[ { "id": 206264, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n75\n\nBy the 1860s a clearly defined élite group had established itself, providing leadership for the Chinese community.\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to document the conditions from which an identifiable élite group arose in Hong Kong and to illustrate this emergence by biographies of some of its members.\n\nSOURCES FOR THE STUDY\n\nWhat sources were used to determine the Chinese élite for the period covered by this study? The most important are the names given on memorials, petitions, and subscription lists. The repetition of a name on subsequent lists, the amount of the contributions, and the position of the name on the document serve to suggest the relative status of an individual. Proprietorship of land also suggests potential élite status.\n\n(1) The earliest such document used is a list of land owners dated 19 February, 1848, in which they petition for the remission of what they considered excessive crown rent charges. There are twenty-seven signatures of the principal Chinese landowners. This document is in the Colonial Office Records, Series CO129/23.\n\n(2) In September 1852, The China Mail published the subscription list for the Chinese Hospital proposed by Dr. Hirschberg of the London Missionary Society. This also contains twenty-seven names. Of these, ten were compradores, seven shopkeepers, three merchants, three contractors, and one \"gentleman\". Only three names that were on the 1848 list appear on this list: Loo Aqui, gentleman, Tam Achoy, building contractor, and Chow Aqui, merchant.\n\n(3) On 4 November 1856, a memorial concerning a recent piece of legislation was presented to Government. It contained both European and Chinese names. Nineteen Chinese signed. It is in the Colonial Office Records, Series CO131/3.\n\n(4) In 1859 the Government Gazette published a \"List of Chinese Voluntary Contributions to a Fund for purchasing books, etc., for the Government Schools in the Colony\". Most of the contributions were made in the name of business firms, but all of the largest amounts were contributed by individuals. The two largest contributors were both contractors; Tang Luk gave $60,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206271, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "82 \n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\ncollecting rent on over a hundred shops and houses. But in 1855, he was declared bankrupt. He had stood security for the administration of the estate of the Chinese merchant Chinam; the administrator had misused the property of the estate, and Loo Aqui had to pay up, throwing him into insolvency. However, anticipating this, he had previously transferred most of his property to his relatives. After his bankruptcy, he no longer appears as a public figure, although two near relatives, perhaps his sons, Loo Shing and Loo Chew (or as he is sometimes called \"Young Qui\") are on several of the later lists we have used to determine elite status. One of Loo Chew's sons was compradore for David Sassoon, Sons and Company in the 1870s; another son, Loo Kum Chun, in 1872 was Secretary to the Tung Wah Hospital.\n\nThe family of Loo Aqui was from Whampoa, and they were most likely Tanka or boat people. The Rev. Karl Gutzlaff, Chinese Secretary to the Superintendent of Trade, reports that \"the most numerous class who have, since our arrival, fixed themselves on the island, are from Whampoa; many of them are of the worst characters, and ready to commit any atrocity\".9 They had defied the Mandarins' edicts prohibiting Chinese citizens from supplying provisions or other services to the British forces. However, it is not surprising they seized the opportunity to make a quick profit by collaborating with the enemy. They were a secondary caste within the Chinese social structure and were deprived of certain rights. As boat people, they had had a long association with foreign shipping. In recognition of their valuable services to the British, they, along with others, were allotted land in the new town. The Tanka, on leaving their boats for land, soon put aside their distinctiveness and merged with the general population, though they long maintained control of trade in cattle, fish, and prostitutes.10\n\nHong Kong government authorities were much concerned in the first ten years of the Colony's existence about the type of Chinese who came here. Conditions were not conducive to attract substantial Chinese of respectable background, who could strengthen Hong Kong's economy by promoting local and south-east Asian trade in Chinese products. There had been some optimists who believed that the Chinese would welcome the opportunity to live and trade under an \"enlightened, benevolent government\", but they had underestimated traditional Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206302, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n113\n\ncorporated as a more integral part of government, and its members may be regarded in many ways as the élite of the élite. But these developments are beyond the time limit set for this particular study.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See the studies by Chung-li Chang, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seattle, 1926) and The Chinese Gentry: Studies in their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society (Seattle, 1955) and by Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York, 1964).\n\n2 The South China Morning Post, 12 July 1933, in column \"Old Hong Kong\".\n\n3 Colonial Office Records (hereafter given as C.O.), Series 129-12.\n\n4 The Friend of China, 6 Nov. 1861.\n\n5 George Smith, The Consular Cities of China (London, 1847), p. 82.\n\n6 Yen-p'ing Hao, The Compradore in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 195. I have not been able to check the sources he cites.\n\n7 These were Loo King A owner of I.L. 99, LL.102, I.L. 103; Lo Lye or Alloy A owner of M.L. 16 C., M.L. 19; Loo Foon owner of M.L. 16 D.; Loo Sing A owner of M.L. 17 C.; Loo Chuen alias Loo Chew alias Young Aqui alias Loo Choo Tung owner of M.L. 16 A., M.L. 28 A., M.L. 35 A. The family lived in Aqui's Lane, or as it is now known Kwai Wa Lane† running from Hillier to Cleverly Street and lying between Queens Road and Jervois Street. Here in 1872 lived Loo Wan Kew, Loo Yum Shing, compradore of D. Sassoon, Sons and Co., and Loo Achew.\n\n8 The China Review, Vol. 1 (1872), p. 333, \"The Districts of Hong Kong and the Name Kwan-Tai-Lo\". This source also confirms the deleterious effect of Aqui's activities in Hong Kong: \"In 1843, when there were but few merchants or shop keepers, one Sz-man-king, unto whom those who were in distress, in debt, or discontented, resorted, opened a place for gambling along Chung Wan to which all among the fishing-boat people, who loved gambling, came.\"\n\n9 Quoted by R. M. Martin in his report, 24 July 1844, in G. B. Endacott, An Eastern Entrepot (London, 1964), p. 97.\n\n10 E. J. Eitel, Europe in China (Hong Kong, 1895), pp. 168-169.\n\n11 Endacott, op. cit., pp. 96-98.\n\n12 Ibid., p. 107.\n\n13 Ibid., p. 96.\n\n14 A Singapore house was a pre-cut timber house ready for assembling imported from Singapore. At the time of the gold-rush in California, a similar type house was shipped from Hong Kong to San Francisco in large numbers. The trade enriched a number of Hong Kong carpenters.\n\n15 C.O. Series 129-12, No. 97, 10 July, 1845.\n\n16 C.O. Series 129-7, 23 July, 1844.\n\n17 C.O. Series 129-3, Treasurer's Report 1847.\n\n18 The Friend of China, 5 Jan., 1856.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206611, "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-1972", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n153\n\nto themselves, in the case of Le, interest at 4% on the principal sum of $2,400 (the figure given in the deal between Ying and Le) and, in the case of Chow, at 4% on the sum of $1,000. All disbursements were to be met by them and any balance after all these purposes had been satisfied was to be put to reducing the principal outstanding to them. Once the capital sums were repaid, then the property was to be reconveyed to Hwei Afoon for a nominal $5.\n\nThus, by mid-1847, four different people had different interests in the market. There remains one other who so far has not yet appeared on the scene.\n\nHwei Afoon was a builder and contracted with the Government for some work on Government property at Stanley (Chek Chu). He completed the work and received an order for payment drawn on the Treasury. When he went to the Treasury to collect his money, the Treasury Compradore (Chow Aoan) told him that he would deduct $750 which was owing to Colonel Caine's Compradore (named Lo Een-teen) in respect of the Market. Afoon knew that his brother, Hwei Aqui, had agreed, in consideration of influence being exerted on his behalf to secure the lease of the Market, to make a payment of $150 per month to Lo Een-teen and also to allow him to select meat and produce in the Market without payment. The point was that Lo represented that he could persuade his master, Caine, then the Colonial Secretary, to give the lease to Hwei; apparently made these payments and after his death Afoon paid $400 to have the lease transferred to him but demurred at the payment of $150 per month, considering no doubt that there was little that Lo could do about it if he did not pay. But he was reckoning without Chow Aoan who attempted to dock the arrears of 'squeeze' unpaid by Afoon.\n\nThe arrangement of 28 June 1847 may have been an attempt by the parties to reach an 'honourable' solution. But matters did not stop there for Afoon unadvisedly went to the Surveyor General's Office to complain that he was not receiving all the money due to him under his Government contract and, no doubt, explained why. He told his story to William Tarrant, the Clerk of Deeds and general factotum in the office of the Surveyor General.\n\nTarrant had had a mixed career since arriving in China a few years previously. He had first come as a steward on board ship and, on the establishment of the colony, was able to secure the position of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206615, "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-1972", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n157\n\npay during his suspension to the date at which his post was abolished, but he could do no more. The injustice was acknowledged but, as the Friend of China put it, it was \"but miserable redress in a pecuniary light.\"32\n\nTarrant's connection with the Central Market ceased on 28 December 1849 when he assigned his quarter share of the profits to Chow Aqui, one of Hong Kong's biggest Chinese businessmen at that time.33 Chow had extensive property interests in the Lower Bazaar area, had run Hong Kong's first theatre and had had the opium monopoly for a few years. Curiously enough, allegations had been made a few years previously that he was able to use Government police officers to protect his monopoly and Caine was inevitably linked with the allegation. The lease of the Market came to an end in 1850, the term being expired but Chow was given a renewal for two years from 10 March 1851 at the same rent and the lease was further renewed on two subsequent occasions.35\n\n16\n\nThis account illustrates two quite diverse matters. First, it shows the extent to which Chinese in Hong Kong adapted themselves to the institutional demands of a British colony. Although the whole system of law was alien to them, the transactions memorialised in the Land Office show the extent to which the possibilities of English Law were utilised to their commercial advantage, even though on some occasions it is difficult to follow at this remove the complexity of their dealings. If they did sometimes find themselves on the losing side in the Supreme Court, there were a significant number of Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong itself whose names recur over the years and who were, presumably, successful. Several have been named in this article but there were perhaps about a dozen or so in this category.* They, in addition to the Europeans, learnt to take advantage of the British system.\n\n37\n\nThis account also touches on the problem of the integrity of the colonial Government of the time. While it is true that the Chinese who came to the island may not have expected what the European would have regarded as an incorrupt government, it is also true that the circumstances of the colony in its early days gave opportunities for corruption which some were not slow to use. Though there was little at this time or later that could definitely be proved against\n\n* On this subject see Rev. Carl T. Smith's article \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" at pp. 74-115 of the 1971 Journal. (Ed).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 } ]