[ { "id": 205639, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "176\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTHE SENIOR JOHN SAMUEL SWIRE 1825 - 98: MANAGEMENT IN FAR EASTERN SHIPPING TRADES, Sheila Marriner & F. E. Hyde; (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1967) pp. xiv, 206, appendices, illus. 42/-\n\nThis book is the latest product of the Liverpool School of Business History which, under Professor Hyde's direction, has published a number of converging and complementary studies of the Liverpool merchant and ship-owner. Although it is claimed for these studies that \"they are collectively an expression of ideas and techniques in the progression towards more sophisticated types of analysis in the handling (sic) of business records\", a common feature of all of them is the endorsement of Charles Wilson's credo: in the history of business, biography is a powerful element.\n\nWe come to this book, then, with the previous knowledge from these other Liverpool Studies that 'The Senior' was a tenacious, aggressive character, described by a business rival as \"a person who lived by and for business alone\"; with, as well, a considerable understanding of the part played by Messrs. Butterfield and Swire in the Far Eastern shipping trades and, in particular, of J. S. Swire's role as architect and protagonist of the Eastern Shipping Conferences. The commercial history of Butterfield and Swire, and to a lesser extent of Holt's Blue Funnel Line,* has already been examined from several angles which means that the reviewer of this present study has had to read three books instead of one! (The third one is K. C. Liu's study of the Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China (Harvard, 1962) and which drew, if indirectly, on the Butterfield and Swire records.) This effectively strikes the note of competition arising from the establishment and operation of the China Navigation Company.\n\nWhat we have new in this latest piece of research, principally, is the story of the 'Great and Ancient' (Taikoo) Sugar Refinery and, later, of the Taikoo Dockyard in Hong Kong. This project stemmed, as the authors make quite clear, as much from the conflict between Swire's and Jardine's - Swire swore to oppose the Princely House at all points—as from a calculation that it might further the shipping interests of the firm. Indeed, one of the most valuable sections for the historian of the China Coast trade is the\n\n* Blue Funnel: A History of Alfred Holt and Co. of Liverpool from 1865 to 1914, F. E. Hyde and J. R. Harris, Liverpool University Press, 1957.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206330, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n141\n\nin the Colony. In 1948 they were taken over by the Medical and Health Department.\n\n58 G. W. Skinner, Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Yale University Press, 1958, p. 79.\n\n59 James Michie wrote: \"The means taken to conciliate the Chinese (in Hong Kong) must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colony Legislature and on the Commission of the Peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government.\" The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood, 1900, vol. 1, pp. 280-1.\n\n60 The Labour Advisory Board was established in 1937 and consisted of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the Secretary and Cashier of His Majesty's Naval Yard, the Assistant Director of Supply and Transport of the China Command, a representative of the Public Works Department, the Manager of the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, the manager of the Hong Kong Electric Company, and the manager of the Taikoo Dockyard. The members consisted entirely of representatives of large government departments and employers of labour. The board rarely functioned.\n\n61 The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1896 principally by Ho Kai and Wei Yuk. It was called at first the Chinese Merchants Bureau. In 1913, after a period of decline, a new building costing $40,000 was erected in Connaught Road. After 1913 the Chamber became one of the most influential bodies in Hong Kong, and many members of the District Watch Committee served at one time or another on its executive committee. The Chinese Club was founded in 1899 by Sir Robert Ho Tung and modelled on the European Hong Kong Club. A description of the Club's premises is to be found in Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1902, p. 323: \"We were taken by the Committee into an upper room, where European comforts of curtains and cushioned arm-chairs were judiciously intermingled with Cantonese elegances of black carved wood and landscape marble.\" Mrs. Little was a member of the Anti-Footbinding League or Natural Feet Society.\n\n62 See G. William Skinner for a detailed analysis of Chinese associations. See especially ch. 6 of his Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand.\n\n63 For Overseas Chinese associations, see important works by the following: Maurice Freedman, \"Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth Century Singapore,\" Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1960, and Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London, H.M.S.O., 1957; G. W. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1957, and Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1958; William E. Willmott, The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London, The Athlone Press, 1970; and Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1965.\n\n64 See Wilfred Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, London, Oxford University Press, 1969.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207143, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "208 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nwas bought by the Church and a large number of houses were built for the poor. In 1849, the Roman Catholics acquired land next to the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley and ceased burying in the old cemetery, though headstones remained scattered about for a long time. \n\nAnother Roman Catholic institution was located south of Queen's Road on the waterfront between what is the present Anton Street and Li Chit Street. Here the French Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1848, built an orphanage called the Asile des Sainte Enfance. \n\nIn 1845, two Americans, Charles Emery and George Frazer, moved their ship-building yard from Kowloon Point to a lot east of the French Orphanage. The yard passed through a succession of owners. In 1880 George Fenwick came into possession. He gave his name to the present Fenwick Street. In 1871 the Hong Kong Pier and Godown Company was launched to develop extensive wharfing and storage facilities. It occupied the land between the Orphanage and the shipyard. The present Gresson Street intersects the original property. The venture was not a success and the Company went into liquidation in 1873. In 1876 several Europeans financed by Chinese capital built the Oriental Sugar Refinery on property now defined by Swatow and Amoy Streets. It also soon failed and passed into receivership. Eventually, it was taken over by Jardine, Matheson and Company and was merged with their China Sugar Refining plant at East Point. \n\nThe first Protestant Chapel in the area was built in 1863 on Wan Chai Road by the London Missionary Society. A school was also opened, supported by Chinese subscriptions. The present Ying-Wa Girls School had its origins in the Wanchai Girls' Boarding School of the London Missionary Society opened in 1888. The Wanchai Chinese Methodist Church on the triangle of Hennessy Road, Fenwick Street, and Queen's Road East was occupied in 1936. \n\nThe Urban Services Office, where we are having tea, and the Wanchai Post Office next to it, are located on a lot which was sold to the first American resident of Hong Kong, Charles V. Gillespie. Here, in the spring of 1842, he built a substantial brick house of six rooms surrounded by a verandah at a cost of about $2,800. It was called “Jorrock's Hall” (sic) and was located on Inland Lot 14. The adjoining Lot No. 15 was also owned by Gillespie. He sold it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207335, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n95\n\nentering the harbour, George Woodcock affirms of seamen in the Far East that they 'provided its nearest equivalent to a European proletariat; out of their ranks emerged its shifting population of poor whites and also a high proportion of its adventurers'. He concludes that 'on shore the status of the seamen remained, as it always had been, anomalous. His occupation was essential to the very existence of British communities in the Far East, and yet he was always an outsider, disturbing and distrusted',10\n\nThe author of a booklet issued in 1891 to commemorate the jubilee of Hong Kong claimed that\n\nthe practice of the handicrafts in Hong Kong appears to be entirely in the hands of the Chinese; there is a considerable European population, but few are mechanics, and the Portuguese decline all forms of labour, the aspirations of both running towards the counting-house and the banker's desk.11 The suggestion that there were few European mechanics in Hong Kong is incorrect if we realise that many European overseers in the dockyards and other industrial undertakings and utilities were expected not only to supervise the labour force but to look after and repair machines. Many overseers in such enterprises were skilled engineers, who had served their apprenticeship in the engine-rooms of the British mercantile marine. The Taikoo Sugar Refinery at Quarry Bay, owned by Butterfield and Swire, gave direct employment to fifty or sixty Europeans as well as many hundreds of Chinese. A journalist, J. S. Thomson, wrote of this refinery that it\n\nwas\n\na marvellous study in Scotch sociology. There is a company reservoir and hospital in the hills; a cable to carry European overseers five hundred feet over the gullies to the fever-free bungalows on the cliffs; Company model tenements at inexpensive rents; a Company loan fund for overseers to bring out Scotch wives...12\n\nThe China Sugar Refinery, owned by Jardine, Matheson, also utilised the services of at least twenty-five European engineers, mechanics and overseers. At the end of the century, the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company employed about 800 Chinese, chiefly natives of Swatow, supervised by European overseers, many of whom were skilled mechanics. Other undertakings, such as the Green Island Cement Company, the Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209780, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "17\n\nSt. Mary's Anglican Church is at the junction of Tai Hang Road and Eastern Hospital Road. The congregation began in the chapel of the Eyre Diocesan Refuge for destitute women in 1912. In 1914 the Refuge was moved to Kowloon, but Anglicans in the east part of Hong Kong continued to meet there for worship. A vestry was formed in 1920 and plans were discussed for a new building. It was not until 1930, however, that a large fund-raising plan was undertaken. Finally, on 12 July 1936, ground was broken for a new church. It was officially opened on Christmas Eve 1937. In 1954 another building containing offices, kindergarten and vicarage was completed, and in 1958 the foundation stone for the Primary School was laid.\n\nFarther along Eastern Hospital Road is the Shing Kwong Church of the Church of Christ in China. This congregation considers itself the successor to a chapel built by the London Missionary Society in Tai Ping Shan in the 1860's. The chapel building was demolished at the time of the clearance of the Tai Ping Shan area at the turn of the century. Tai Ping Shan had been the breeding ground for the bubonic plague. With the money received in compensation for their land and building, the London Mission bought a new site on Yee Woh Street at Tung Lo Wan in 1898. The Mission had for some time been conducting services for workers at the nearby China Sugar Refinery. At the new site, schools were opened for boys and girls. The congregation became fully independent in 1922. With the widening of Yee Woh Street it became necessary for the congregation to move. In 1926 they exchanged the Yee Woh Street site for Inland Lot 2550 at So Kon Po. They occupied their new building in the summer of 1927. At that time the congregation adopted the name \"Shing Kwong\".\n\nThe number of institutions in the valley associated directly or indirectly with different religions is striking: Confucian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Jewish (indirectly, in the name of Ellis Kadoorie), and the former presence of the Japanese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210799, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "133\n\nger ferry service direct to Hong Kong has already been established, and airports at Haikou and Sanya are being up-graded to international standard for direct air links with Hong Kong. A 50-km railway link will complete the link between Ba Suo, Lintau and Yulin. For energy, an open-cut mine will be developed at Changpo with capital investment of US$ 60 million (Bulletin, May 10, 1983) and the estimated output of 500,000 tonne of coal will be used at power stations at Changpo and Haikou (China Daily, November 25, 1983).\n\nThe projects which the Hainan authorities would like to proceed as joint ventures with foreign capital are listed in Table 1 (Anon., 1982a). These projects were presented to the Australian Department of Trade as being indicative of the range of the island's ambitions rather than as specific projects to which they\n\n \n Product\n Location\n size\n Comments\n \n \n Cement\n Dong Fang\n 1 Mt/a\n Export through Basuo.\n \n \n Petroleum refinery\n West Coast\n 1 Mt/a\n Based on expectations of offshore oil.\n \n \n Silicon carbide\n Dong Fang\n 15000 tpa\n Based on planned hydro expansion on Changhua River. High quality silica sand.\n \n \n Plate glass\n Daxian\n \n Rebuilding of facilities.\n \n \n Paper\n Daxian\n \n \n \n \n Aluminium\n \n 30000 tpa\n Long-term ambition.\n \n \n Tourism\n Five potential locations.\n \n \n \n \n Tropical agriculture\n \n \n Sugar cane, pineapple, cashews, coffee, cocoa macadamia nuts, beef and dairy cattle.\n \n \n Fish, prawns\n 27 sites available for fish farms.\n \n \n \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210867, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "201\n\npomeloes, sweet dates, melon seeds, Chinese wine, cuttle fish, dried shrimp, Chinese vegetables, preserved ducks, herbs and medicines, incense sticks, and, of course, rice.\n\nOne Hongkong shipment was signed by A-chick's brother, Tong A-ku, who at the time was interpreter in the magistracy but was doing business on the side. Another manifest was signed by a relative, Tong A-yuk. Later, when Tong A-chick had returned to Hongkong from California, he was in business with Tong A-yuk.\n\nTheir store was the Kwong Cheong on Queen's Road Central near the Central Market. It dealt in imported foreign goods, particularly from the United States.\n\nTong A-chick's brother had an interest in the establishment of Hongkong's first industrial plant, a sugar refinery. Tong A-chick, or Tong Mow-chee as he was now calling himself, managed his brother's interests as well as putting some of his own money into the venture.\n\nThe plant was installed in 1869 in a building at East Point formerly used as a Government mint. The machinery had been purchased in England by William MacGregor Smith, one of the partners in the sugar company.\n\nThe Tong brothers soon sold out their interests. Perhaps they had intimations that the project would have difficulty in making a profit. Three years after they withdrew, the company went into receivership, being taken over by Jardine, Matheson and Company. It was later incorporated as the China Sugar Refinery Co. Ltd.\n\nTong A-chick left Hongkong in 1871 and became compradore for Jardine at Tientsin.\n\nDuring the 1870s the financial position of the Tong brothers was strong and their interests had broadened. They began to play an important part in the financing and management of projects to modernise China,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212308, "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": 250, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "227\n\n19th century. In 1891 the Hong Kong Telegraph spoke of the firm in less than complimentary terms;\n\nthe everlasting Bugbears of Eastern commerce, the nigger-drivers, the sweaters, the Jews worse than Jews,\n\n-\n\nfor no Jew was ever so full of hatred and persecution and intolerance of all others...\n\nYet Swire's was sometimes also accused of having more liberal racial views, and comments were rife when B&S invited Chinese brokers to a dinner. A recorded comment was:\n\n+++\n\nthe Swire lot blustering away among the Chinamen (hobnobbing) with every unwashed devil in the place\n\nJohn Swire died in 1898, wealthy and prestigious.\n\nDuring World War I Governor Sir Henry May accused Swire's of reluctance to help the war effort for failing to provide volunteers for the defence of the Colony. Today, with people in their employ like Lady Lydia Dunn, Howard Young and others, Swire's can certainly no longer be accused of lacking in community spirit.\n\nFrom 1878, Jardine's acted as agents for the China Sugar Refining Company at East Point. But after going East, Swire soon started to diversify. John Samuel's first marriage was to the owner of a sugar refinery, and not only did he consider he knew something about the business but a study conducted in Hong Kong satisfied him there was potential for two refineries. Consequently, Taikoo Sugar Refining Company was first registered in 1881, although it did not commence production until 1884, at Quarry Bay, in a refinery based on a design of a factory in Scotland.\n\nBy the early 1900s Taikoo was the largest sugar refinery east of Suez, with a turnover of approximately 2,000 tons a week. At one stage it was said to be the largest in the world under one roof. The company was the first in Hong Kong to provide living accommodation on site for its staff. A new factory was completed in 1925. This had to be refitted after World War II, but in the early 1950s there were about 650 workers and it was still the largest sugar refiner in the Far East.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212491, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "25\n\nItem\n\nTable 5\n\nXu Run's Investment in Modern Enterprises\n\n \n Company\n Amount (T)\n %\n Place\n \n \n China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co\n 480,000\n 33.44\n Shanghai\n \n \n Yun Wo Insurance Co.\n 100,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Chi Wo Insurance Co.\n 50,000\n 10 45\n Shanghai\n \n \n Kaiping Coal Mines\n 150,000\n \n Tianjin\n \n \n Guichi Coal Mines\n 100,000\n \n Anhui\n \n \n Sanshan Silver Mines\n 60,000\n \n Rehe\n \n \n Pingchuan Copper Mines\n 60,000\n \n \n \n \n Jinzhou Mines\n 50,000\n \n \n \n \n Other Mines\n 10,000\n 29 96\n \n \n \n Shanghai Cotton Mill\n 50,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Shang Jinglun Cotton Mill\n 170,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Craseman & Hagen's Filanda (Yantai Saosi Ju)\n 10,200\n \n Yantai\n \n \n Paper Manufactury\n 20,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Chinese Glass Works Co.\n 30,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Shanghai Dairy Farm Co.\n 30,000\n \n Shanghai\n \n \n Hong Kong Liyuan Sugar Refinery\n 30,000\n \n Hong Kong\n \n \n Tianyi Land Reclamation Co\n 5,000\n \n Jinzhou\n \n \n Taggu Cultivation Co.\n 30,000\n 2.44\n Tianjin\n \n \n Zhongshan Tongyi Ranyuan Cultivation Co\n 1,000($)\n \n Guangdong\n \n \n Total\n 1,435,200\n 99.99\n \n \n\n(+$1,000)*\n\n* Mexican dollars have not been added in the total or calculated in the percentage\n\nSource: Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi Xiansheng Run Zixu Nianpu.\n\nbut educated in Hong Kong. He first came to Shanghai as an interpreter in the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1859. It is believed that he was introduced by an officer named Horatio Nelson Lay whom Tang had met in Hong Kong. Tang was recruited as a comprador by the Jardine, Matheson & Co. in 1863 but he left in 1872. During the decade of his compradorial career, he invested, planned, organized and assisted in the sale of stocks of a number of enterprises. These enterprises were called modern because they had adopted a new form of ownership, organization and management. Moreover, some of them such as steam navigation and insurance companies were the first to take place in China. Unlike Xu\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212493, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "27\n\nShanghai, named the Guang Zhao Gongsuo,\n\nNeedless to say, Tang was famous amongst Cantonese merchants. In 1876, when Tang was organizing the telegraph office in Fuzhou, he was invited by Ding Richang to set up a Chinese bank with branches in Tokyo and London. The venture was supported by a group of Cantonese merchants to set up a modern bank with a paid-up capital of three hundred thousand taels to meet the increasing need of a financial institution to accelerate Chinese trade in foreign countries. Tang was also active in business circles in Hong Kong. He joined in partnership with his brother Tang Maozhi in the first sugar refinery in Hong Kong. Tang contributed three thousand taels while William McGregor Smith contributed the largest share of sixteen thousand taels. They planned to export sugar to Jiujiang, but probably due to Tang's transfer to Shanghai, export of refined sugar was changed to connect with Shanghai where they operated successfully until 1864. Afterwards Tang sold his share to his brother Tang Maozhi. The refinery was set up at East Point, Hong Kong, under the name of Smith, Wahee & Co. However, it eventually went bankrupt and was taken over by Jardine, Matheson & Co.\n\nTang left his work at China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. in 1884 to manage the Kaiping Mines in Tianjin in which he had a personal investment of three hundred thousand taels. It has to be mentioned that with the appointment of Tang as the Kaiping's general manager, a large number of Cantonese workers were recruited for Tianjin. By 1891, the number of Cantonese workers had grown to five hundred of which some had returned from California and Australia. Though these Cantonese miners were more skilled and experienced than local workers, they did not get along with the local people and refused to teach their skills to the northerners, as they were called. In 1883 a group of a hundred men from Swatow had to be discharged because of conflicts between them and their headmen.\n\nZhang Guanying (1842-1922)\n\nZheng was born in Zhongshan. It is unclear when he moved from Zhongshan to Macau but it was certain that he had received his traditional education in Canton. After Zheng had failed in the public examination, he decided to become a merchant. In 1858, he was sent to his uncle Zheng Tingjiang in Shanghai, who had been a comprador to Overweg & Co. Zheng soon entered into the Anglo-Chinese School organized by a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214065, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "100\n\ncamp by the presiding judge but disappeared without trace after his death in 1944.\n\nConclusion\n\nOne must inevitably conclude that Hong Kong should be justly proud of its impressive civil engineering achievements during the first hundred years of British administration, many of which are still in existence and benefiting our society today. Needless to say the last fifty years have been even more impressive and we must all look forward with confidence over the next fifty years to the expertise and ingenuity of our civil engineers in providing the increasingly sophisticated facilities needed by our own community and to meet the future challenging needs of China.\n\nAbout the Author\n\nC Michael Guilford has spent most of his working life in Hong Kong with Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick, the penultimate twenty-one years as a Partner and the last five as a Consultant, before retiring in 1996. Much of his effort over the years has been centred on the original Kai Tak Airport development, the airport tunnel and runway extensions, the Plover Cove Water Scheme and a variety of projects associated with civil and geotechnical engineering.\n\nAcknowledgement\n\nThe information for this wide-ranging general article has been obtained from numerous sources. My sincere thanks are offered to all who have in any way helped with my research. Any factual errors, however, are my own and the writer would welcome comments or views on the facts from any interested readers.\n\nAddendum\n\nSince this article was first published, a reader has kindly advised that the purpose of the “overhead tram\" referred to in the section on Water Supply was not as suggested but to provide access to two blocks of flats used in the summer by the Tai Koo sugar refinery staff. It was probably erected in 1891 and survived until 1932 when both the flats", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215279, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "could be nullified only by the use of the crown prerogative of disallowance. The Colonial Office was most reluctant to exercise this power except in extreme circumstances since it might cause the governor public embarrassment. There are only three cases to be found in the files before 1933 where the Colonial Office was consulted about a project and imposed its veto.\n\nThe progress of industrialisation in Hong Kong was completely different from all other British colonies where factories could be established only with the aid of protective tariffs and other government assistance and manufactured goods were sold only in the local market. Hong Kong island was originally occupied because it had the best deep-sea harbour between Shanghai and Indo-China. It served as a base for the British navy and a place where merchants could store their goods and transfer them from ocean-going vessels to smaller ships to trade at ports along the China coast and inland waterways. About 80 per cent of the goods passing through the harbour consisted of re-exports destined for South China from overseas or from North China, or exports from China being transhipped in Hong Kong. Since the principal reason for Hong Kong's existence was to be an entrepôt for trade with China, it has always been a free port with no customs duties on imports or exports. Industries were established early in the colony's history to provide for the needs of the port and to process primary products for local consumption and export to China. Shipbuilding and ship-repairing yards were established soon after Hong Kong island was occupied in 1841, followed by a rope-making factory in 1851, a flour mill in 1859, a sugar refinery in 1870, a distillery in 1871, tobacco and cigarettes in 1880, a cement factory in 1897, and a cotton spinning and weaving company in 1899.\n\nIn 1911 the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce carried out a survey of all European, American, and British Indian firms in the colony engaged in import, export, and manufacturing. The survey listed 38 trading companies which had also set up factories. The 1931 census found that about a quarter of the working population (112,133 out of 470,794) were employed in manufacturing industries. The 1930 Blue Book listed 3,164 factories and workshops under 102 categories ranging from 124 boat builders to 116 tin beaters and 14 weaving factories. Most of these establishments were very small, situated in the back streets and tenements of the urban area. In 1932 only 586 were registered under the new Factories and Workshops Ordinance, which regulated firms that employed at least 20 persons. It is difficult to quantify the size of the manufacturing sector in the absence of detailed statistics of local consumption, but it appears that domestic exports of manufactured goods in 1932 totalled at least HK$36 million (about £2,500,000).1 The main items exported were cement, refined sugar, preserved ginger, lard, knitted singlets and hosiery, and electric torches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]