[
    {
        "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": 208197,
        "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": 236,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "220\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe borrower then pays that amount weekly until his loan is paid off, while the other depositors reduce their weekly payments by the amount of interest. However, their share value remains.\n\nThe bidding occurs at a meeting to which all depositors are invited. If no one bids, the banker finds a single borrower from the list of depositors and the funds are thus dispersed. Borrowers must have another person vouch for their integrity and be considered solvent themselves, but no loans are secured by property or recorded in courthouse files as liens.\n\nAfter the loan is made, regular deposits resume until a new round of bidding occurs. After a period of time agreed to by the group, the \"bank\" stops making loans. After all loans are paid back, the depositors receive their money, and the bank is closed. Then a new one is formed and the process begins again.\n\nIn this system there is no policing as such. The operation is run by a \"banker\" chosen by the organizers. The banker accepts deposits, keeps the books (usually handwritten in Chinese characters), keeps the money in a safe place (invariably cash, never in a regular bank account), dispenses the loans and ultimately pays the depositors.\n\nWhen it came time to close the four banks in late 1976, the money was not there to pay the depositors. The lack of that money, according to those involved, is related to the financial difficulties of [name] one of the bankers and head of the local Chinese Free Masons.....\n\nThis interesting piece was supplied by one of our Members, Captain Charles S. Mill, United States Marine Corps. The account by Eugene Meyer, Washington Post Staff Writer, clearly relates to the traditional Chinese money loan association, not something \"created long ago in this country by enterprising Chinese immigrants\" as Mr. Meyer supposed. Accounts of it as practised in China may be found in J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese, 4th edition, Kelly and Walsh, Hong Kong 1903: 632-645 and as Appendix E to G. N. Orme's Report on the New Territories [of Hong Kong] for the years 1899 to 1912 in Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, 1912.\n\nTWO LETTERS FROM WARTIME CHINA\n\nThe two letters which follow were passed to me by the late Walter Schofield (Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-1938) They are from the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]