[
    {
        "id": 210157,
        "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": 128,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "107\n\nsee, had a reputation for civility. The larger farming villages included Little Hong Kong and Wong Nei Chung. The smaller villages and hamlets included Hok Tsui, Chai Wan, To Tei Wan, Tai Tam (at Stanley), Tin Wan (at Aberdeen), Wan Chai, Tai Tam Tuk, Kwan Tai Lo, Wong Ma Kok, So Kon Po, Shek O and Pokfulam, whilst the port villages cum small towns included Chek Chu (Stanley), Shau Kei Wan and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen).” Most of these settlements exist today, albeit greatly changed, although a few have gone.\n\nWhat did these places look like in the 1840s when they first came under British rule? Fortunately, in those days before the camera, one of the officers stationed on the island and entrusted with the first contour survey (1843-1845) entered some useful descriptions in his letters home. This was Lieutenant Thomas Bernard Collinson of the Royal Engineers, a gifted young man who died a major-general at the age of 81 in 1902.\" In a letter he wrote:\n\n\"There is really a great deal more to be seen in Hong Kong than its appearance promises. Besides the town of Chuck Chu [Chek Chu] there are 10 villages and at least 400 acres of well cultivated ground. Some of the villages certainly consist of only 7 or 8 houses, but they are distinct villages with ground attached. The largest is Shapwont as it is printed,\" or “Chuckpyewan\" as it is called by the inhabitants, and “Aberdeen\" as it is called by the Governor. Her Majesty's surveying vessel employed by the Board of Ordinance has been anchored for a fortnight exactly at the figure 6 at Careening island [on the Chart of the anchorage] and begins to know something of Aberdeen and if the old Aberdeen is anything like the new, it must be a straggling village scattered round a small bay, with an ill-paved sort of quay in front and about 50 fishing boats lying about a great rock in the middle, a good supply of shops where bamboo hats, mats, sails, ropes and baskets; rice, fruit, vegetables, tobacco, earthenware and fireworks are all sold together; these being the staple commodities of a Chinese country shop and cakes by the bye, with plenty of pork fat in everything and a thousand of the dirtiest men women and children that ever talked altogether in a singsong:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210158,
        "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": 129,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "108\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n“How they live I don't know for I seldom see any boats going in or out; but they all manage to look fat somehow.”\n\nCollinson goes on to describe Little Hong Kong. The village still stands at the head of the Wong Chuk Hang valley immediately west of the southern concourse of the Wong Nei Chung to Aberdeen Tunnel, although its few remaining old village houses are buried inside an area of squatter huts and squatter industries. He continued in the same letter,\n\n“The valley between Shuckpyewan and Hong Kong bay (called Hong Kong in the map) is the proper Hong Kong of the Island and is the largest and best cultivated and prettiest in the island. It is almost a dead flat and according to the people's account has 100 acres of these little fields in it, with the village on an artificial level at the head and a thick wood of evergreens around and behind it and steep rocky hills rising above the wood. Though as dirty as every Chinese place I have been in, it contains a piece of civilisation I did not expect in Hong Kong -- a village schoolmaster; who in his black cotton coat and white stockings is ridiculously like both in manner and appearance (if his tail was cut off) the same character in England. He has only nine scholars, but they are certainly the cleanest 9 of the 200 in the village and he teaches them arithmetic, by giving them so many characters to copy and learn by heart. The school room would have shocked Charley and from the number of drawings on the walls I should say ‘Boys will be boys.’ Even in China.”12\n\nCollinson concludes by commenting on the village itself and the wood clearly the fengshui wood behind it.\n\n“You will have some idea of the way they build villages in this part of China from this one, 70 houses of which are all packed on a space 100 yards by 70. The evergreens behind the town are most luxuriant and reminded me of the oak woods in Wicklow, and the tall bamboo would make a graceful ornament to any garden.’\n\n13\n\nAnother military officer was impressed with the villages and the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    }
]