[ { "id": 204275, "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-1961", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n10\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n39\n\nand defeated government troops again and again. They were eventually persuaded to capitulate to the government, and took part in the victorious campaign against another rebel Fang La.1 However, some modern historians believe that after they had helped the government forces, Sung Chiang and his followers were themselves liquidated in their turn. Be that as it may, the exploits of Sung Chiang and his followers soon became the subject of popular legends told orally. These grew in number and came to be written down. At first only short accounts were written, but later, towards the end of the Yuan period, about 1300, the different stories were joined together to form one long romance, possibly by Shih Nai-an, who has been identified with the dramatist Shih Hui, styled Chun-mei.2 By then, the number of heroes involved had grown from the original thirty-six to a hundred and eight. The romance continued to be enlarged and revised by various hands during the Ming period, until it became a work of 120 chapters, published about 1620. Then, at the beginning of the Ch'ing period, in 1644, the critic Chin Sheng-t'an took the first seventy chapters, added a new chapter at the end as well as commentaries, and published it as the \"Fifth Work of Genius\" in Chinese literature. This edition achieved immense popularity, and it is this truncated version which most Chinese readers have read and which has been rendered into English.\n\n21\n\nMeanwhile, some stories about knights errant found their way into the drama of the Yuan period. The plays of this period were classified by subject under twelve categories, one of which was \"long swords and clubs\". This obviously corresponded to the two categories of stories \"long swords\" and \"clubs\" mentioned earlier. In particular, some stories about Sung Chiang and his followers not included in the Shui-hu chuan were given dramatic treatment in Yuan times. For instance, there were at least a dozen Yuan plays about Li K'uei, one of the followers of Sung Chiang and one of the most colourful characters in popular literature.22 Two of these plays are still extant.23 They present with great gusto this rough-mannered, quick-tempered outlaw with a heart of gold. In plays of later periods, Li K'uei and other\n\n4a.\n\n18 Sung-shih* (SPPY), chüan 22, 3a; chüan 351, 11b; chüan 353,\n\n1 Mou Jun-sun, \"On the tombstone inscription of Chê K'ê-ts'un and Sung Chiang's end\" 牟潤孫,折可存墓誌銘考証兼論宋江之結局, Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 2.\n\n20 Sun K'ai-ti, Chung-kuo t'ung-su hsiao-shuo shu-mu 孫楷第,中國通俗小說書目 (Peking, 1957), p. 181.\n\n+\n\n21 Chu Ch'üan, T'ai-ho cheng-yin p'u 朱權,太和正音譜 (reprinted together with the Lu kuei pu 錄鬼簿, Shanghai, 1957), p. 135.\n\n22 For the titles of these plays, see Fu Hsi-hua, Yuan-tai tsa-chü ch'üan-mu 傅惜華,元代雜劇全目 (Peking, 1957), pp. 406-7.\n\n23 There is another Yuan play in which Li K'uei appears, but only as a subsidiary character.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205129, "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-1966", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "80\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nFederation. In April 1941 the Alliance helped arrange an East Asian Buddhist conference in Nanking, and then tried to reactivate the Chinese Buddhist Association (Shanghai, 1929) — apparently without success. It also sponsored some of the Chinese who went to Japan for study.\n\nJapanese-Chinese Buddhist associations set up by the Alliance were to be found in Nanking, Shanghai, Hangchow, Wusih, Soochow, Chen-chiang, Changshu, Pengpu, Nantung, Wuhu, Hofei, and Kiukiang. They were staffed by three categories of personnel: Chinese monks, Japanese priests, and local Chinese officials. If the head was in one category, his deputies would be in the other two. Among the membership the sangha (mostly Chinese) generally outnumbered the laity. The work of these associations is variously described as relief, arranging lectures, and providing guidance for seminaries and devotees' clubs.22 The real work, of course, was mobilizing China's Buddhists in support of Japanese policy.\n\nAlthough the membership included the Panchen Lama from Tibet and the Living Buddha Chang-chia from Mongolia, only a few well-known Chinese monks appear to have been involved. Among them was Shuang-t'ing, the abbot of Chin Shan, who headed the Japanese-Chinese Buddhist Association in Chen-chiang.23 According to one of his disciples the Japanese authorities told him quite frankly that if he refused this post, there would be \"very serious consequences.\" Shuang-t'ing felt that his first duty was to protect Chin Shan, doubly vulnerable since Nationalist officers had been hidden in a cave there during the Japanese attack. Hence he accepted.\n\nOne reason for his decision was that the parent body, the Great Harmony Alliance, was committed to \"do its best when Chinese monasteries and temples applied for protection.\" According to several informants, it generally succeeded. Well-known Buddhist institutions that cooperated with the Japanese encountered few difficulties. Some of the occupation forces behaved badly (one soldier killed a monk at Chin Shan, for example, \"because of a language difficulty\"), but most of those who visited the immense shrines seem to have treated them with respect or reverence.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205524, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n61\n\ncurrent, such as the Friend of China and North China Herald. The connections of the Hong Kong trading community with Australia, India and Southeast Asia, as well as with Great Britain, are represented, though there is an absence of American publications.\n\nOn May 8th of this same year, 1867, the China Mail carried an editorial on “Our Libraries\", which makes it clear that some of the other European communities in Hong Kong were equally well provided with library facilities. The German and Portuguese clubs are mentioned as having active libraries. The article goes on to remark upon the little use which is made of the Morrison Library, not because of restrictions imposed by those in charge of it, but on account of its out-of-the-way situation\n\nthe same criticism which had been made of the Victoria Library in 1852, and was later made of the University of Hong Kong Library in 1961. On the Victoria Library, after praising the exertions of a few in prolonging its existence, the China Mail continues that it is \"by no means so well supported as it deserves to be.\" The reason, it is suggested, is that the club-libraries had to a great extent filled the place it occupied fifteen or more years before, and as the funds available for book purchases decreased with the declining membership year by year the Victoria Library had become “but an inferior copy of its more thriving brother at the English club.\" The China Mail continues by suggesting that it would be profitable for both institutions if the Morrison and Victoria Libraries were brought under one roof, and whilst preserving their separate identities allowing subscribers of the latter to use the former (and presumably vice versa). As will be seen later, this suggestion by the China Mail met with a more favourable response than the earlier proposal, to convert the Victoria Library into a book club. The editorial concludes with the suggestion that the combined institutes might invite the deposit of free copies of \"books, papers and pamphlets upon China, Japan, the Eastern archipelago or any portion of the world tenanted by the Chinese race\", in return for which a catalogue raisonné of these publications would be issued every three or six months, and distributed free to subscribers as a kind of advertisement. \"If the same principle were extended to general literature, it would be found that a very large number of European publishers and the consignees of books in China would gladly send 'review copies'. The question of expense would be solved by adopting this plan entirely in place of purchasing new works, the sum now paid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205878, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "178\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nand clubs, on their families, and on their ties with home. All these contain much of interest, though there are many points small and large on which one might quibble, from the trivial matter of the delusion which the author has that Chinese restaurants in general serve Chinese food which derives its virtue from Cantonese culinary supremacy (p. 28), to the important matter of omitting to mention that many Chinese employees receive in cash their total wage, their employers paying for them their tax, National Insurance, etc. over and above the wage (p. 81).\n\nMore important is the lack of organisation of the approach to this subject. One has the feeling that little attempt was made to extract meaning from the facts with which Mr. Ng presents us. If there had been, then surely they would have been presented differently? Certain basic considerations seem to have been neglected. Why London? for instance. Granted that London is an important centre for Chinese immigrants, why is it so? and how is it possible to study London as a centre without reference to the area of which it is a centre? Would not The Chinese in Britain have been a more valid topic? (Of course, the research worker's time and finances are important factors here, but there should be justification for the choice of field.) Again, was it not possible for Mr. Ng to approach this subject from an angle which would give more meaning to the whole to impose a pattern on it, as it were? To be constructive, could he not have started with the individual and worked outwards from there? the three case studies in Chapter IV are very enlightening.\n\nSince the work for this study was done (in 1963-64) the situation of the Chinese in Britain has changed a great deal. There seems to have been achieved a greater degree of coalescence (particularly in the provincial cities), political awareness has heightened, the Hong Kong Government has attempted to help its people overseas, the Gerrard Street area of London has become more and more clearly defined as a Chinese centre (the world's only new Chinatown?), and so on. There is call now for much more detailed and wide-ranging study of the field; and whoever undertakes it will be fortunate in having Mr. Ng's general survey to start from.\n\nSchool of Oriental and African Studies,\n\nMarch, 1969.\n\nHUGH D. R. BAKER", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206251, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN CITIES AND THE KAIFONGS IN HONG KONG\n\nALINE K. WONG*\n\nVOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS IN OVERSEAS CHINESE COMMUNITIES\n\nThere are many kinds of voluntary organizations among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as chambers of commerce, clan associations, district and dialect associations, trade unions, religious societies, secret societies, political clubs and recreational clubs. However, in terms of contribution to the public life of the Chinese communities, three types of organizations, viz., the chambers of commerce, the district and dialect associations are more important than the rest. District and dialect groups are always closely connected; it is difficult to speak of one apart from the other. And in some cases, the chambers of commerce are in fact federations of local district associations.\n\nWell-known literature on the Chinese voluntary associations in this part of the world includes such works by William Skinner1 and Richard Coughlin on Thailand, Maurice Freedman3 on Singapore, Victor Purcell on Malaya, Ju-k’ang T’ien5 on Sarawak, Donald Willmott on Semarang and Lea Williams on Indonesia. Examining this wealth of literature, one finds that the chambers of commerce, the district and dialect associations serve three main kinds of functions; namely, economic, social and political. While the chambers of commerce are manifestly merchants’\n\n* Mrs. Wong is head of the Department of Sociology at United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. This paper was contributed to a conference on \"The City as a Centre of Change in Asia\" organised by the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong in June, 1969.\n\n1 Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand, Ithaca, 1958.\n\n2 Double Identity. The Chinese in Modern Thailand, Hong Kong, 1960.\n\n3 Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, London, 1957.\n\n4 The Chinese in Malaya, London, 1948; The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London, 1965.\n\n5 The Chinese of Sarawak, London, 1953.\n\n6 Chinese of Semarang, Ithaca, 1960.\n\n7 Overseas Chinese Nationalism, Glencoe, 1960; The Future of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1966.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206314, "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": 131, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n125\n\nChinese Affairs, spent most of its time in session discussing social and economic problems. In 1913, for example, among subjects discussed at its deliberations were the regulation of Chinese theatres, the prohibition of the circulation of foreign notes and silver, and means for the more effective regulation of Chinese householders; in 1914 the prohibition of all new Chinese restaurants in the Central District, the licensing of singing girls, and the classification of boarding houses (emigration houses and hotels); and in 1915 the restriction on the numbers of clubs and societies, the appointment of midwives, the question of payment of wine and spirit licenses, and the question of new legislation for money loan associations33. It is not surprising, then, that the Secretary for Chinese Affairs was pleased to write in 1918 that 'the loyal advice and assistance of this important Committee (which deals with every kind of question affecting the Chinese community) continues to be of the greatest value to Government'. The stabilising role of the Committee is also made clear by its activity during periods of intense crisis in the Colony. Thus the Committee was extremely active during the period of ebullition following from the 1911 Revolution in China; it also helped to prevent violence during the short time when diplomatic relations between China and Japan were strained in 1915; it played a part in bringing to an end the bitter seamen's strike of 1922 and the strike and boycott of 1925-192634. It was a Committee, as Lockhart probably intuited it would become, that allowed the Chinese to 'regulate' themselves within the fairly broad limits set by government,\n\nThe committees of the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the District Watch Force, together with those of some other associations such as the Lok Sin Tong and the Chung Sing Benevolent Society35, formed a system. The system was, in terms, of prestige, influence and power, an hierarchical one. The Tung Wah Board of Directors was usually recruited from ex-committeemen of the Po Leung Kuk; and the District Watch Committee always contained a very large number of former members of the Po Leung Kuk and the Tung Wah Hospital. The District Watch Committee thus formed the apex of a pyramidal and hierarchical structure, at the base of which were local-based associations such as Kaifong, and also district and clansmen associations, and guilds of employers36. But the prestige", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206321, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "132 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nand workers. In one case, a District Watch Inspector arrested a member of the Secret Strike Party (the so-called Labour Commission) carrying illegal dispatches to union members, a fact duly noted in the Secretary for Chinese Affairs' report for 1925. \n\nIt is difficult to see how the Hong Kong government could have coped as well as it did with periods of economic recession after 1918, with years of labour unrest, with the rising tide of nationalism emanating from Nationalist China, without the strong support of the Committee, whose members between them sat on most of the ten other official Chinese committees and boards. The members of the District Watch Committee were strongly entrenched in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinese Clubs and they played a significant role in the Chinese Manufacturers' Association. They also occupied important positions in district associations, benevolent societies, guilds of employers and business associations. The power and influence of the Committee ramified down through such associations, so that the few were able to exercise political control over the many62. Thus the power of the Committee was diffused through many associations, helping to maintain what no doubt the government would call 'sensible attitudes' among the Hong Kong-born Chinese, the group that formed the vertebra of the Colony. \n\nThe District Watch Committee was re-established after the return of the British administration in 1945, the Committee containing the same names as in 1941. No further nominations were ever made. A hundred and one District Watchmen reported for duty in 1945-6 and carried on with their normal duties: patrolling streets, conducting enquiries in connection with boarding houses, guilds, and the protection of women and girls, and making general investigations on behalf of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. In addition, the force assisted the rice controller in checking black marketing in government supplies; they were also put on static guard duties at various premises requisitioned by government. But the pre-war system of soliciting private subscriptions for the upkeep of the force was abandoned in 1945: henceforth it was financed entirely by the government; and government soon decided that the strength of the force should gradually be reduced to about fifty men, which would be sufficient to deal with the special requirements of the Secretariat for Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207269, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "MERCHANT ORGANISATIONS IN IMPERIAL CHINA\n\n29\n\nsponsored Western-modelled chambers of commerce (shang-wu hui), merchant leaders accepted them readily, and by 1911 established some eight hundred major and minor chambers throughout China. Clearly a number of changes had taken place to span the chasm which once divided the traditional guilds from the quite modern chambers.\n\nBroadly speaking, three types of guilds existed in traditional China: those organised by craft, by common geographical origin and by trade. I shall here deal in detail with the last two, since the first, such as the carpenters' guilds, was not affected by the kinds of institutional changes which we shall discuss. Indeed, since the chambers of commerce did not take them in, the craft guilds were left relatively unchanged until the 1920's. In earlier times, however, the craft and the trade guilds were similar in many ways. Both began during the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618), and they had comparable rules and rituals. The lack of substantial change in the craft guilds during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a reflection of the similar lack of change in status and function of the Chinese artisan.\n\nLandsmannschaften (Hui-kuan)\n\nThe second type—commercial associations based on common geographical origin—had a more recent origin than either craft or trade guilds. To trace their beginnings, we must go back to the early part of the fifteenth century when similar associations were formed by officials in Peking in order to cater to the needs of travelling gentry, official members and scholars who had gone there from their home area on official business or for taking state examinations. Known in Chinese as hui-kuan or \"provincial clubs,\" they resembled the Landsmannschaften of medieval Europe. As they proved their usefulness, they spread to provincial capitals and other major cities. Gradually, merchant sojourners in these cities were accepted as associate members.\n\nIn Peking, the original Landsmannschaften remained strictly official and gentry dominated. Although contributions were accepted from merchants, the latter shared little of the benefits as late as the 1800's. For example, the big tea merchant members of the Hsi-hsien Landsmannschaft in Peking made regular and sizeable contributions toward its upkeep from at least 1741 when the Landsmann", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207331, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n91\n\nbetween those who were, and were not, socially acceptable. An inordinate degree of effort went into securing release from this social limbo. Release, when it occurred, was achieved in most cases by judicious entertaining, by obtaining entrée to the right clubs and associations, or by a change of occupation.\n\nThe Oxford English Dictionary defines a beachcomber as ‘a settler on the Pacific islands, living by pearl fishery, etc., or loafing about wharves and beaches' and as 'a white man in Pacific islands etc., who lives by collecting jetsam, longshore vagrant'. The term, a pejorative one in European circles in the East, in time was applied to all European vagrants by those in established positions and meant, simply, a loafer. It was difficult to survive on the beach in Hong Kong for the climate, with its cold winter months, did not provide the lush consolations of life on the Pacific islands; and the Chinese, the host population, whose traditions supported the values of hard work, frugality and sobriety, were not as easy-going as the denizens of the South Seas. Beachcombers in Hong Kong were defined as loafers, destitutes, down-and-outs, spongers, and paupers, and were referred to as such in the newspapers of the time. A news item in the China Mail of 1888 sheds light on contemporary attitudes toward beachcombers:\n\nA 'Dead-Beat' named George Smith was brought before Mr. Sercombe Smith, in the Police Court to-day, charged with being a rogue and vagabond and having no visible means of subsistence. Defendant, who admitted having no occupation, no money, and no place of abode, was sent to Gaol for a month's hard labour, during which time steps will be taken to procure a more desirable berth for him.3\n\nBeachcombers in Hong Kong were mostly discharged seamen, seamen who had jumped ship, or deserters from foreign navies, especially the American. A few were work-shy nomads who moved from port to port, waiting for something to turn up. Others adopted an itinerant mode of life because their capacity to work regularly had been undermined by drink, drugs, or debauchery in general. Some were escaping from a criminal past. All were objects of suspicion.\n\nA European constabulary had been recruited to police the city of Victoria and adjacent areas soon after the establishment of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207343, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "# EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n103\n\nThe European lower orders were not, of course, totally neglected by their superiors. The church and the various missionary societies, such as the Mission to Seamen, did their best to elevate the moral tone of the less fortunate. Various institutions were established to cater to their needs—a Sailors' Home at West Point, close to the Seamen's Church, St. Peter's, and a Soldiers and Sailors' Rest at East Point. By the end of the century, there was also a Union Jack Club, a Royal Naval Seamen's Club, a United Services Club, an Institute of Marine Engineers, complete with technical library and librarian, and a branch of the British Mercantile Marine Officers' Association (the last two catered for a merchant navy elite). A Seamen's Hospital had also been opened.\n\nThe military authorities, in turn, strongly backed the work of the Army Temperance Association and the Independent Order of Good Templars, a society of abstainers formed in America in 1851, which had ramified over the Anglo-Saxon world. No doubt all these associations, societies, and clubs did sterling work and restrained some servicemen from seeking the scabrous temptations offered by Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai; but they did not offer enough to the average soldier or sailor, only tea and buns, prayers and uplift, draughts and dominoes, and the ministrations of lay missioners, missionary ladies, and army and naval chaplains.\n\nIn 1889, the Hong Kong Ladies' Benevolent Society was founded 'for the purpose of rendering assistance in cases of sickness, want, poverty, or distress arising from time to time amongst persons other than members of the Portuguese or Chinese communities'. The society helped defray the passage home of destitute Europeans and educated orphaned European children; in some cases, it paid the rents of the hard-up and obtained employment for those stranded in the colony.\n\nWhat the government felt about poor whites is mirrored in the report prepared by Dr. Eitel in 1880 on the treatment of paupers in Hong Kong:\n\nIn the case of British destitutes, anything done by the Government over and above what is now being done in furnishing such destitutes with board and lodgings in the Gaol, would tend to make the condition of a 'beach comber' or destitute here more eligible than the lot of the hardworking seaman or stoker, and consequently put a premium on loafing and idleness... I would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208189, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n24. a. Several tales contain information regarding land tenure. For instance, an elder of the 3rd Fong who related the Tang Hei-sui () tale (see Sung p. 253), mentioned that members of the Tso () established after his death each received 100 Tam Kuk each year till 1898, indicating extensive holdings.\n\n24. b. As mentioned above, the Kam Tin Tangs virtually owned the Pat Heung Valley (even the suspect Cadastral Surveys confirm this).* They also possessed land around Yuen Long and further south, Shun Fung Wai (). Ancestral land on Hong Kong Island totalled approximately 1000 Chinese acres, and clan land (shared among the five fongs) in Kowloon was extensive (200 acres in Cheung Sha Wan alone).\n\n25. Land was either communally or privately owned. The former (\"communal ownership\") is divided into a number of categories, the most important of which are Tso () and Tong (). Tong land is appropriated in the literary name of an ancestor (hence early confusion of Tongs as literary clubs). Unlike Tso, the joint holders need not be descendents of a common ancestor. Hence, while Tso land exhibits \"vertical solidarity\" within a fong across class boundaries, Tong land establishes horizontal ties across fong within class boundaries.\n\n26. For the uses to which ancestral land is put, see the material from the Nam Yeung genealogy and the section on Land Tenure (\"varieties of Tenure\") reproduced from the Hong Kong Government Gazette, No. 26, 28 April 1900. I would here simply like to add two further uses of ancestral land: 1) defence funding and 2) financing ritual ceremonies. On the former, see Enclosure 7, no. 172 from Extension of the Boundaries. [I add here what might appear superfluous; ancestral land increases in direct proportion to the distance from Kam Tin. Private holdings predominate within the heung itself]\n\n27. As we have seen, the Kam Tin Tangs acted as \"unofficial\" government of a large section of San On county. One of the essential elements to this system of control was their status as tax-lords. The former is thus explained in Cecil Clementi's report on his work in the New Territories in 1905-1906: \"On the recommen-\n\n“Suspect\" because they do not always reflect the pre-1898 situation: owing to decisions about ownership made by the New Territories Land Court.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208196, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n219 \n\nBeyond the traditional image of most Washington banks closely regulated, largely impersonal entities insured by the federal government lie some lending institutions whose existence rests solely on trust between the people who use them. \n\nThe participants call them \"banks\" but there are no passbooks, no withdrawals, no Christmas clubs and no drive-in windows. There are only deposits, periodic loans and a final payoff of principal plus interest to all members. \n\nIt is a system created long ago in this country by enterprising Chinese immigrants unable to obtain conventional financing for business ventures or personal needs from established American banks. Instead they created their own institutions, informal, unregulated, relying on handshakes in place of written contracts. It is a matter of pride among Chinese Americans that over the years such arrangements have rarely failed. \n\nShattering that tradition, four Chinese banks here have quietly gone broke, leaving their 100 or so depositors more than $130,000 in the hole and with uncertain prospects of ever seeing their savings again. \n\n\"The Chinese community usually helps each other,\" said Bob Lee, a Boston restaurateur and national president of the Chinese Free Masons, whose D.C. branch sponsored the failed banks. \"If everyone was doing the job right, the money should be there.\" \n\nBut everyone, it is apparent, didn't do his job right. For reasons that are still only alleged and unproved, the honor system failed. The pivotal figure, by all accounts, is a longtime Washington restaurateur [name]. \n\nWithin the closely knit Chinese-American community, numbering about 600 downtown and 15,000 in the entire Washington area, such scandals normally are handled discreetly and seldom emerge into public view. This time, however, a civil lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court by the depositors offers a rare glimpse at a side of Washington life foreign to most residents. \n\nThe Chinese \"banks\" operate for a limited time, usually about three years and have only deposits and no ordinary withdrawals. Members deposit $10 per share weekly. Once a week, on Sundays in this case, those wanting to borrow money bid an amount they are willing to pay for the loan, in effect how much \"interest\" they will pay above principal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208792, "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "222\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nnotably among which were beans, teas, wines, fertilisers etc., while the ones in Wing Lok Street concentrated so much on the sole item of rice that the street was nicknamed \"Rice Street\". These firms acted as a medium for trade between countries in Southeast Asia and Mainland China, operating on a commission basis, and in Chinese they were often referred to as the \"98\" firms implying that a 2% commission was charged both ways. Thus from Singapore came canes and firewood, from Java, sugar and from Siam, rice. In addition, they were also recognised as banking institutes through which overseas Chinese remitted money home before the modern banking system was fully developed.\n\nThe majority of these pioneer merchants were from Chiu-chow, and within their small circle they possessed all the virtues of being sympathetic, honest, trustworthy and generous, eager to help each other in case of need. The stress was on a person's status and it was not at all surprising that business deals were sealed by the lips only and any consequences that followed would be fully honoured by both parties without further ado. Written contracts were unheard of and highly unnecessary. With wealth came the desire for honour, and it was quite common that most of the better-off merchants held official sinecures which were bought from the Chinese Government. This entitled them to don colourful official robes during ceremonies and important festivals. It was a spectacular sight to see these celebrities moving around, impressively attired during the Chinese New Year when European executives from leading shipping and insurance companies called to present their greetings. These were usually carried out amidst highly decorated surroundings, coupled with theatrical performances and lavish receptions which lasted for weeks. Class distinctions were obvious, and only the privileged few had the right of access to particular installations ranging from private clubs to public tea houses. An employee who was caught by his employer sneaking into one of these would be dismissed almost instantly.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208909, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE\n\n39\n\nvoluntary associations entitled \"Waichow\" are Hakka and few are Hoklos. People often regard \"Waichow\" as synonymous with \"Hakka\" and neglect the very significant language and cultural differences between these two groups. Geographically, the districts of Hai-feng and Lu-feng border upon Chao chow and some of their territories were even separated from the later. This is why the Hoklos' culture is so similar to that of the Chao-chow people but quite different from that of the Hakka. This also makes the Wai-chow Hoklos adopt a special strategy to unite with the Hoklos from other places in order to organize their own associations.\n\nIn contrast to the kinship principle, the traditional locality principle is still very important in organizing voluntary associations in Hong Kong. Among the forty-nine Waichow associations that I have been studying, there are thirty associations, roughly 60 per cent of the total, based on the locality principle. In China the idea of locality comes from the idea of \"domicile of origin\" or of legal residence, in Chinese (chi-kuan). Although, unlike the surname, the domicile of origin is not transmitted hereditarily, it cannot be changed easily because it is not simply determined by one's birth place or place of current residence. According to Ho (1966: 1-9), in addition to the dialect factor, the ethics of filial piety stressed by the Confucianists, as well as the administrative laws for regulating legal residence in order to control the quota system of candidates in the civil examinations, have been important factors in shaping the idea of domicile of origin. From the anthropological point of view, I think that the Chinese emphasis on kinship relationships, from which the tradition of localized lineages is formed, and the formation of the idea of domicile of origin, interact both as cause and effect.\n\nWith the passing of time, the organizing principles of associations are usually no longer only traditional but become diversified following societal complexity. My investigation has shown that there are also cultural associations (such as education funds), athletic associations (such as lion-dance clubs), and recreational associations (such as music clubs). Kerri (1976:23) writes:\n\nWith increasing modernization, industrialization, and urbanization and the concomitant large-scale rural-urban migrations, social scientists have found that kinship and territory are no longer effective means for the organization of new social groups", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209242, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n131\n\nIt is remarkable that the F.M.O. is not really among the agencies subjected to this lobbying. In their 1978 report, the F.M.O. (as distinct from its parent body, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries) is not mentioned. In conversation SoCO workers and F.M.O. officials appeared unaware of each others' interests in the welfare and education of Shui-sheung-yan. They were dealing, in fact, with what had become two separate populations.\n\nOther Shui-sheung-yan organisations: links between rich and poor.\n\nVery few organisations bridge the gap between the FMO-constituency and the SoCO constituency; those that do, however, are worth mentioning. This paper will look at the Hong Kong and Kowloon Fishermen's Association, Ltd. in the port of Castle Peak; the three Fishermen's Recreation Clubs of Chai Wan, Stanley and Lamma Island; and the remarkable Chan Ye-So Kaau-Ooi (True Jesus Church) in the island of Ap Chau and the border port of Sha Tau Kok.\n\nThe Hong Kong and Kowloon Fishermen's Association Ltd.\n\nThis association is a trade union in which the Chinese Communist Party plays a leading role; as the F.M.O. liaison officer at Castle Peak put it, it acts as an intermediary for such Hong Kong fishermen as require it with the Chinese authorities, and can assess and influence the politics of the fishing industry in Hong Kong. Many Castle Peak fishermen are also registered with Chinese coastal communes. In 1971 it had built a handsome floating headquarters, which is still in the harbour at Castle Peak.\n\nThe same process of mechanisation and reduction of the fishing fleet that operate throughout the territory had perforce affected its aims. By 1980, only 60 percent of its membership were still active fishermen, and their secretary stressed the achievement of better housing on land as being currently their main objective. Education could not be a priority issue for the boat-people when their living standards were so low. Because many had registered only recently, they were very low in the queue for public re-housing. The boat-people wanted to be re-housed together, and it would take less than one of the tall blocks of flats on a new housing estate to do so, but the housing authority would not allow group applications for re-housing; they would only take applications from individual families. One of the seven or eight new blocks of flats that had been built around the harbour area had had the character for fish in its name, and the boat people had thought it MUST", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209243, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "132\n\nTA ACTON\n\nbe for them, despite all the official denials. But it had been filled up with outsiders as soon as it was finished. Just in the past couple of weeks, he told me, there had been whispers of resettlement for a number of families in a temporary housing area some miles away. The part of the harbour that contained the club-houseboat and most of the leaky old living-boats would then be filled in and reclaimed as land for further housing. Those of the Shui-sheung-yan who were still fishing would have a long way to travel to their boats on which they were employed. (The richer fishermen had mostly established already their own private, more convenient shore bases.) 41\n\nDespite the fact that it would mean the virtual end of their club, and despite frequent reports in the press of other boat people dissatisfied with the temporary housing areas, members of the association appeared resigned to moving, to feel it was necessary. Boat people from Aberdeen resettled in Shatin had complained that their family life was breaking down because their menfolk were either unemployed, or spending all their time travelling back to work in the Aberdeen fishmarket. They also complained that the Shatin schools had higher standards than those in Aberdeen (including, presumably, the F.M.O. schools) and that their children were falling behind or dropping out. 42 This can in a way be read as an expression of confidence in the F.M.O. schools. There are, however, no F.M.O. schools in Castle Peak; there are no data on how well children there have adapted to the ordinary schools there. Whatever the problems, at Castle Peak for the poorer boat-people, rehousing was still the priority.\n\nAs in the case of the struggle for re-housing at Yaumatei, that at Castle Peak was given continuity by an outside force. With SoCO both ideology and finance are supplied from Western trusts and churches; at Castle Peak it is the concern of the Chinese authorities. The Hong Kong Government for its part, appear to regard the Trojan horse of liberal capitalism as rather more dangerously subversive and left-wing than that of communism.\n\nThe Fishermen's Recreation Clubs\n\nThe Fishermen's Recreation Clubs of Chai Wan and Stanley were founded by a lighthouse-keeper, now retired, Charles Thirlwall, M.B.E., who has been concerned with helping the Shui-sheung-yan since the 1930s. The clubs are, as they say, recreation clubs. The Chai Wan club room is three rooms knocked together in the basement of a resettlement estate block of flats, its walls covered with photographs of smiling", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209244, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n133\n\ngroups of men receiving trophies for rowing, for fishing, or for winning the San Miguel beer-drinking championship. Dragons from the head of dragon boats are also hanging up; the club is very strong on participation in the dragon boat races. A much-used ping-pong table occupies one end of the room; at the other sits a caretaker amid piles of plastic heels: he does a little cobbling on the side. In a nearby restaurant the club holds numerous dinners, where guests are entertained with Chinese opera singing, and modern pop songs. Both present and ex-fishermen attend these dinners; it was estimated that at one I attended no more than 10 percent of those present were still active fishermen, (though this estimate discounted women and children and guests present, such as the San Miguel brewery representative.) Probably a greater proportion belonged to active fishing families.\n\nBefore the war, Mr. Thirlwall said, there had been no policy for the boat-people, and they had been very socially isolated. From his lighthouse he had befriended them, dressed wounds, and had come to prefer their society to that of the uptight land-based Hong Kong Chinese. After the war, the pace of social change had been very fast, bewildering many older people. The fishing industry had contracted, and despite his local efforts there was very little solidarity among the fishermen, and that they were not represented as a community in the government process. Challenged as to whether the Regional Co-operative Federations did not do this job, he responded that the credit societies were just concerned with the operation of the better-off boats; they did not concern themselves with the slow loss of small anchorages to land reclamation, the difficulties of getting settlement without becoming an illegal squatter. It was said that all the boat-people were keen to settle: why then did the Marine Department have to refuse all fresh registrations of houseboats? In fact a community was being broken up, and many of the members of his clubs in Stanley and Chai Wan were no longer active fishermen. But they would defend their rights to be part of the Shui-sheung-yan community. He did not use the word “Tanka”, however, (“In fact, I hate it\"), because it was used by land people to oppress them.\n\nThese two clubs in fact bridged the gap between the well-to-do active fishermen and the poor ex-fishermen, partly because of the very evident affection in which Mr. Thirlwall was held by all sections of the community. The clubs were, in fact, an exception to the general rule among the boat-people, not economic organisations, but quasi-ethnic ones, following a very common Hong Kong Chinese pattern, that of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209245, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "134\n\nTA ACTON\n\n\"home village associations\", which are formed by all members of particular villages in China who have migrated to Hong Kong. The clubs are the home village associations of two little fishing villages left behind not in distance, but in time, engulfed by technological change and urban sprawl. The villages still exist, surrounded by or transmuted into flats, but their former inhabitants are as much spiritual exiles as most other Hong Kong Chinese.\n\nThat these clubs are not primarily economic in aim does not mean, however, that they cannot be used for economic advantage, of course. The members do help each other. Members of the clubs, for example, had managed to secure most of the life-guard jobs at the new Chai Wan public swimming pool.\n\nThe fishermen's club on Lamma Island was founded by a business-man who had been active in trade with China since the 1930s, Jonathan Gray. It is similar to those of Chai Wan and Stanley, but has been prepared to be more militant and public in its pressure group activity to gain compensation for fishermen when their best fishing areas off Lamma were being 'reclaimed'.\n\nThese three clubs, confined to a small area in the south of the territory, are the only instances that even approach an ethnic mobilisation of the Shui-sheung-yan,\n\nThe True Jesus Church\n\nThe True Jesus Church was founded in Peking in 1917, and is evidently part of the world-wide Pentecostal revival of the early years of this century. It is distinctive in that, as well as being charismatic, it is \"Seventh Day\" — that is, it holds the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday, not Sunday. It also holds that believers' baptism should be carried out by total immersion with the face facing downwards, and should be followed by the washing of feet. Otherwise, it is fairly orthodox in its evangelicalism. It describes itself as \"a revived apostolic church”, preaching \"a full gospel of salvation based on the truth in the Bible, accompanied by signs and miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit\".\n\nThe membership of this church remained almost wholly Chinese as it spread to South-East Asia, apart from some missionary work in Nigeria. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, a lady fish merchant belonging to the church came to Hong Kong from Malaya to buy seafood. She began to preach to her Shui-sheung-yan suppliers, and to pray for healing for their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209247, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "136 \n\nT.A ACTON \n\nCantonese Shui-sheung-yan who have joined, and not the Hoklo, who have been \"resistant to the Gospel message.\" When I asked Philip Chan about the use of the term \"Tanka”, he answered, as did most Shui-sheung-yan, that the term was no longer used as it was offensive, because of the way ordinary Cantonese used it to oppress them. Nevertheless, in the sermon he preached the next day, referring to the knowledge of the sea his audience possessed, which land people could not understand, he spoke of \"We Tanka... or so to speak, Shui-sheung-yan.\" The whole sermon, over an hour and a quarter long, held his audience spell-bound with illustrations from storms at sea, fishing disasters and marine life, salting his speech with fisherman's talk (Shui-sheung-wa) so deep that the Malaysian student who had been put by my side and knew only standard Cantonese, was often completely baffled and unable to give me any interpretation. (Later, Philip Chan referred to Shui-sheung-wa as “a separate dialect”.) \n\nOf course, the content of this sermon can hardly have been completely unaffected by the knowledge that there was a sociologist in the congregation interested in the life of boat-people. Nonetheless, it is indicative of the way in which an ethnic and cultural solidarity has been maintained, an assertion of pride of origin, which provides a way of avoiding the schizophrenic need to assimilate wholly to ordinary Cantonese society and suppress one's own identity. \n\nAdaptation and Education \n\nAs Barbara Ward and other sociologists have indicated, the majority of boat people are able to assimilate into land-based Cantonese society, and do so fairly often. Members of the Fishermen's Recreation Clubs, the True Jesus Church, and perhaps to some extent the Hong Kong and Kowloon Fishermen's Association Ltd., find a middle way of adaptation that relieves them from the stark dilemma between the self-obliteration and the stasis of isolation. Nonetheless, one cannot speak of any general emergence of Shui-sheung-yan ethnic consciousness; the leaders of the three movements mentioned above, geographically separated at the three opposite corners of the territory, appeared absolutely unaware of each others' activities. When one asks Shui-sheung-yan the conventional Cantonese question about what kind of Chinese they are, (“Nei hai matye yan a ?\"), the most common answer remains a reference to their home village, or, at any rate, to that of their grandparents — “Ngo hai Tunglowaan-yan\" or \"Yeung Kong yan”, or “Ap Chau yan”, \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210259, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "209\n\ned April 15, 1865.\n\nIn the biographies roman figures, as above, will be used to distin-guish these committees.\n\n2. Social Committees\n\nDespite the pressure of work during part of the year and in spite also of some claims that the treaty ports were a social and cultural desert, Shanghai could boast a fair number of clubs and charitable institutions.\n\nBelow I give some elementary details about those that crop up more than once in the biographies.\n\na. British Episcopal Church\n\nThe official Anglican Church was very early established in Shang-hai; in 1847 the first Trinity Church was built, to be replaced by a new one in 1866-1869.\n\nb. Chinese Hospital\n\nFounded in 1846 by the London Missionary Society with non-mission funds; trustees supervised the activities of the hospital, which was for Chinese only.\n\nc. North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS)\n\nOriginated in 1857 as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, renamed the NCBRAS in 1859, temporarily suspended in 1861 to be resuscitated in 1864.\n\nd. Recreation Fund\n\nA fund that was formed in 1863 through the sale of the ground within the second racecourse (to the east of the new one at Bub-bing Well Road). In order to administer this fund a committee was formed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210922, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "256\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nA festival demands she appear in her most precious ornaments and her most attractive gowns. Then there is nothing to do but to confess to her gambling addiction, or, as many did, seek escape from her predicament by suicide through use of “the opium pot or hempen rope.”\n\nThere was, however, a third way out, for according to Dr. Ho Kai \"some tread the path of infamy and dishonour.” adding that \"this may have been done with the connivance of their worst enemies, the gambling agents.\"\n\nAfter paraphrasing the ten suggestions for the suppression of gambling contained in the Chinese petition, he proceeds to remark on the next evil, sly brothels. These were brothels which operated without licence. In those days the Government licensed and inspected houses of prostitution.\n\nWith proper Victorian prudery, he said: \"I feel conscious that this is a subject that requires very delicate handling, and it is on that account and my sense of pain and disgust whenever the subject is approached that I desire to be excused from dwelling upon it at any length.”\n\nDr. Ho Kai advocated severe measures for the suppression of these evils. He proposed as penalties flogging and imprisonment with hard labour. An editorial suggested that Dr. Ho Kai was thus unintentionally advocating class legislation a topic we shall return to in a later article.\n\nWith some irony the editor suggests: “We do not suppose that this Chinese delegate wishes there to be one law in Hongkong for foreigners and another for Chinese; and yet, on the other hand, it seems as if he must have had some such idea, as it is scarcely credible he meant to suggest that foreigners who engaged in gambling should be flogged.\"\n\nThe editor asks Dr. Ho Kai some rhetorical questions: \"Are the gamblers on the Stock Exchange to be flogged and imprisoned with hard labour? Are the whist players in the various clubs and at numerous private houses, and the men who bet a few dollars at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212172, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "91\n\nswallow are quite unalike, as also are the utensils with which they eat. The Chinese like to play mah-jong or poker for high stakes; the foreigners cannot afford it. The wealthy Chinese gentleman as often as not transacts his business in the public bath house; the Club is a foreign institution. As the foreigner everywhere is so outnumbered, to avoid being swamped he has kept his clubs to himself. The Chinese resent this. And, of course, there is the almost insuperable language difficulty; fluency in Chinese requires years of study, years which few foreigners can spare.\n\nIn Nanking these difficulties could be overcome: on the foreign side the community included many officials who had spent a lifetime in China and could speak the language; and on the Chinese side there were many who had studied abroad and got used to foreign ways. Consequently, whereas elsewhere in China entertainment between Chinese and foreigners was generally confined to feasting in Chinese restaurants, here it took place quite often in the intimacy of the home. The advantage to international association was priceless.\n\nThe members of a large German military mission lived in Nanking, helping to train and equip the Chinese armies. Their departure from Europe had pre-dated the extreme Nazi phase, and they were not averse to mixing with the other foreigners. General von Falkenhausen, who commanded the mission, was later to be appointed by Hitler as Governor of occupied Holland. The mission did much to improve the quality of the Chinese troops, though it was often thwarted by the sort of obstruction to which one grows so accustomed in China.\n\nThe German mission, which under Japanese pressure was ordered out of China by Hitler in the autumn of 1938, left an excellent impression. Some officers of the mission were with the Chinese troops who fought against the Japanese at Shanghai, and the later Chinese success at Taierchwang is generally attributed to German advice. To this day the Chinese officers who were associated with the mission or who were taught in its schools, remain Germanophile.\n\nOn the advice of the Germans large areas of the extensive fortified zone round Nanking were placed out of bounds. The restriction, alas, interfered with shooting. On several occasions, when I went out with my dogs, I was politely stopped by a perspiring patrol who, having spotted me from a distant hill or heard my shots, had chased after me", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212204, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "cannibalisation. Until the Japanese advance, in the autumn of 1944, flowed over Hengyang you could see a harlequinade of locomotives there in various states of disintegration. Without these reserves, saved through the foresight of the railway personnel, the Chinese would have found it impossible to maintain the service between Kukong, Hengyang, Kweilin and the west as long as they did.\n\nThere was much activity in the airfields, the civil field over at Wuchang, and the military field near the Race Club behind Hankow. From the latter the Russians were operating light bombers, which would pass over in twos and threes on missions beyond Kiu Kiang; and Russian fighters laid in wait for Japanese raids. As I was riding down the Bund one day in a rickshaw - petrol was scarce and under control - a single Russian bomber flying overhead, for no apparent reason, blew up.\n\nThe foreign married women and children had long since left Hankow. The two faded cabaret dancing-halls prospered even more than usual. Artistes, who spoke Russian with a Harbin accent, so I am told, made lots of hay; but, as will happen when news and women both are short, it was chiefly at the clubs that the men foregathered. It was the fashion to go out to the Race Club of an evening. There on the lawn after sunset you would see the British, the Americans, and the French. Hitler had recently recalled the officers of von Falkenhausen's mission, so that the usual sprinkling of German officers was missing, but occasionally Russian air-force officers came to sit huddled in a group by themselves.\n\nI was able to book a berth on a ship of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company leaving for Kiu Kiang. It is an overnight journey. I do not propose to enlarge on the minor discomforts of travel in China. In the railway carriages, in the ships, and even in the cinemas, the bedbugs and fleas take a long rest during the winter from November to February. It was only June and so I was up on deck soon after dawn to watch the familiar banks go by. As we moved alongside the same old hulk I observed the Kiu Kiang Bund. It had grown shabbier. The process of degeneration, which appears to follow on the withdrawal of the foreigner, was evident. Flaking paint, dirty window panes, broken plaster, left their mark. The Chinese are not good at maintenance, whether it be of houses or machines.\n\nApart from Shanghai, Hankow, and Tientsin, where there were large\n\nIII", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212223, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "142 \n\nnumber of bicycles, and despite having to dismount frequently to cross ditches, alleged to be anti-tank but too narrow to be effective for the purpose, made forty miles in a day along the footpaths amongst the hills. \n\nTens of thousands of coolies were carrying loads over the track from Mirs Bay to the East River: it shewed what a large flow of supplies still entered China from Hongkong despite the Japanese blockade. I even saw the parts of wholly dismantled lorries being carried along, four coolies to each pole on the heavier loads, such as the frame. Unfortunately a cholera epidemic was raging, and the Chinese government appeared to have made no effort to provide medical and sanitary supervision, on what was one of the few remaining routes of entry into China. A plague of flies hovered over the human excreta which defiled the edges of the road along its whole length. Coolies were dying by the dozen. They would collapse by the side of the road and crawl off to expire in the scrub. In places the stench was so strong as to make you retch. On arrival next day at Mirs Bay we were offered tea at the little Chinese customs house, while waiting for the launch. As the bay was entirely inside Hongkong territorial waters, Japanese ships could not enter, and the launches ran twice a day with impunity. \n\nI stepped ashore at Taipo, a village in the New Territory, in time to catch the evening train from Fanling, but I was now feeling ill myself and half wondering whether I too had not caught cholera. I was unable to join the golfing fraternity in the saloon car to listen to the highlights of the day's sport, or to partake of refreshment, and on arrival at the Gloucester I retired to my bed. \n\nThe luxury, however, of a modern hotel soon put me on my legs, and I was further fortified by the comfort of a passage to Shanghai in one of the Canadian-Pacific Company's liners. \n\nIt was November. Many of the younger men had left to join up, either in Malaya or in India, where it was thought their services might prove more useful than in England. Nevertheless with the addition of the people who had been brought in from the outports, there was no shortage of staff in the offices; and the Clubs, if anything, appeared rather crowded. Owing to the stagnation in trade, people had not much to do. Yet managers seemed reluctant to release their young men, too many of whom, as it appeared to me, seemed quite content to stay; while, surprisingly, older middle-aged men were being allowed \n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212225, "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "Under police escort, the Japanese broke through the screens and dashed at the ambulance, which was being brought up behind. They rescued Mr. Hayashi and carried him off in triumph, whereafter the meeting was declared adjourned. Next day the Japanese Consul General called on the Municipal Council to express apologies for the incident. Mr. Hayashi, it was learnt, had been removed to Japan, where he presumably became a national hero. The adjourned meeting was reconvened for a later date, when the proposed motion was carried, under the covering protection of a strong contingent of Japanese Consular police.\n\nThe compromise arrangement, which was also put into effect, placed the affairs of the Municipal Council in the hands of a nominated commission, to be known as the Provisional Council. It consisted of 4 Chinese, 3 Japanese, 3 British, 3 American, 1 German, 1 Dutch, and 1 Swiss. That gave a proportion of 8 Axis versus 8 non-Axis votes. It will be seen the balance depended on the ability of the Dutch and Swiss members to hold out. The Chinese members would inevitably be puppets of the Wang Ching Wei regime, and therefore tools of the Japanese.\n\nWith this little flurry, the tempo of terrorism in the Settlement tended to increase. The British had already withdrawn their contingent of troops to Hongkong, where they were required to strengthen the garrison. There was an argument with the Japanese about whether their troops were to be brought south of the Soochow creek into the centre of the Settlement to man the British sector, or whether the Americans were to be allowed to take it over. In the end a compromise was arrived at and the Shanghai Volunteer Corps took over the sector.\n\nI had been for some time trying to persuade my wife that it was necessary to leave Shanghai; the optimistic atmosphere which the women found amongst their friends in the Clubs and at the bridge tables made the task anything but easy. I think, perhaps, the attack on the Chairman of the Council helped to decide the issue. It was impossible to obtain passages direct to England, but passages could still be obtained on Japanese liners for America, and so my wife, with several other wives, left for San Francisco in a sister ship of the \"Asama Maru\". Owing to blocked currencies, it was not everyone who could afford to send their wives to the U.S.A., but I was fortunate enough to be able to buy sufficient dollar exchange to tide...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213978, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "12\n\nHealth were listed provision & operation of maternity homes, ante- & post-natal clinics and health visiting. Under Education came provision & operation of primary & secondary schools, adult education & evening institutes. Under Welfare were recreational facilities, youth clubs, community centres, sports facilities, public swimming pools, homes for the aged, infants' crêches, refuges for street sleepers, distribution of relief, entertainment (band concerts, Chinese drama & opera), pleasure grounds, playgrounds and bathing beaches. The Miscellaneous category added declaration of one-way streets, parking zones, closing of streets as playgrounds (after consultation with Police), traffic warden services, provision & management of car parks, amenity provision (eg public fountains & tree planting), museums & art galleries, and undertaking of functions (such as collection of water rates & various fees) as agents of the central government.\n\nThis list went much farther in involvement of representative bodies in the affairs which closely and legitimately concerned the ordinary man and woman in the street, as well as extending what was already delegated to the Urban Council into most of the colony's growth areas. Apart from suggesting that the list might be added to in the light of experience, the bold proposition was made that in future no central department should be permitted to establish new local machinery without proving that the activity could not be carried out by a Local Authority. The report stated that it was not envisaged that the new councils should be independent Education Authorities; but it was clearly hoped that in the fullness of time the Education Department would regard local authority schools as a main component of the grant-aided system, and indeed relinquish its own primary schools to the councils. Finally, as a carrot for those in the NT who might be willing to contemplate change, it was pointed out that rural district councils should take over agricultural extension schemes, forestry lots, fish-ponds, local public works (footpaths, bridges, piers etc), local ferries, village layouts & housing schemes, and local water supplies & irrigation.\n\nThis would all have to be paid for. Local authorities should have financial responsibility, including revenue-raising powers. Local accountability to tax-payers and freedom from stifling dependency on central grants (with their inevitable consequential frictions) were essential to success. New structures would increase the administrative costs of the colony overall, and it might well be that some areas would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214196, "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "17\n\nSome Westerners and Hong Kong Chinese will tell you that Chinese humour on the circumscribed Mainland is not subtle. It is too ... and a great deal of it falls flat on the average European. Although 200 Cartoons from China (Xu, 1989) goes down quite well, in the series of four books Selected Jokes from Past Chinese Dynasties only about four per cent of the jokes appeal to the author's sense of humour. An exception is:\n\nA father and son were both fond of the bottle and one night they were both staggering back home. On entering the gate the father said: 'Strange! Why do you have three faces? You look neither like a ghost nor a man. I'll never leave my house to you.' The son replied, 'I don't want such a rickety, revolving house anyway' (1997; vol. 4, joke 86)! To give another example of the more simple humour on the Mainland. The sound 'wok', in Chinese, can mean either a Chinese round-bottom frying pan or 'trouble' or 'problem.' Thus a large trading company with a television 'dish' (wok) on the roof is known in Guangzhou as the ‘Trouble Company.' This more direct form of humour, common in Guangdong, contrasts with the complicated humour which requires a person to use his 'grey matter' more.\n\nFor instance Nury Vittachi, Hong Kong journalist, author and part-time comedian, writes that he believes what he calls 'personality humour' works best with Westerners. In such cases the comic goes into his role and recreates a conversation with his mother-in-law, the taxi driver, or whoever. This does not always work, says Nury, with Asians who prefer more direct, straightforward, 'Man goes into a bar' approach.\n\nBut Hong Kong, as opposed to China, is a relatively small place with western influences. As Harry Wong, the talk-show host and co-median of Metro Broadcasting said: 'In this city-state (Hong Kong) people are short of time. There is a ‘combat' situation and people have a better command of English. Western-style Rotary, Round Table clubs and the like, with their style of humour, are common. Put all this juxtaposition to Chinese humour, including films made in Hong Kong often consisting of vulgar, triad language, and obvious jokes with excessive action, and you have a peculiar mix' (Bolton, 1997; 300). Such exaggeration, found for instance in Chinese films, contrasts with much of the British humour which often relies on understatements. Some", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214419, "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": 277, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "243\n\none so pretty!\" said my friend. \"That's dear,\" I remarked. \"Two shillings,\" she repeated flatly. \"You can't be from here, because you're too white. Where are you from? What's your name?\" probed P., trying to move nearer to her. \"I'm from Macau; my name is Etola,\" she answered in English, slurring over a few syllables as is the Chinese habit. \"Two shillings,\" she added later, after a pause. \"How pretty you are!\" continued my companion. \"Show me your hand, tell me how old you are. Who do you like better: us, the English or the Chinese?\" \"Two shillings,\" She replied. We drew up to the frigate; my companion took her hand, while I was already on the ship's ladder. \"Talk to me, Etola,\" he said to her, holding her hand. She remained silent. \"Tell me what you...\" \"Two shillings,\" she repeated. I with a laugh, and he with a sigh, paid the money and went to our separate cabins.\n\nHere, as in England and in the Cape, we were granted free entry into the club. The club is a type of superlative palace: its founders have spared no expense, to impart to the club the same opulence that is customary in London clubs. A number of big halls with windows facing the bay, a verandah, fireplaces, windows set in marble; bronze and crystal everywhere; excellent mirrors, elegant furniture - everything brought from England. But - alas! The halls remain empty; you'll have trouble attracting the attention of a sleepy Chinese man-servant, and then you'll order dinner and pay three times what it costs right nearby, in the tavern. The club is close to bankruptcy. The Europeans sit in their own corners for the greater part of the day, and in the evening prefer to gather in family circles - and so the club fails. But what a delight it is to relax on that verandah in the early evening, when the cool night air takes the place of the intense heat.\n\nAt six o'clock in the evening the whole population pours out of doors, along the seashore, along the avenue. Officers on foot and on horseback, business men, ladies make their appearance. On a meadow, near the Governor's house, music is playing. Not far from there, on a hill, in a stone house, lives the General commanding the local detachment, and right nearby a building, something like a monastery, houses an Italian bishop with a few monks.\n\nOur people left for Canton, at which time I was lying in a fever and half sleeping heard the launch being lowered. I was awakened by a crash of thunder; a storm had erupted just at the moment of their leaving.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214878, "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": 293, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "263\n\ninterest payable on the principal. This sum, though unstated, is likely to have been one dollar. As indicated above, those members who took loans early paid more interest than those who were prepared to wait. Thus, Yeung Tai would have paid least by waiting longest for his turn to have the use of the principal sum.\n\nAs for place, the participants' varied names suggest a town rather than a village. Since the book in which it was found was bought in Hong Kong, and as the currency used in drawing up the record was in use there, it is very likely that this small group of persons were living and working there.\n\nThere is no mention of the purposes for which men and women clubbed together in this way, but it was usually for small, attainable objects connected with household, economic or religious purposes. Such associations were certainly popular at the time, in town and country alike. It is significant that money loan associations feature in the older Western literature on China, gaining a mention, for instance, in compendia like Dyer-Ball's Things Chinese, first published in 1892. In Hong Kong, defalcations and mismanagement among their members brought many civil cases into the magistrates' courts.\n\nThis particular association, if such it was, was combining for very modest sums. In this regard, it was on a lower level than the money loan associations I reported from the village of Shek Pik on Lantau Island in Vol. 8 (1968) of this Journal; afterwards reproduced with additional material as Chapter 15 of my The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983). The sums borrowed there were larger, since land and houses were available as security for participation, and could be used to guarantee repayment of loans taken. This made them more significant than the smaller associations, more akin to clubs, represented by this scrap of paper.\n\nOther Explanations?\n\n(a) The list represents the outstanding sums owed to a money loan association\n\nDr. Patrick Hase, to whom I sent the draft of this paper, questions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216258, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "ship. His final seagoing appointment was in command of the experimental deep diving ship HMS Reclaim. After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1972, he joined the secretariat staff of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland administering the 1,800 or so Rotary Clubs in GB&I from which he retired as Secretary to the Association in 1996 (michaelgillam@compuserve.com)\n\nJames Hayes, Ph.D., (London), Hon. D.Litt. (Hong Kong), spent his working life as an Administrative Officer in Hong Kong. He is a noted scholar and local historian and has contributed prolifically to the Journal. Among his books are The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Country (Hamden, Archon Books, 1977) and the memoir of his Hong Kong service, Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996). His most recent book, a volume in OUP's Images of Asia series entitled South China Village Culture, was published in 2001. Dr Hayes is a Past-President and former Hon Editor of HKBRAS (mouseh1@bigpond.com).\n\nDavid Mahoney, is an active member of the Friends of HKBRAS. He joined the Crown Lands Office of the Public Works Department, Hong Kong Government, 1964, and moved to Swire Properties in 1973 where he spent the next 20 years looking after Taikoo Shing and Taikoo Place. A keen collector of medals, he has just celebrated 50 years of membership of the Orders & Medals Research Society. Specialising in awards to Britons who served in China, Mr Mahoney addressed HKBRAS on the subject in 2000. Having previously served on the committees of various societies, his only remaining commitment is to the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, an organisation which locates, identifies, records and restores European cemeteries in India, Pakistan and South East Asia (davidwmahoney@aol.com).\n\nLan Li, Ph.D., is an anthropologist working at Queen's University Belfast as a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Anthropological Studies. She also lectures in Chinese Culture and Society at the Institute of LifelongLearning was corrected to Institute of Lifelong Learning. Her research interests are Chinese popular religion, history, politics, and ethnic minorities. She was a co-organiser of the international conference on 'The Career and Legacy of Sir Robert Hart,' which took place in Belfast between 26 and 27 September 2003 (lan.li@gub.ac.uk).\n\nxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]