However, in the 16th year of Chia Ching, Wong Wang, Commander-in-chief of the Kwangtung naval forces, defeated the Portuguese at Sai Tso Wan8.\n\nAfter that, no Portuguese was found in the Tuen Mun area.9 At that time, there were villages like Lung Kwu Tsuen, Lang Shui Tsuen✯k††, Tuen Mun Tsuen19#, So Kwun Wat Tsuen 掃桿笏村, and Siu Lam Chung Tsuen 小欖涌村.10\n\nDuring the early Ch'ing Dynasty, the Coastal Evacuation✯✯ caused the abandonment of the area close to the sea. Tuen Mun thus lay barren until, in the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1668), people were permitted to return to the coastal strip. The Tuen Mun Watch-post was re-established with a garrison of fifty men under a Tsin-Tsung. In the 21st year of K'ang Hsi (1682), the Tuen Mun Watch-post was turned into the Tuen Mun Walled City19 with a garrison of thirty men under a Tsin-tsung11. During", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209014, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "144\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTai Lam Chung Sub-district:- Tai Lam Chung, So Kun Fat, Tai Lam, Tsing Fai Tong, Un Tan and Tin Po\n\nTsai 田箭仔、\n\nLung Ku Tan Sub-district:- Nim Wan, Tai Shui Hang 大水坑, Pak Long 北朗, Ha Nam Long 下南朗, Sheung Nam Long 上南朗 and Tuk Mi Chung 篤尾涌.\n\n18\n\nAt present, Tuen Mun consists of thirty-two villages; namely: Chi Tin Tsuen, Ching Chuen Wai † (mainly surnamed To 陶), Ching Shan Keuk 青山脚, Ching Shan Tsuen 青山村, Chung Uk Tsuen (mainly surnamed Chung), Fu Ti Tsuen 虎地村, Fu Hang Tsuen 福亨村, Ho Tin Tsuen 河田村, Ki Lun Wai 麒麟圍 (mainly surnamed Chan 陳), Kwong Shan Tsuen 礦山村, Lam Tei 藍地 (mainly surnamed To 陶 and Kwan 關), Lam Tei San Tsuen (mainly surnamed To), Leung Tin Tsuen 良田村 (mainly surnamed Ho 何), Lung Ku Taan 龍鼓灘 (mainly surnamed Lau), Nai Wai (mainly surnamed To 陶), Nim Wan 稔灣, Po Tong Ha 寶塘下 (mainly surnamed Tsui 徐), Sam Shing Hui 三聖墟, San Hing Tsuen 新慶村 (mainly surnamed Siu 蕭), San Hui 新墟, San Wai Chei 新圍仔, Shun Fung Wai »§ £, ♬ (mainly surnamed Cheung 張 and Leung 梁), Siu Hang Tsuen 小坑村 (mainly surnamed Tse 謝), So Kwun Wat 掃管笏 (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tai Lam Chung (mainly surnamed Wu 吳 and Wong 黃), Tin Fu Chai (mainly surnamed To and Choi), To Yuen Wai (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tseng Tau Tsuen 井頭村, Tuen Chi Wai 屯子圍 (mainly surnamed To 陶), Wo Ping San Tsuen 和平新村, Yeung Siu Hang 楊小坑 and Luen On San Tsuen 聯安新村.\n\nTuen Mun has now been developed into a large new satellite town. A major road, the Tuen Mun Highway, has been built, joining it with Tsuen Wan, and a light rail system within the town area will be developed in the near future.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The name 'Tuen Mun' appeared first in Chapter 43 of the New History of T'ang.\n\n2 Tuen Mun Shan was also known as 'Pui To Shan'. Nowadays, it is also called 'Castle Peak'.\n\nThe Bay was also known as Tuen Mun O.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209622, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 279, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "257\n\napproximately between 1900 and 1915. We find that of the four born before 1898, three had attended class for an average of four years, one attended for only one year, and then worked first in the farm for a few years and then in the construction of the railway. Amongst the six born after 1898, however, three never went to school and one claimed that he learnt to read a little when he worked as a shop assistant in a small tea-house at Shamshuipo. Around 1900, at least two teachers are known to have given up teaching, one to work in the Land Office of the New Territories administration and the other to work for his brother-in-law at Taipo. Liao Chung-nan, the siu-tsai who formerly taught a small class at high fees in his own home as mentioned above, eventually had to move to teach at the Wan Shih Tang at a lower fee of about $5 per pupil.\n\nThree government schools providing an elementary English education were set up between 1905-1906, one being situated at Taipo, about six miles from Sheung Shui. Unlike in urban Hong Kong, response to this new educational provision was not great. The school at Ping Shan fared most badly and was closed in 1907 to be replaced by one set up in Cheung Chau. The average attendance throughout 1905-1912 in these three schools was twenty, out of a total of 224 schools in the whole Territories with an average attendance of sixteen each.15 The Report of the District Officer of 1912 states: “Government schools on a small scale have been opened at centres in the New Territories providing an elementary instruction in English, the fee for these is 50 cents per month. There is not, however, a great demand for this instruction of a more modern type in most of the districts, for the people still cling to the old-fashioned learning.”16 We have no record of village people from Sheung Shui attending the Taipo government English schools before 1913.\n\n1913. The social and economic changes resulting from the change of government were still small and the opportunities for new jobs were still limited, and the jobs were mostly confined to manual labour. New demands had not yet appeared to bring marked changes in popular literacy which remained basically rooted in the traditional and relatively confined village society, but it was perhaps beginning to lose its former hold both as a basic education for the masses and, at a more advanced level, as the avenue to position and wealth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209854, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "THE ISLANDS AROUND HONG KONG\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nPresent Inhabitants of the Islands\n\nAt present, there are four races living in the Islands: they live very much mixed together.\n\n1. Tan Ka (literally \"egg people\"); these are boat-people who speak a dialect of Cantonese, they live a great part of their lives on the water, but sometimes settle on land.\n\n2. They are an outcast race, and in the old times they were not admitted to the civil service exams. They are usually quite illiterate. They sometimes live in boats hauled ashore, or in more or less boat-shaped huts, as at Shaukiwan and Tai O. All their chief centres are harbours: Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, Tai O, Potoi, Kau Sai, Yaumatei. They were formerly pirates.\n\nThey are the only modern people who might claim, perhaps, to be descended from the most ancient inhabitants.\n\nCantonese; these form the majority of the population in Lantua, Cheung Chau, and Lamma: their chief centres are Tai O, Tung Chung, and Cheung Chau. They speak various sub-dialects; a common one is the Po On dialect; this is widely spoken by the people both north and south of the frontier.\n\n* Mr. Walter Schofield (1888-1968) was a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service (1911-1938). Mr. Schofield was District Officer, South, during much of the inter-war period (see his Memories of District Office South, New Territories of Hong Kong, in Vol. 17 (1977) of this Journal, pages 144-156). This present paper is taken from the notes prepared by Mr. Schofield for a talk he gave in August 1937. It gives a useful glimpse of life in the Islands in the years before the coming of the Japanese as seen by a highly knowledgeable observer. In the paper Mr. Schofield gives translations of the place names listed. In many cases these translations were and are doubtful owing to lack of evidence of the original form of the name. These translations have been left in this version of the paper with notes added where present usage clearly differs from that given in the paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "92\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\nThese speak a different language from the other three races. They have a history of having migrated ages ago from the Yangtse valley, and economically are pioneers, opening up inferior lands, and doing all quarry work. They occupy the eastern and northern islands, and are often called \"Chinese Scotchmen”. For this reason Scottish regiments here are called “Hakka ping\" (Hakka soldiers). Nearly all regimental servants here, I believe, are Hakkas: formerly the Hakkas were anti-Manchu and often joined Triad Societies. As such, they gave vigorous assistance to the British in 1857-61, and the connection with the Army has been kept up.\n\nHoklos, a Cantonese nickname for the coast peoples of Northeast Kwangtung; it means \"men of Hok1\", meaning Fukien. Most come from the area around Swatow and Swabue. Their language is very widely different from both Cantonese and Hakka: as different as German from English. They are fishermen, grasscutters, limekiln and saltpan workers. Their major settlements are at Tai O, Pingchau, Cheung Chau, Taipo (by the District Officer's island), and probably others. They are migrating here steadily, and many appear in court for offences of all sorts. A major reason behind the migration is probably that the coastal areas from which they come are suffering erosion and losing soil: the collapse of the Hoi Luk Fung Soviet Republic is another factor: finally, piracy is no longer as profitable as it was.\n\nPolitical divisions\n\nThe Ladrones or \"Pirate Islands\" of which Hong Kong and its outlying islands are part were so named by the Portuguese pioneers of sea trade to the East. They are shared unequally between China, Britain and Portugal. In China they are administered by the nearest district magistrates, of Hoifung, Po On, Chungshan, Sanwui, and Toishan districts. Macao has only two or three nearby isles. The British Islands are divided between the District Officer, North, and the District Officer, South, so that the latter is sometimes called \"Lord of the Isles\". I had that job for nearly 3 1/2 years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209857, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "94\n\nOn drier land are grown pea-nuts, taro, ginger, onions, and many other crops. Pineapples are grown in some places, always on the hillsides, and nearly always among pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years. On the Islands pineapples are grown only on Tsing Yi, Ma Wan, and Lantau. Other fruit is grown near villages: laichis, oranges, lungngan, pumeloes, and papaya; the last especially in North Lamma.\n\nFishing is almost entirely in the hands of the Tan Ka and the Hoklos. Big junks go out from Tai O, Cheung Chau, and Hong Kong to trawl on the continental shelf beyond and around the Lemas and Ladrones; smaller boats go in for line fishing and prawn catching; the dried and salted shrimp paste is what gives to Cheung Chau its \"ancient and fishlike smell\". But the main fishery of the year is that of the \"wong fa\", which migrate from near Kwongchau Wan every autumn up the coast towards Swatow. Night fishing with acetylene lamps is very common: these first came into favour about 1920. Stakenet fishing is very common, but does not pay very well. Rock oysters, the sort that cut your feet when bathing, are picked in great numbers by women and children, especially at low tides in summer, all round the coast. Crabs and lobsters (the sort without claws) are caught in nets and traps.\n\nForestry is confined to the growing of firewood for use and sale. The plantations are generally near villages, but some on the islands belong to owners who live elsewhere. Nearly all Tsing Yi is divided between three forestry lots: yet on Lamma there are no forest lots, though there are trees all right. The biggest forestry lot is at Tung Chung. Very little planting is done except when encouraged by the District Officer: trees are allowed to sow themselves. Grass, growing thick in summer, is cut for fuel everywhere in autumn; it is the chief cooking fuel of the New Territories. Its cutting is women's work.\n\nOther island industries are salt-making, confined to Tai O; lime-burning at Pingchau, Tsing Yi, and formerly at Naikwuchau; shell and coral are used. Limekilns on a small scale are found everywhere along the coasts; the place-name \"fui yiu\", not ...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209875, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "112\n\nHaven\".\n\nPui O at present often uses for its name characters meaning \"Shell Harbour\".\n\n1* Yi Long Wan (\"Second Wave Bay\").\n\n1 These villages used to stand just south of Discovery Bay but have since given way to the major housing project of that name.\n\n\" Tai Pak Island is now called Tai Lei (\"Great Profit\").\n\n19 Shau Chau is now called Sha Chau (\"Sand Isle\").\n\n\"Tongkwu is now called Lung Kwu Chau (\"Dragon Drum Island”). \"The Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts (SARDA) has had a treatment centre here since about 1960.\n\n31\n\n* Capital of San On District.\n\n** No villages now survive on Hei Ling Chau, which, after the closure of the leprosarium, is now occupied solely by the Correctional Services Department. The remaining villagers were resited to various places on Lantau in 1952-53.\n\n** Chau Kong is now called Sunshine Island (Chau Kung To), after an agricultural rehabilitation programme for refugee families launched there in the 1950s by Mr. Gus Borgeest (of Hong Kong) and others.\n\n\"Kau Yi Tsai is now called Siu Kau Yi Chau, with the same meaning.\n\n**A prewar periodical magazine containing many items of great interest, including Father D.J. Finn's contributions on local archaeology, 1933-36. These were reprinted, edited by Rev. T.F. Ryan S.J., by Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958, entitled Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island (M) near Hong Kong.\n\n** Waglan at present uses for its name characters meaning \"Barrier to the Waves\".\n\n#T\n\nRespectively Cheung Shek Pai, Ngan Wu, and Shan Liu.\n\n\" Also known in English as Junk Island. At present the island is known in Chinese only as Fat Tau Chau (\"Buddha's Head Island\").\n\nNam Tong Island is now known as Tung Lung Chau (\"Eastern Dragon Island”).\n\n* This is the Tin Hau Temple (Tai Miu) on Joss House Bay.\n\nAfter partial excavation, it is now listed as an ancient monument under the care of the Urban Services Department.\n\n** Respectively Pak A, Leung Shuen Wan, and Pak Lap.\n\n** These inlets were drowned in the mid 1970s to form the High Island Reservoir.\n\n*Tolo Harbour.\n\nYuen Chau Tsai, see note 2 above.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209879, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "116\n\nIn selecting these organizations for study, I must emphasize that they are representative of many more from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. These simply happen to have come to my attention in the course of official duties and aroused my interest over the years. Taken as a group, whether situated in street, sub-district or suburban village, and despite being under foreign rule, they demonstrate the same capacity for social organization and self-management as in the much older communities on the mainland New Territories, then still under Chinese rule. They provide further evidence to show that communities of shopkeepers and villagers, of diverse origins and without benefit of kinship ties and long settlement, could manage their own affairs without any necessity for gentry or merchant elite leadership. In short, the instances from Hong Kong Island carry this conclusion one step beyond that reached for areas like Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the individual and linked villages of the Southern district of the New Territories, because, if gentry were lacking in those areas, there was altogether no possibility of their presence in early British Hong Kong, concerning which frequent estimates of the low quality of the population can be found.7\n\nAp Lei Chau and the Hung Shing Festival\n\nAp Lei Chau, the island on the south shore of Aberdeen Harbour, had apparently no more than \"two or three families of Hakka grass-cutters\" when the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841. There was, however, a temple to Hung Shing, the God of the Southern Sea, that had stood on the island for many years; its bell is dated 1773.10 The likelihood is that the temple predated the land population, and that (together with the Tin Hau Temple on the north shore, where Aberdeen town now stands) it originally served the boat population of the Ap Lei Chau-Aberdeen anchorage. By the mid-1860s there were 60 houses there, with a population of perhaps two or three hundred persons.11\n\nBy 1897 the number of residents was 1,123, and by the Colony Census of 1911 it had risen to 1,437.12 This population gained its livelihood from concerns that served the fishing fleet: the local Aberdeen-Ap Lei Chau anchorage had 424 boats and 4,130 persons at the 1866 census.13 There was little farming, as the island has steep", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209884, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "121\n\ntemple repairs. Ap Lei Chau was a fishing port and its temples were very popular with the boat people in the anchorage. They thronged to them at the festivals and to the performance of opera and puppets organized by the chik lei, but it seems that they were not allowed to share in the management of these events. My informants recalled that at one time, even, because of a dispute over seating arrangements at an opera performance, it was decided not to seek donations from boat people in future at festival times. This happened before the Pacific war, and from that time on, the decision has been followed. On the other hand, the boat people's contributions have been sought for temple repairs whenever these have become necessary.\" The tablets in both temples on the island show that, as at Tai O and Cheung Chau, other large centres of boat and land populations, both communities have combined on these occasions, no doubt because the high cost of the work made it necessary to get contributions from every possible source.\n\nThe Earth God Shrines at Sai Ying Pun and Tai Ping Shan\n\n(1) Sheung Fung Lane (4)\n\nAt Sheung Fung Lane in the Sai Ying Pun district of Hong Kong Island there is an old shrine to the Fuk Tak Kung, the earth god of that locality. It has a large granite altar, carved with figures at each end, which has corners cut to simulate bamboo trunks and is inscribed with Chinese characters. These give the names of the persons (listed by their shop names) styled tai chik lei who contributed the costs of erection in the year 1910-1911, together with the name of the overall organiser, styled chung lei (1) dated the year before. However, this was a reconstruction, as the present managers have in their possession, dated from the year 1905-1906, a large banner, a hanging cloth and an umbrella, all well-preserved and made for use in processions round the area in time of need of spiritual protection*. Local tradition supports an earlier origin of the shrine, and traces its beginnings to a great epidemic that caused many deaths in the district at \"an earlier time\". This might have been the great\n\n* Plates 1 to 5 illustrate this section.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209898, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "135\n\n14.8.1897, all three Ap Lei Chau residents belonging to the old Luk Hing, Sau Hing, and Fuk Hing Tongs respectively. Their evidence enlarges and confirms the information obtained from the record of the Squatter Board's proceedings.\n\n\"Hayes 1977, pp. 99-101. The Tai O information is more explicit on this point, but the Cheung Chau practice was the same.\n\n** See E.G. Pryor, Housing in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1983) pp. 15-17. These new urban districts were very susceptible to contagious disease. It is well to recall Governor Des Voeux's report of 1889 in which, describing the City of Victoria, he wrote: \"Going ashore our visitor would see in the Chinese quarters houses, constructed after a pattern peculiar to China, of almost equally solid materials, but packed so closely together and thronged so densely as to be in this respect probably without parallel in the world.. It is believed that over 100,000 people live within a certain district of the City of Victoria not exceeding 1⁄2 square mile in area. It is known that 1,600 people live in the space of a single acre.\" (Sessional Papers 1889, pp. 303-304).\n\n15\n\n** Victoria had seven officially-approved sub-districts in 1857, as listed and described in the Hong Kong Government Gazette for 9 May 1857, GN No. 69. They included \"No. 1, or SEI-YING-POON — From the small village westward, called Cowee-wan, to the end of Circular Buildings, including all the houses on Bonham Strand, west of No. 1 Police Boat Station. The historical development of this area is given by Revd. Carl T. Smith's note at pp. 211-218 of JHKBRAS 14(1974) in \"Programme Notes for Visits to Older Parts of Hong Kong Island (Urban Areas....)\n\nSee also Chapter 3, Sheung Wan, of Frank Leeming's Street Studies in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1977) pp. 45-66.\n\n24\n\nSheung Fung Lane itself is situated between Second and Third Streets in that section bounded by Centre Street to the East and Western Street to the West.\n\n** An account of pao wui at the Tam Kung festival in Shau Kei Wan from a Secretariat for Chinese Affairs' file of 1958 is typical: \"There were about 15 Kaifong elders in the Tam Kung temple who were enrolling pao wui (K), there were about 18 pao wu's from the sea and about 10 from the land. The wul's who brought their own roast-pigs with them had to pay \"oil money\" and \"worshipping fees\" from $10 to $30 to the elders before entering the temple. It is learned that the worshippers have no objection to pay these fees. In addition the temple keeper also charged $5 or $10 for each roast-pig brought into the temple plus $5 to $10 \"oil money\".\n\n20 A recent account of the proceedings at Sheung Fung Lane is given in the article \"Everyone's festival\" in The Asia Magazine issued weekly by Asia Magazines Ltd., Hong Kong, Vol. 21, Number V7, 4th January 1981, pp. 3-6.\n\n3-6. For a very well illustrated account of a similar old neighbourhood in Singapore, and its community festivals, see \"Singapore's Vanishing Chinatown\" by Joan Ogden in The Asia Magazine 25th July 1976.\n\n* \"No. 3, or TAI-PING-SHAN From the end of Hollywood Road near Circular Buildings, to Gough Street steps, including all the houses on the south side of the Queen's Road between these two points.\" See the plan opposite p. 124 of Marjorie Topley (ed) Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch 1967). This was drawn in 1882 (ibid, pp. 123-124).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "87\n\nI did not record very much about the role of the Hoklo, Wai Chau, Chiu Chau newcomers. They were actually visible mainly through the flags in their honour and the Chiu Chau performers whom they hired to perform on the main day of the celebration. Their participation was more in contributing money to provide performances in their own dialect than in participation in the processions or in preparation of the offerings.\n\nThe number of persons present in the main-day procession and the procession with the Daai Si Wong was impressive. However, they were more sharing the fun and enjoying the novelty than making a collective, disciplined presence as in the case of the same processions in the New Territories jiu festivals, in which the participants wore special clothing and hats, excluded women and were in general more organized at least in appearance.\n\nI did not see many signs of nearby villagers (who did not live in the three participating villages) coming to the jiu to visit or to offer good wishes, as was the former custom. There was a flower basket on display outside the festival office at Shek O. It was presented by the chairman of the rural committee of Cheung Chau. The only fa-paai was from Ma Hang, Laan Lai Wan, Stanley and Tai Tam Tuk, which are nearby. Near noon time on the main day some guests did come. One of them was a police officer, probably the head of the Chai Wan Police Station. Another was the District Officer for South District, who came with some assistants.\n\nMarried-out daughters were expected to come back for the festival too. On the bus back to town on the main day of the celebration, I overheard a middle-aged woman telling someone that if a married-out daughter did not come back for the jiu, she could not come back until ten years later, presumably during the next celebration.\n\nOther than the villagers, participants at the jiu included the professionals, among whom the most important were the priests. The yn-sau, or his companion, explained to me that they had hired a team headed by the priest Chan Wa as they did for the last celebration. I had thought, when he explained this was because Chan was 'familiar', he had in mind familiarity with the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210934, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 284, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "LANTERN FESTIVAL, CHEUNG CHAU, 10TH FEBRUARY 1971\n\n1\n\n267\n\nI had received invitations from several of the island's fellow countrymen, that is “district”, associations (鄉親會) to join them on Cheung Chau for the Lantern Festival, and went over for the evening. The Rural Committee Chairman, Mr. Chau Li-ping (周立平先生), met me at the pier and took me to the Sei Yap Yick Sin Tong Association (四邑益善堂) dinner in the Ho Tai Sun Restaurant (好泰新酒家). The leading kaifong members were there and I was able to join them on their usual tour of all district association celebrations taking place at the same time on that evening.\n\nThere were twenty tables at the Sei Yap Association dinner, and entertainment was provided by a Sei Yap group from Hong Kong singing modern songs. There was a stage in the street outside the restaurant on which they would perform later, and this was a popular attraction when we passed later in the evening. They changed four years ago from old-style entertainment. The cost of hiring the singers for two nights was $1,400.\n\nWe then went to the Tung Koon Association (東莞同鄉會) dinner in the restaurant beside the playground at Tung Wan (東灣). There were twenty-eight tables and many Tung Koon association leaders from Hong Kong and other parts of the New Territories were seated on the stage. Speeches went on all the time we were there (we only had a drink at this celebration). There was no sign of entertainment inside, and the stage was apparently provided on street.\n\nWe next visited the Shun Tak Association (順德同鄉會) dinner in the Rural Committee Country Club premises. I forgot to ask the number of tables, but it must have been about twenty. An auction for association funds was in progress, with the emphasis on selling decorative lanterns. I did not see any sign of an entertainment group and there was apparently no stage on the streets provided by this body.\n\nWe went from there to the Po On District Association's (寶安縣同鄉會) celebration at a restaurant on the waterfront beside...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211237, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 298, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "273\n\nperson who has really done it is James in his two books, and with a bit of luck we will see more of this in the future.\n\nJames Hayes\n\nI think we had better go over to questions. Who would like to open?\n\n(Pause)\n\nPatrick How much of the raw information that has been accumulated so far is being studied? Has anybody analysed any of the information, or has this yet to be done?\n\nJH - No, I don't think so, apart from David and perhaps Dr. Alice Ng. Do you know of anyone else in the Chinese University who is using it?\n\nPH - No. To answer my own question, I think the problem is, it is probably too early, actually. When you are doing this sort of work, you start from a fixed point and work out. I was at one fixed point in Sha Tin because I was District Officer and could put the “squeeze\" on people who were reluctant to discuss! There were other fixed points in Sai Kung, and there have been other fixed points elsewhere, but the compact nets around these various fixed points don't link up. There are still lots of blank spaces, like the map of Africa in the 19th Century. This includes almost the whole of the western New Territories. I doubt if we have even dipped our toe in water in more than a tenth of the New Territories yet. If you read James's recent book carefully with this in mind, you will see how patchy the information is on the area; lots from Lantau and Cheung Chau and bits from here and bits from there, and huge blank areas where there is nothing at all.\n\nJH That's right, simply because if one is going to do anything, especially if you are a civil servant lucky enough to have a job that takes you to a part of the New Territories, you can only work there. I was never in a position where I could go to work anywhere else. I concentrated on the areas that were accessible to me and where I had contacts. That's the way it has had to be built up.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211382, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "74\n\nTang family had the right of building shops there, and a stone with an inscription to that effect, was put up in the temple of T'in Hau Kung(g) which can still be seen in old Tai Po market.\n\nWhen the Man family lost their case a wealthy friend called a big meeting of the elders of the seven districts round about Taai Haang (林村), Fan Ling(K), Lam Ts'un(#1), Yip Woh(), Sheung Wan(), Ting Kok(TM) and Cheung Shue Tan(). At his suggestion, and financed by him, they built a new market where the present market now stands. It was called Taai Woh Shei (utmost friendship market)(★Fifi) and was officially opened on the twenty-third day of the 6th month of the twentieth year of Kwong Sui, A.D. 1894. All the trade at once went to the new market and the old one gradually fell into disuse and can now be seen as a very poor and derelict village.\n\nNote. 1. The district of Sun On was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing() A.D. 1572 of Ming dynasty. Fourteen years later the **History of Sun On District** was written by Yau Tai Kin the district magistrate. It was revised for the first time in the eighth year of Sung Ching(), but this edition was not published until eight years later when a third magistrate Chau Hei Yiu(2) added slightly to it. A second edition was published in the eleventh year of Hong Hei(E) A.D. 1672 of Ts'ing dynasty, a third appeared sixteen years later, and the present edition was published in A.D. 1819.\n\nNote. 2. The second character(W) is read yeuk in Cantonese but in the New Territories dialect it is read as Kwat.\n\n#\n\nNote. 3. Lam Fung is \"Limahong\" (= Lim a hong, not Li ma hong) whose name is already mentioned in the history of the Philippine Islands. It is also translated as in some Japanese books, and Limahong or Lin Ah Hong in some of the European books.\n\n=\n\nLam Fung\n\nLimahong was a native of Raoping district(ATM) In the 10th month of the 2nd year of Lung Hing(), A.D. 1568 of Ming dynasty, he took sixty-two battleships with 2,000 sea-soldiers, 1,500 women, and a large store of food and ammunition to attack the Philippines. He was defeated and his fleet dispersed by the soldiers of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211746, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "136\n\nLei (#) clans were settled in the area then, and the Ho family at least must have been there from the late Yuan.\" It seems likely, however, that no Ming political groupings survived the chaos of the Coastal Evacuation (1662-1669) in the area - the returning villagers must have had to re-create their society more or less from scratch.\n\nSoon after the rescission of the Coastal Evacuation Order Hakka groups moved into the Ta Kwu Ling area. There is no evidence that there was any opposition to this, and the area has been one of marked Punti/Hakka co-operation throughout the last three hundred years.\" The first, and the most important, Hakka group to enter the area was the Chan (B) clan, of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan. Other Hakka groups arrived mostly during the eighteenth century.\n\nThese villages began to establish alliances between themselves from early in the eighteenth century. The Chans of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan allied themselves with the Fus and the other tiny clans of Wo Keng Shan to form the Sam Heung (, \"Three Villages\"), and this alliance in turn allied itself with the Mans of Ping Che to form the Ping Yuen Hap Heung (\"Ping Yuen United District'). The Tin Hau temple at Ping Che was founded by this group of villages, probably in the early eighteenth century, and they celebrated the Ta Tsiu festival in front of the temple from the eighteenth century until the 1930s.\" The groupings of Kan Tau Wai, Tai Po Tin, and Lei Uk; and of Lin Tong, Wang Kong Ha, and Au Ha2 are very probably of the same sort of date. Several villages in the area were genealogically related, and these also tended to form loose groups around their main ancestral graves during this period. However, inter-village alliances in the area in the eighteenth century do not seem to have been particularly strong or socially significant. Each individual village had its own Tai Wong (AE, “Superior Earthgod Shrine\"), and the groupings of villages around a single, shared shrine found in many places in the New Territories were unknown here.\n\nThus, when the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was founded towards the end of the eighteenth century, it was founded within a region with a weak political structure, marked by numbers of villages without alliances with others, or only weakly grouped with others. The strongest grouping, the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, consisted of only four villages, two of them very tiny. It is entirely likely that the area was in this period dominated politically by “major lineages\" from outside the area -- particularly the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211747, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "137\n\nCheung (張) lineage of Wong Pui Ling. The area, however, was fertile, rich, and, by the later eighteenth century, becoming relatively densely populated. Growth of stronger and less politically quiescent inter-village groupings could be expected, and the clearest evidence of this comes from the nunnery.\n\nThe nunnery was founded by the villages of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung on the one hand, and Loi Tung and Man Uk Pin on the other. Loi Tung was a tight lineage alliance of three large villages of the Punti Tang clan (Loi Tung Lo Wai, San Wai, and Tai Tong Wu), and Man Uk Pin was a single, large Hakka village, predominantly of the Chung clan. The nunnery lay in six shares: Ping Che, Ping Yeung, Wo Keng Shan, Loi Tung, Tai Tong Wu, and Man Uk Pin. Of these, the Wo Keng Shan and Tai Tong Wu shares were probably there to reflect the greater size and strength of the Chan and Tang lineages within the grouping. In practice, however, the nunnery was controlled by the four clans of the Mans, Chans, Tangs, and Chungs, and normally probably had one Manager drawn from each lineage.” This group of eight villages, most of them large and wealthy, clearly represents a new generation of inter-village grouping in the Ta Kwu Ling area.\n\nThe importance of the road through the Miu Keng pass has been discussed above. The position of the nunnery on the road was not only of value to travellers seeking shelter, it was also of major strategic and political significance. The road was the only passage through the hills, and could not be by-passed. Whoever controlled this pass controlled much of the Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road. The foundation of the nunnery was the result of the grouping together of a few villages which were clearly seeking to capitalise on their strategic location, and thus to increase their local political leverage and district significance. The political significance of the foundation should not be downplayed. The religious impetus behind the foundation should not, of course, be ignored, but the strategic significance of the grouping is too strong to be overlooked. The nunnery-founding group of villages seems to be, in fact, an early example of a Yeuk (約) mutual defence and support inter-village alliance. The villages which had founded the nunnery seem to have worshipped there together at the Yu Lan Festival in the summer, when vegetarian food was served to the elders and faithful in front of the nunnery.\n\nIt is likely that the Ping Yuen Hap Heung people used their alliance with the groups east of the pass to strengthen their position as against", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "no Kankyo [Village Festival in China: Background of Local Theatres] (1989). The Jiao festivals studied by Tanaka are as follows:\n\n \n Communities\n Year\n \n \n Cheung Chau\n 1979\n1979, 1983\n \n \n Recorded in\n 1981:74-99\n1985:227-302\n \n \n Ha Tsuen\n 1981\n \n \n \n 1985:199-226\n \n \n Hung Hom, Kowloon *1\n 1978-80\n \n \n \n 1981:771-780\n \n \n Kam Tin\n 1985\n \n \n \n 1989:915-996\n \n \n Lam Tsuen\n 1981\n \n \n \n 1985:359-528\n \n \n Leung Shuen Wan, Sai Kung\n 1980\n \n \n \n 1981:99-113\n \n \n Lin Fa Tei *2\n 1967\n \n \n \n 1985:558-572\n \n \n Lung Yeuk Tau\n 1983\n \n \n \n 1985:609-720\n \n \n Sha Tin, Kau Yeuk\n 1985\n \n \n \n 1989:1041-1112\n \n \n Sha Tin, Tai Wai\n 1987\n \n \n \n 1989:977-1040\n \n \n Sha Tin, Tin Sam\n 1986\n \n \n \n 1989:1040\n \n \n Tai Po Tau\n 1985\n \n \n \n 1985:121.131-138\n \n \n Tuen Tsz Wai\n 1986\n \n \n \n 1989:817-913\n \n \n Yuen Long\n 1983\n \n \n \n 1985:139-198\n \n \n 43\n \n\n*1: From the context, this festival, held on the 14th of the seventh moon, can be best seen as a ghost festival organized by the Hoklo dialect group.\n\n*2: Tanaka did not attend this festival. Analysis of the festival was mostly based on the 1967 account collected by H. Baker.\n\nSee map for the location of places.\n\nJH Tanaka, Ritual Theatres, 5.\n\n班 Tanaka, Lineage and Theatre, 11.\n\n40\n\nfbid., i-ii.\n\n41 Tanaka, Village Festival, i-iij.\n\n42\n\nFaure, David, The Structure of Chinese Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 81.\n\n4.3 Segawa, Masahisa, \"Daa Chiu: matsuri ni arawareru Hon Kon no mura no sugao” [Da Jiao: facets of villages in Hong Kong as shown in the festivals] Kikan Minzoku Gaku Ethnography Quarterly 33 (1985): 21-35.\n\n14\n\nSegawa, Masahisa \"Ta-tsiu [Da-Jiao], feuds, and village alliances: the case of Pat Heung\" (unpublished manuscript, 1991).\n\n45 Choi, Chi-cheung, “Chi o urai ekibyo o harau taihei shinsho\" [Jiao festival: to wash: the land and remove illness] Kikan Minzoku Gaku 40 (1987): 90-105.\n\n4\n\n40\n\nChoi, Jiao festival\", 1046.\n\n47 Choi, \"Kinship\", 147-149.\n\n4#\n\nThough Tanaka wrote that only a few communities in the New Territories celebrated the festival during his seven and a half years' observation (Tanaka, Lineage and Theatre, 608), we are still unclear as to how many communities continue to celebrate it. For instance, the Cheung Long Wai case was not mentioned by any informants. It was known only by an occasional visit to the village. A likely source is the Police since theoretically every festival celebrated in Hong Kong has to receive permission from the police for security measures. The district offices in the New Territories are another source of information. Certainly there were in the past other celebrations which have now ceased for one reason or another (e.g. at Sha Tau Kok, Shuen Wan and Ta Kwu Leng).\n\n49 Segawa, \"Daa Chiu', 35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213135, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "185\n\nhigh standards, and took care to employ good teachers. The school must always have had several teachers - the building is just too big to have been feasible for just one.\n\nIn 1923 there were five teachers. Three were Shap Yeuk area people. One, Chan Kan-cheung, from Luk Keng, was a returned student from USA - he taught English and Physical Education. Another teacher from Luk Keng was Chan Ping-long, a graduate from Canton. He taught \"the new books\". The third teacher from the Shap Yeuk area was Lau Woon-kwong, from Keng Hau (Jinghou) in the Chinese part of the Shap Yeuk area. He taught classical Chinese and Music. The other two teachers were outsiders: Lei Wai-lau was a Sau Tsoi from near Yuen Long, a Punti speaker - he taught classical Chinese. The fifth teacher, Wu Fan-ng, was from Shaoguan in the north of Guangdong. He had lived for many years in Sha Tau Kok, and spoke and taught in Hakka. He, like Chan Ping-long, was a graduate from Canton, and taught \"the new books\".\n\nRight down to the 1930s, the desire to keep their school one of the best and most advanced in the region was a major aim of the elders of the Shap Yeuk. In the 1920s, the standard of the school was as advanced as the Government schools which the Hong Kong Government had started to open in the major centres of the New Territories. By having this group of well-educated and cultured men living in the market, the elders of the Shap Yeuk demonstrated that their town and district comprised a full and viable community - not only having artisans and labourers and merchants, but scholars and gentry as well.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "200\n\nnot have been written at all\n\n58 See the plan and cross-section of a typical 1853 Sha Tau Kok shop unit, taken from the drawings and descriptions of the Basel missionaries, in P.H. Hase, \"The Alliance of Ten\", in D. Faure and H. Siu, eds, Down to Earth, op. cit., and see also P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n59 D. Faure, A. Ng, B. Luk, eds, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280\n\n60 The Hong Kong Museum of History has a set of Po Tau equipment\n\n61 Julonghaiguan Barman Dashiji, op. cit., sub anno.\n\n62 P.H. Hase, \"Sha Tau Kok in 1853\", op. cit.\n\n63 The Tai Po to Sha Yue Chung Ferry was also deeply involved in this trade. In 1939, the Customs came to an agreement with Tsang Sang, the leader of the guerrillas controlling the eastern side of Mirs Bay, that the Customs would treat as duty-free goods anything imported through Sha Yue Chung for the guerrilla fight against the Japanese, but, while this trade was, therefore, not smuggling, it still faced major problems from Japanese attack.\n\n64 Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hongkong, 1899, printed by Noronha & Co, Government Printers, (Sessional Papers), \"Extracts from Papers relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong. Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor: Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong\" (No. 9 of 1899), p. 190, notes this boatyard as a significant business in 1898.\n\n65 \"Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart\" (Sessional Papers, 1899), op. cit., p. 189\n\n66 For the Sha Tau Kok Branch Railway, see R.J. Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990, pp. 84-93\n\n67 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1925. I am indebted to Mr. J. Lanham for drawing my attention to this description.\n\n68 For the first two of these tablets see Faure, Ng, and Luk, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 262-280, and Vol. 2, pp. 376-379. The third is unpublished, and is now at the Hong Kong Museum of History.\n\n69 A further, small, boatyard was at Kat Om in 1912: see Oime Report, op. cit., para. 76, p. 55\n\n70 See, for instance, details on shops in Sai Kung in D. Faure, \"Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 22, 1982, pp. 161-216, on Tsuen Wan in D. Faure, \"Notes on the History of Tsuen Wan\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 24, 1984, pp. 46-104, and on Cheung Chau in J.W. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213469, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "32\n\nnow s 5. Cap 4\n\n10 The late Mr. G.E. Strickland in the penultimate paragraph of his Appendix I to the Committee Report, 1953\n\n20 (1910) 6 HKLR 12, at p. 53 per Sir Francis Piggott, C.J.\n\n\"Committee Report, 1953.\n\nMarriage by Chinese Law and Customs in Hong Kong, (1958) 7 International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 437\n\n2 Chinese Marriages in Hong Kong, Government Printer, Hong Kong, 1960\n\n* TANG CHOY HONG vs TANG SHING MO & OTHERS. (1949) 33 HKLR 58 (concerning succession to land see below), and CHAN PUI vs CHU YAN KIT (1950) 34 HKLR 297 (concerning agricultural tenancies)\n\n* Committee Report 1953. Chap II para 11 at pp 6-7, and Annual Departmental Report District Commissioner New Territories. 1954-55, para 72 (Hereinafter such reports are referred to as Report DCNT 19)\n\nReport, DCNT, 1950-51, para 26 and 1954-55, para 72 This attitude among the Chinese was always the reaction to litigation and possibly was born of a general distaste for their ancient judicial procedure, vide R.H. Van Gulik, T'ang-Yin-Pi-Shih \"Parallel Cases from under the Pear-tree\". Leiden. 1956, P. 58\n\n\"Report, DCNT, 1956-57, para 106\n\n16\n\nReport, DCNT, 1957-58, para 98\n\npara 43\n\n* CHEUNG Sau Tim vs CHEUNG Yo, Lam (1948) 32 HKLR 31\n\n\"vide Committee Report, 1953. Chap III, para 31\n\n\"ibid paras 34 and 40\n\nLik\n\nMemorandum of 20th March 1958, addressed to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs\n\nvide McAleavy's article \"Certain Aspects of Chinese Customary Law in the Light of Japanese Scholarship.\" BSOAS, 1955, Vol XVII Part 3. p. 535\n\nFor the customs of the land-dwelling Cantonese and Hakka I have had recourse to notes\n\n \n \n \n \n !", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213678, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "built all over the Territory: a taste has sprung up for many foreign luxuries, and aerated waters, cigarettes, clothes, caps, towels and kerosene oil are now common objects of sale in the small market towns\". The district officer also noted the villagers' openness to new ideas: \"Contact with foreign ways has rendered the average villager less superstitious than of yore”: as an example of this openness to new ideas, he stressed the \"suddenness and unanimity” with which the New Territories villagers accepted the 1911 Revolution: \"all showed ... that they had long been ready to join the party of progress.\"\n\nIf, however, in the generation before 1911, there was already some openness to foreign ideas in the New Territories, the efforts by the Hong Kong Government to inculcate these new ideas formally through the schools were initially less successful. In 1902, the Brewin Committee recommended setting up government schools in the New Territories to teach village youths English and a modern curriculum. The first such school, at Yuen Long, was established in 1904, and schools at Tai Po and Cheung Chau followed in 1906 and 1909. However, in their first decade, these schools were unpopular with poor academic standards, and had little influence: in 1911 the three government schools only had 66 pupils between them, out of 3,085 pupils at school in the New Territories generally (2.1%). However, during the next decade the standards and acceptability of the government schools began to rise: in 1920 their combined enrolment reached 133. It was only after that date, however, that the government schools began to have any very marked effect.\n\nIn 1913 the village schools were brought within the ambit of the Education Ordinance. The Sung Report recommended paying a grant to those village schools of a better quality willing to include some modern teaching within their curricula. Initially 50 schools (out of the 260 existing) were chosen, and the scheme was begun in 1914. By 1916, however, only 11 of the aided schools were as yet able to teach a \"modern curriculum\". In 1918 a two-level grant scheme was introduced, and in 1919 a three-level scheme: this was designed to increase the number of schools eligible for a grant, and to increase the leverage of the government in introducing more modern subjects into the village schools. By 1921, however, there were still only 85 village schools which the government considered fit to receive any form of grant.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213679, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "3\n\nThe attempts by the government to improve and modernise teaching in the village schools, therefore, although they began in 1904, only started to make a real impact after about 1920\n\nHowever, even if there was an inchoate openness to new ideas in the area, nonetheless oral testimony from all over the eastern New Territories suggests that the traditional society of the area remained basically untouched until after the opening of the railway and the new roads brought the area into a closer physical relationship with the city.\n\nThe Kowloon-Canton Railway started operation only in October, 1910, and the light railway branch to Sha Tau Kok only in December, 1911.7 The railway was an important factor in the modernisation of the central and north-eastern New Territories, but the effects of the railway were, clearly, only substantial after 1910-11\n\nIn 1914, it was decided to build a surfaced circular motor road around the New Territories This was done in phases, between 1914 and 1921. Since the crucial Tsuen Wan to Castle Peak and Kowloon to Tai Po sections were only ready for motor traffic in 1921, the road system thus only became a significant factor in the modernisation of New Territories life after that date.\n\nIn the islands, there had been an intermittent steam ferry service to Cheung Chau from before 1899, but a regular daily service seems only to have begun in 1910. It is unclear when the regular steam ferry service to Tai O began, but it was probably shortly before 1915. It seems that it was only in 1919 that there was more than a single ferry service a day to Cheung Chau, and only from 1922 that there were more than two Easy contact with the city, and the modernisation and change that implies, began before 1899, but became a marked feature of islands life only after 1910, although the effects were clearly significant by 1921\n\nAll in all, it is clear that New Territories physical communications with more developed communities were poor before 1911, and only became a widespread factor of importance after 1921\n\nThe district officer noted in 1912 the changes that the railway in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213685, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "recorded as having 29 males and 10 females resident. The boat people at Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po may have been included in the Victoria Harbour grouping. But it seems likely that the bulk of the Northern boat-people population was omitted from the statistics in 1911.\n\nAt Cheung Chau, 4,442 boat-people are recorded in 1911, 2,601 of them male. This probably includes those boat-people usually anchored at Ping Chau and Mui Wo. At Lantau, 5,413 are recorded, 3,159 of them male.** The Lantau figure probably includes, not only the floating population at Tai O, but also the people living in \"boat-huts\" on stilts there. It also probably covers those boat-people anchored at Tung Chung, and may cover those at Tuen Mun as well. In 1921, 3,552 boat people are enumerated at Cheung Chau, and 3,894 at Tai O (probably not including the “boat-hut” residents). Given the absence of some deep sea fishing boats during the 1921 Census period, it seems that the Southern District floating population statistics are broadly similar in 1911 and 1921.\n\nThe careful notification of New Territories residents as to the purpose of the 1911 Census, and the use of local men as enumerators, led to a lack of practical problems with villagers, who seem to have responded surprisingly well to the process. The police escorts had \"not very much to do,” and “no trouble whatever\" occurred.\n\nOn a more detailed basis, the civilian enumerator teams in the mainland New Territories, and the police on Lamma, in the Sham Shui Po area, and, to a lesser extent, on Lantau, seem to have done a more careful job than the police on Cheung Chau, and in the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas. 598 villages were separately enumerated in the nine mainland civilian enumerator districts,\" 18 on Lamma, 49 on Lantau, and 23 in the Sham Shui Po district.\" Very few of the villages or hamlets on Lamma or in the mainland New Territories outside the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas were not separately enumerated. The few that are not are hamlets closely connected with a nearby village and enumerated with it. On Lantau, however, some villages are not separately enumerated. The villages to the south of Tai O (Fan Kwai Tong, Yi O, Fan Lau), those immediately east of Tung Chung and along the upper edges of the Tung Chung valley (Tai Po, Tung Chung Hang, Wong Lung Hang, Lam Che, etc.), most of those in the Chi Ma Wan peninsula (except Shap Long), and most of the very tiny villages in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213686, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "10\n\n-\n\nextreme north of the island, are omitted. It seems likely that the populations of these villages most of which are rather small were combined with the populations of the nearest market, port, or major village. In most cases the market, port, or major village was where the police post was from which the census was being conducted. Thus, the populations of the missing villages are probably buried in the figures recorded for Tai O, Sheung Ling Pei, Shap Long, Cheung Chau, and Ma Wan.\n\nThis is certainly what happened at Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City. In Tsuen Wan, populations are recorded only for Tsing Yi, Tsuen Wan, Ma Wan, Chai Wan Kok, and Kwai Chung.1 Clearly, all the Tsing Yi villages are lumped together, as are all the Kwai Chung villages. Equally clearly, the Tsuen Wan villages - with the odd exception of Chai Wan Kok - are combined in a single entry with Tsuen Wan Market. In Kowloon City district, none of the central Kowloon villages (i.e. the very important villages of Nga Tsin Wai and Po Kong and the smaller villages such as Chuk Yuen) are entered separately - their populations are, clearly, subsumed under the entry for Kowloon City.1 In part, the lack of detail in the Kowloon City census may be due to the heavy rain which interfered with the first attempt to hold it.\n\nThus, when conducting detailed analyses of the tables of statistics in the 1911 Census, it is necessary to bear in mind that the populations recorded for the towns and major villages in the south of the New Territories are inflated to some degree, and their social characteristics are likely to be obscured, at least in part.\n\nThe villages still existing on Hong Kong Island and Old Kowloon in 1911 are separately recorded. Po Toi Island is included under the Hong Kong villages.1\n\nThe process of holding the house-to-house enumerator visits lasted “a few days” on Lamma, and three months in the bigger districts.3 Assuming Lamma was completed in five days, and the largest districts (Au Tau, Sha Tau Kok, Ping Shan, and Sai Kung) required 50-60 working days, the average population enumerated each day varied between 143 and 181, with between one and four villages being dealt with each day.1 This is clearly not excessive, and, again, suggests that the statistics produced should be treated as reasonably accurate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213697, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "Tables 7 and 8 assume that mortality rates in 1911 and 1921 were basically the same, or at least that any changes were too small to be discerned in statistics as approximate as those in Tables 7 and 8. In fact, major improvements in the health of the New Territories only began to be seen in the 1930s. The government had begun to provide for the health of the New Territories immediately after the take-over. A dispensary with a resident doctor was established at Tai Po in 1900, and a programme of vaccination was initiated. However, most of this clinic's time was taken up with treating the police and other government servants in the New Territories; few local villagers were affected. The annual number of vaccinations (including re-vaccinations) was under 100 before 1909, when the Tung Wah Hospital began to assist every summer. Between 1910 and 1920 the annual vaccination rate in the New Territories rose to several hundred. Nonetheless, the area affected by this vaccination campaign seems to have been limited to the market towns of Tai Po, Sheung Shui and Tsuen Wan. The doctor posted to the New Territories in 1900 was withdrawn in 1909, after which the only trained medical staff resident in the area was a “dresser”, who was supervised by intermittent visits by a doctor from Kowloon.\n\nThe very high rates of neo-natal casualties in the New Territories began to be addressed by the government from 1914, when a government midwife was stationed at Yuen Long. Midwives were posted to Tai Po, Tsuen Wan, and Cheung Chau in 1915, 1916, and 1917 respectively. The Pok Oi Hospital at Yuen Long was reorganised in 1920, and was backed by a government dispensary from 1925. However, the critical decision to post midwives to cover the villages in addition to the market towns was only taken in the 1930s. From the 1930s, the district midwives disinfected all drinking water wells, and vaccinated against smallpox, as well as attending births. Oral evidence suggests that the results on infant mortality were massive. By 1921, however, these great improvements had only begun to affect the market towns, and the overall mortality rates for the New Territories as a whole must have been much as they had been in 1911 and earlier. Between 1911 and 1921, changes in mortality rates were probably, therefore, marginal, and averaging the two sets of statistics, as in Tables 7 and 8, is not unreasonable.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213701, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "25\n\n5%\n\nwide divergence where females are concerned cannot be due solely to the transfer of Tsuen Wan alone. This wide divergence can probably be ascribed to the large numbers of women busy in the fields during the 1921 Census period and thus being missed by the 1921 enumerators. The 1921 Census Officer, as noted above, remarked on the problems the peak agricultural season caused for the enumerators, who, clearly, were able to compel the presence of the heads of household, but not always the womenfolk of the family.\n\nThe higher numbers of females as compared with males recorded in both 1911 and 1921 (at ages above about 26 in 1911, and about 32 in 1921) can be ascribed to the temporary absence of many of the males in the City or abroad. As is to be expected, this feature is much less marked in 1921, because of the return of so many males for the Ching Ming Festival, and the greater effort made to record the boat-people, many of whom were prime-age males, whose families were resident outside the New Territories. The higher recorded figures for females at ages above 55 are more likely to be due to differential death-rates, with females living longer.\n\nSouthern District. An Immigrant, Urban Society\n\nWhile the censuses show a settled agricultural society in Northern District, in Southern District they show a society dominated by the land and floating populations of the market town seaports of Cheung Chau, Tai O, and Ping Chau, and marked by significant temporary immigration of young adult males.\n\nAs mentioned above, the census figures are problematic for Southern District. Because of differences in the treatment of New Kowloon, Tsuen Wan, and the floating population, only two tables provide fully usable data: the 1911 figures for the islands' land population, and the 1921 figures for the Southern District floating population. However, even though the series of usable figures is short, nonetheless they clearly show a society radically distinct from that of Northern District.\n\n00\n\nTable 9 shows the reported population figures for the 1911 land population of the islands. As in Northern District, the figures suggest under-reporting of infant children. At 35 births per thousand, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213702, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 55, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "26\n\nannual number of live births in the islands land population would have been about 180-185 each for males and females.\n\nThe 1911 overall situation for females from the Southern District land population is generally similar to that for Northern District. The increase in recorded females aged 20-25, however, is rather higher in percentage terms than in Northern District (16% as compared with 11%), and must include some immigration of women into the district as well as under-reporting of resident unmarried young women.\n\nThis postulated immigration into the district of young adult land population women who probably, in many cases, left the district again before death - raises the average age of death for women in the Southern District land population as compared with Northern District from 24 to 26, and causes, as will be noted below, a similar slip of 2 or 3 years in, for instance, the average age of marriage, when compared with Northern District. This influx of young women into Southern District was small (possibly only 10 a year), and is possibly connected with the prostitution trade which is known from oral sources to have been significant on Cheung Chau, although other immigrant female workers may also have been involved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "32 \n\nto say. These came from the Wai Chau Prefecture, particularly Kwai Shin District, and from Ka Ying Prefecture, especially Cheung Lok District - 556 males are recorded in the 1911 Census from these Prefectures, 488 from the two Districts of Kwai Shin and Cheung Lok. Only 110 females from these areas were recorded, making it clear that the bulk of the people from these areas were not accompanied by their families.\n\nThe third group of Northern District men recorded in the 1911 Census as born outside the New Territories are probably mostly shop-keepers in the small market-towns, people from all over the Canton Delta (273 males and 119 females), but only a few from any one place. A few may be children born while their New Territories parents were living temporarily away from home, as doubtless the three males born in Honolulu.\n\nIt is clear that, in 1911, the 556 Northern District males born in the north-east prefectures, and the 273 born in the Delta, could not have affected the basic structure of society - they together represent only 2% of recorded males.\n\nFemales born outside the New Territories were more numerous than males born outside the New Territories in 1911 in Northern District, as it had long been the custom of the area to seek wives for sons from some distance away from the village. Doubtless, the 1,536 females recorded as born in San On District, and the 2,383 born in Hong Kong and Kowloon were mostly wives brought in, and thus not likely to affect the basic structure of society. Females from further away constitute only 308, a mere 1% of the recorded female population of the Northern District in 1911.\n\nIn the islands, however, a full 26% of males recorded in 1911 of the land population (1,631 males) were born outside the New Territories. As in the Northern District, some of these were probably shop-keepers resident with their families (246 San On males, and 265 San On females: 195 Tung Kun males, and 144 females: 40 Macau males, and 63 females), but many were businessmen or coolies living apart from their families, in businesses supporting the coastal shipping trade. 51 males from the Chiu Chau area (only 7 females), 536 from the Hoi Luk Fung area (only 28 females), and 32 men from Lo Tung (no females) were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213722, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "46\n\nextremely uncommon among women In 1911 only 235 women out of 25,899 for whom the educational attainments are given (0.9%) in Northern District, and 231 out of 7,991 (2.8%) in the land population of Southern District are recorded as literate. It is probable that the 1,934 females over 10 whose educational attainments are not given for Northern District (27,833 females are recorded there over 10), and the 532 not recorded in Southern District (8,523 females are recorded there over 10), were also illiterate. In 1921 674 females are recorded as \"Able to Read and Write\" (2.5% of 26,942 females over 10) in Northern District, and 377 in Southern District (3.5% of 10,665 females aged over 10).\n\nThe floating population was also far less literate than the land population. In 1921, in Southern District, 1,452 males of the floating population were “Able to Read and Write” (45% of 3,180 males over 10), and just 67 females (2.7% of 2,394 females over 10). At Cheung Chau, however, there were a number of boat people who travelled on the large coastal trading junks, and these were more likely to be literate than the dwellers on small sampans: in 1911, for the floating population of Hong Kong as a whole, the census found only 4,416 floating population males out of 24,747 males over 10 literate (17.8%), and only 127 females out of 15,129 (0.8%), and this is more likely to be closer to the true position for dwellers on the smaller and poorer vessels.\n\nThe 1931 Census gives literacy rates for persons aged “21 and over\" (i.e., born in or before 1910), 66.0% of land population males in the New Territories in this age group, and 2.81% of land population females, are recorded there as literate. It will be seen that these figures are very close to those recorded for the same age group in 1921 (i.e., those aged \"over 10\" in 1921).\n\nA further indicator of education appears in the tables of \"Occupations\" in the 1911 Census. This shows that 1,729 males aged over 10 in Northern District were students, and 771 males over 10 in Southern District (including New Kowloon). It is unlikely that more than a tiny minority of villagers continued in full-time education after 15. 4,008 males were enumerated as being aged between 10 and 15 in Northern District in 1911, suggesting that 43.1% of them were students. It is, however, probable that, in the \"Occupations\"\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213737, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "60\n\nCensus does enumerate as being in full-time employment must be treated as being in actual fact working independently, except for those enumerated as agricultural labourers. The 404 women so enumerated in Northern District represent 2.5% of the total of 16,271 women aged between 15 and 45 in Northern District in 1911. Clearly, there were a substantial minority of women who were in full-time independent employment outside the home in 1911. From the 1911 statistics, many were working at the lower end of the employment market, as coolies and general labourers, or hawkers, but there were enough women operating shops (possibly in many cases as widows taking over the family shop after their husband's death) to make it clear that shops operated by women were by no means rare, as, indeed, oral evidence would lead us to expect. The 1911 female masons, carpenters, general shopkeepers, doctors, basketry dealers, joss-stick dealers, and restaurant keepers are all in this category.\n\nThe 1911 statistics do note, but clearly under-represent, the specifically female occupations (embroiderers, seamstresses, nuns, and prostitutes), plus the fuel sellers which oral evidence strongly suggests was another more or less exclusively female occupation. The 1911 statistics also suggest that beancurd selling, in 1911 as now, was essentially a female occupation. The presence of prostitutes only in Southern District confirms the oral evidence that, while there were no prostitutes in Tai Po or Yuen Long, there were in Kowloon City and Cheung Chau. Midwives and marriage brokers were also purely women's work, but mostly were part-time jobs undertaken ad hoc by housewives, and so only two strays out of the many dozens who worked in these areas appear in the statistics. The 1911 statistics, however, seriously under-record women working in these trades. In 1921, in Northern District, far more women are recorded as working in them than in 1911 (thus, 61 female foodstuff sellers are recorded in 1921 as against 21 in 1911; 1669 seamstresses as against 36; 48 weavers as against 0; 118 coolies/hawkers as against 50; 107 nuns, fortune tellers, temple keepers etc as against 18, and so on). The 1921 Northern District statistics for female occupations, therefore, are much fuller, and so probably closer to the actual position, even if under-recording is still likely.\n\nThe 1911 statistics draw a distinction which is probably real, between \"Tailors\" or \"Dress\" (male: Northern and Southern Districts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213740, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "Table 28\n\nUrban Population: New Territories. 1911\n\n63\n\n \n Northern District: Town\n Males\n \n Females\n \n Total\n \n \n Yuen Long\n 458\n 81.9%\n 101\n 18.1%\n 559\n \n \n Sai Kung\n 320\n 62.5%\n 192\n 37.5%\n 512\n \n \n Hang Hau\n 262\n 67.7%\n 125\n 32.3%\n 387\n \n \n Ha Tsuen Sh\n 120\n 67.4%\n 58\n 32.6%\n 178\n \n \n Shek Wu Hui\n 29\n 67.4%\n 14\n 32.6%\n 43\n \n \n Tuen Mun San Hu\n 72\n 67.3%\n 35\n 32.7%\n 107\n \n \n Tai Wo Shi\n 377\n 79.9%\n 95\n 20.1%\n 472\n \n \n Tai Po Old Market\n 104\n 53.3%\n 84\n 44.7%\n 253\n \n \n Tap Mun\n 168\n 66.4%\n 85\n 33.6%\n 253\n \n \n Sha Tau Kok\n 43\n 70.5%\n 18\n 29.5%\n 61\n \n \n North District Total.\n 1910\n 70.8%\n 789\n 29.2%\n 2699\n \n \n Southern District: Town\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Tai O land population\n 1159\n 51.6%\n 1089\n 48.4%\n 2248\n \n \n .boat population\n 3159\n 58.4%\n 2254\n 41.6%\n 5413\n \n \n Total\n 4318\n 56.4%\n 3343\n 43.6%\n 7661\n \n \n Cheung Chau land population\n 1918\n 59.1%\n 1326\n 40.9%\n 3244\n \n \n :boat population\n 2601\n 58.6%\n 1841\n 41.4%\n 4442\n \n \n Total\n 4519\n 58.8%\n 3167\n 41.2%\n 7686\n \n \n Ping Chau\n 434\n 67.6%\n 208\n 32.4%\n 642\n \n \n Mui Wo Kau Chun\n 11\n 61.1%\n 7\n 38.9%\n 18\n \n \n Southern District Total\n 9282\n 58.0%\n 6725\n 42.0%\n 16007\n \n \n New Territories Total.\n 11192\n 60.0%\n 7514\n 40%\n 18706\n \n\n* Most of Sha Tau Kok was in China this is the New Territories part of the town\n\nTsuen wan is not included as the census includes a large rural population with the town. Some of the Cheung Chau boat population was probably at Ping Chau, and some of the Tai O boat population was probably at other anchorages on Lantau, but only a small percentage in each case\n\nIt will be noted that there was no town in the Northern District as large as Ping Chau, and that Cheung Chau was more than 24 times as large as all the Northern District towns put together. There were rural populations included within the total for, especially, Tai O, but, nonetheless, the differences are very real. The 1921 Census includes population figures for only one town, Sai Kung the figure it gives (an overall figure of 606) is in line with the 1911 figure.\n\nIt is noticeable that the population engaged in “urban” occupations can be comfortably fitted into the recorded populations of the Southern District towns, with a substantial excess over to cover the fishermen and ocean-going seamen living in the towns In Northern", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213745, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "68\n\nTable 30\n\nDialects Spoken in the Home (Southern District, Land Population). 1911\n\n \n Enumeration district\n Punti\n Hakka\n Hoklo\n Others and unstated\n Total\n \n \n Cheung Chau (M)\n 1421\n 59\n 348\n 14.6%\n 621\n \n \n (F)\n 1022\n 64.9%\n 216\n 13.7%\n 336\n \n \n Total\n 2443\n 61.6%\n 564\n 14.2%\n \n \n \n Lantau (M)\n 2999\n 85.5%\n 466\n 13.3%\n 40\n \n \n (F)\n 2695\n 84.2%\n 478\n 14.9%\n 29\n \n \n Total\n 5694\n \n \n \n \n \n \n Lamma (M)\n 168\n 84.9%\n 944\n 14.1%\n 69\n \n \n (F)\n 489\n 98.8%\n 6\n 1.2%\n \n \n \n Total\n 657\n 79.5%\n 129\n \n \n \n \n Total (M)\n 4588\n 73.7%\n \n \n 6229\n \n \n (F)\n 4206\n 79.8%\n 700\n 13.3%\n 365\n \n \n Total\n 8794\n 76.5%\n 1637\n 14.2%\n 1066\n \n \n \n \n \n \n 9.3%\n 3\n \n \n \n \n 11500\n \n 15.6%\n 40\n \n \n \n 150%\n 701\n \n 4.8%\n 826\n \n \n \n 5271\n \n \n \n \n \n\nMale:Female Ratios and Emigration\n\nThe village population tables in the 1911 Census which give the male and female population of each village in the New Territories are of value, not only in giving the basic population statistics of the area, but also because they enable us to identify villages with abnormal population characteristics.\n\nIt is not easy to extrapolate from the 1911 Census figures to detailed analysis of village society, because of the problem of the under-reporting of infant children and teenage girls in the Census. The problem is made worse by the 1921 Census having no tables parallel to those giving the village-by-village population statistics in the 1911 Census. While the under-reporting of youngsters in 1911 is clear, it is not, for instance, clear if the under-reporting was universal in incidence, or more typical of wealthier, Punti, villages, or, conversely, of poorer Hakka villages. Since more young girls went under-reported than young boys, the standard ratio as reported should have been about 51.5 males, 48.5 females. In fact, in many villages, more females than males are recorded. Given the general under-reporting of young girls, this feature can only be explained as the result of the temporary emigration out of the village (to the local market town, to Hong Kong, or abroad) of young adult", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "72\n\nOf course, in some cases the emigration was over a short distance, to the nearest market town. It is likely, as noted above, that the absent males of the Yuen Long plain villages were working in the Yuen Long markets, and possible that some at least of the Lam Tsuen males were in the Tai Po Market. Some Lamma villagers were probably working in Aberdeen, and from all over the New Territories there were villagers working in the city - so many that their return to the villages for the Ching Ming Festival in 1921 could bias the census in that year, as noted above. But much of the emigration, as the Basel missionaries, the temple donation tablets at Shan Tsui and Tsuen Wan, and oral evidence, all make clear, was to overseas.\n\nThe implications of villages with surplus males are less easy to identify (see Appendix II and Table 32; these identify villages with more than 56% recorded males in their populations: villages with fewer than 35 total population are excluded, except where the surplus of males is extreme). In many cases, just as the villages with low male female ratios identify villages with significant temporary male emigration, so villages with high male: female ratios identify places with temporary male immigration. One group already discussed which stands out is the market towns, almost all of which have high male: female ratios. Nearly 82% of the recorded population of Yuen Long market was male, and almost 80% of that of Tai Po new market (Tai Wo Shi). Even Shek Wu Hui, Ha Tsuen and Tuen Mun San Hui had over two-thirds of their tiny populations male (Table 28). These figures need to be put into perspective. In 1911, within the City of Victoria (i.e., omitting the Peak and the Hong Kong Island villages) there were 151,303 males out of a total Chinese population of 217,668. Males represented, therefore, 69.5% of the total Chinese population.1 Thus, the male domination of the larger New Territories market towns was significantly more substantial in 1911 than that of the city, and even the smaller New Territories markets had at least as high a level of male domination. The only exceptions to this are Cheung Chau, and Tai O, in Southern District. While these towns have more males than females, the imbalance is less than in the Northern District towns or the city: however, it seems likely that small rural populations are included with those towns, and that this causes distortion in these cases. Most of the New Territories towns also, as noted above, had suburban villages which shared the male domination of the town itself.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213758, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "Appendix II\n\nVillages with High Male: Female (More than 56% Male)\n\nPopulation Ratios 1911\n\n81\n\n \n Village\n District\n No. of males\n Total population\n Age of males\n \n \n Liu Pok\n Shek Wu Hui\n 136\n 237\n 57.4\n \n \n Lo Wu\n \n 37\n 56\n 66.1**\n \n \n Tai Tau Tong\n \n 8\n 18\n 44.4*\n 100*1\n 5!\n \n \n \n \n 91\n \n 56.0\n \n \n Tsung Pak Leng\n N\n 105\n 184\n 57.0\n \n \n Yin Kong\n N\n 21\n 35\n 60.0+\n \n \n Tiu Keng Wan\n N\n 38\n 56\n 67.6\n \n \n Sau Hang\n N\n 25\n 42\n 59.5*\n \n \n Ma Wat Wan\n N\n 28\n 49\n 57.3\n \n \n Wan Shan Ha\n N\n 38\n 66\n 57.6\n \n \n Loi Tung\n N\n 107\n 191\n 56.0\n \n \n Kuk Po Lo Wai\n N\n 140\n 247\n 56.7\n \n \n Hung Shek Mun\n N\n 49\n 87\n 56.3\n \n \n Wu Chau Tong\n N\n 28\n 48\n 58.3\n \n \n Sha Tau Kok\n N\n 14\n 14\n 100**\n \n \n Yim Liu Ha\n N\n 29\n 47\n 61.7+\n \n \n Ngong Ping\n ST\n 7\n 9\n 77.8**\n \n \n San Tun\n ST\n 77\n 109\n 70.0**\n \n \n Pak Tin\n ST\n 2\n 3\n 66.7**\n \n \n Wang Pok\n ST\n 8\n 9\n 88.9**\n \n \n Sheung Wo Che\n ST\n 70\n 100\n 70.0**\n \n \n Chek Mei Ping\n ST\n 70\n 122\n 57.2\n \n \n Shek Wu Wai\n YL\n 37\n 56\n 66.1++\n \n \n Tung Tau Yuen\n YL\n 26\n 38\n 68.4**\n \n \n Kak Hang Yuen\n YL\n 16\n 25\n 64.0**\n \n \n Lei Uk\n YL\n 32\n 48\n 66.7**\n \n \n Sha Kong Miu\n YL\n 5\n 6\n 77.4**\n \n \n Yuen Long Market\n YL\n 458\n 559\n 81.9**\n \n \n Tong Fong\n \n 83\n 148\n 56.1\n \n \n Sha Kong\n YL\n 5\n 6\n 83.3**\n \n \n Kong Tau\n YL\n 26\n 46\n 56.5\n \n \n Ha Tsuen Shi\n YL\n 120\n 178\n 67.4**\n \n \n Wang Che\n SK\n 4\n 5\n 80.0**\n \n \n Wu Lei Tau\n SK\n 6\n 9\n 66.7**\n \n \n Yau Ma Po\n SK\n 24\n 31\n 77.4**\n \n \n Uk Cheung\n SK\n 4\n 6\n 66.7**\n \n \n Hang Hau\n SK\n 262\n 387\n 67.8**\n \n \n Mau Fa Tsuen\n SK\n 28\n 47\n 59.6*", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213762, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "85\n\nX\n\n\"J\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1913, pages N13-17, 1914, pages N12-N13, 1915, pages O18-O19, 1916, pages 15-06-1917 page 07-1918, page 09, 1919, page O10, 1920, pages O15, O21, O29-O30, 1927, pages O17-4, O16, O22-O23, O33-O34. Scholarships were offered from these aided village schools to the Government schools in the New Territories, and from the Government schools in the New Territories to those in the City, although very few were taken up in the first few years.\n\nSee RJ Phillips, Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section). A History, (Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1990), and Administrative Reports for the Year 1910, page R6, 1911, page R1. In 1911, the Sha Tau Kok light railway was opened only as far as Shek Chung Au. The extension of the light railway to Sha Tau Kok came in 1912.\n\nAdministrative Reports for the Year 1910, pages P34-35, 1911, pages P40-41, 1912, page P51, 1913, pages 186-88, 1914, page P85-86, 1915, pages Q94-96, 1916, pages Q77-78, 1917, pages Q88-90, 1918, pages Q81-85, 1919, pages Q53-55, 1920, pages Q64-65, and 1927, pages Q77-78. A programme to build 6 to 8 feet wide footpaths/bridle paths had been begun in the New Territories in 1899. The footpath from Kowloon to Tai Po was completed in 1902, and that from Castle Peak Bay to Au Tau in 1911. The section from Au Tau to Fanling was completed (except for the bridge at Au Tau) by the end of 1914. No path was built between Castle Peak Bay and Sham Shui Po, or between Tai Po and Fanling in this period.\n\nThis footpath construction programme does not seem to have affected traditional village life significantly, although the District Officer felt the new footpaths had made the work of patrolling and administering the New Territories easier. However, the only specific use the District Office noted for the new footpaths, other than by Government officials, was by cattle drivers sending animals to the City for slaughter. The footpaths were \"justified by administrative and military needs” (the Orme Report, pages 30, 32-33, 36). The New Territories circular road was an upgrading of these earlier footpaths, where they existed, but included new construction where the earlier footpaths were lacking.\n\nPapers Land Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers), printed by Noronha and Co., Government Printers, Hong Kong, No. 9, \"Extracts From Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong, Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor. Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong,\" p. 187, remarks that, in 1899, the steamers from Hong Kong to Macao called intermittently at Cheung Chau. The Orme Report, op. cit., mentions that steam ferries from Cheung Chau used to carry the fish catch to Hong Kong early in the morning (para 65). See also Administrative Reports for the Year 1913, page J12, 1915, page J9, 1916, page J12, 1919, page J12, 1922, page J12.\n\n1 Including the choice of Cheung Chau as a place to spend weekends and the summer by numbers of European families, mostly missionaries from Canton. This began in a very small way in 1912, but only became a major feature from 1918. In 1919, a “European reservation” was formed, and a small year-round resident European community with an Assembly Hall and a 10-hole golf-course had become established by 1921. Administrative Reports for the Year 1912, page J13, 1914, page J11, 1915, page J10, 1917, page J11, 1918, page J11, 1920, page J12, 1921, page J13.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213948, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "to his daughter, Mrs R. Woodcock, for donating these to our Society.\n\nOur Branch is always looking for donations and if anybody wishes to find a good home for some interesting and valuable items or artifacts we should be grateful if you would consider donating them to the RASHKB.\n\nThe Public Records Office\n\nAlthough the RASHKB is apolitical and has no wish to be seen as a pressure group, it does make its views known when it has a case. You may remember that our Branch objected when the Hong Kong Government decided to move the Public Records Office from Central District into an industrial building in Tuen Mun. Besides writing letters and taking other action two Branch deputations appeared before the Legislative Council Panel on Information Policy in 1993. The outcome of our efforts was that a new, purpose-built Public Records Office was opened in Kwun Tong, in June 1997, shortly before the Handover. Our Branch played a major role in this achievement.\n\nThe Council\n\nSeveral of the 14 posts which comprise our Council require a special expertise. These include the Treasurer, the Librarian and our Editors. But, in addition to these 14 posts, other persons are co-opted on to the Council. They include the Reverend Carl Smith, our Honorary Vice President, and our Assistant Secretary, Mrs Sarah Parnell. Each Council Member is expected to pull at his or her respective oar and to row in unison. It is a working council.\n\nIn addition to the two co-opted persons named above, namely Carl Smith and Sarah Parnell, as well as the President, the following have sat on the Council during the past year: Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, Peter Barker, Choi Chi-cheung and Anthony Siu, together with Robert Nield, Geoffrey Roper, Peter Halliday, Valery Garrett, Julia Chan, and Peter Rull. Also, although Anita Wilson stepped down from the Council at the last AGM, she was co-opted back on until she left the Territory last July. All those\n\nxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214625, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "the whole area remained a Restricted District, and closed to civilian settlement.\n\nThe earliest civilian settlement in the area that we know of dates from the middle-late twelfth century. The Lam clan settled in this period at Po Kong, and, as will be discussed further below, the Chan clan settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area at about the same date. The foundation date of Ma Tau Wai is probably middle-late twelfth century as well. It is noticeable that the Salt Intendancy moved at precisely this period (1163) to Tip Fuk, in the still unsettled Mirs Bay area: it is likely that a decision to allow civil settlement around Kowloon City was coupled with a decision to keep the Restricted District in place around the Mirs Bay salt-fields, and to move the Salt Intendant's yamen into this still secure part of its old district.\n\nThe most significant event in the early history of the area was the visit to Kowloon City of the Sung boy-Emperor Ching and his brother Ping (himself Emperor from the Third Moon, 1278) in 1277. The boy-Emperor and his remnant Court were being pushed down to the south by the Mongol troops, and, from the 2nd Moon in 1277 until the final destruction of their forces and the death of the Emperor Ping in the 2nd Moon, 1279, they were unable to leave the area around the mouth of the Pearl River, which was all they were able to control. During this period they stayed at Kowloon for five months (4th to 9th Moons, 1277). It is likely that the Imperial family stayed in the Salt Intendant's yamen, but a wooden \"Travelling Palace\" was also built for the Court. This may well have been built at the site of the later village of Yi Wong Tin,\n\nE, \"Palace of the Two Kings\" - this name is clearly rather suggestive (this village stood under today's Tam Kung Road, near Mok Cheung Street). Yi Wong Tin village stood just below the Sacred Hill, which was crowned by the Sung Wong Toi Rock, which has commemorated the boy-Emperor's stay here since the Ming dynasty at least.\n\nThe presence of the Sung remnant Court for this period must have had major implications for the residents of the area, although it is difficult now to discover details. Many villages in the area (including Nga Tsin Wai) claim to have been founded by remnants of the Sung Court left behind when the Court moved away in late 1277, but in many cases (including Nga Tsin Wai) it can be shown that this is unlikely. One nineteenth century clan of Ma Tau Wai, indeed, the Chius, claimed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "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": 215530, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 307, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "257\n\n250 square feet, to be known as the Sung Him Tong Sung Chan Wui Kei Tuk Kau Fan Cheung (#*******) near Tsung Hom [sic] Tong in D.D. [Demarcation District] No.83 of the Northern District of the New Territories of Hong Kong, 142\n\nAnother Chinese Christian cemetery was also appointed in 1931. It was known as 'Cheung Chau Chinese Christian Cemetery' and contained about 10,000 square feet. 43 In the same year, the \"Tao Fung Shan Christian Cemetery' was also in use. 144\n\nIn 1932, both a cemetery and an urn cemetery were approved in the coastal market town at Tai O on Lantau Island, which was called 'The Tai O Cemetery'. The cemetery contained about 250 acres.\n\nA tiny cemetery was appointed in Stanley in 1933, which was 'to be known as New Stanley Cemetery, the piece of land containing approximately 2.5 acres, situated to the south of St. Stephen's College at Stanley.' 146 This cemetery was extended to approximately 4.26 acres five years later. 147\n\nA government notice 148 in 1933 ordered that a certain Telegraph Hill Urn Cemetery be closed, however, no other reference examined has anything about this cemetery. In the same year, with the closure of Kowloon Cemetery No.1 (European Protestant) at Fo Pang near Ho Man Tin, a new European Protestant cemetery was authorized in Kap Shek Mi Valley in substitution for the closed cemetery. 149 The new cemetery, containing an area of about 11 acres, was to be known as 'New Kowloon Cemetery No.6'. 150 However, no further information in regard to this cemetery has been found yet, though the boundary of the cemetery is shown in a 1954 map. 151\n\nThe next new cemetery, 'Sai Kung Catholic Cemetery,' in Lot No.1697 'in D.D.221 of the Northern District of the New Territories,' was approved in 1934.\n\nIn 1935 a Chinese permanent cemetery in Tsuen Wan, similar in nature to the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, was set apart for 'Chinese who shall have been permanently resident in the said Colony (of Hong Kong).' 153 Again, as with the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, the care and management of the new cemetery", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 139, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "72\n\naltars erected within the enclosure. On more social occasions, especially among the kaifong associations, it was also usual (and tedious for those present) to invite principal guests to speak: some orators did not need a second invitation!\n\nOwing to its super-glossy surface, this particular card does not reproduce well, nor does its successor for the 1985 Ta Chiu. I have therefore used the invitation card for the similar event at Shatin, held also in 1985 to indicate type and content (Plates 2-5).2\n\nAlthough the majority of invitation cards were printed, some were still being hand-written in black Chinese ink using a brush (Plate 6), and even on the printed ones, the recipients' names and ranks were usually added by brush rather than by fountain pen or biro (Plate 2). Owing to their intrinsic interest, and the fact that most were destined for the wastepaper basket, I kept many of those I received, and sent specimens to library collections as ephemera, literary productions of a fleeting kind. The Hong Kong Collection at the University of Hong Kong has, or should have, them in its holdings today.\n\nAt the scene\n\nInvariably, there would be some indication on site of the event being celebrated. Decorated archways and banners raised on bamboo scaffolding (pai lau), and/or floral tributes (fa pai), were the norm, and very colourful and ingenious they sometimes were, too. They were the work of skilled artisans, but their wording had to be supplied by the host body.\n\nHere are a few examples. The elaborate archway erected at the entrance to the ground used for the Ta Chiu at Kam Tin in 1985 features in Plate 7. The floral banner erected to mark the District Commissioner, NT's ceremonial opening of a newly completed local public works concrete track on Cheung Chau Peak in 1960 is shown in Plate 8, whilst the subject of Plate 9 is one of the large floral tributes made to honour a new chairman and his two vice-chairmen of the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee, which, along with others, was set up outside the restaurant\n\n1 I must apologize for the high family content of the illustrations, the selection being made, of necessity, from our own photographs and memorabilia, from my wife's and my own service in the relevant departments.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "73\n\nin which the inauguration ceremony was being held. Plate 10 hints at the profusion of flags and banners in evidence on these occasions. Floral banners were also in use when farewelling one official and welcoming another in his place. The one shown in Plate 11 was erected at a street entrance on Cheung Chau in 1962, to mark my departure from office, and my successor's arrival to take up the District Officer's post.\n\nItems in use at ceremonial occasions\n\nBy time-honoured practice, various items were in common use in the course of the proceedings:\n\nIndividual rosettes\n\nFirstly, each of the principal guests was provided with an ornate rosette, on which his or her name and (if an official) his or her appointment was noted. This is often done with a Chinese writing brush, in black ink (see Plates 12, 13 and 14).\n\nScissors for ribbon-cutting\n\nAt all opening ceremonies, the officiating guest was invited to cut the ribbon stretched across the stage used (or especially erected) for the event, or across a doorway, as appropriate to the occasion. He or she was accompanied by other principal guests, who also participated in the ribbon-cutting. (Plate 14 shows the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Kam Tin Ta Chiu in 1985). For this purpose, the host body had usually to prepare special scissors, in gold or silver plate, inscribed with the name and date of the event, and in the case of the principal guest, his or her name.\n\nPresentation items\n\nIt was important at all ceremonies to make public acknowledgment of the persons and groups who had helped to finance or otherwise contributed to the particular event or project; not forgetting the boy scouts, girl guides, cubs and brownies or other organized youth groups who so often lined the official route to the site, or held the ground. Their assistance was duly recognized by the presentation of various kinds of commemorative items.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "77\n\nprovided an account of one failed scholar in the Appendix.\n\nTeachers as helpers\n\nLike the scholars, local schoolmasters had long performed a vital role in the literary segment of the popular culture, including assistance with mounting local events and ceremonies. Even after the depopulation or abandonment of many old settlements, and the amalgamation or replacement of schools in places altered by development, had changed their situation, their successors in today's modern and much larger schools in the new town areas of the New Territories are still valued by the rural committees and a wide range of social and cultural associations. Some are calligraphers and scholars in their own right, and assist the associations' leaders and their secretaries in various ways. I used to meet many principals in the course of attending district functions and association dinners, and can bear witness to their major contributions to community life. In the old Southern District (present day Sai Kung and Islands), they were well to the fore, particularly on Cheung Chau, a large and always vibrant though outlying community, with a number of regional associations, some of which provided schools.\n\nWho paid?\n\nThe secretaries of kaifong and other urban associations were usually hired and paid for by their chairmen. For this reason, salaries and running expenses were generally kept low, and when a wealthy man was prepared to underwrite the cost, there were in general few changes of chairmen. In the New Territories, a small monthly subvention was paid to rural committees from 1961 on, to assist with running expenses, reflecting official recognition of the work they were performing in the public interest, assisting government and people alike in a period of ever-accelerating development and the disruptions it created for ordinary folk. Later on, similar small monthly sums were made available to federations of societies and to mutual aid committees across Hong Kong. (See Friends and Teachers, p.308, and my Tsuen Wan, Growth of a New Town and its People (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1993), Pp.212, 231 and 243 for these several payments).\n\nThe cost of the ceremonies and anything that went with them, and in the case of religious festivals of hiring the priests, the opera troupes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 155, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "88\n\nPlate 8. Temporary pai lau erected for the opening of Peak Road, Cheung Chau, 1960, by the District Commissioner, NT, Mr. A. St.G. Walton.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215859, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 158, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "阿倍\n\nPlate 11. Hail and farewell! Temporary street pai lau to mark a banquet for outgoing and incoming District Officers, Islands, Cheung Chau, 1962\n\n91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215860, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "92\n\n監誓官\n\n許\n\n先生\n\nPlate 12. Rosette for District Officer administering the oath to office bearers, first term, Chiu Chau Countrymen's Association, Cheung Chau, circa 1960. This rosette would have been in addition to one showing name and post.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216162, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 461, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "395\n\nso on. I owe this information to our President, Dr. Patrick Hase, who has also referred me to an article on the subject by Professor James L. Watson, \"Eating from the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society\", published in Anthropos, Vol. 82, 1987, pp. 389-401.\n\nIn the course of enquiries (1970s) into foods made at festival time, I came across some interesting facts about the preparation process. This was often laborious. The \"cakes\" made at the lunar New Year are a case in point. The materials comprised pounded glutinous rice and cane sugar. According to men from two of the former Tsuen Wan villages, sixteen hours were needed to cook the mixture in a very large, deep wok (the Chinese frying pan) in effect for a whole day, from dawn till dusk or later. Cooking in an old-fashioned village stove, fuelled by dried grass or firewood, was essential; since the taste would be different were charcoal or gas to be used. Some of the Sham Tseng elders (also Tsuen Wan District) said that each \"cake\" might require between 30 to 50 catties of glutinous rice, resulting in very large \"cakes\". In one household of my acquaintance (originally from Shek Pik on Lantau Island, resited to Tsuen Wan in 1960), it had been usual for them to make four large \"cakes\" every lunar New Year. These were distributed as goodwill gifts to shops in the market towns of Tai O and Cheung Chau, and the boat people's families in the Shek Pik anchorage - indicative of this household's economic and social ties. People also gave and received portions of such cakes during the customary visiting to mark the arrival of the New Year.\n\nThe Sham Tseng men had also mentioned a rather curious requirement involved in the preparation of the dumplings made for the fifth day of the fifth lunar month festival, commonly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. The dumplings had to be made with a preparation of wood ash, placed between bamboo leaves, and filtered with water. This watery ash, known as kan shui [the character I was given for 'kan' is that for 'root', but though this sits oddly with the context, I have not been able to find anything more suitable in a dictionary search] had to come from \"new\" wood, though not necessarily of any particular kind. It was no use trying to filter ash from anything that came to hand, like old boards or drift-wood.\n\nTurning to other topics, I had earmarked but subsequently overlooked two interesting items in the course of shaping the chapters.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]