[ { "id": 208485, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 209, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n193 \n\nBut in recent months the mud-skis have been used by illegal immigrants, first to help them float across the bay and then to negotiate the mud flats and swamps of the Mai Po marshes. \n\nYesterday Sgt-Major Wilson demonstrated how they were used. \"They can move faster over the mud than a man can run over firm ground,\" said Sergeant Major Chris Wilson yesterday. \n\n\"If it's thick mud the illegals stand on the skis and push with their feet and they can shoot across mud and water at a tremendous speed,\" he said. \n\n\"If they cross thin mud or water they lay down and put out one leg and make a swimming motion and they can travel very fast.” \n\nThe Army Air Corps has adapted one of its Scout helicopters to play a very special role in rescuing refugees from the deep mud and treacherous swamps in the marshes. \n\nThe small helicopters are now equipped with nets and the crews hover over the swamps and drop out the nets to pluck illegal immigrants trapped in the mud to safety.” \n\nReprinted, in part only, from the South China Morning Post, 18 June, 1979 \n\nThis item was brought to my notice by our printer and Honorary Life Member Mr. Y. F. Lam (Hon. Ed.) \n\nTHE SAINTLY GUO (Sheng Gong) \n\nProfessor G. E. Guldin doubtless will be delighted to learn that the cult of Sheng Gong is alive and well and thriving in SE Asia. In his interesting article on Little Fujian in the 1977 Journal (JHKBRAS17(1977); 112-129) he surmised that Hong Kong may have the only Sheng Gong temple left functioning in the world. He will be surprised to hear that although there is only the one temple dedicated to Sheng Gong in Hong Kong, there were at least twelve in Singapore, six in Malaysia (1970) and twenty-seven in Taiwan (1969), all dedicated to this deity. This, of course, does not include the hundreds of images of the Saintly Guo seen in secondary positions in temples throughout SE Asia and Taiwan. More than half of the temples dedicated to Sheng Gong in Taiwan (16 out of 27) are within a thirty-mile radius which includes Tainan, and Kaohsiung South-West Taiwan. Only four are in towns and the remainder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208626, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "56\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nSzeliga and Michael were not tied up, being I supposed considered neutrals. As we were being questioned back and forth—the Japanese being evidently very much puzzled by our motley group—our passports were demanded, and after being examined were thrown on the ground in front of us.\n\nDuring all this questioning the battle was going on, and now and then we heard the whistle of a rifle bullet just over our heads, probably coming from the British defenders on the hill just below the fort (for the Japanese were now concerned with an assault on this last bastion). Also to our left in front of a Chinese house a Japanese field piece was barking intermittently and we could see soldiers keeping in the lee of the walls as they passed by from position to position. Also, as we were being questioned, we saw Lt. Lawrence and his three brother officers who had been with us led past and down a little declivity towards the Convent wall. As he passed Lt. Lawrence whispered: \"I'm sorry for any trouble I've caused you” and disappeared around the corner of the embankment. Shortly after, we heard shouts and screams. The four officers had been untied amid a cordon of fixed bayonets and I distinctly saw one, a young fellow, run toward us, only to have Japanese soldiers point a bayonet at his stomach and the poor fellow turned and ran back, with a look of agony in his eyes. It was all over within a few seconds, and just in front of me I saw a Japanese stoop down, pick up a little grass, and coolly wipe off the point of his bayonet.\n\nLater we learned from Chris Wong, our office clerk, that he and some of our servants had been compelled to dig a trench and bury the bodies of these brave fellows. They also buried other bodies of Canadian and British soldiers who fell on our property. The question in our minds was, were we destined to a like fate? Brother Thaddeus, who knew a little of the Japanese language, heard the soldiers say: \"Kill them! Kill them! They are soldiers in disguise!\" But he did not convey that knowledge to us at the moment.\n\nFinally, after about a half an hour or so, we were ordered to stand up and were led away, this time retracing our own tracks and ending up in a garage at the rear of a Chinese house just below our own hill. Here we were herded like cattle in a pen and once inside, with the sliding doors closed, I think we felt like a herd of cattle. It was intended for two cars, but for some time apparently it had been used merely as a gardener's storehouse, for scattered around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212930, "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-1992", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "224\n\nP'i) mentioned in the main text. Anne Birrell's Chinese Mythology achieves such distinction that we can easily forgive its minor shortcomings. The book is a delight to read and a joy to give to others. I only hope that her editors see fit to issue a paperback version soon. My own hardbound copy is already rather dog-eared.\n\nMICHAEL NYLAN\n\nNOTE\n\nFor example, the apocrypha to the Documents give an amusing explanation of the white fish omen that appeared at the end of the Shang dynasty\n\nFrank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, Harper Collins, 624 + xv pp. Appendices, notes, appendix, maps.\n\nThis review has been excerpted from The New York Review of Books (7 April, 1994) by kind permission of the reviewer, Dr Jonathan Mirsky, who is East Asia Editor of The Times.\n\nThe entire history of Hong Kong, as Frank Welsh shows in his magnificent, much needed, and compendious history of the colony, is filled with misunderstandings and cultural collisions. One hundred and fifty years of muddle and injured pride are what permits Peking's leaders to call Chris Patten, whom they perceive as the point-man for an international conspiracy to overthrow the entire Communist system in China, 'a whore.'\n\nWelsh, a former Hong Kong banker, starts his dense but wittily written history in the early nineteenth century, and just manages to include the accession of Mr Patten in 1992. He refers to Hong Kong as 'that natural child of Victorian Britain and Ch'ing China... a source of embarrassment and annoyance to its progenitors since it first appeared on the international scene in 1842.' More than an annoyance: for the Chinese, Hong Kong has been a perpetual symbol of national humiliation. There are many instances of mutual disregard, which Welsh understandably enjoys and quotes copiously. In 1831, James Matheson, one of the founders of the 'noble house' of Jardine Matheson, the trading firm whose history", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214673, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "52\n\nlooked down its nose at these contests, since contestants would pass a hat round, and Ngau Chi Wan thought this was \"just like begging\". The Hakka villages certainly sang Mountain Songs themselves (Ngau Chi Wan was quite well known for them), but they did not hold formal contests. Sha Po also competed in these contests, as well as Nga Tsin Wai. Mountain Songs were always composed \"in the head\": it was felt to be rather improper to write them down, as spoiling the spontaneity of the form. Because of this, women were as good at singing these songs as men - probably better (certainly better, according to the villagers). Women who were particularly good at singing Mountain Songs improved their marriageability, as they had demonstrated their intelligence and self-confidence, which were qualities admired by the villagers in this period. Probably some of the Wais and Chois who married into Nga Tsin Wai were drawn to their husband's families' attention by their skill at singing these songs.\n\nRecent History of the Area\n\nThe prosperity of Nga Tsin Wai, which was so marked in 1902, slowly dissipated thereafter. From 1912 onwards the village has suffered one disaster after another, until it faded from the early 1940s into today's seedy and run-down condition.\n\nThe first disaster came in and after 1912, with the opening of the first phase of the new motor road around the New Territories. Both the road and the Railway (opened in 1910) ran along the western side of the Kowloon Peninsula, far away from Kowloon City. Within a year or two the Railway took almost all the traffic from the eastern New Territories away from Kowloon City. Villagers stopped carrying their goods over the mountain passes to Kowloon City, but instead carried them by rail to Yaumatei. The Sha Tin villagers had always traditionally shopped at Kowloon City; now they often went to Yaumatei. The shops in Kowloon City lost half their business: the Market went into a major depression. At the same time, the vegetable buyers for the City found that it was easier and cheaper to buy vegetables by the truckload from Yuen Long than by the sampan-load from Kowloon City. In Yuen Long there were many large farms which could sell in bulk: in the Nga Tsin Wai area the farmers were all small-scale, the buyers from the City had to buy from intermediate wholesalers in the Kowloon City Market, which raised the costs when compared with buying in Yuen Long. If in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215254, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Appendix\n\nDate Visits 2001\n\nSat April 28th: Sam Tung Uk Museum and Hoi Pa led by Valery Garrett\n\nSat 26th May: Mount Davis and Pinewood Batteries led by Tim Ko.\n\nSat 18th Aug: Preview of Hong Kong Museum of History led by Dr Joseph Ting.\n\nSat 15th Sept: Tour of the new Central Library in Causeway Bay led by Julia Chan and Dr Pat Hase (two visits)\n\nSat Sept 22nd: Private View - Chinese Textiles given by Valery Garrett and Chris Hall.\n\nFri Sept 28th to Wed Oct 3rd: Korean Palaces in Seoul led by Dr Pat Hase.\n\n2002\n\nSat 10th Nov: Visit to Dolphins led by Lindsay Porter.\n\n8-19th Feb 2002: Bhutan, led by Dr Brian Shaw.\n\nSat Feb 23rd: Guided tour of the Cultural Relics of the Great Wall Exhibition at the HKMH led by Dr Joseph Ting\n\nxxviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215725, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey - Visiting St. John's Island\n\nDan Waters - Projects and enquiries ........\n\n435\n\n449\n\nDan Waters - Yet more thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing: Conduit Road and its environs\n\n453\n\nJohn Wilson - A poem from the HKBRAS visit to East Bhutan, February 2003......\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n459\n\nPeter Halliday - Voices from the past: Hong Kong, 1842-1918 (Solomon Bard)\n\n467\n\nPeter Halliday - The development of education in Hong Kong, 1841-1897 (Gillian Bickley)\n\n468\n\nPatrick Hase - The fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation (Philip Snow)\n\n472\n\nJames Hayes - From rice to riches: A personal journey through a changing China (Jane Hutcheon)....\n\n474\n\nXV", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]