[ { "id": 204914, "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-1965", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY\n\n17\n\nLocal legend and history had it that there was another rock carving in the valley. A search on the west side of the valley was unrewarding and it was assumed that if it originally was there it had been obliterated by weathering and erosion. During Christmas 1962 the spur in the middle of the valley, at about 400 feet, was explored. On a prominent rock the second carving was found.\n\nIn 1961 the Team's attention was called to rings of large stone boulders on hill spurs at Tai Po (above the Chinese University) and at Lo Ah Tsai, Lamma Island (1).\n\nThese new discoveries offer a new field of archaeological research. With the aid of air photography other such remains will almost certainly be found. While the largest stones in the rings cannot compare in size with those at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, England, they might very well be established as prehistoric stone circles comparable in age.\n\nMuch has been written on our archaeology over the last fifty years, and for the convenience of those interested in the subject, a fairly complete bibliography is added to this note. It will also help to refute that loosely used phrase that \"Hong Kong is a cultural wilderness”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206539, "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n81\n\n21 'Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 32 of 1899, p. 13.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 36.\n\n23 Ibid., p. 65.\n\n24 Ibid., p. 69.\n\n25 'Report on the New Territory during the first year of British Administration', Sessional Papers, no. 15 of 1900, p. 252.\n\n26 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901', Sessional Papers, no. 22 of 1902, p. 4.\n\n27 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921.\n\n28 Alfred Hancock and his brother Sydney were partners in the firm of A. and S. Hancock of Queen's Road, Hong Kong. In 1906 Alfred Hancock had resided for over fifty years in Amoy and Hong Kong. In the 1920s the firm had moved to Des Voeux Road and the chief partner was H. R. B. Hancock, Lockhart's brother-in-law. The firm was still active in 1940.\n\n29 The walled city of Weihaiwei, captured by the Japanese in 1894, by the terms of the 1898 Convention was not under British jurisdiction but nominally under a Chinese sub-district deputy magistrate. The British sphere of influence extended for an area of 1,500 square miles east of the Leased Territory.\n\n30 On the Chinese Regiment see: Captain A. A. S. Barnes, On Active Service with the Chinese Regiment, London, 1902; C. E. Bruce-Mitford, The Territory of Wei-Hai-Wei, Shanghai, 1902, pp. 22-24; R. F. Johnston, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, London, 1910, pp. 82-3; and Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1906. The only servicemen left in Weihaiwei after 1906 were the small body of Royal Marines of the Island Guard,\n\n31 Johnston, op. cit., p. 82.\n\n32 L. K. Young, British Policy in China 1895-1902, London, 1970, p. 73.\n\n33 Johnston, op. cit., p. 80.\n\n34 The Weihaiwei School was opened with only four pupils in 1901 by a Mr. H. J. L. Beer. In 1903 a new school house was built near Port Edward, partly with the aid of a debenture loan subscribed by British subjects in Shanghai. The new school had dormitories for forty boys. The school, which took boys between ages of 8 to 14, was mainly for the sons of British expatriates. Pupils came from places as far apart as Mukden, Canton, Kobe, and Chungking. The school closed in 1925 when it became apparent that the rendition of Weihaiwei was close at hand. Weihaiwei's fine climate contributed to the school's success with expatriate parents.\n\n35 Johnston, op. cit., p. 96.\n\n36 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, K.C.M.G. (1874-1938). Johnston was educated at Edinburgh University and Oxford. He arrived in Hong Kong as an Eastern Cadet, fresh from Magdalen, on Christmas Day, 1898. In 1904, Robert Walter, Secretary to Government and Magistrate at Weihaiwei, was seconded for service as Emigration Agent at Ch'iu-wang-tao for the Transvaal Government and Johnston was appointed to take his place. In 1906 he was appointed District Officer and Magistrate and resided in the heart of the Territory. In 1919 when he took up his appointment as tutor he was Senior District Officer. In 1927 he returned to Weihaiwei as Commissioner. After the rendition of Weihaiwei in 1930 he became Professor of Chinese, University of London, and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Studies, 1931-37.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207013, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "78\n\nROBIN MCLACHLAN\n\nIt may not have been Orlando's intention to alarm the gentler members of his family, but the receipt of such accounts must have been the occasion for much apprehension for his safety and well-being. In October, he wrote from the island of Chusan where, he told his sister, there was the danger of being kidnapped by the \"dreadfully treacherous\" Chinese.\n\nYesterday, Shadwell had a most narrow escape of being kidnapped. Since the peace we have been perhaps rather incautious in walking too far into the country, and almost unarmed, but now we have had a warning. Shadwell was walking in the country with Cap. Wellsley and after about getting five miles they returned, when within three quarters of a mile of the city they were suddenly attacked by about ten men from behind. Shadwell was pinioned and gagged and Wellsley after breaking one man's head with his stick, saw there was no chance against so many and having also broken his stick, took to his heels and alarmed the guard, but he had to run a mile.5\n\nIn the meantime, Shadwell was trussed up by his Chinese captors, who were already dragging him off when the guard arrived on the scene and rescued him from an unpleasant fate.\n\nBut such danger and excitement were rare during Orlando's stay in China; more common were his complaints of boredom and homesickness. Within weeks of arriving in China, he confessed a longing for home with the lament:\n\nOh for the joys of England again, all those joys, alas so long vanished, and with so small a chance of seeing them again for a long time, ... I would rather break stones by the roadside in England than undergo what I have done since I have been in the East.6\n\nBy Christmas, he was not only homesick for England, and an English Christmas (\"There is no place like England for it.\"), but quite bored with life in China.\n\nMonotony generally makes time fly very quickly, but I do not ever remember anything so tedious as the time has been since my embarkation.7\n\n5 The two persons mentioned in the letter were brother officers of the 98th.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207457, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n217\n\nwe had sudden night checks which would be carried out about midnight or one a.m.\n\nOne of the most disagreeable tasks in the hospital was that of the washing squad. We had to have a system of washing bed linen for those unfit to wash their own sheets. Most of the work was carried out on badly stained sheets which had come from the dysentery wards and which had to be washed in cold water. The four men under Corporal R. Thompson R.A.M.C. who did this work deserve unstinted praise, but it was not until December that I was able to buy a pair of rubber boots for the washing squad.\n\nIn the same month Seino gave me 25 grammes of nicotinic acid and all Canadians received ten yen each from home,\n\nPatients and staff decorated the wards at Christmas time and it was remarkable what a gay effect was produced by the bright colours of a few empty cigarette packets. We had a little extra for Christmas dinner carefully hoarded for many weeks beforehand. We even had a concert on Hogmanay but I was glad to reach the end of 1942.\n\n1943\n\nThirty years after the event it is possible to look back and see that 1943 was the turning point for the better in the affairs of the hospital and its inmates. It was less easy to discern this at the time.\n\nWe had known of the naval battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway in June 1942. They were fought over four thousand miles from Hong Kong and seemed remote to us. The Japanese accounts claimed them as decisive victories, and it was not till the history of the campaigns became available long after the war that I saw these battles clearly as having imposed the first check on the Japanese advance in the Pacific. It would have been immensely encouraging to have known this at the time.\n\nIn 1943 we knew of the Russian successful defence of Stalingrad, we knew of the victory in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini. The placenames on the Russian front showed how that terrible campaign was going. We knew of the island battles in the Pacific; we knew of Guadalcanal; but all the Far East news published in the Hongkong News was presented to show the huge losses inflicted on the Americans by the Japanese defenders of positions which in the end remained safely in their hands. The impression conveyed was one of enormous American losses from\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207483, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n243\n\nRed Cross X-ray films but by then we had no developer. We were very glad to receive from the Japanese some bars of coarse washing soap which we badly needed. We were also given 200 envelopes of tooth powder, some material for sewing and for boot repairs and some drugs including T.A.B. for inoculations.\n\nIn January 1945 we had to render yet another list of patients suffering from serious visual defects, arranged by nationalities, and this list recorded a total of 65. No mail had come in for some time but some did arrive on 18 and 19 January, my latest letter from home being dated August 1944. Christmas and New Year messages were delivered to us from Red Cross Societies in many of the allied countries.\n\nThe month however was dominated by American air attacks on Hong Kong. By 8 January we had had 17 air alerts without a raid and on 15 January we had a two-hour raid. On 16 January occurred the most spectacular and effective of all our raids. It began about 8 a.m., went on till noon, was resumed during the afternoon and continued until dark. The all-clear was sounded at 9:30 p.m. During raids, all movement in the hospital was prohibited but we had to go out of doors to reach our kitchen and as the morning went on, I went out myself, as of course there was no interpreter about and by signs got the agreement of the guard to draw breakfast, which we eventually got about 11 a.m. It was 2 p.m. before we got dinner and not till after 6 o'clock was it possible to draw tea. All bearers of food had to hasten to get under cover with the greatest possible despatch.\n\nIn the hospital, Japanese standing orders were to keep all shutters closed during raids or run the risk of being shot at. My little bunk in a converted lavatory overlooked the harbour and it was not difficult to open a shutter far enough to get glimpses of what was going on. Three large Japanese cargo ships were anchored in the harbour and the American air attack was pressed by dive-bombing through very heavy fire in the most courageous fashion. At times the whole atmosphere seemed full of the sound of sustained gunfire and bomb explosions and the amount of ammunition used in the defence must have made a serious inroad on Japanese stocks. I did not see any aircraft brought down though there must have been casualties, but at the end of the day three cargo ships were badly listing and clearly unseaworthy for a long time to come. Fires were left burning in oil storage tanks on Stonecutters Island and elsewhere, and this day was to us a most impressive...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208620, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "50\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nthey were friends or foes. There were a great many Canadian soldiers at Stanley; they arrived in Hong Kong just prior to the outbreak of hostilities, and we felt sorry for them as they seemed to have had very little training or direction. Of what was happening in Hong Kong during these latter days we knew nothing, but one thing was certain: the Japanese were on the Island and were converging on Stanley.\n\nThe twenty-fourth dawned bright and early and we began another and most anxious day. As the upper chapel was now in the line of fire, we moved the portable altars out into the first and second floor corridors away from exposed windows, and thus prepared for the Birth of the King of Peace. Apart from this there was nary a bit of decoration or sign of the approaching Feast, which always means so much to us. On the Eve of Christmas, after our usual repast of rice, soya beans and vegetables, we tried to recreate in our candlelit refectory, but soon our recreation was rudely interrupted by the sharp rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire which seemed rather close. Outside the night was black, but it was not long before Stanley was lit up with a constant stream of tracer bullets criss-crossing each other. The Japanese were coming down the hills from the north and west and the British, comprising Regulars, Canadians, Volunteers and prison guards began defending the Stanley peninsula and the approaches to the Prison and the Fort. There was not much possibility of sleep under these conditions, but we went to our rooms and kept under cover as much as possible. Those whose rooms were on the north side of the building hastily picked up their mattresses and doubled up with their confreres on the south side, putting their mattresses on the floor, in the least exposed corner of the room while a few hardier ones tried to sleep in their beds. Needless to say there was not much sleep that night, for the battle raged incessantly throughout the night and the rat-a-tat of the machine guns and the desultory boom of the trench mortars kept up without respite. Those who ventured to look out from the south verandah on what was ordinarily a peaceful scene, now beheld nothing but the flash of mobile field guns as they belched forth their deadly missiles, the criss-crossing of tracer bullets which made one think of the aerial fireworks on a Fourth of July, only on a more grandiose scale, and over all the inky blackness. During the course of the engagement one could readily pick out a machine gun", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209780, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "17\n\nSt. Mary's Anglican Church is at the junction of Tai Hang Road and Eastern Hospital Road. The congregation began in the chapel of the Eyre Diocesan Refuge for destitute women in 1912. In 1914 the Refuge was moved to Kowloon, but Anglicans in the east part of Hong Kong continued to meet there for worship. A vestry was formed in 1920 and plans were discussed for a new building. It was not until 1930, however, that a large fund-raising plan was undertaken. Finally, on 12 July 1936, ground was broken for a new church. It was officially opened on Christmas Eve 1937. In 1954 another building containing offices, kindergarten and vicarage was completed, and in 1958 the foundation stone for the Primary School was laid.\n\nFarther along Eastern Hospital Road is the Shing Kwong Church of the Church of Christ in China. This congregation considers itself the successor to a chapel built by the London Missionary Society in Tai Ping Shan in the 1860's. The chapel building was demolished at the time of the clearance of the Tai Ping Shan area at the turn of the century. Tai Ping Shan had been the breeding ground for the bubonic plague. With the money received in compensation for their land and building, the London Mission bought a new site on Yee Woh Street at Tung Lo Wan in 1898. The Mission had for some time been conducting services for workers at the nearby China Sugar Refinery. At the new site, schools were opened for boys and girls. The congregation became fully independent in 1922. With the widening of Yee Woh Street it became necessary for the congregation to move. In 1926 they exchanged the Yee Woh Street site for Inland Lot 2550 at So Kon Po. They occupied their new building in the summer of 1927. At that time the congregation adopted the name \"Shing Kwong\".\n\nThe number of institutions in the valley associated directly or indirectly with different religions is striking: Confucian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Jewish (indirectly, in the name of Ellis Kadoorie), and the former presence of the Japanese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211424, "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-1988", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "116\n\nhad to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then.\n\nIn a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote:\n\n\"My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine.\n\nNow I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211688, "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-1989", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "78\n\nextensively damaged; and close range fighting never actually reached us. The Japanese (as we discovered later) never actually located the two field gun batteries though they could tell their approximate position. They also seemed to suspect that something was concealed in the woods running down the valley from the Peak to Pokfulam, so this area was fairly intensively searched. So there was a rain of trench mortar and field gun shells and of air bombs (both high explosive and incendiary) all round us, and sufficient direct hits on the block of flats itself as well as near misses to make things unpleasant.\n\nThe Japanese landed on the Island on December 18th-19th and we had hardly absorbed this unpleasant information when we learnt that they had already crossed the hills and were in Aberdeen and Repulse Bay, thus cutting the island in two. On the morning of Christmas Day the Police sent round an urgent warning that the situation on the Peak was critical and that everyone who could move should go down the hill. Mrs. Witham and her baby got a lift in what must have been the last car to get through but there was no room for my wife and myself, and as we could not walk we had to stay where we were. Our fellow evacuees struggled down to Pokfulam and the servants disappeared so we were left alone in the flat. Our situation was, however, not so bad as it sounds, as there was a Police post in the same block of flats and the Police were very helpful during the following days in getting food and water for us. Hongkong surrendered on Christmas afternoon and the fighting, so far as we saw it, ended with a heavy burst of fire about 5 p.m. from one of our own anti-aircraft guns posted on one of the adjacent islands which was in Japanese hands.\n\nThe troops in our neighbourhood gradually collected, firing off their ammunition, blowing up batteries and dumps and making bonfires of stores. There were so many stores that if we had been mobile my wife and I could have provisioned ourselves comfortably. Even as it was, we got some tins of biscuits, jam and other odds and ends which came in very useful during the next fortnight. The troops were marched off to internment next morning but it was not until late that evening that we saw our first Japanese, when a Gendarmerie post was established in a nearby building. There followed a very disagreeable period. Though the Japanese established Gendarmerie posts here and there they seemed to make no serious effort to patrol the Peak area effectively, and it was in consequence being very thoroughly looted by bands of Chinese. The Japanese themselves were also very troublesome. Though the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211889, "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-1989", "page_number": 304, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "279\n\nsome hopes of Capt Moate, for it is possible to talk to him, and we have had some very serious conversations together on religious subjects; and he has even read his Bible occasionally; but he still swears dreadfully when he is talking to any of the rest.\n\nMy clothes have lasted out well; especially the shirts, which I have saved by using the \"flannel ones\". I intend to do a small \"dab\" of washing on my own account this week, that I may have less to have done when I get to Hong Kong.\n\nWe ought to sight Christmas Island on Friday, and with a good strong wind I have no doubt but that we shall do so. I intend to write another letter to send you from Batavia, because it is only a quarter ounce I can send for you to get it soon. I often trouble myself to think how disappointed you are not to have heard from me before, but of course it is not my fault. I dare say this yarn will stretch out long enough before I get to China to last you several hours reading it through.\n\nTuesday, June 18th\n\nToday has occurred the only event of the least importance for a very long time. About ten o'clock we spied a sail in sight and at noon the ship came up with us. She was a whaler about half the size of our ship. She lay to for us to come up, and then sent off a boat, supposing from our shattered appearance we were in distress. The whaler was from New Bedford, United States, and her name was The Congress. The boat was soon alongside, pulled by six stout strapping Yankees. The captain, a very gentlemanly fellow in every respect but dress, came aboard, and had a good yarn with our \"skipper\". To hear the fellows talk was quite amusing to me. They have all such a nasal twang that when I heard one speak I went and looked over the side, expecting to see \"old Bobby\" there, for I never heard anything more like his \"cackle\".\n\nThey had been out nearly two and a half years, and had only taken 800 barrels of oil. There are four men continually at the mast heads, on the lookout for whales, and in the distance you may imagine how very small they appeared to be. They will make about a four years cruise of it before they return to their home. What a life it must be, to stay on the water so long, and in such dangerous employment. They had eight harpoons in the boat which came off; and the boat seemed to fly over the water.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212220, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "139\n\nI was in Ningpo when the announcement of the closing of the Burma road was received. It was a severe blow for the Chinese, but I think they appreciated the difficulties of Britain's position and that she had only been compelled by the force of circumstances to accede to the Japanese demand. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and courtesy shown to me by the merchants and officials whom I met.\n\nNingpo was one of the first five treaty ports, opened to trade in 1842. Early promises had not been fulfilled, and the port, overshadowed by Shanghai, had remained small. Off the mouth of the Ningpo river on the largest island of the Chusan archipelago lay the walled city of Tinghai, occupied by British troops twice for a space of several years between 1840 and 1860. Tinghai at one time was designated, instead of Hongkong, as the place to be ceded to Britain for the repair of vessels. It looks a healthy enough place, built up the slopes of a high hill, yet the troops suffered much from sickness and the stones in the graveyard bear witness to the numbers buried there. The garrison imported some turkeys, to provide variety for the larder. The British troops have long since left, but the climate was favourable to turkeys, and now large flocks descended from the original birds are bred to supply the Christmas market in Shanghai.\n\nIn Ningpo, the graveyard contains the stone monument, first erected outside the East gate of the city, to commemorate the assistance given by Captain Roderick Dew, R.N., and Lieutenant Kenny of the French Navy and their respective ships' companies, in 1862, to the Imperial Chinese troops in expelling the Taiping rebels from the town. It was nearby that the American General Ward, Gordon's predecessor in command of the Ever Victorious army, was killed. But times change. To Dr. Sun Yat Sen and the Kuo Min Tang the Taiping rebels are the glorious forerunners of their own revolution, and it is doubtful whether General Gordon, or the British, are given any credit for having assisted the Imperial Government to quell the rebellion.\n\nThe country round the little Ningpo plain is very beautiful. In previous winters I used to shoot on the shallow lakes which lay amongst the hills to the west. Most sportsmen waited to go after the early morning and evening flights of duck, but I preferred to work along the edge of the hills with my dog for the occasional pheasant. They were not so numerous here as amongst the reedbeds of the Yangtze. Beyond the lakes, the deep waters of Nimrod Sound were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212385, "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": 327, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "304\n\nShe first arrived in Hong Kong in May 1857 under the agency of Dent & Co, one of the major trading companies in the rapidly expanding colony. For the next three years the Norna carried general cargo along the China coast between Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports.\n\nIn 1860 Dent & Co. decided to move her to the more profitable tea trade route to Australia. The Norna, under the command of Captain Wilson, received orders to make sail for Foo Chow, load her cargo of tea and proceed to Sydney. For crew, Wilson had eight Europeans and twenty lascars. As was not uncommon at the time, he also took along his wife and young son.\n\nOn the 27th September 1860 the Norna, loaded with tea chests, made her way down the Min River and headed south for Australia where she arrived two days before Christmas. Within two weeks the Norna had completed unloading and sailed in ballast the short distance up the coast to Newcastle. Here she took on coal for delivery to Hong Kong.\n\nOn the 3rd March the Norna had taken on over 400 tons of her cargo and put to sea for the return passage to Hong Kong. Lying in her path in the Western Pacific, just north of the equator, were the Caroline Islands. This group of islands stretch for about 2,000 miles east/west between Palau and Ponape (Pohnpei) and consist of about 560 coral islands, islets and atolls, the majority uninhabited.\n\nAs the evening closed in on the 31st March 1861, the wind had increased to a strong breeze and the Norna was sailing at a steady 10 knots on a west nor'west course. Unknown to Wilson, he had his bows pointed directly at the coral-rimmed Oroluk Lagoon. Somehow his precise navigation had failed him.\n\nAt 2200 hours that night, the Norna struck hard and remained held fast in the coral, her timbers splintered and beyond repair. The following morning Wilson established that the atoll was about 15 miles in diameter with the small half-square-mile island of St Augustine 12 miles to their north-west.\n\nThe crew worked feverishly around the wreck for a week to salvage what they could, and in the three ship's boats rowed across the lagoon to the uninhabited St Augustine island. After ten days", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212456, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 10, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "Mr. David Sheil Mr. Michael Kirkbride Mr. Yip Cho-hong\n\nMr. Philip Bruce (twice)\n\nand Mr. David Mahoney\n\nDr. James Hayes Mr. K. Leung\n\nMr. Tao Ho\n\nMr. Charles Walker\n\nTibetan Rugs\n\nHong Kong: a Landscape History Preparing for the Future: Our First\n\n15 years in the Antiquities Office Second to None: The Hong Kong Volunteers and the Battle of Hong Kong\n\nTsuen Wan: 1887 to 1987\n\nCivilians Under Japanese\n\nOccupation\n\nWestern Market\n\nEric Lidell\n\nThere have also been the following trips/tours over the last year since I last reported. Dr. Patrick Hase and Dr. Graeme Lang organised a trip to Wong Tai Sin, and three visits have been organised by Mr. Philip Bruce namely the Bogue Forts in the Pearl river Delta, the Colonial Cemetery and Chek Lap Kok in conjunction with Mr. Bill Meacham (again and probably the last), Mr. John Wilson organised a trip to the Shing Mun Redoubt in keeping again with the Society's sights on the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Hong Kong. Dr Patrick Hase and Mr. Philip Bruce did not also forget to look after our gastronomical and liquid desires since the former organised our annual Chinese dinner at the City Hall, and the latter our resuscitated Christmas cocktail party at the Volunteer Officer's mess at Beaconsfield house. Since the new year we have also been well taken care of by a visit to the South Side of Hong Kong Island organised jointly by Mrs. Rosemary Lee who took us to the war cemetery at Stanley, Mr. Michael Kirkbride who expanded on Keteleeria Trees, and Colonel Douglas Fox who showed us how the South side of the island and Stanley Fort in particular was fortified in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Colonel Douglas Fox also led a very successful trip to Stonecutters Island. This was followed in quick succession by a tour to more of the remote parts of Lamma Island led by our honourary secretary Mr. David St. Maur Sheil. And more recently we had a very successful if rather wet trip to Xiamen, organised by Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee, and a very comprehensive tour of Tsuen Wan led by Dr. James Hayes. To all these organisers may I extend our thanks and sincere appreciation.\n\nOur local tours are very popular as many members, who were not able to get on some, found: the Council is very conscious of this problem,\n\nIX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212916, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "210\n\nthe day we would be off to the beach annex of the Chefoo Club where there were rowing boats and canoes. From nine in the morning till lunch time and all afternoon a crowd of us were in and out of the water, rowing out to the raft which was a converted junk with diving boards. I got so brown that summer that the mark of the swimming trunks was still visible at Christmas time!\n\nHolidays at Home\n\nA great part of school life was the holidays at home. Home at this time was in Tung Shan Terrace off Stubbs Road, when my father was building the Chinese Methodist Church in Wanchai—the triangular red brick building at the junction of Hennessy Road and Johnston Road.* This was home not in a flat but a three-story house, with a garden overlooking Happy Valley. At the back we had access to Bowen Road which was a safe place to play as there were no motor vehicles. Those holidays I remember chiefly for rambles up to Sir Cecil's Ride and a major hike over to Tytam from Wong Nei Chong Gap. And we went to a school pantomime at the Central British School (now King George V School) where the bad guy called himself “ZBW my middle name is trouble you\" ZBW being the embryo Radio Television Hong Kong. We had our first family car here, an Austin Seven with a folding roof and went for picnics to the beaches at Repulse Bay and Big Wave Bay, and at Stanley where a new prison was being built. Although it was winter in Hong Kong the climate was comfortable for us from the north and we had no hesitation in swimming.\n\n—\n\nOur journeys home in the winter holidays were considerable undertakings. Of course there was no air travel nor was rail travel possible. Instead we went by sea on the B. & S. ships of the China Navigation Line. These were coasters of about 7,000 tons which made their way up and down the China coast carrying cargoes of all sorts, a small number of passengers in cabins and a much larger number of deck passengers. Sometimes we were able to get a ship that went all the way from Chefoo to Hong Kong but often we had to get off in Shanghai and wait in the China Inland Mission hostel for a suitable connection. Some luckless schoolmaster had to accompany some twenty or so children more as far as Shanghai on these journeys. They were carefree days and I have wondered how we all survived. We would sit up on the taffrail undeterred by the possibility of toppling over into the sea. I remember getting into frightful trouble from practising throwing a penknife into the cabin bulkhead. In the ports we watched\n\n*Since demolished [Editor]\n\n—\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214737, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "116\n\nmirrored by the meticulous interest of model enthusiasts. There has been less interest in events in Asian theatres of war, particularly those before the change of the tide of war after the Battle of Midway. Save for a few battles, little has been written in English about the major battles in the Pacific War. One exception is the Battle of Hong Kong fought against the Japanese forces in December 1941. In this Battle, two brigades of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps without air support fought three full-strength Japanese divisions supported by an air fleet.\n\nThe Battle broke out at 08:00 hour on 8 December, when the air raid on Kai Tak Airfield began, and lasted to 15:25 hour on Christmas Day, when the Governor Sir Mark Young made the decision to surrender. This led to the official ending of the almost 18-day fighting, which was intended to cease at 18:00 hours, when for the first time in history, a British Crown Colony was surrendered to enemy forces with her governor taken as a prisoner. This surrender occurred one hundred years after the creation of the colony. A miserable three years and eight months period followed for the captive defenders and civilians until the British administration returned on 30 August 1945.\n\nBriefly, the Battle was conducted in two distinct phases2. From 8 to 13 December, it was fought in the New Territories and Kowloon. This phase ended with the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt of the Gin Drinkers Line on 11 December and the final evacuation of defence forces to the Island of Hong Kong two days later. The second phase commenced in the early morning of 18 December when the Japanese made their first attempted landings on the Island near Lei Yue Mun Strait, the eastern approach to Victoria Harbour, and ended with the surrender one week later. Before the final capitulation, the Governor had rejected the Japanese request for surrender twice, on 13 and 17 December.\n\nWe shall consider a brief textual review of the English and Chinese publications and materials on the Battle of Hong Kong available in the University of Hong Kong Library, which provides points of reference for our re-assessment of the performance of the defenders of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214902, "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": 317, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "293\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nGillian Bickley (2201), Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare, with a foreword by Arthur Gomes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 303 pages.\n\nA97NIGHTMARE\n\nIn 1897, a series of anonymous articles appeared in the China Mail. Together they constituted a story entitled The Back Door. This was a fictional account of a successful invasion of Hong Kong by the combined forces of fin-de-siècle aggressors, France and Russia. The inference is that the author was perturbed that Hong Kong's defences at the time were inadequate and so, in an attempt to galvanise the authorities, wrote this \"wake up call.\" Copies of the story ultimately found their way to Whitehall in London.\n\nGillian Bickley\n\nAs the title of the story infers, the superior invading forces entered Hong Kong by way of the south side of Hong Kong Island. There was the bloody Battle of Deepwater Bay, fought in \"the jungle\" around the Golf Club and on the beach. There was shelling of the Peak from the sea and the sea battle of Sulphur Channel. Matters neared their end when the enemy captured the Kowloon Forts and the dynamite and gunpowder stored on Stonecutters' Island were fired. At the last stand, on Stonecutters', the defenders were ultimately annihilated.\n\nThe Back Door evidently arose from the same anxiety that drove Britain's negotiations with China; concluded in 1898 when China granted the ninety-nine year lease of the New Territories, which Britain had requested as a protective buffer against attack.\n\nGillian Bickley discovered a copy of this story some years ago and it evidently fired her imagination, probably because as we all know, Hong Kong was invaded on 8th December, 1941, by the Japanese - also by superior forces - and ultimately capitulated on Christmas day. The Japanese, however, entered Hong Kong from the north, through the New Territories. Had the Japanese, she wonders, read The Back Door?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215714, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1861) is both a tour de force and riveting, to boot. Ch'ëa was the keeper of a temple at Poklo. He was visited in 1856 by two colporteurs from Hong Kong who left him with a bible. On reading it, he was almost immediately converted to Christianity and was later baptised in Hong Kong becoming, essentially, a disciple of James Legge. He returned to Poklo where he pursued his faith with great, if not excessive, zeal, becoming an object of suspicion and hatred in many quarters. In October 1861 he was seized by a local vigilante squad, tortured, ordered to renounce his faith - which he refused to do - and was ultimately beheaded.\n\nStephen Selby's interesting account of archery in China from the pre-Shang period to the end of the 19th century mirrors the excellent address that he recently gave to the Society.\n\nThe indefatigable Keith Stevens takes us on a voyage of discovery into the history of Zhenjiang. As always the illustrations are wonderful.\n\nAnd Dan Waters reminisces about Hong Kong in the post-War years.\n\nThere are a total of 18 NOTES AND QUERIES on a wide variety of subjects. Paul Bolding gives us some insights into the life of the intrepid Belgium aviator, Louis de San - who he ultimately met in 1988 with some interesting photographs. There is an amusing 1905 Christmas card from Arnold Graham - that great benefactor of the HKBRAS Library - and an account of the Library by our Hon. Librarian, Julia Chan. Peter Hansell discusses the famous clock maker Douglas Lapraik. Paul Harrison writes penetratingly on the highly unusual subject of restoring artefacts for display in Hong Kong's museums. Bob Horsnell continues his highly interesting pieces on old military installations. David Mahoney provides further insights into the Chinese Labour Corps in France during World War I. Martin Merz adds another follow up to Solomon's Bard's TEA AND OPIUM advising that Chinese and Indian teas are, essentially, the same (we live and learn!). Robert Nield's beautiful photographs of Bhutan which I messed up in Volume 41 are now reproduced in all their glory. I'll leave you to read The wrestling princes by Keith Stevens (a little suspense will do no harm). Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey take us to St. John's (Shangchuan) Island to the southwest of Hong Kong where St. Francis Xavier died in 1552 (not, as I originally thought when skimming through the article,\n\niv", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215946, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "179\n\npolitical understanding. Boxer's approaches to Chiang Kai Shek came at an opportune time, and might have developed into more, had circumstances so evolved. By spiriting Admiral Chan right from under the noses of the Japanese the British were making a political statement that they, too, could deliver. This was important as the Chinese had perfectly effective escape and intelligence systems of their own: General SK Yee, for example, was able to escape from Apleichau Island, even though the Japanese were almost certainly hot in pursuit and there appeared to be no means of escape for him when he was left behind, believed killed, as the two MTBs flotilla sailed away. Nonetheless to retain their credibility and their claim on Hong Kong, the British had to demonstrate their own ability to create a functional resistance and gain the respect of the Chinese.\n\nBeing realistic about defeat meant that British military strategists could plan pragmatically for occupation and resistance. It was those who clung to colonialist values who could not envisage that there might in fact be quite sophisticated planning behind the scenes. Quietly and unobtrusively, the British developed a comprehensive and effective network ready to activate as soon as the Japanese attacked. They were not \"caught on the hop\" by defeat by any means, nor unprepared. The groundwork was developed and networks in place and in some cases already operating. Support was brokered with the Chinese National Government and also with the Communists, and with the influential left wing faction of the KMT as well. The hinterland behind Hong Kong had been surveyed and alliances were in place to support any resistance in occupied Hong Kong. The British military may have surrendered Hong Kong on Christmas Day, but the next phase, war by other means, was poised and ready to unfold.\n\nChange of direction\n\nJust as refugees had poured into Hong Kong to escape the Japanese conquest of south and central China, refugees began pouring out of Hong Kong within days of the Japanese attack. Throughout January 1942, people were pouring out of Hong Kong by any form of transport they could find: some villagers reported 100 or more passing through each day. At first, the Japanese neither had the inclination to stop them, nor the apparatus in hand to organise an orderly evacuation. Even in POW camps it was easy enough even for men to discreetly remove", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]