[ { "id": 204767, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE\n\n59\n\non the land with indigenous wives, probably seized from the boat people; a process of assimilation which was repeated all over South China and accelerated by the disorder of the times which prevented their embarking on the precarious journey to their ancestral homes, which their own tradition places in the province Kiangsi,58\n\nThis then is the picture, or the jigsaw puzzle. Subsequent work by those more qualified than I may show that I have put some of the pieces in the wrong place; may show indeed that some of the pieces are in the wrong puzzle, since I have indicated that there is yet no certainty whether we have one jigsaw puzzle or four. There are many Chinese sources into which I have dipped but which I have not thoroughly sifted. There are other Chinese sources to which I have not been able to obtain access: most important of these are the earlier editions of the San On Yuen Chi,123 to which the 1819 edition makes several tantalizing references, but reproduces only their prefaces. I have suggested how the geologists can contribute to this study. The botanists and agronomists should be able to reconstruct a general picture of the local flora a thousand years ago before removal of the forest cover started the rapid erosion which has defaced these hills. The archaeologists should do some really intensive work between Castle Peak and Mong Tseng. The Arabists and Indologists should contribute accounts of the voyages made by traders during the Tang139 and Sung132 dynasties. And the book collectors should hunt for the previous editions of the San On122 and Tung Kwun31 gazetteers.124 The first edition of the San On Yuen Chi123 was that of Chan Kwols of which the preface was written by Yau Tai-kin64 the sixth holder of the office of chi yuen.161 He wrote it in 1587 at which time there must have been several villages which preserved their former language, dress and customs which could not have failed to be noted. Even the list of Hakka149 and Cantonese villages in this and the intervening editions would teach us something about the subsequent pattern of occupation and agriculture and thereby give us some clues to other problems, such as the origin of the Hakka, which may have a bearing on the subject with which I have dealt today.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206326, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n137\n\nto be the richest man in Hong Kong. When Ho Tung retired as chief compradore to Jardine, Matheson's in 1900, Ho Fook succeeded him. Ho Fook's assistant was Ho Kom Tong, another of Ho Tung's brothers. The members of the District Watch Committee were members of a small circle of businessmen, often related through ties of blood or marriage. When the Tai Yau Bank was established in 1914 with a paid-up capital of $6,000,000, the proprietors were named as Lau Chu Pak, Ho Fook, Ho Kom Tong, Lo Chung Shiu and Chan Kai Ming. Lau Chu Pak was compradore to A. S. Watson and Co., chairman of the Po On Commercial Association and chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce; Chan Kai Ming was manager of the Opium Farm; and Lo Chung Shiu, assistant compradore to Jardine, Matheson and Co., was Ho Fook's brother-in-law. All were or became members of the District Watch Committee.\n\n22 T. C. Cheng writes that Wei Yuk 'was very much concerned about law and order among the Chinese masses because in those early days riff-raff and political refugees from South China continued to come into Hong Kong. Thus it was at his suggestion that the District Watch Force was founded in 1888. Mr. Cheng appears to be mistaken about the date and is no doubt referring to the ordinance of that year, no. 13 of 1888 rather than to its proper date of origin. Wright and Cartright, Feldwick, and Professor Woo all state that the Committee was formed on Wei Yuk's suggestion. See: T. C. Cheng, 'Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils of Hong Kong up to 1941', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 9, 1969, pp. 17-18; Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Treaty Ports, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co., 1908, p. 109; W. Feldwick, ed., Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent Chinese at Home and Abroad, London Globe Encyclopedia Co., 1917, p. 576; Professor Woo Sing Lim, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Five Continents Book Company, 1939, p. 4.\n\n23 Unfortunately all the records in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs were destroyed or lost during the Japanese occupation and hence anyone trying to reconstruct the history of the District Watch must work mostly from scraps of information found in government publications, newspapers, books.\n\n24 My guess is that a large number were traditional Chinese merchants from the Five Districts operating on a relatively small scale. The Committee after 1891 represented the views of a more westernised and modernised elite with a knowledge of modern business techniques and modern financial manipulations. Dr. Ho Kai, for example, played the stock exchange with great success and speculated in many fields, particularly land development. He was, properly speaking, a financier although his occupation is often given tout court as lawyer. He had also qualified in medicine at Edinburgh but gave up the practice of medicine soon after his return to Hong Kong in 1882 because of Chinese resistance to western medicine.\n\n25 In 1903, for example, the Committee opposed the re-introduction of the night-pass system but suggested other remedial measures (see Index to Correspondence (General Register) 1894-1904, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1909, p. 100). In 1909 'at the request of the District Watchmen Committee, children who are hawking without a licence are on their first offence sent to the Registrar General who cautions their guardians. This procedure seems to have proved effective in each case' wrote the Registrar General in 1909. It is worth noting that both Registrar General and Committee wanted to end the night-pass system and were opposed by the Captain Superintendent of Police, who was unsuccessful. As for hawkers, very few Chinese regarded them as a serious menace although colonial administrators", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208032, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH’ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN, KWANGTUNG\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm*\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was carved, in three successive steps, from the Chinese county of Hsin-An (新安). These essays represent attempts to reconstruct modes of economic activity which prevailed in this remote county during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction will eventually serve as the groundwork on which an analysis of mercantile capitalism, in terms of its impact on local Chinese social structure, will be built.\n\nIn the first year of Wan-Li (1573), Hsin-An Hsien was formed from the division of Tung-Kuan Hsien (東莞縣) into two jurisdictions. Except for a brief period during the reign of the Kang-Hsi Emperor, the county remained one of the fourteen counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture throughout Ch'ing. As with most other magistracies in rural imperial China, Hsin-An was characterized by a high degree of self-government. The magistrate seldom intervened in local affairs, and relied heavily on the indigenous social order for the day-to-day administration of the countryside.\n\nThe dominant stratum of the local hierarchical order consisted principally of landlord-gentry patrilineal descent groups, commonly referred to as great clans (大族). Of these clans, the Tangs (鄧) and especially that branch of the clan which resided in Kam Tin (錦田) -- were probably best representative. Much of the data presented was collected during field work into the social history and oral tradition of this Punti \"power brokerage.\"\n\n*\n\nMr. Kamm states, The essays were written in fulfillment of seminar requirements for an A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies-East Asia program. The work is based largely on research undertaken in the New Territories (including a brief stint as coordinator of an NTA-Yuen Long \"oral history\" project in Kam Tin) and in the archives of the Public Records Office, Hong Kong. Writing and editing was supervised by Professor Yang Lien-Sheng of Harvard during late 1974.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong Island was ratified by the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Kowloon peninsula was added in 1860. Britain obtained the New Territories (on a 99-year lease) in 1898.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208386, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "94\n\nEUGENE COOPER\n\nbasis coinciding with the monthly publication of Hong Kong Worker and were known as \"discussions of our livelihood”. On June 29, 1973, a similar discussion occurred, this one concerning developments in Shansi province, printed and sent around in a circular by the Federation of Trade Unions. The article was also read aloud paragraph by paragraph, but the discussion was not as lengthy as that which accompanied the reading of Hong Kong Worker. The event seemed designed to promote national consciousness as opposed to class consciousness, and the news did not seem to so directly affect the lives of the art carved furniture workers as the articles in Hong Kong Worker,\n\nOn any given weekday evening at union headquarters, there may be three or four Chinese chess games in progress with a number of persons standing around giving advice on which pieces to move. Anyone near enough to give advice to one or another of the players usually does, and any given game serves as a focus for endless voicing and countervoicing of opinion as to what constitutes the right move. There is also a chance that when one enters the union premises there may be a game of bumper checker pool in progress, involving four participants and a great ruckus about the board. One may be teased to within an inch of one's life for a poorly executed shot.\n\nMah jong is significantly absent as a diversion at Union premises, although it is played regularly at union halls not affiliated with the pro-communist Federation of Trade Unions. It would not, however, be true to say that many pro-communist union members never play the game.\n\nUnion representatives come in from time to time with dues they have collected in their particular geographical area, laying the money and receipts before the treasurer who enters the transactions carefully into the books. The representative may also pick up the latest copy of China Pictorial or China Reconstructs to distribute to the union members in his area. He keeps a careful checklist of who's received one every month. Sometimes a union representative will bring an application form from a worker who has just joined the union, together with three pictures, one of which is pasted in a huge membership book along with a great deal of personal data, name, place of origin, age, date of first registration, address, etc., another affixed to a small certificate of membership, and a third", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209430, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "# THE STRIKE AND RIOT OF 1884\n\n# A HONG KONG PERSPECTIVE\n\nELIZABETH SINN*\n\nIn the autumn of 1884, Chinese dock workers in Hong Kong staged a strike against French ships. The strike spread, bringing trade to a standstill and creating much animosity. After a few days, a riot broke out in the Central and Western districts. This caused great excitement; the military was called out, the fleet was put on the alert, and the government passed new legislation for preserving the peace. The local press became almost hysterical. It became a diplomatic issue between Peking and London, and questions about it were raised in the House of Commons.\n\nYet, despite the uproar these events created, relatively few historians, including historians of Hong Kong, have paid attention to them. This paper is an attempt to reconstruct this dramatic episode, and to examine its significance.\n\nIn 1884, the war between China and France over Annam dominated the horizon of East and Southeast Asia. The year before, the Chinese had despatched regular troops quietly into Tongking. As negotiations broke off, the Chinese court feared a French attack on China itself, and important officials were sent south to consolidate the front. P'eng Yu-lin,** a president of the Board of War was appointed Commissioner for the Coastal Defence of Kwangtung, and in the following year, 1884, the conspicuously pro-war Chang Chih-tung became Governor-General of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Officials and people both of Canton and the surrounding region responded excitedly to every move the French made.\n\nOn 5th August, 1884, French warships bombarded Keelung,\n\n* Miss Sinn is a Ph.D. candidate of the University of Hong Kong, currently working as Resources Officer in the History Department of that University.\n\n** All Chinese names/words will be Romanized according to the Wade-Giles system except where there are other transliterated forms in common usage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209485, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "120 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nunusual for a Chinese in those days. \n\nOn December 1, 1925 Lock gave a dinner party to celebrate his son's coming of age. This young man, Lock Ling Tam, had just returned after nine years of education in China. The evening was convivial and speeches were made in the only son's honour by both father and mother. Before his guests departed, Lock said to one of them: 'Ring me up tomorrow morning, and let me know how your daughter is' (Lock was always concerned about his friends.) In the early hours of December 2, 1925, a call came through to the Liverpool Telephone Exchange with the message, in broken English, 'I have shot my wife and child'. The mysterious caller was immediately put through to the Police and a constable recorded the words: 'Tam shot kill wife and child'. The caller further stated that he was Lock Ah Tam and that his home was at 122 Price Street, Birkenhead. \n\nThe chain of events, as reconstructed by the police and affirmed by the prosecution, was never seriously questioned by the defence. Soon after all the guests had gone, Lock Ling Tam heard his father abusing his mother and stamping his feet. The young Lock intervened and told his father to leave her alone. The father then left the room and asked the maid, a Eurasian girl, to fetch his boots. The maid caught a glimpse in a mirror of Lock loading a revolver. Next, Lock loaded his shotgun and immediately went to the kitchen where he killed his wife and youngest daughter. After that he seized his revolver and shot his eldest daughter who was cowering behind a door with the maid (the latter was not fired at). The son, terrified by the first explosion had fled the house. While he was seeking help from neighbours, Lock, as related above, phoned the police and admitted responsibility for the murders. Such were the stark facts; how to interpret them? \n\nbut \n\nAs soon as Lock's story became known in the Chinese community, his friends opened a defence fund and subscriptions flowed in from all over Britain and from other parts. Altogether, more than a thousand pounds were raised (a large sum in those days). His solicitor instructed the famous Sir Edward Marshall Hall K.C. to defend him. Marshall Hall was then probably the best-known English advocate. A flamboyant, histrionic, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209800, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "37\n\nhas apparent existence because of the apparent union of countless dust particles. Aside from the dust particles, there is no world. Similarly, according to modern scientific view, the world is made up of atoms. Aside from the atoms, there is no world.23\n\nThe third argument is that since the Buddha's teaching is the truth, it must contain all the knowledge ever discovered by science. However, the Buddha's words do not contain every detail of science, but they do contain the principles from which science is derived. One writer puts it: \"Although Buddhism is not science, it is science and philosophy on a higher level.\"24 Another writer puts it: \"Buddhism is the philosophy from which science is derived.”26 Since Buddhism is super science, it fulfills the a priori conditions of not getting into conflict with science.\n\nThe fourth kind of argument is the reconciliation of apparent contradictions between science and Buddhist teaching. One problem discussed is the existence of Amitabha's western paradise. The conviction that the world is a globe spinning round the sun has rendered the interpretation of the term \"west\" rather problematical. Two essays have been written to solve this problem and I leave the reader to reconstruct the arguments for themselves.20\n\nIV. The Self-perception of the Monks\n\nAt the outset of this paper, the observation was made that the monk's self-perception changes in relation to his perception of the reality around him. At whatever point in time, monkhood must maintain its sense of purpose. The monk must find his own life attractive and his sense of value adjusted to his perception of reality, which cannot be totally cut off from the community's perception of it. Hong Kong has experienced a lot of changes in recent decades and these changes posed challenges to the sangha and I have documented some of its major responses. Here I shall discuss the monks' self-perception in terms of these responses.\n\nDuring the last two or three decades, monks in Hong Kong have experienced great changes in material conditions. There have been great fluctuations in the numbers of monks when immigrant monks came from mainland China and later dispersed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210702, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "36\n\nWALTER GREENWOOD\n\nmember, being re-elected in 1891 and 1894, until his resignation in 1895. It was a substantial commitment, involving fortnightly meetings and reading papers in-between meetings. Considerations of space allow reference only to certain events in 1894 and 1895 for which Francis is best known. Suffice it to say that he appeared to try to dominate the proceedings of the Board but at the same time had an ambivalent attitude to it because he considered that it did not have sufficient powers and independence to make it an effective body. For example, in March 1894 he seconded a proposal that it be reconstructed on a popular basis but also argued that that was premature until its powers had been enlarged. Prior to the election in June 1891 the Daily Press said that he had rendered good service and that his keen and ever-ready criticism, sometimes perhaps degenerating into captiousness, had exercised a wholesome influence both on the Board and its officers. The China Mail in its obituary said that he was not an unqualified success and his performance as a member of the Board might have deprived him of support for a place on the Legislative Council.\n\nIn May 1894 plague struck Hong Kong, and a Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board, comprising three members with Francis as Chairman, was set up to cope with the emergency. It met daily at his chambers at 4 p.m. Its actions were not universally popular. It was in conflict with the Government on occasion, and at one stage was said to be daggers drawn with the Governor. The business community complained that its activities had an adverse effect on commerce, and its relations with the Chinese community were not assisted by wild rumours such as that pregnant women were cut open and children's eyes were gouged out to make medicines for the treatment of the plague. There were recriminations as to whose fault had led to the outbreak and whether the right steps were taken to combat it. Francis bluntly laid the blame on gross mismanagement by the Public Works Department. Whatever the rights and wrongs of particular matters, there were many tributes to his work. The Governor in a dispatch to the Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, in June said that the Permanent Committee acted with extraordinary energy and efficiency and that the Government was indebted to him and others. The acting Attorney General paid tribute to his great assistance, at enormous sacrifice of time, and his wonderful and rapid grasp of any subject and great", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210806, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "140\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nChina Daily (1983) “Hainan Island draws more foreign interest”, November 25, 1983, published by Xinhua News Agency.\n\nClark, L. (1938) \"Among the Big Knot Lois of Hainan\", National Geographic Magazine, September issue, pp. 391-418.\n\nDehergne, J. (1940) “Les Origines du Christianisme dans l'ile de Hainan”, Monumenta Serica, 5: 329–348.\n\nDunne, G.H. (1962) “Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decade of the Ming Dynasty”, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A.\n\nEberhard, W. (1969) A History of China.\n\nFairfax-Cholmeley, E. (1963) \"Hainan: Awakening Paradise”, Eastern Horizons, 2: 35-42.\n\nFenzel, G. (1933) \"Die Insel Hainan: Eine landeskundliche Skizze, dargestellt auf Grund eigner Reisebeobachtungen und des vorhandenen Schrifttums\", Mitteilungen der geographischen Gesellschaft Munchen, 26: 73-221.\n\nFusson, C.G. (1929) \"The Peoples of Kwang-tung: Their Origin, Migrations and Present Distribution”, Lingnan Science Journal, 7: 5-21.\n\nGao, Da-Xian (1981) “The Li People of Hainan Island”, China Reconstructs, 10: 59-65.\n\nHenry, B.C. (1886) Lingnam: Travels in the Interior of China, S.W. Partridge & Co, London.\n\nHollingworth, C. (1982) “Letter from Hainan”, Far Eastern Economic Review, April issue, p 78.\n\nIskoldsky, V. (1958) \"The Development of Agriculture on the Island of Hainan”, Sovetskoe kitaevedenie, 2: 117-123.\n\nKirk, D. (1965) \"Unknown Hainan\", Far Eastern Economic Review...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210809, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "143\n\nSouth China Morning Post (1984) “Hainan Undersea Link in Pipeline\".\n\nStubel, H., and Li Hua-min (1933) “Vorlaufiger Bericht uber eine ethnologische Exkursion nach der Insel Hainan\", Jubilaumsband herausgegeben von der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens, 1: 133-145.\n\nStubel, H., and P. Meriggi (1937) “Die Li-Stamme der Insel Hainan\", Ein Beitrag zur Volkskunde Sudchinas, Berlin.\n\nSwinhoe, R. (1872) “Narrative of an Exploring Visit to Hainan”, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 7: 41-91.\n\nSydney Morning Herald (1985) “CSR exploration deal approved by China\", May 27, 1985, published by John Fairfax Limited.\n\nThompson, R. (1985) “Production Glut Overheats Chinese Economy\", Sydney Morning Herald, August 22, 1985, published by John Fairfax Limited.\n\nWang Hsiang-chih (1849 edition), Yu-ti chi-sheng, cited by Schafer (1969).\n\nWigmore, L.G. (1957) The Japanese Thrust, Halstead Press, Sydney.\n\nWu, Tong, and Zhi, Exiang (1981) \"Hainan: the Treasure Island (1)\", China Reconstructs, 30: 56-62.\n\nZhao, Ziyang (1982) China's Economy and Development Principles, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210977, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "14\n\nearly Manchu emperors. The Jesuits' basic strategy was to establish the compatibility of a conversion to Christianity with the continuation of the Confucian ceremonies of respect to the Emperor and to family ancestors. They had to defend this strategy against other influential church lobbies in Rome, especially the Dominicans. The Jesuits were defeated, eventually, but they had produced in the course of this epoch-making controversy La Querelle des Cérémonies Chinoises an enormous wealth of material highly favourable to Chinese culture and society, among which the standard collections of Father Lecomte and Father Du Halde are best known. After these Jesuits' memoirs had lost their polemical value within the Church, they found a new lease of life with the Philosophes, who turned them against the whole ancien régime.\n\nChina's position in this Age of Enlightenment is well-known. Rather than chart it in greater detail, I should like to emphasise that for the French Philosophe, China was a perfectly abstract entity, an ideological construct, an intellectual artefact. Needless to say, almost none of them had ever visited China or had contemplated doing so. The Philosophes, and the Jesuits before them, knew nothing of the deeply rooted dissatisfaction of the Chinese people with foreign Manchu rule, of the rampant peasant unrest, the bureaucratic control of the economy, the atmosphere of intellectual rigidity, or the repression against dissidents. In their eyes, China was not so much idealised, but rather completely reprocessed, reconstructed so as to fit into French intellectual and political controversies.\n\nYes, China was an abstraction, and this was not considered a handicap. For China as reconstructed by the Philosophes was an essential prerequisite for the achievement of a genuine philosophical universality, for a universal and world-wide approach to human nature and human society. China enabled these Philosophes to break away from a Eurocentric view of world history, founded only on Greek and Roman cultures and on earlier Hebrew traditions. To include China in their views on modern progress, to appeal to China as much as to Greece and Rome, was a major intellectual and philosophical advance towards universality. Voltaire was most concerned with this generalising approach to world", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212205, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "124\n\ninternational communities, the smaller treaty ports had come to depend for their foreign population on the few large companies which maintained organisations throughout the country. These included the British American Tobacco Company, the Asiatic Petroleum (Shell) Company, amongst the distributing companies, and Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company generally known as Ewo, and Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, amongst the shipping companies. Imperial Chemical Industries as a rule only had offices in the larger ports. China at one time offered the largest market in the world for cheap quality cigarettes, and for kerosene (paraffin as we call it). The motorist in Britain and America paid less for petrol because of the kerosene offtake in China. It is self-evident that amongst the cuts distilled from the crude oil petrol, kerosene, lubricating oil, diesel oil, wax and asphalt the cost of production is recovered in proportion on each finished product and, if the market for one of those products is limited, then the price proportionately increases on the others.\n\n—\n\n―\n\nBut let not our Chinese friends claim that the distribution of kerosene in China was a form of oppressive dumping. It was not. A very real demand for illumination was met, where other satisfactory illuminants were missing, and at a price below that at which the locally produced and less efficient vegetable oils could be marketed. And this despite the heavy duty which was collected on the imported product for revenue purposes, so that it could be said of kerosene that in China it not only provided almost the sole source of illumination, but also a substantial contribution towards the cost of government.\n\nThe urgency of war was more evident in Kiu Kiang, though the Japanese had refrained from bombing the former Concession area. My old Chinese friends all wanted to know what was going to happen. How could I tell them?\n\nThe Club had moved from the Customs godown to our former flat, the interior of which had been reconstructed to meet the new purpose. The bar was in our former bedroom, and from behind it the same ancient retainer dispensed the drinks; even the dice boxes looked the same with their heavy yellow ivory dice. But I could not loiter to rattle these for long. There was a decrepit railway to Nanchang, the provincial capital, a hundred miles to the south, and with some difficulty I procured a seat for myself on the train, which as always in China was overcrowded.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212418, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 360, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "337\n\nas regards your request to send someone to remain at the capital. while it is not in harmony with the regulations of the Celestial Empire we also feel very much that it is of no advantage to your country\" (pp. 122-123).\n\nThis disdain for trade has now been replaced by eagerness to earn foreign exchange. Recently, we saw China go to great lengths in its attempt to retain most-favoured-nation trading status with the United States. In the weeks before Washington was to decide whether to renew China's trading privileges, Beijing went so far as to lift martial law in Tibet and to release hundreds of political prisoners.\n\nSpence has an eye for the telling detail, the little twists of fate that propel history forward. Thus he says that when two Soviet nuclear experts were withdrawn from China during the Sino-Soviet dispute, they tore to shreds all the documents they could not take with them. But the Chinese painstakingly reconstructed the shredded documents and found in them crucial information on atomic implosion\" (p. 589).\n\nThis is by no means a book that can be read in one sitting. Some of Spence's earlier books were page-turners. \"The Death of Woman Wang\" was as gripping as any thriller: \"Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-hsi\" was poignant and stirred one's deepest emotions.\n\nBut \"The Search for Modern China\" is the most ambitious work by the author thus far.\n\nIt is encyclopedic in scope. It is crammed with facts, dates and names. Its 876 pages include 49 well-placed maps and 49 well-chosen tables, as well as dozens of illustrations in colour and black and white. Its contents are to be sipped and savoured, not swallowed in big gulps.\n\nSpence the master historian is on less sure ground when dealing with more recent events. Thus, he has Chiang Ching-kuo becoming president of Taiwan in 1975, three years too early. He also displays a less sure grasp of his facts regarding the Sino-British agreement on Hong Kong.\n\nBut these petty details are almost not worth mentioning when one\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213219, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "20\n\nLane, Crawford Restaurant and for several years in the 1930s it was known as the Exchange Restaurant, but in 1935 the name reverted again to Cafe Wisseman (details of management, location and name are from notices of the Spirit Licensing Board published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette).\n\nAn incident took place at the Cafe in September 1914, just after war was declared, which placed three German nationals under suspicion. They were observed throwing down a copy of the China Mail and stamping on it because it contained a report that the British had compulsorily bought two battleships then being built for the Turkish Government (CO129/413, Information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on list, 8 Oct. 1914).\n\nFirms\n\nI have tried to reconstruct the history of these firms from the records available in Hong Kong. The average reader may not be interested in the detailed account of change of partnership, location and other minutia, but as most of this material has not been published previously, I presume to do so now in the hope that there may be some who have an interest in the firms may learn more about them. The information and references may provide a starting place for those who might wish to write a fuller history of particular firms.\n\nThough Germany was not a colonial power in Asia, its merchants carried on an active trade there. Throughout the nineteenth century German firms became increasingly competitive with those of other western countries. In the opening decades of the century Canton was the centre for trade, but it declined in importance when the ports at Hong Kong and Shanghai developed.\n\nWhen war was declared between Britain and Germany in August 1914 citizens of enemy countries were placed under parole but in October new laws were enacted enabling the Hong Kong Government to place German nationals who held reserve status in the military to be interned. Representatives of German businesses in Hong Kong sent a letter dated 30 October to the American Consul General there asking him to submit it to the British authorities. The merchants appealed for a reversal of the orders on the grounds that they had contributed through the years to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213548, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "113\n\nCHINA COAST PIDGIN ENGLISH\n\nANNE AND STEPHEN SELBY\n\nHundreds of millions of years ago, the dinosaurs ruled the earth. They were an efficient, diversified group admirably suited to their environment. Over a long period, they flourished and in their turn, they subtly affected the environment they lived in. During the period the dinosaurs roamed the earth, flowering plants as we know them today evolved.\n\nAgain over a long period, they died out. Their fossils give us clues about their appearance, their environment and their lifestyle. Some of their relatives have evolved into species which survive today.\n\nLooking at China Coast Pidgin English is like studying dinosaurs. Only the barest traces of Pidgin survive. Because the language is one of history's losers, it has, like the dinosaurs, been characterized as clumsy, outmoded and comical.\n\nWe should like to devote this article to looking at the bones, without preconceptions or prejudice and helping to reconstruct the animal for you, together with its environment, its origins and its demise.\n\n\"Pigeon English\", says Hobson Jobson, the Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases published in 1886 by Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, is \"the vile jargon which forms the means of communication at the Chinese ports between Englishmen who do not speak Chinese, and those Chinese with whom they are in the habit of communicating\n\nMiss Isabella Bird, whose book, \"The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither\" published in 1883 is cited in Hobson Jobson, wrote\n\n\"The Pidgin English is revolting, and the most dignified persons demean themselves by speaking it... How the whole English-speaking community, without the distinction of rank, has come to communicate with the Chinese in this baby-talk is extraordinary.\n\n1\n\nMany sources on Pidgin refer to it as \"baby talk.” Objective accounts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214227, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "48\n\nSpurr, Russell (1995), Excellency, the Governors of Hong Kong, FormAsia.\n\nStapleton, Kristin (1997), Interpreting Humour in History: Two Cases from Republican China, paper presented at 'Comparative and World History Seminar,' at John Hopkins University, USA, on 4 February 1997.\n\nSypher, Wylie (1956), Introduction and Appendix, Comedy, John Hopkins University Press.\n\nSyrett, Michel (1995, October 29), ‘Jest over the wall,' Agenda, South China Morning Post.\n\nTse, Sabrina (1997, November 14), 'What a laugh: being funny in Hong Kong,' Hong Kong Standard.\n\nVittachi, Nury (1995), The Hong Kong Joke Book, Chameleon/Hellman and Schoenberg.\n\n(1999, March, 27) letter to the author.\n\nWaters, Dan (1991), 21st Century Management; Keeping Ahead of the Japanese and Chinese, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster.\n\n(1995), Faces of Hong Kong an Old Hand's Reflections, Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster.\n\nWelsford, Enid (1935), The Fool, His Social and Literary History, London.\n\nWu, Cynthia Hsin-feng, “If Triangles Were Circles...” A Study of Counterfactuals in Chinese and in English, Crane Publishing Co. Ltd., USA, undated but some time in 1990s.\n\nXu Jingxiang (1989) 200 Cartoons from China, China Today Press (China Reconstructs Press), Beijing.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "173\n\nThe experiences of migration, exile, refugees and diasporic communities all suggest that nostalgia can be employed as a strategic resource to re-appropriate and forge new identities in the face of globalising dislocations from place. 'Exile is the nursery of nationality', as Anderson (1994) quotes Acton as saying. In this context, David Parkin (1998) points out that anthropologists 'can no longer assume that the people they study see themselves as attached to a particular, bounded locality', as in colonial ethnography which tended to depict territorially distinct peoples in homogeneous locations clearly bounded one from another in a way which facilitated ease of administration (the 'simplifications' of the state talked of by Scott, 1998). Yet real life has never actually been like this, as Parkin (1998) notes; there have almost never been autonomous communities perfectly isolable from one another, there has always been movement of peoples across boundaries and borders, and globalisation too has a long pre-capitalist, imperial history, as Friedman (1999) also notes. Nor in my opinion is the experience of the imaginative reconstitution of place so clearly linked either with the modern or post-modern, although it is often assumed to be.21 We have always constructed 'simulated worlds', admits Iain Chambers (1994); what is really new is the awareness of taking part in a global network of other and similar peoples. The experience of deterritorialisation is however a dislocation of place, and what we find here, for the Hmong as for many other dispersed or fragmented communities, is the use of nostalgia to reconstruct the past - and the nostalgic construction of place.\n\nLouisa Schein (1998) and myself (1996) have both documented the returns of overseas Hmong, settled after the conflicts of Indochina as refugees in Western countries like France, the US, or Australia, to revisit their immediate homelands in South East Asia, and the imaginary homelands of their ancestors in Southwest China. A Hmong friend of mine in Chiangmai, who has lived all his life in an urban environment, makes a point of bringing his children every year to visit his wife's parents in their rural village, so that they should remember where the Hmong came from and what it is to be really Hmong. It is for similar reasons that some of those who are able to afford to do so return with their families for extraordinary, emotional homecomings which I have witnessed in Hmong homes in Laos and in Thailand, and the same happens, although on a smaller and less public scale, in Vietnam.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216040, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 339, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "273\n\nsince sought his assistance to calm storms. In yet another legend Yan Gong is claimed to have saved the life of the first emperor of the Ming during a crossing of the Yangzi; and Werner, after relating a complicated story about the presence of a mythical creature being found, noted that Ming Hong Wu, having realized that he had been saved by a spirit called Yan, bestowed the title of Marshal of the Metropolis upon him and ordered a temple to be built in his honour.\n\nImages of Yan Gong have been only noted on altars in the area of Nanchang in Jiangxi, and in the southern maritime provinces of China including Taiwan and Hong Kong, but not within Chinese communities in South-east Asia.\n\nJiang Shen, literally the spirit of the river, is the generic title for a nameless deity on the Yangzi about whom little is known. She is said to have taken on human form and been bathing in the nude when she was stranded by the low tide. A fisherman caught and raped her, and died! The image of the deity seen in the temple near Wuhan on the Yangzi was that of a fish.\n\nJin Shan Si\n\nThe Song emperor Zhen Cong [998-1022] first gave the name of Longyou Dao, the Island of the Imperial Swim, to Jin Shan island after he had had a dream that he had been swimming in the Yangzi from it and then some ten years later gave permission to the monastery on the island to take the name Longyou Chan Si, which indicates that the temple was of the Buddhist Amitabha School of Meditation. It was restored to prominence and imperial patronage in about 1323 following several annual religious congresses.\n\nVisitors nowadays see a hillock, Jin Shan, Gold or Golden Hill, on which the temple stands with its tall octagonal pagoda with galleries marking each of the seven storeys outlined against the sky. This pagoda crowns the buildings and dominates the River and for a small gratuity permission to ascend the spiral staircase may be obtained. Today's pagoda, known as the Cishou Ta, was built in 1900, though according to historical texts there used to be two pagodas. These stood one at each end of the temple, and were first built during the Tang, though reconstructed several times down the centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]