[ { "id": 204720, "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-1964", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "14\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nLinguists were licensed Chinese interpreters. (See note 39). Compradore was a Chinese national in charge of workers in a factory.\n\nColoured buttons attached to caps determined the rank of Chinese officials.\n\nThe term Hoppo was coined by Westerners to designate the official appointed by the Emperor to look after trade at Canton and to remit the resulting revenue to the Board of Revenue (the hu-pu) at Peking. His full title was Yüeh Hai-kuan-pu which means \"Superintendent of Customs for the province of Canton”.\n\nChop was an official pronouncement by Chinese authorities.\n\nChop boats carried cargo from Whampoa to Canton; in design they resembled a melon with circular decks and sides and could provide for 500 chests of opium.\n\nJOURNAL OF OCCURRENCES AT CANTON 1839\n\nMarch 24, Sunday\n\nThe Chinese are building bridges across the street in the rear, to the roofs of our Hongs in order the better to keep a lookout.\n\nOur servants, coolies, cooks, and compradore as well as those from all other Factories, quit the Hongs this evening. It looked as if they were running from a plague, each person carried off his bed, trunk, or box, and for a short time the Square was all in confusion. The linguists permitted ours to remain till the last moment, and from the time the order for them to quit was received, which was about 8 p.m., till after 8 when not a Chinese was left in any Hong, the coolies made out to secure for us outside and bring in about 60 fowls, 15 tubs of water, a tub of sugar, some oil, a bag of biscuits, and a few other things.\n\nThe Square now is one blaze of light, innumerable lanterns from the different Hongs are disposed all over it, and the noise of some three or four hundred coolies stationed to guard any foreigner from leaving Canton makes it resemble a large wild encampment.\n\nCaptain Elliot landed at the Factory steps about 5 p.m., hoisted the British colors and called a meeting of all the foreigners in Canton. He then went to Mr. Dent's Factory and took him to the hall. Thousands of Chinese in the Square greatly excited", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204729, "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-1964", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n23\n\nbetween 40 and 50 vessels now lying in Macao Roads all detained there for want of communication with Canton. He saw Talbot there who told him that the two American men-of-war were daily expected.\n\nJust before he arrived in Canton, Old Tom showed me a letter he had a few moments before received from Alantsae, dated Heang-shan25 (22 of the Chinese moon), day before yesterday. He states that he and the mandarins and soldiers with Johnston and Thom under their charge arrived there last evening and intended to start again for Macao yesterday morning. They probably reached there last night in which case the delivery of the opium to the mandarins may commence tomorrow, and we are in hopes to have our servants, compradore and coolies back by Thursday next. It is just two weeks tonight since the mandarins drove them from the factories.\n\nAchun states that at Macao everything is very quiet as yet but no Chinese, under a severe penalty, is allowed to approach them.\n\nWe are guarded as strictly as ever, no person is permitted to leave the Square in front of the Factories.\n\nThe Commissioner sent a communication today to Captain Elliot in which he proposes a sort of bond to be given by all foreigners for their signature in which they must bind themselves to abstain ever after from the opium trade here, and to agree to suffer death if after six months from this time any one is discovered selling it, and requires also that the crews of vessels bringing it here shall be strangled and the vessel and cargo be confiscated to government. It also expressly demands that all opium which may arrive here within six months be delivered up to the Chinese government.\n\nIt is needless to say that nothing can compel us to sign such a bond as this.\n\nInspite of our uncertain situation it is ridiculous at times to notice in what position we are placed without a servant, cook or coolie; everyone of course has to look out for himself. This morning after nine I went to Elmslie's house. He is secretary to Elliot, and I found him and his brother and Morrison26, Elliot's interpreter, in the kitchen in their sleeping trousers and shirts, cleaning shoes and procuring water to wash and shave.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204737, "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-1964", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n29\n\na communication from them in which they state that orders had been transmitted for the return of the cooks, coolies, and compradores to our service. Johnston also states that at noon of the 12th he had ordered up to Chumpee the following vessels, Jane, Ariel, Lady Grant, Ruparell, Mithras and Mermaid with their cargoes for immediate delivery. He says that the mandarins did not give any trouble from too close investigation.\n\n10 p.m. Our compradore came in to see us at 9 and has just gone away, there appears to be a difficulty in returning to the Factories. Bonds are required by the officers which involve them in great responsibility, and he says many will not grant them and consequently will not return to the service of foreigners.\n\nMonday, 15 April, 1839\n\nThere are about 30 sailors, English, American, Malay, and Bengalee in Canton who happened to be here when the communication with the shipping was cut off and consequently could not get down to their ships. Four belong to H.B.M. Sloop Larne, who came up with Captain Elliot. They afford the Chinese a good deal of sport by their antics in the Square every afternoon. Yesterday afternoon one of them climbed up to the top of the American flagstaff, a height of about one hundred feet, much to the astonishment of our guard. In fact it was quite a feat; he had no assistance except from the cleats nailed at long intervals to the mast.\n\n16th April\n\nTwo of our coolies have been with us for two or three days, and we have transferred to them the duties of setting table, washing dishes and plates, sweeping, making beds and so forth which we have been, in common with all foreigners, obliged to submit to for more than three weeks past.\n\n16th April, 1839*\n\nYoung Tom's purser A Heang came in today and reported that he had received a letter from his partner dated at the Bogue which communicated the fact of a boat with 100 chests of opium and a Chinese officer in charge having disappeared. No one knew where she had gone, it was supposed that during bad weather that had been experienced she had foundered.\n\n* The journal contains two separate entries for 16th April.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204738, "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-1964", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "30 \n\nW. C. HUNTER \n\nA letter came up this morning from Whampoa which reported that two rafts are thrown across the river, about half way between this and Whampoa, and at some distance from each other. \n\nWe are all quiet here but begin to suffer from our long imprisonment, no excitement, dull and monotonous. Guard of coolies and soldiers kept up as usual, and no one permitted to go beyond the Square. Several coolies were returned to the service of the foreigners today and some cooks. The compradores are all very reluctant to come back. Supplies of food, water, grass for the cows, and so on, brought in daily. \n\nAt the Bogue the Chinese are very particular in receiving the opium; it is carefully kept in all the good chests while the loose is done up in bags sealed with the Commissioner's seal and stored in the forts and temples in the neighborhood. Many men are appointed to guard it. \n\nWednesday, 17 April \n\nNothing of interest has occurred today except that letters were received from Johnston which state that 700 chests of opium had been delivered up to the 15th at noon. Wrote to Mr. Sturgis at Macao and forwarded the letter through A-Hin, linguist. \n\nA game of cricket in the Square by a party of sailors which collected all the guard and foreigners around them. \n\nThe tailor came in and took clothes to be mended. The compradore also came for a few minutes in the afternoon and said he intended to return [the] day after tomorrow and that the cooks and coolies were to come back with him to remain, \n\nWeather hot, damp and muggy, at times hot sun and then again heavy rain with much thunder and lightning. Our meals brought to us as usual from Old Tom, the linguist. \n\nSaturday, 20 April, 1839 \n\nWe were much horrified this morning on going out to learn that a few hours before daylight a scene which liked to have proved serious occurred in the Danish Hong. It appears that a quarrel took place about midnight between Mr. Goldsborough and another Englishman and a Prussian named Knock. At two it got to that height that a scuffle took place, and as they are armed as all foreigners have been since the threat on the part of the Chinese to put us to death, Knock drew his pistol and fired at Goldsborough, fortunately he missed him. Mr. G. immediately", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204739, "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-1964", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n31\n\nposted off to Captain Elliot and told him he considered his life in danger and begged protection. Captain E immediately gave a warrant to Mr. Youle, an officer belonging to the Reliance (at Whampoa), and despatched him with four sailors belonging to the Larne, to bring the two who attacked Mr. Goldsborough before him. On reaching the Factory they were refused admittance and threatened to be fired into if they tried to attempt an entrance. Mr. Youle and his men, who were unarmed, went back with this to Captain E who told them not to arm but to go once more and try persuasion. When Mr. Y reached Knock's Factory it appears he supposed Youle and his men were armed and consequently surrendered. On going into the room they found two pair of loaded pistols, a couple of cutlasses, and a loaded musket lying on the table quite ready to be used. They were seized at once and are now lodged prisoners inside Captain E.'s Factory.\n\nWe have farce and tragedy alternately. This morning Captain E received a Chop from the Commissioner which stated that smuggling was going on outside the Bogue and contained much abusive language. The Kwang Chow Foo, Nam Hoy, and Pwan Yu also came out to the Consoo House with another Chop from the Commissioner insisting upon the bonds which we hoped had been forgotten43. The orders for them were addressed to Elliot, Snow, and Van Basil. They all refused to grant them. Elliot was so enraged at this that before Houqua's face he tore the Commissioner's Chop into a thousand pieces and threw it into the fireplace.\n\nTho' matters begin to look gloomy again we had a bit of fun in the Square. The officers who came out to the Consoo House were attended by several on horseback. These alighted at the Consoo House and their horses were led into the Square. The groom of one, having no idea that it would be accepted, offered it jokingly to an Englishman named Glenn for a ride. Glenn immediately jumped on his back and off he went all full gallop around the Square. The Chinese were frightened half to death and utterly incapable of action. The scene was ludicrous in the extreme, the high saddle, immense basket stirrups and Glenn in a white jacket, cap and stick flying from one end of the Square to the other made us quite a good bit of fun.\n\nToday the compradore, cooks and coolies, Mr. Green's, Mr. King's and my own servant came and remained all day.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204743, "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-1964", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n35\n\nare the vessels of war who could alone defend the place. But it is doubtful if Mr. Commissioner will allow matters to get to such a length. If they do, the Governor of Macao intends to defend it to the last extremity. He has ordered all the inhabitants between the ages of 15 and 50 to hold themselves in readiness to be called upon to carry arms.\n\nWe hear of three more vessels from the east coast, the Corsair, Amelia, and Anna. There are yet there the Lord Amherst, Henry Clay, and Lady Hayes.\n\nLetters from Chumpee to the 30th have been received. 13,800 chests were delivered and no more vessels were there but the Lady Grant and Mahmoodie were in sight in their way up. It is said they have on board near 200 chests and when they are discharged we shall see if the Commissioner intends to break his word again. Weather rainy; have not had a fine day these ten days past and it is very cold for this season of the year, thermometer at 60° to 63°. Wrote to Captain Gilman and Mr. Sturgis at Macao gave the letter to the Compradore to be forwarded.\n\nSunday, 5 May 1839\n\nSome of us at last to be released but 16 foreigners are to be detained in Canton till the opium business is all settled. Under certain restrictions and surveillance any foreigner except 16 can leave Canton. This is by permission received yesterday from the Commissioner. Ships at Whampoa can be loaded and unloaded and leave Whampoa, but no ship can come in.\n\nIn the morning the Kwang Chow Foo, the Chung Hup and the Kwang Hup with attendants on horseback rode into the Square and to the Point and ordered all the military guard to withdraw from the boats, and the boats to break up the line of circumvallation with which we have been surrounded six weeks this day.\n\nThe Hong coolies also broke up their encampment on the edge of the walk and retired from below the Company's arch leaving however 70 who have stationed themselves in the middle of the Square to guard the 16 foreigners and prevent their escape. The Hong merchants have also retired from beneath the Company's verandah and things begin to look as before. No ships boats can go to or come from Whampoa yet, neither can our pleasure boats be allowed to be put into the water. But licenced passage boats are permitted to go daily as before with passengers.\n\nIn the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204984, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n83\n\nAnother case which might be said to have had political undertones was that of the China Navigation Company's Shuntien in June 1934. The Shuntien was the latest addition to the China Navigation Company's large fleet, and was making only her second voyage at the time. She was captured by some thirty pirates after leaving Tientsin for Chefoo, and was taken to the mouth of the Yellow River where she was beached on soft sand. The pirates then made off inland, taking five European and twenty Chinese passengers as hostages. Before leaving, they told the ship's compradore that the piracy was a reprisal for the Chinese Maritime Customs having stationed an extra customs cruiser in Shantung Bay, thus interfering with their smuggling operations. The Europeans returned a few days later, but nothing more was ever heard of the Chinese hostages.\n\nBias Bay, sixty-five miles northeast of Hong Kong, was notorious as the pirates' stronghold in the interwar years. Unfortunately, it was just outside Hong Kong territorial waters, and came within the jurisdiction of the Cantonese authorities, who were either unwilling or unable to co-operate with the Royal Navy against the pirates. The nationalist and anti-foreign feelings of the Cantonese probably contributed to this, as did the fact that the warlords of Kwangtung were suspected of being in league with the pirates. Whether this was so or not, it was definitely established that pirates based on Bias Bay committed nine major piracies between 1924 and 1926.\n\nAlthough the Navy was unable to suppress piracy on the China coast, so much of which took place almost on its own doorstep, the mere fact that naval ships were in the vicinity must have reduced its incidence. The pirates rarely boarded ships at Hong Kong, partly because of the strict naval and police control there, and also because passengers joining ships there were unlikely to have much money or valuables. In the case of the second Sunning piracy in 1926, it was definitely established afterwards that the pirates came on board at Amoy, and that their weapons were smuggled on board by stevedores. The lack of co-operation from Canton meant that the Navy was unable to follow up action at sea by punitive expeditions against the pirates' shore bases. The Kwangtung authorities had been much more co-operative in the first few decades after the cession of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205326, "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-1967", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "The China Coasters\n\n81\n\na modern coaster, specially equipped for the emigrant trade, with space for almost two thousand deck passengers. She was employed on the Amoy, Swatow, and Singapore run, and when I joined her in 1928 the Malayan rubber boom was at its height, and the Antung was carrying a full complement of deck passengers south each monthly trip. On going below before leaving Swatow on my first trip, I came across many strange Chinese in the engine room and shaft tunnel, all industriously polishing hand rails and floor plates. Enquiry revealed these to be the Number One Fireman's 'pidgin'. The bosun, compradore, and chief steward each had their quotas hidden or working away in other parts of the ship.\n\nThe Antung had loaded her first few hundred deck passengers at Amoy and was completing her complement by loading another thousand or so at Swatow, where a medical inspection and tally was carried out by a doctor and member of the British Consul's staff at Swatow. On the China coast, the successful prosecution of the art of pidgin lay in knowing just how far to go without exciting undue comment. Had this 'smuggling' of passengers become too blatant, the Consul would have been compelled to take some action, or the authorities in Singapore been placed in an equally awkward position. Then, had the captain 'squeezed' the senior members of his Chinese crew too much for shutting his eyes at the appropriate times, they would have made life very awkward for him, and might well have \"blown the gaff\" themselves at either end of the passage.\n\nPrivate cargo was another source of 'pidgin', and on the Singapore and Bangkok runs this consisted of fish, fruit, vegetables, and other delicacies in great demand among the prosperous Chinese expatriates. Cabbages and mandarin oranges from Swatow made a very profitable deck cargo in the season, on voyages which rarely lasted more than ten days, and ships often left Swatow with their decks piled so high with cabbages and oranges that their lifeboats were completely immobilised. Some attempt was made to control this dangerous practice on British ships, but it continued on Chinese and foreign ships as long as the trade lasted. Large wooden tubs of live fish were also carried on deck, and the water aerated by relays of coolies working paddles, whose payment was a free passage. Much of the 'pidgin' cargo carried on the southern runs was of an edible nature, ministering to the home-sick palates of the overseas Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205327, "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-1967", "page_number": 89, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "82\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nAs I have said, stowaways and private cargo of this kind were considered legitimate 'pidgin'. Many snug villas on the south coast of England and the Clyde coast of Scotland owe their origin to legitimate 'pidgin' and 'squeeze'. Opium, drugs, and arms and ammunition came into a different category, however, and Europeans involved in this kind of 'pidgin' were usually acting under duress. Any unsolved murder, suicide, or disappearance of a European officer invariably gave rise to lurid rumours of entanglement with unscrupulous opium gangs.\n\nI once found a dozen or so small flat tins, like sardine cans, tucked away among some clothes in a rarely used drawer in my cabin. I was new on the coast at the time, and pleasantly thrilled when told that it was opium. I was advised that the best thing to do was to throw it over the side, and the outcome was that the messroom boy disappeared at the next port. My only other experience of opium was its sickly sweet smell, which I used to encounter when going along the 'tween decks at night. There were always a few groups of passengers there indulging in a mild session of opium smoking. Even today, some forty years later, any similar smell takes me back to the dimly lit 'tween decks of the Antung, Kwangtung, or Kiangsu, and revives all my old memories of the China coast.\n\n'China coasters' were run on the compradore system in those days, a maritime analogy to the system common in much of Sino-Western commerce ashore in the ports. Under this system the deck passenger accommodation was hired from the owners by a Chinese compradore, who carried his own staff to look after the deck passengers.\n\nThe compradore was also in charge of the cargo, for which in turn he was paid by the owners, and his staff which looked after the deck passengers when at sea acted as stevedores and tallymen in port. The compradore was responsible for stolen or damaged cargo, and insured himself against this, often through the owners acting in their capacity as insurance brokers. The chief steward and his staff looked after the captain, officers, and saloon passengers; while the bosun and Number One Fireman each catered for his own department. The compradore was a responsible Chinese business man, with influential connections at all the ports at which his ship called, and a great part of the ship's success depended on him. Harmonious relations between the captain and the compradore, therefore, were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205328, "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-1967", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "THE CHINA COASTERS\n\n83\n\nessential; although there was a point beyond which these could be detrimental to the owner.\n\nThe rent which the compradore paid to the owners for the deck passenger space depended on the number of passengers usually carried in that particular trade. It was adjusted periodically according to fluctuations in trade and other factors, and was the subject of keen bargaining between owners and compradore — the latter naturally putting a much lower evaluation on the ship's passenger potentiality than the owners. At irregular intervals the owners sent someone to travel on the ship, and check the number of passengers and the amount of cargo carried. These men were known as 'pidgin snatchers' and were very unpopular with the floating staff. If the captain and compradore were good friends and either knew in advance of the 'pidgin snatcher's' movements, the other was warned, and co-operative counter measures instituted in good time.\n\nMost China coasters called at their home port of Hong Kong or Shanghai at least once a month, so that their officers were in much closer touch with life ashore than their contemporaries on overseas ships. During the inter-war period, normal tours of service on the coast were five years, in the course of which officers would serve in several of their company's ships. Many senior officers were married, and had wives and families in Hong Kong or Shanghai, or in a few cases Hankow. Long home leave was granted after a five years tour, but the attractions of life on the coast made many officers and their wives reluctant to go on leave. Captains and mates on ships where 'pidgin' were plentiful, were afraid they might be posted to less profitable ships on their return; while wives were loath to exchange their smoothly-run homes for the doubtful comforts of furnished rooms or boarding houses in Britain. European homes in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or the treaty ports, were sparsely staffed by African or Indian standards, but run much more efficiently. A cook and house boy, sometimes only a cook boy, sufficed for a small house or flat, supplemented by a baby amah or gardener if circumstance warranted this. A similar establishment in India would have been indifferently served by a staff twice as large. Although the taipans of the big foreign companies and senior customs commissioners lived in considerable style, life on the coast was in general much less ostentatious than in India, and much more pleasant.\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205331, "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-1967", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "86 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nThe sailors' and firemen's cook's 'boy' was usually the grandson or grandnephew of the bosun and Number One, while the 'boy' in the pantry bore the same relationship to the Chief Steward. Chinese crews developed a strong sense of loyalty to their ship and owners, sometimes putting their European officers to shame in this respect. Payment for overtime was unheard of, and sailors and firemen would often work round the clock after a docking to have the ship spick and span for an early morning sailing; while bosuns and Number One Firemen would sometimes buy extra cleaning and polishing materials out of their own pockets. The compradore and his staff also spent many years on one ship and one service, resulting in efficient cargo handling and stowage. \n\nEach department of the Chinese crew of a prewar 'China coaster' usually came from a different part of the country. An average 2,500 ton coaster would have about 70 Chinese in its crew, and a common arrangement would be for the sailors to come from Tientsin, the firemen from Ningpo, and the stewards and compradores from Canton and Swatow. Pidgin English was invariably the only means of inter-departmental communication, but normally all worked together harmoniously under their European officers. Provincial rivalries and jealousies were, however, always latent, and their existence helped to ensure efficiency. \n\nThere were always ten applicants for any job. Wages for the Chinese crew on a coaster were small, but being assured and regular, a job on a coaster was highly prized. There was the additional attraction of 'pidgin' and 'squeeze', which had an extraordinary fascination. The prospect of an extra dollar or two from this source meant more to them than three or four times the amount in wages. The more 'pidgin', the happier and more contented the crew, and the more hard-working. Nothing was too small or insignificant to escape their attention, and there was always something to be bought at one port, which could be resold at a small profit a few days later further up or down the coast. I am sure that on a ship trading between the North and South Poles, the Chinese crew would soon organise a brisk trade in polar bears and penguins with the Eskimoes. \n\nOn the China coast, the distinction between the 'regular' and the 'outside' ships must always be remembered. The foregoing applied mainly to the 'regular' ships, that is to the ships of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205334, "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-1967", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "THE CHINA COASTERS\n\n89\n\non the outside passage, low-powered ships would have done little more than hold their own against the monsoon.\n\nOn the present day ships trading from Hong Kong around Far Eastern and South Pacific waters many of the old China coast customs still survive. The 'sew-sew' women, for instance, are now peculiar to Hong Kong alone, but used to flourish in Shanghai and Singapore in the old days. In groups of two or three these women board every ship soon after its arrival in Hong Kong to darn the socks and repair the clothes of the officers, and every officer soon after his arrival on the coast has his regular 'sew-sew' woman. They are middle-aged women, severely dressed in black with shining black hair strained back tightly in buns, and invariably sporting a few gold teeth. Whichever 'sew-sew' woman an officer employs on his first visit to Hong Kong usually remains his 'sew-sew' woman for the rest of his time on the coast, and no rival will ever try to solicit his custom. The 'sew-sew' women are scrupulously honest, and are allowed the complete run of the accommodation. They go into their client's cabin unattended, and ransack his drawers and wardrobe looking for clothes to mend, and when these have been collected, retire to a sunny corner of the deck to carry out the repairs. When they return with the clothes later, payment is the subject of shrill but good-natured bargaining.\n\nA similar system still operates in Hong Kong with regard to barbers, tailors, shoemakers, compradores, and others. The compradore in this connection is a petty trader, who deals in a wide variety of goods, from toilet materials and patent medicines to dubious literature. Either he or the tailor will also carry out miscellaneous commissions for their clients, such as posting letters and parcels and so on. An older institution than any of the above, however, were the flower boat girls. Like the 'sew-sew' women they were more common in Hong Kong than in the other ports and were an inheritance from the old days at Canton and Macao. When I returned to the coast twelve years after the end of the Pacific War, and after an absence of almost twenty years, I was pleased to find the 'sew-sew' women, barbers, tailors, and shoemakers plying their trades as busily as ever. The flower boat girls, however, had disappeared from the scene.\n\nPearl Buck, in her biography of her missionary father, Fighting Angel, London, Pan Books, 1964, pp. 84-85, has this to say of river steamers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205410, "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-1967", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n165 \n\ntimes) as the sole export agent for producers of a special kind of incense which, then as now, was widely used for ritual worship in temples and in the home. Incense is said to have been shipped to Aberdeen by sea from Kowloon Point, to which it had been brought from various parts of the San On and Tung Kwun districts. It was then re-shipped in large trading vessels to Canton, from which it was carried overland to the north to such cities as Soochow. (It is not entirely clear to me why such a round-about route was taken to bring incense to Canton.) The cultivation and trade in this specially-favoured type of incense is said to have received a fatal blow in the early Ching period when the government evacuated the coastal areas to deny the aid and collaboration of their inhabitants to the anti-Manchu ruler of Formosa and his sympathisers.14\n\nSir Show-son CHOW (1861 - 1959). Sir Show-son CHOW who died only a few years ago, at a great age, was one of the most famous members of the Hong Kong community. He was truly a local man as his ancestors had lived in Little Hong Kong for several hundred years. His successful career, though the result of his own merits, was made possible through his father, whose abilities removed him from a farming village to the business centre of Canton and the position of compradore to the Hong Kong and Canton Steamship Company. He was in business in Canton and it was there that his son, the future Sir Show-son, was educated. By reason of this opportunity, and his own undoubted capacity, the son was selected as a free scholar by the Chinese Government as one of the first batch of Chinese youths to be sent to America for a Western education. This was in 1874, when the boy was only 13 years old. He returned to China in 1881 and for the next 16 years held important posts in Korea in the Korean Customs Service and the Chinese consular service in that country. He was President of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company at Tientsin, 1897-1903 and was managing director, Imperial Chinese Railways of North China, Peking-Mukden line, 1903 - 1907. From then until 1910, he was Customs Superintendent of Trade and Counsellor for Foreign Affairs at Newchwang, North China. On his return to Hong Kong after the 1911 Revolution his wide experience, undoubted ability and excellent reputation led to his being appointed to directorships in many firms and public utility concerns. He was appointed a member of the Legislative and Executive Councils and was knighted in 1926. He also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205716, "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-1969", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "16 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nDr. Ho died in September 1914 at the age of 55 leaving over ten sons and daughters by his second wife who was a Chinese. \n\nThe fourth Chinese to serve on the Legislative Council was Wei Yuk, son-in-law of Mr. Wong Shing. He had another name Wei Bo-shan17 and Po Shan Road is named after him. He was born in Hong Kong in 1849 of a wealthy family, his father, Wei Kwong, being compradore to the Hong Kong branch of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China (now the Mercantile Bank Ltd.). After many years of Chinese studies under private tutors, he entered the Government Central School. In 1867, at the age of 18, he proceeded to England to attend the Leicester Stoneygate School. In 1868 he went to Scotland and studied for four years at the Dollar Institution. After a European tour, he returned to Hong Kong in 1872 and then worked in China for a short period. When his father died in 1879 he succeeded him as compradore to the bank. He was a very public-spirited citizen, well-known for his charming manners and pleasant personality. In 1880 he was elected a director of the Tung Wah Hospital and in 1887 became its Chairman. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1883. \n\nWei Yuk's appointment to the Legislative Council was additional to and not in replacement of Ho Kai, and came about as follows. \n\nDuring 1894, the Governor, Sir William Robinson, forwarded to the Secretary of State a petition signed by the Honourable Messrs. Thomas Whitehead, Paul Chater, Ho Kai and other residents in the Colony, asking for unofficial membership in the Executive Council; \"free election of representatives of British nationality in the Legislative Council\"; \"a majority of such representatives in the Legislative Council\"; and freedom of the official members to vote according to their conscientious convictions.18 \n\nThe Secretary of State, Lord Ripon, criticized the petitioners' demands as lacking in clarity on the ground that the petitioners \"asked for the free election of representatives of British nationality without reference to the qualifications of the voters\". Thus if the petitioners intended that only those from the British Islands should vote and be eligible for election, this would exclude the Chinese who comprised nine-tenths of the entire population. He dismissed the claim to have a majority of elected representatives,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205720, "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-1969", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "20 \n\nT. C. CHENG \n\nauthorities should look into the teaching of Chinese boys in English so as to increase the efficiency of the teaching of English. As a result, a Committee was appointed in 1917 \"to enquire into the teaching of the English language to Chinese boys in Government schools, and to examine the question whether by a reduction in the number of other subjects more time can be devoted to such teaching\". The Committee reported the same year, but did not recommend any changes in the school curriculum. However, they recommended (a) small classes, better buildings and better-paid teachers which would bring better results, and (b) the appointment of one English teacher to a maximum of 120 pupils. The Committee also advocated medical inspection of pupils in Government schools, as a result of which a system of medical examination was instituted the following year. \n\nIn recognition of Lau's services towards his fellow-men in Hong Kong, the Chinese Government conferred upon him “The Order of the Excellent Crop, Third Class\" in 1916. He died in 1922. \n\nThere is a Chinese belief that “good deeds will be rewarded by bearing good offspring\". This seems only too true in his case, for his eldest son, Lau Tak-po, founded the Hong Kong & Yaumati Ferry Company and his eldest grandson, Lau Chan-kwok, J.P. is now the Managing Director of the Company. \n\nWhen Sir Boshan Wei Yuk retired from the Legislative Council in 1917, he was succeeded by Ho Fook, younger half-brother of the late Sir Robert Hotung. He was another outstanding student of the Central School. In 1878 when the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, attended his first Prize Giving at the Central School, Ho Fook, then in Class 2, received from him a prize in the form of a gold pencil case.23 He served in the Compradore's Department of Jardine, Matheson & Company and in 1900 was a founder of the Chinese Merchants Bureau. He remained in the Legislative Council for only four years and retired in 1921. \n\nHo Fook was a generous benefactor of education. In 1917 he donated HK$50,000 to the University of Hong Kong for the erection and equipment of the School of Physiology. He also endowed prizes in all the faculties of the University. Like the Honourable Lau Chu-pak he produced some very fine offspring.24", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205723, "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-1969", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS OF COUNCILS\n\n23\n\nmerchants in this Colony. In all necessary measures to that end, I know that I can rely upon the whole-hearted support of this Council\". At the same meeting, the Senior Unofficial member, Sir Henry Pollock, paid the following tribute to Sir Shouson Chow and Robert Kotewall; \"During the last seven months, in particular, we have felt indebted not only to Sir Shouson Chow but also to his Chinese colleague on the Council. We, Sir, behind the scenes, can appreciate perhaps more fully than the general public the work of the Chinese members of this Council during the period I have referred to”. \n\nOn 9th July 1926, Sir Shouson Chow was also appointed the first Chinese member of the Executive Council, following the death of Sir Paul Chater who had served on that Council since 1896.26 Although the appointment was made on personal grounds, it was evident that political considerations also came in, viz., to pacify anti-British sentiment in China and to further encourage the loyalty of local Chinese towards Hong Kong. \n\nSir Shouson Chow served on both Councils until 1930, when he resigned from the Legislative Council. He continued, however, to be a member of the Executive Council until he retired in 1936. He died many years after the war, in 1959, \n\nWhen Lau Chu-pak retired from the Legislative Council in 1922, he was succeeded by Ng Hon-tsz who was born in 1877 and was compradore to Shewan, Tomes, Ltd. He was a director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1907 and was a founder of the Tsan Yuk Hospital. He was at various times a member of the District Watch Force Committee, the Sanitary Board and the Council of the University of Hong Kong. He served in the Legislative Council for only two years and died in 1923 while in office. After his death, Sir Henry Pollock remarked at the Legislative Council meeting held on 10th May 1923 that Mr. Ng had always been a \"wise, sound and faithful councillor”. \n\nMr. Robert Kotewall, who succeeded Ng Hon-tsz as a member of the Legislative Council in 1923, was born in Hong Kong in 1880. Educated at the Central School as well as the Diocesan Boys' School, he was a noted English as well as Chinese scholar and was a very good speaker. After a distinguished career in the Hong Kong Government until 1916, he turned to business and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205963, "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-1970", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "38 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nmutual incomprehension of Chinese and Europeans. Only a few missionaries had a working knowledge of the Chinese dialects spoken in Hong Kong; but missionary effort went mainly into the evangelisation, conversion and education of the Chinese, and most missionaries, many of whom were not British, were antipathetic to the Colonial Government, whose raison d'être in their view, judging by the contents of the contemporary publication The Friend of China, was to protect the opium interests of the great European hongs. Eitel claims there was in 1854, apart from the missionaries, 'not a man left in Hong Kong thoroughly acquainted with both the written and spoken languages of China'; and in 1859 there were said to be only three men in government service, (excepting Lobschied, the Inspector of Schools) who had some knowledge of Cantonese; but only one, the Interpreter of the Supreme Court, 'was at all acquainted with the written language and that imperfectly'. The Chinese could not bridge the gap either: there were few educated Chinese and fewer who could understand English. In 1867, an editorialist in the China Mail averred that 'we can safely assert that the average knowledge possessed by the compradore class in Hong Kong is almost entirely useless in any situation of official responsibility'.8 \n\nAbove all else Hong Kong needed a group of officials with competence in spoken and written Chinese, especially the former; and, although this was less understood at the time, it lacked officials with an understanding of the structure of Chinese society (of what we would call today the social anthropology of the Chinese). Sir Hercules argued, in defence of his scheme, that it was quite impossible to conduct the government of 120,000 Chinese without proper interpreters who knew their language; but Eitel probably comes closer to the nub of the matter with his declaration: “English education among the Chinese people of the Colony, and Chinese knowledge among the English officials of Hong Kong are the two factors upon which the success of the general scheme of English colonial policy to a great extent depends....\" Communication with the Chinese was needed not merely for social and cultural contacts but for reasons of social control over a Chinese lumpenproletariat, without a stake in the Colony. \n\nThe scheme initially propounded by Sir Hercules to the Hong Kong Legislative Council on 23 March 1861 was designed primarily to establish a staff of interpreters, to be used in the courts,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206013, "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-1970", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "88 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nAlmost every China coaster was equipped to carry several hundred deck passengers, although ‘equipped' is too grandiose a word to use when describing the very modest preparations this entailed. Deck passengers were usually carried on the main deck and in the 'tween decks, wooden decks on most ships, but without beds, bunks, or any luxuries of that nature. Each passenger or family was simply allotted so many square feet of deck space, and supplied their own bedding, mats, and wooden pillows. As the weather was usually warm and mild, male passengers spent most of their time on the main deck, which was sheltered from the sun by awnings. Female passengers, however, often spent the whole passage in the 'tween decks, in semi-private enclaves constructed with their baggage. Washing and sanitary facilities may have been primitive, but were reasonably adequate for a voyage rarely lasting more than nine or ten days, and were probably superior to what the passengers were accustomed to in their native villages. Numerous taps provided fresh water several times per day, and on a well-found ship passengers could fill buckets and other receptacles to last them through the dry periods. Thus Conrad's \"Typhoon\" does not give a very accurate description of an emigrant ship: the Nanyang was not a regular emigrant ship, and even Captain MacWhirr's well-intentioned efforts cannot have secured his passengers a comfortable passage before running into the typhoon.\n\nIn the heyday of the trade, deck passengers were usually provided with at least two Spartan meals per day, whose main ingredients were rice with a little dried fish and vegetables, and bought any extras and luxuries themselves. The compradore's staff cooked the two meals and kept the decks clean; but the whole crew were financially interested in the deck passengers. Some ran food and drink stalls where a wide range of Chinese delicacies were on sale; others ran opium dens and gambling schools; while others again hired out their accommodation. Under such circumstances the passenger with money to spare could have a very pleasant passage. There were the occasional periods of discomfort during bad weather and typhoons, when it might be necessary to confine the passengers in the battened down 'tween decks for their own safety. During the late 1920s and the 30s on the Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, and Haiphong trades I saw very little real hardship, and few destitute passengers. Most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206014, "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-1970", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE 89\n\nmaking their first venture abroad in those years were joining relatives or friends, and had been able to borrow enough on future earnings to ensure a comfortable passage. There were always a few unfortunates, however, who, in their anxiety to escape from the poverty and misery of their native village, had borrowed their passage money from money lenders or their tongs at ruinous rates of interest.\n\nConditions for most of this century were certainly vastly changed from the middle decades of the 19th century. Prospective passengers lived in boarding houses in Amoy or Swatow when waiting for a ship, and the ship's compradore often had a financial interest in these boarding houses or worked in close co-operation with their owners. As there was keen competition in the 20th century emigrant trades, not only between different shipping companies, but under the compradore system — between different ships in the same company, the prospective passengers were well treated in the boarding houses, which bore little resemblance to the barracoons of the 'bad old days'.\n\nBeside the China coasters, overseas ships on the Far Eastern run also took part in the emigrant trade, especially to the Straits and Bangkok, as this could be fitted into their wayport schedule; and even the large and luxurious Canadian Pacific liners were not above carrying a few hundred deck passengers from time to time. Ben Line steamers, too, sometimes called at Amoy and Swatow and took up to two hundred deck passengers to the Straits or Bangkok or vice versa, but on many overseas ships the passengers had to supply and cook their own food, and sleep on wooden planks laid over steel decks. The overseas ships were not normally so well suited for deck passengers as the regular coast ships, and by the First World War the latter had captured the cream of the trade.\n\nIn the South-east Asian trades south-bound traffic normally exceeded north-bound, but not to a disproportionate extent. Many overseas Chinese returned home, either for a holiday or to retire, and north-bound ships were especially busy just before Chinese New Year, and south-bound just after this important festival. These north-bound ships, where many passengers were carrying the savings of a few years or even of a lifetime, were the most tempting for pirates, and were specially equipped to deal", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206266, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n77\n\n(10) Relation of land ownership to élite status can be judged by a list of the twenty highest rate-payers in 1876 and 1881, published in the Government Gazette. The list includes both Europeans and Chinese. In 1876 European ownership outranks Chinese twelve to eight; but in 1881 ownership had shifted so that there were seventeen Chinese among the twenty highest rate-payers. In the 1881 list seven of the top twenty were of compradore families, six were merchants, one contractor, and the widow of Rev. Ho Fuk Tong, ordained minister of the London Missionary Society's Chinese congregation.\n\nThe terminal date for this study is the opening of Tung Wah Hospital in 1872. After this date, the names of the Directors of the Hospital published in the Development of the Tung Wah Hospital 1870-1960 are an excellent criteria for determining élite status. After 1872 there is also an ever increasing number of subscriptions, memorials, committees, delegations, etc., which serve as counter-checks to the Tung Wah Directorships.\n\nFor a study of élite based on such lists, it is necessary to give identity to the names by a biographical sketch. These sketches indicate the manner by which the individual arrived at élite status. To reconstruct the biographies of these early residents of Hong Kong is not easy. Only documentary sources have been used for this reconstruction. No information has been sought from present day descendants of these individuals. I have relied upon such material as newspapers, Land Registry Office records, the Police and Lighting Rates for 1860, 1868 and 1872, the Government Gazettes and Blue Books, the published Calendar of Probates and Administrations, the Colonial Office Records in the Public Records Office, London, and the archives of several Missionary Societies. The Chinese practice of using various aliases complicates identification. In one instance, for example, an individual used at various times and in various relationships ten different aliases. The varying Romanization for Chinese names constitutes another problem for the researcher who uses western sources. The contemporary English, Portuguese, Germans and French each had a different system for Romanizing Chinese characters. For instance on page 101 there is a reference to Tso Aon's brother, Chow Yik Cheong. The Chinese character", "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": 206277, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "88\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\none of the leading brokers and charterers of emigrant ships. In front of his lots he erected a wharf which he leased to the Hong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company after its organization in 1865. In 1860, he appeared in the Courts on the charge of piracy. In response to a request of the Mandarin of his home district in Hoi Ping for assistance in suppressing some Hakka bandits, Achoy had chartered the vessel Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy from Kwok Acheong, the P. and O. Company's compradore. Engaging some Europeans in the Colony he took them up to Hoi Ping where they attacked some Hakka villages. Achoy pleaded that he had not realized that this would be against British law and therefore threw himself upon the mercy of the court.19 He again assisted his home district in 1865 by supplying the local militia with western-made armaments. This earned him official recognition and a biographical notice in the Hoi Ping Gazetteer. In later years his constitution was affected by habitual opium smoking and he did not participate actively in public affairs. He died in 1871, leaving a large fortune.20 In 1857, the editor of The Friend of China described him as being \"no doubt the most creditable Chinese in the Colony\".\n\nTang Aluk, another contractor, though not as much of a community leader as Tam Achoy, was a generous benefactor of worthy projects. He was the largest contributor to the Chinese school book fund of 1859, contributing sixty dollars; Tam Achoy contributed fifty dollars and Kwok Acheong, the P. and O. compradore contributed twenty dollars; all other contributions ranged from ten dollars to fifty cents. The fact that Tang Aluk's name was that of \"Number Six\" indicates he was of humble origin. He began as a stone cutter. Most of them were Hakka, and it is probable that Aluk was of this group. In time he built up a successful contracting business. At his death in 1887 he left a large estate, much of which was in landed property. The administration of his estate involved many lawsuits among his heirs. A newspaper commentator observed that the estate was a gold mine for the legal profession as suits and appeals dragged through the courts for several decades after his death.2\n\nTHE MERCHANTS GROUP\n\n21\n\nHong Kong had difficulty in attracting merchants with capital. We have mentioned the abortive efforts of Chinam and several", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206282, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\nTiuchau merchant, Ko Mun Wo\n\n93\n\nalias Ko Cho Heung\n\nof the Yuen Fat Hong. He was the founder of the firm which established itself in Hong Kong about 1858 and developed an extensive business in the importation of rice from Siam. It soon became one of the wealthiest Chinese firms. In 1881, Ko Mun Wo was the sixteenth highest rate payer, and when he died the year following, the value of his estate was estimated at $163,000. After his death the business was continued by his four sons.\n\nTang Pak Yeung\n\n16\n\nalias Tang Kam Chi was the youngest member of the first Tung Wah Hospital Committee. He was a merchant in the chartering firm of Kwong Lei Yuen. He had received an English language education. He was not a large property owner, nor does his name appear in other lists of the elite.\n\nTHE COMPRADORES GROUP\n\nThe compradores were an important new class which arose in the nineteenth century in the port cities of China. A recent study by Yen-p'ing Hao entitled The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, Mass., 1970) shows how influential this group became in providing capital for the introduction of modern forms of communication, industry, mining, banking and journalism in the late Ch'ing Dynasty. The origin of the compradore system is in the Co-Hong organization through which China channelled all trade with foreigners before the opening of the Treaty ports in 1843. The compradores were recruited from the Canton and Macao area. A large majority of the most influential compradore families were from the Heung Shan District near Macao. When the foreign firms came to Hong Kong they brought with them their compradores. As trade increased on the China coast, the compradores were provided with an opportunity to accumulate considerable capital. This they invested in real estate and in Chinese commercial firms.\n\nThe late Ch'ing Dynasty was often in financial difficulties. One method of raising income was through the sale of official degrees. The compradores and merchants of the port cities, who formed a newly-created bourgeois nouveau riche group within", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206283, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "94\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nChinese society, were eager customers. Purchased degrees was an easy way to acquire a social status which had previously been reserved for the scholars, government officials and gentry. The account of the Governor's visit to Tung Wah Hospital in 1878 published in The Hongkong Government Gazette states that \"there were present nearly three hundred influential Chinese residents from all classes of the community. Of those present some fifty or sixty were in their mandarin costumes.\"\n\n**\n\nWhen the second Sino-British War broke out in the late 1850s, the foreign firms at Canton moved down to Hong Kong bringing with them their compradores. This influx was an impetus to the already significant role compradores were assuming as leaders in the Chinese community. The compradores of the old-established Hong Kong firms formed the core of this leadership.\n\nIn the early days of the Colony the two leading foreign firms were Jardine, Matheson and Company and Dent and Company. One would expect, of course, that their compradores would be among the elite of the Chinese community. The earliest compradore of Jardine's that I can definitely identify is Ng Chook alias Ng Choong Foong alias Sooi Tong. At the time of the opening of the Tung Wah Hospital the newspaper account states that he was the oldest man on the committee, although his name does not appear on the official list of committee members. He died some months after the opening. His estate was administered by his son Ng Seng Kee (A), who was living in Shanghai. The first date I find for Ng Chook in Hong Kong is his purchase of the lease of the Central Market in 1848. I do not know if he is connected with Ng Sow and Ng Lok, both compradores originating from Macao, who bought and sold a great deal of real estate from 1842 to 1847. Nor if Ng Wei alias Ng Wing Fui (**) alias Ng Ping Un (e), who was a compradore for Jardines at Foochow in the 1860s and subsequently at Hong Kong, was a near relative of Ng Chook. Ng Wei was a member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee in 1883 and died in 1897 at Canton.\n\nIn 1861, two of the compradores of Dent and Company, the rival of Jardines, provided capital for a significant real estate development in Hong Kong. The large property where Dent and Company had their stables and residences for their Taipans was bought up by Chiu Wing Chuen and Yeong Lan Ko along with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206284, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n95\n\ntwo European partners of the firm, with the intention of building Chinese houses of a better type to accommodate the wives and families of the growing class of well-to-do compradores. Previously the compradores had not brought their families to Hong Kong but they remained in their home village or in Canton. The editor of The China Mail comments that \"Messrs. Dent and Company have shown both wisdom and kindness in disposing of their land for such purposes.\n\nChiu Wing Tsun (†), one of the purchasers, and his elder brother, Yuk Ting (†), had both been compradores in Dent and Company. Their nephew Chiu Yee Chee () was compradore at Shanghai and became one of the organizers of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company in 1872. Chiu Wing Tsun died at Macao in 1873, leaving property in Hong Kong estimated at $111,000.27 Yeong Lan Ko (☎), the other Chinese purchaser of the Dent property, had succeeded his relative Yeong Atai (*) alias Yeong Chun Kum, to the position of first compradore of Dents at Hong Kong upon the latter's death in 1870. Yeong Lan Ko alias Yeong Sun Yow (), and also known as Asam (), was one of Hong Kong's largest landowners. In 1876 he was the nineteenth largest rate-payer and in 1881 had risen to fifth position. He died in 1884 at Pak Shan, the family village in Heung Shan District.\n\nBefore Dents sold their property, the few substantial Chinese who had family residences in Hong Kong were located at the former Middle Bazaar site. When the inhabitants of the Middle Bazaar had been relocated at Tai Ping Shan, the Government replotted the area and laid off new lots which were meant to be bought principally by Europeans for their residences or business houses.28 Two of the more substantial Chinese bought lots at the sale in 1844: Ying Wing Kee (*) alias Ng Wing Kee (**), a compradore and merchant who died in 1849, and Tong Kam Sing, a contractor who died in 1845. Other Chinese of this class soon bought lots from European owners, that they might establish family houses in a better part of town. These included Wei Akwong, compradore of Bowra and Company and later of the Chartered Mercantile Bank; Ho Sek, compradore of Lyall, Still and Company; Lee Kip Tye, a Fukien broker who began his Hong Kong career as a Government interpreter;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206285, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "96\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nWong Shing, newspaper editor and manager of the London Mission press; and Cheung Achew, a wealthy carpenter.29 The Rev. Ho Fuk Tong and his family lived at the nearby compound of the London Mission Society. In time this area around Peel, Graham, Gage Streets and Hollywood Road became a centre for Parsee and Indian merchants, as well as European brothels. Some of the old families stayed on, but the opening up of the area bounded by Wyndham, Wellington and Pottinger Streets by the Dents provided a needed location for the houses of the better Chinese. After the Peak was developed in the 1870s and 1880s, the wealthy Chinese moved up to Mid-levels occupying the mansions of the Europeans who moved to the Peak.\n\nOf the individuals who had their family residence in the former Middle Bazaar area were two who were on the organizing committee of Tung Wah Hospital, Wong Shing and Ho Asek alias Ho Fai Yin #alias Ho In Kee. Ho Asek first appears in Hong Kong records in 1849 when he purchased a lot in Tai Ping Shan. At the time he was compradore of the opium firm of Lyall, Still and Company. It failed in 1867 and Ho Asek embarked upon his own business ventures under the firm name of Kin Nam. According to a newspaper account, he was subject to a $2,000 “squeeze” from the mandarins during the second Sino-British War.30 He traded extensively in opium as well as rice, and in 1871 held the gambling monopoly from which within a year he realized a $28,000 profit. In an action brought against him in 1871, he testified that he operated with a capital of $200,000.31 In 1868 two of his employees were brought before the court on a charge of extortion. In the evidence presented it was stated that about September 1866, some influential Chinese started a system of subscription or unofficial taxation to support district watchmen. The city had been divided into two sections, East and West. The West District was superintended by Tam Achoy and Ho Asek, \"a most respectable and honest trader”. A shopkeeper resisted the pressure put upon him to contribute and brought the charge of extortion against two of Asek's employees who had been collecting for the scheme. The court gave judgment in favour of the defendants.32 Ho Asek was still a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872. He died in Pang Po (likely Ping Po+), Shun Tak District in 1877. His wife was granted letters of administration on his estate, but she being blind, gave her power", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206286, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n97\n\nof attorney to Wei Akwong. His estate was held in trust until 1919, when the family property was sold at auction.\n\nWe have mentioned Dent and Company (it failed in 1867) and Jardine, Matheson and Company as the leading firms in Hong Kong in the early years; but if we think of the financial giants today, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank takes its place beside Jardines. The Bank was organized in 1865, and as we might expect its first compradore, Lo Pak Sheung alias Lo Chung Kong, was on Tung Wah's organizing committee. He died in 1877 and his position as compradore was taken by his son Lo Hok Pung (alias Lo Sau Ko)(44). Unfortunately, the son overcommitted himself in several speculative ventures, and not seeing any legitimate way of extricating himself from his financial difficulties, absconded in 1892 with over a million dollars of the Bank's assets; at least that is the figure reported in the newspaper accounts. An indication of his penchant for unwise investments is the $30,000 he put into the organization of the _Uet Po_ newspaper in 1885. Within a year, this had been spent, and he was forced to sell out to Lo Ping Chi, who was able to operate the paper with an expenditure of only several thousand dollars for a number of years.33\n\nIn the field of shipping, the P. and O. Steamship Company played an important role in the Hong Kong economy. They established a branch here in 1845. Their compradore was Kwok Acheong# alias Kwok Kam Cheung. The newspaper notice of his death states that he \"originally belonged to... the boat people's clan, but afterwards obtained admission to Tam Achoi's clan, Tam Achoi being a Punti....\"34 This substantiates my previous statement that the boat people who settled on land generally wished to lose the peculiarities of their origins. Acheong was one of the first settlers of Hong Kong, having organized a provisioning system for the Army and Navy at the time of the first Sino-British War. However, he did not receive the extensive land privileges granted to Loo Aqui for his services. When the P. and O. Company disposed of their shipwright and engineering department in 1854, it was taken over by Kwok Acheong. He developed a fleet of steamships in the 1860s, which provided keen competition to the European-controlled", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206287, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "98\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nHong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company. In addition to his shipping interests he operated a bakery, imported cattle to the Colony and operated as a general merchant under the firm name of Fat Hing. In 1876 he was the third largest rate-payer in Hong Kong, and the first among the Chinese. He died in 1880 leaving an estate valued at $445,000. He was survived by seven sons. Two of them are listed among the twenty largest rate-payers in 1881, Kwok Ying Kai is number 8 and Kwok Ying Shew is number 14. Both of them became involved in the land speculation mania of 1881 and their property became subject to foreclosure.\n\nThe death notice of Kwok Acheong states that he was one of the original directors of Tung Wah Hospital and the year before his death was re-elected to that position. As he died in 1880, he must be the same as the Kwok Siu Chung alias Kwok Ching San of the Fat Hing firm listed as a Director in 1879 and in 1873. He was a member of the Kai Fong Committee in 1872 and signed almost all the lists and subscriptions. Government frequently consulted him regarding affairs which affected the Chinese community. His death warranted an extensive biographical notice in the English language papers. It characterized him as \"a man of remarkable intelligence and keenness in business, and of great cheerfulness and urbanity in his social relations. He was a liberal subscriber to all charities and behaved handsomely to those in his employ. His acquaintance with the English language never rose above respectable 'pidgin'; but he agreed well with and was much respected by foreigners, with whom he had constant intercourse and large transactions\". His funeral cortege was one of the largest Hong Kong had witnessed. It occupied one hour and thirteen minutes to pass one spot. One of its features were four tablets on poles with flowers surrounding the inscriptions of his purchased Chinese ranks.31\n\nThe Chairman of the organizing committee of Tung Wah was the compradore of Gibb, Livingston and Company named Leung On alias Leung Wan Hon alias Leung Hok Chau. He would seem to be the same as the Leong Po Wan named as Gibb, Livingston and Company's compradore on the 1852 list of contributions to Dr. Hirschberg's Hospital.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206288, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\n99\n\nOn the 1859 contribution list for Chinese textbooks he appears under his usual name, Leong On.\n\nIn 1876 the London Missionary Society wished to raise funds for a proposed school in Wanchai. The Rev. Mr. Eitel called a meeting of the leading Chinese compradores to present his Society's plans and enlist their financial support. However, he encountered the opposition of Leung On at the meeting. Eitel wrote to Mission Directors in London,\n\nI explained the whole subject, especially dwelling on the point that as soon as our native church is able to provide for all the expenses connected with the chapel it shall be handed over to the native church, and that I intended to insert the same stipulation in the deed for the school building. Unfortunately there\n\na very loquacious compradore present, who lately at an interview with the Governor made himself notorious by his narrow self-conceit, a Mr. Leung On, compradore to Gibb, Livingston and Company. He proposed that we should teach the boys no religion but confine ourselves to exclusively secular teachings. When I positively declined doing any such thing, he coolly proposed that I should hand over the piece of ground to him, saying he would build the school himself and keep it going if the Bible and Christian books were excluded. Of course, I declined this proposal, and stuck to my own plans.35\n\nIt is not surprising that Rev. Mr. Eitel does not mention Leung On as one of the contributors to the school fund, though he quickly raised $585 from other compradores and felt confident that the amount could be increased to $2,500 with more extensive solicitations.\n\nIn 1883 Leung On encountered business reverses and the court appointed Trustees to administer his bankrupt estate. He died in 1890 at Canton, leaving an estimated estate in Hong Kong of $20,000. His son and his grandson succeeded to his position as compradore for Gibb, Livingston and Company, the latter dying in 1962; thus the Leung family served the company for well over a century.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206289, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "100\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nalias\n\nFung Ming Shan alias Fung Po Hai Fung Chew, another of the founders of Tung Wah, in the 1870s was compradore to A.H. Hogg and Company, but later became the compradore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank. He had received an English language education and may have been a classmate of Ng Choy (Wu Ting Fang) at St. Paul's College, as they were partners in several land transactions in Hong Kong. Fung Ming Shan was one of the signatories in 1878 of the petition of natives of Tung Kwun District to Government concerning the kidnapping and sale of children, which resulted in the organization of the Po Leung Kuk. He was naturalized as a British subject in 1881. He died in 1898, leaving a widow and two sons, one of whom died in 1906.\n\nYet another of the organizing directors of Tung Wah was the compradore of Gilman and Company, Choy Wing Chip **蔡永接 alias Choy Lung Chi. Along with Choey Teo Soon and Chop Aping, he was a partner in the Wing Cheong Shun firm which failed in 1873 owing some 160,000 taels. He was probably the brother of Choy Aloy, who was compradore to J. J. dos Remedios and Company in the 1870s; both were in Hong Kong as early as 1865. Choy Achip died in 1874 and the administration of his estate was granted to his eldest son Choy Afoong.\n\nA compradore family that appears on a number of the various lists and by 1881 had become the largest rate-payer was headed by Ng Acheong alias Ng Ying Cheong(A) who died in 1873. He left an estate of $260,000. The family were compradores to the firm of Messrs. Douglas Lapraik and Company. Lapraik began his career as a jeweller and watchmaker, but by the 1850s had extended his business into commerce and eventually the firm built up a large shipping concern. His compradore first appears on the Hong Kong records in 1855. After the death of Ng Acheong in 1873, a near relative Ng Sang(A) alias Ng Ying Sang alias Ng Chuk Shau succeeded as compradore. He fell victim to the fever of land speculation in 1881 and suffered heavy losses. Concern over his strained financial position so affected his health that he died in 1883. Action was brought by his employers against the Ng family property to cover debts he left in his compradore's accounts. The family had come to Hong Kong from Macao.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206290, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG\n\nTHE GOVERNMENT SERVANTS GROUP\n\n101\n\nA life-long career by a Chinese in Government service usually would not have provided opportunity for the accumulation of sufficient capital to enable one to enter the élite group. The highest paid positions were the interpreterships, but a Chinese who had sufficient competency in English to be appointed to this position could earn more in the employment of the foreign firms. However, many of the young men who received an English language education, at first in the Mission schools or the Morrison Education Society School and after 1860 at the Government Central School (now Queens College), upon leaving school became interpreters and clerks in Government for several years. But normally they did not make a life career of Government service.\n\nThere were, however, two individuals who appear on our lists who had been employed by the British Government even before its removal to Hong Kong and who continued as Government employees until their retirement. These were Tso Aon and Cheong Assow.\n\nWhen the British established their Government offices in Hong Kong the man who became responsible for all the Chinese staff in Government offices, as well as serving as compradore to the Treasury, was Tso Aon alias Cho Yune Choong alias Cho Wing Chow. His family had lived in Macao for several generations, and in 1834 he entered the service of the British in the office of the Superintendent of Trade. By the time of his removal to Hong Kong he had accumulated enough capital to invest in real estate. When he retired from Government service in 1857 without pension, he lived off the income from real estate, pawn shops and other business ventures. He died in 1874 at Macao, survived by several sons. One of his grandsons was the Rev. Tso See Kai (**) 曹思楷) Vicar of St. Paul's (born 1895, died 1928). Tso Aon's brother, Chow Yik Chong (5) alias Chow Yin Yin alias Chow Yau () alias Chow Kam Ming (alias Chow Wai Chun (R), was a large land owner and capitalist in Macao. He was knighted by the Portuguese Government, made a member of the Macao Legislative Council, and was a leader of the Chinese community in Macao. He died in 1896. His son Tso Seen Wan came", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206299, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "110\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nBoarding School at Singapore of the American Board. One was Leung Tsun Tak (梁遵德) who was employed as an interpreter at the Hong Kong Magistracy. He was a son of Leung Afat (梁亞佛) an ordained evangelist of the London Missionary Society,49 The other lad was Wei Akwong (韋阿光) whom Bridgman had picked up sick and starving on the streets of Macao some years previous. Akwong, unlike the other Chinese we have been mentioning, never received baptism. At first he assisted Bridgman in his missionary work in Hong Kong, but when Bridgman moved to Canton in 1845 Akwong remained in Hong Kong. He became compradore for the ship chandlers and storekeepers Bowra and Company, but in 1855 was appointed Supreme Court Interpreter in Chinese and Malay. In 1857 when the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China opened its Hong Kong office, Wei Akwong became the bank's compradore. He retained this office until his death in 1878 and was succeeded by his son Wei Ayuk (韋亞玉) alias Wei Bo Shan (韋寶臣). Wei Akwong was a recognized leader of the Chinese community, and his name appears on numerous petitions and memorials. Like Wong Shing he sent his sons abroad to study. His eldest son Wei Yuk married a daughter of Wong Shing, and followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law by serving on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1917.50 He was knighted in 1919 and died in 1922.\n\nThe Bishop of Victoria had under his patronage upon his arrival in Hong Kong in 1850, a young Chinese whom he had met in England. Chan Tai Kwong (陳大光) was a native of Pun Yu District of Kwang Tung, but he turned up in England in 1845 as a young man aged eighteen. How he got to England and what he was doing there, I have not been able to determine, but in 1849 the newly appointed Bishop of Victoria met him and took him under his patronage, with the hope that he could be trained as an evangelist among the Chinese. Soon after coming to Hong Kong, Tai Kwong was sent to Singapore to marry Gay Eng, also known as Sarah Hughes, a pupil in the school for Chinese girls conducted by Miss Grant. Upon his return to Hong Kong he was placed on three years' probation before ordination, but the Bishop did license him to preach to the prisoners in the Victoria Gaol. Chan Tai Kwong, however, had difficulties in adjusting to his new position. His experience in", "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": 206310, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n121\n\ncorrupt than regular police18: Chinese could at least understand the rationale of the tariff and no doubt accepted it as a normal condition of life in their time.\n\nIt was, however, J. H. Stewart Lockhart19, the occupant of the combined posts of Registrar General and Colonial Secretary at the end of the century, who perceived the strategic importance of a Chinese advisory council for the colonial government and who, at the same time, helped strengthen and expand the network of committees and boards on which prominent Chinese sat. In 1891 Lockhart took a decisive step: he recommended that twelve Chinese gentlemen, including such influential Chinese as Dr. Ho Kai (Ho Ch'i), Wei Yuk (Wei Yü), and Ho Fook (Ho Fu), should be appointed by government to form a far stronger committee20 than the informal body that had supervised the Force since its inception, so as to improve co-operation between the force and the Registrar General's Department. As Lockhart stressed in his report for 1891, 'it is hoped with the aid of the Committee the efficiency of the District Watch will be increased, and that the advice of the gentlemen forming the Committee will be of great assistance to this office in dealing with the affairs of the Chinese community'. The following year he was pleased to note that ‘its advice on several important questions connected with the affairs of the Chinese community has been of great help to this Department'. Lockhart saw the Committee, then, as a key advisory body for his own department and, it follows, for the colonial government in general. In this, it appears, he was strongly supported by the rich compradore, Wei Yuk, an unofficial member of the Legislative Council and a collaborator of Lockhart's. Wei Yuk had urged that a new committee should be nominated and that this reorganised committee should be given official recognition, backing and status.22 I have been unable to ascertain the names of the members of the Committee before 189123 but I suspect that many must have been nonentities in the eyes of the Registrar General and prominent Chinese local worthies and local leaders rather than Chinese conspicuous for great wealth, prestige and power24.\n\nIt is not possible to reconstruct Wei Yuk's reasoning at this date; nevertheless it is plausible to surmise that Wei Yuk understood that the tighter the connection between the Committee of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206317, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "128\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nmonthly meetings, but it is clear that consensus was usually arrived at and the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs given sound advice on important local matters for it was politically unwise for the Committee to be deadlocked or sharply split for long. If that had occurred too frequently, the utility of the Committee as the chief consultative body would have declined46,\n\nIt would be wrong, however, to think of the Committee as being, in modern parlance, a purely 'Establishment' body. Certainly its members had very close links with European businessmen in the Colony. At the beginning of this century over half its members were compradores to European firms and banks. On the other hand it is clear the Committee did succeed in expressing what we can only call a Chinese point of view”. There are a number of reasons for this. Most committeemen had contacts of one sort or another with the commercial world of Canton and some were involved in the politics of Kwangtung Province and one in particular, Ho Kai, with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement47. Many owned property and land in Kwangtung and were interested in the economic development of that area48. And nearly all sent their male children back to China for education49. Thus the members of the District Watch Committee were involved in two sets of interests: those of Hong Kong and those of Kwangtung.\n\nYet when they spoke up about an issue they represented principally the interests of the compradore bourgeoisie, suggesting a narrower but perhaps more complex set of interests than would be conveyed by the use of the word 'Chinese'. Even the highly westernised Ho Kai, a Chinese who had studied Western medicine at Edinburgh University, dispensed with the queue and wore London suits, who married an Englishwoman and wrote better English than Chinese50 was still able to represent the generalised opinions of the Chinese community and, more importantly, the point of view of a segment of Hong Kong's Chinese community, that of the Chinese businessman and speculator. The advice given by the Committee to government must be seen then as a distillation of all these complex sets of interests.\n\nThere were, as I have already emphasised, several reasons why the Committee became so important as a key advisory body.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206325, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "136 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\ncensus 13 of the 76 Chinese enumerators were district watchmen; in the 1901 census 5 out of 107 were. In the 1906 census the 120 enumerators were shown round the blocks (census sub-divisions) by district watchmen. They also gave help in the 1911 census, and in the 1921 one the bulk of the force was placed at the disposal of the commissioner of census, who wrote 'each Chinese watchman engaged was in charge of two sections; they helped clear up misunderstandings and kept a check on enumerators'. The Committee was thanked on many occasions by government for its public service; it was praised for the help it rendered to the police during the riots which occurred in 1894 during the great epidemic of plague. The Committee did all it could to help its sister organizations the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk. Thus district watchmen were always employed on special duties at the Tung Wah Hospital during outbreaks of plague and the Chinese Public Dispensary Committee used Watchmen to prevent the dumping of bodies in the streets. The Po Leung Kuk's two principal detectives were serving district watchmen at the turn of the century. Co-operation was easy because most members of the District Watch Committee had served or were serving on the committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk. In 1895 head district watchmen were paid $240 a year, assistant head district watchmen $180 and watchmen from $84 to $96. \n\n18 For examples of police corruption in nineteenth century Hong Kong see numerous references in Norton-Kyshe, op. cit. \n\n19 After a distinguished academic career at Edinburgh University, J. H. Stewart Lockhart became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878; Registrar General in 1887; Colonial Secretary in 1895. In 1902 he was appointed first Civil Commissioner of Weihaiwei and retired from this post in 1921. Among his numerous publications there are several of sinological value. See particularly: 'Contributions to the Folklore of China', China Review, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 352-353 and vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 37-39; also 'Some Chinese Folk-lore', Folk-lore, vol. 14, 1903, pp. 292-298. Lockhart was local secretary in Hong Kong of the International Folk-lore Society. \n\n20 In 1892 new rules were drawn up under Ordinance No. 13 of 1888, with the advice of the Committee, for the regulation and guidance of the watchmen. 'Copies of these rules have been distributed among the contributors of the District Watchmen's Fund, by whom more interest seems to be evinced in and more assistance asked from the force than formerly': See Report of the Registrar General for 1892. Lockhart also persuaded two Chinese newspapers—the Tsun Wan Yat Po and the Wai San Yat Po—to publish weekly lists of cases brought before the magistrate by the District watchmen for the information of subscribers to the District Watchmen's Fund. Lockhart realised that publicity was good for the Committee: he saw that they got it. The report of the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs always contained a section on the District Watch and news about members was given: deaths, resignations, appointments, etc. \n\n21 Wei Yuk (1849-1921) was the son of Wei Kwong, compradore to the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China. He was educated at the Government Central School in Hong Kong and in 1867, at the age of 18, became a pupil at the Leicester Stoneygate School and in 1868 of the Dollar Institution, Scotland. He returned to Hong Kong in 1872 to become assistant compradore in the Chartered Mercantile Bank. He succeeded his father on the latter's death in 1879. Wei Yuk married the eldest daughter of Wong Shing (Huang Shêng). He was the fourth Chinese to be appointed to the Legislative Council, the other three being Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang), Wong Shing and Ho Kai. He was knighted in 1919. During his public career he served on all the commissions appointed by government to inquire into matters affecting the Chinese. Ho Fook (1863-1926) was the younger half-brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung, reputed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206326, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n137\n\nto be the richest man in Hong Kong. When Ho Tung retired as chief compradore to Jardine, Matheson's in 1900, Ho Fook succeeded him. Ho Fook's assistant was Ho Kom Tong, another of Ho Tung's brothers. The members of the District Watch Committee were members of a small circle of businessmen, often related through ties of blood or marriage. When the Tai Yau Bank was established in 1914 with a paid-up capital of $6,000,000, the proprietors were named as Lau Chu Pak, Ho Fook, Ho Kom Tong, Lo Chung Shiu and Chan Kai Ming. Lau Chu Pak was compradore to A. S. Watson and Co., chairman of the Po On Commercial Association and chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce; Chan Kai Ming was manager of the Opium Farm; and Lo Chung Shiu, assistant compradore to Jardine, Matheson and Co., was Ho Fook's brother-in-law. All were or became members of the District Watch Committee.\n\n22 T. C. Cheng writes that Wei Yuk 'was very much concerned about law and order among the Chinese masses because in those early days riff-raff and political refugees from South China continued to come into Hong Kong. Thus it was at his suggestion that the District Watch Force was founded in 1888. Mr. Cheng appears to be mistaken about the date and is no doubt referring to the ordinance of that year, no. 13 of 1888 rather than to its proper date of origin. Wright and Cartright, Feldwick, and Professor Woo all state that the Committee was formed on Wei Yuk's suggestion. See: T. C. Cheng, 'Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils of Hong Kong up to 1941', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 9, 1969, pp. 17-18; Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Treaty Ports, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co., 1908, p. 109; W. Feldwick, ed., Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent Chinese at Home and Abroad, London Globe Encyclopedia Co., 1917, p. 576; Professor Woo Sing Lim, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Five Continents Book Company, 1939, p. 4.\n\n23 Unfortunately all the records in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs were destroyed or lost during the Japanese occupation and hence anyone trying to reconstruct the history of the District Watch must work mostly from scraps of information found in government publications, newspapers, books.\n\n24 My guess is that a large number were traditional Chinese merchants from the Five Districts operating on a relatively small scale. The Committee after 1891 represented the views of a more westernised and modernised elite with a knowledge of modern business techniques and modern financial manipulations. Dr. Ho Kai, for example, played the stock exchange with great success and speculated in many fields, particularly land development. He was, properly speaking, a financier although his occupation is often given tout court as lawyer. He had also qualified in medicine at Edinburgh but gave up the practice of medicine soon after his return to Hong Kong in 1882 because of Chinese resistance to western medicine.\n\n25 In 1903, for example, the Committee opposed the re-introduction of the night-pass system but suggested other remedial measures (see Index to Correspondence (General Register) 1894-1904, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1909, p. 100). In 1909 'at the request of the District Watchmen Committee, children who are hawking without a licence are on their first offence sent to the Registrar General who cautions their guardians. This procedure seems to have proved effective in each case' wrote the Registrar General in 1909. It is worth noting that both Registrar General and Committee wanted to end the night-pass system and were opposed by the Captain Superintendent of Police, who was unsuccessful. As for hawkers, very few Chinese regarded them as a serious menace although colonial administrators", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206422, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n213 \n\nwe find, when he writes about family law, an attempt to describe the law in terms of formal (rather static) relationships. The dynamic element, how the law responds in practice to the needs and expectations of the people subject to it, is missing. Surprisingly, this element is also missing where one would most expect to find it in his consideration of commercial law as it was developed in the Mixed Court at Shanghai. Much of the book is concerned with Family Law and as such is still of interest though, consisting as it does largely of statement without exposition, it is of diminishing value in the light of modern anthropological techniques. But it is to the chapter on Commercial Law and to the Appendix of Mixed Court cases (at p. 142) that the reader will look forward most eagerly. \n\nThe Mixed Court at Shanghai developed over the years its own distinctive brand of law, not consciously but in consequence of the cultural and commercial interplay which was the hallmark of Shanghai. Though the law administered between Chinese parties may be Chinese, the context within which the disputes arose could not be called wholly Chinese and the Court's decisions themselves display a 'mixed' character. Shortly after the publication of Jamieson's book, A. M. Kotenev's much more considerable work, Shanghai: its Mixed Court and Council, was published1 and from it we may learn considerably more about the operations of that court. But, even so, many of the questions which arise in our minds are left unanswered and we are given, for example, little elucidation on the true legal position of the compradore, on his rights and his liabilities. Perhaps Jamieson was too close to events to be able to consider these wider conceptual (though, at the same time, essentially practical) matters but, nevertheless, he fails to point out the basic principles behind the decisions to which he refers and the reader is left unenlightened. He confines himself to description and, in so doing, wrote a less valuable book than he might otherwise have done. \n\n3 \n\nLooking at this book through the eyes of the nineteen-seventies, it appears disappointing. But, though it does not really live up to the enthusiasm of its re-publishers, at a time when interest in the formal study of Chinese Law is waxing fast, it is most valuable to have available once more a work which is part of the history of the development of Chinese law from its earlier ‘feudal' stage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206609, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n151\n\nthe level of the commercial interests of Chinese merchants of the time but also because of the extent to which it figured in a scandal over bribery by Government officials and the victimisation of a Government servant who later became the embittered editor of one of the Colony's newspapers, the Friend of China.\n\nThough, from an historical point of view, the former matters are far more important, the two are not wholly distinct for the Government servant in question acquired property interests in the market.\n\nAfter Sir John Davis let the market franchise go to the highest bidder, he granted the franchise holder a short lease on the premises, thereby effectively changing the relationship of the market operator to the Government. Accordingly, the lot on which the market stood, an area of 37,800 square feet, was leased on 1 July 1845 to Hwei Aqui at a rent of $4,800 per annum (about £1,000). This area, comprising the whole of the land between the shore-line and the Queen's Road, was larger than that of the original market and allowed for the houses and shops which had been built between the market buildings and the road.\n\nIt is at this point that the scene becomes confused for Hwei decided to develop the property further and had to borrow money to do so. Between the date of the lease and mid-1847 when Hwei died, he executed several transactions, some of which are recorded in the records of the Government Land Office as Mortgages, some of which are not. The earliest was on 6 August 1845 when he borrowed $1,500 for one month from the estate of a Chinese, Tong Kim-sing who had been in business as a ‘contractor' until his death in 1844, at the staggering rate of interest of 10% per month. The satisfaction of this mortgage is not recorded in the Land Office but it is known that the administrator of the deceased's estate left the colony about this time and the defect might have been one of form only. About two months later, on 12 October 1845, Hwei borrowed from Ying Wing-kee, described as a ‘compradore' and one of the only two Chinese to have bought land at the sale of Crown Land on 22 January 1844, $2,800 for a period of 18 months and at a rate of repayment which worked out at an interest rate of almost 6% per month. Hwei was, therefore, deeply in debt before the year was out. Before his death in 1847, there follows one further transaction which was imperfectly recorded at the time. On 13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206610, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "152\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nNovember 1846, he assigned the lot to Foong Achi (otherwise Attai) for an unspecified amount. The transaction was recorded as an absolute assignment and this led Tarrant, then Clerk of Deeds in the Land Office and to whom we shall shortly return, to add a note on the lease register to the effect that the leaseholder's name could not be altered in the Lease Register until the mortgage encumbrances were cleared. Though Foong later claimed that the transaction was an absolute assignment, with $1,000 as the consideration, Tarrant rejected this on the ground that the document of assignment was a forgery.10 But in 1848 Foong re-assigned the property to Hwei's administrator, stating that all sums owing were satisfied. This is sufficient to show that, when the market passed to Hwei's brother Afoon on his death in 1847, the picture was already complicated. It was to become more so.\n\nHwei Afoon seems to have felt the need for more cash for reasons which will soon become apparent and he entered into a transaction which is very difficult to understand, though he may have done so under duress. On 28 June 1847, he assigned his interest (as administrator) to two others on trust for various purposes. These two named persons were, first, Chow Aoan who, at the time was compradore to the Government Treasury and, as such, a powerful man. He already had extensive property interests in the Chinese parts of the town and was to extend them in the years to come. The other person was Le Quong-cheong about whom less is known. He described himself on one occasion as a 'bookseller' but certainly also lent money.\n\nThe purpose of the transaction must have been to secure the repayment of monies borrowed by Hwei Afoon. Ying Wing-kee had transferred to Le on 19 June 1847 his interest in the property, the transaction being memorialised as a mortgage to secure the repayment of $2,400 owing to Le by Ying, but it may have in fact been a transfer to Le of Ying's interest under the mortgage of 12 October 1845. As shall be seen, however, Ying retained some interest in the market. The deed of assignment of 28 June 1847 required the trustees (Chow and Le) to pay the Crown Rent twice a month. Then they were to permit Ying Wing-kee to receive the rents of the nine shops fronting on the Queen's Road, showing that Ying retained some interest though precisely what it was is not clear. Hwei Afoon himself was to be paid $100 per month and the trustees were to pay", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "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": 206613, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "H.K.'S CENTRAL MARKET AND THE TARRANT AFFAIR\n\n155\n\nwhich went into his own pocket. The accusations had, of course, been withdrawn because they were impossible to substantiate but doubts still existed on the expenditure of the money which had undoubtedly been collected—Caine's version was that it had been used to run a voluntary hospital for the women but the Hong Kong Register alleged that a sum of about $500 per month was still being collected. To make matters absolutely plain, the Register reported that Afoon had told them that the Compradore's 'squeeze' was known to the Chinese as \"Caine's rent\" or \"tax.\"20\n\nThe finger was pointing at Caine though it is fair to say that Tarrant, whatever his motives, merely recounted the alleged facts. It was the two newspapers which implicated Caine in the dealings of the two compradores, but it was only Tarrant who found himself arraigned, with Afoon, for conspiring to damage the reputation of Caine. He was committed to trial before the Supreme Court by a bench of Justices. As it happened, the three justices were all Government servants (Campbell, Hillier and C. G. Holdforth) and two of them held to be Caine's protégés. It is probably true that the public was taken aback at this and Tarrant had their sympathy. When his case eventually came before the Supreme Court in October, Tarrant being suspended from duty during this period, the Attorney General moved that the trial be postponed because of the absence of a material witness. Lo Een-teen, Caine's Compradore, had disappeared from the Colony. Tarrant was willing for the trial to proceed but the Chief Justice Hulme ruled that it should be postponed and when it came up again, the Attorney General (now Parker, acting) moved before Campbell, now Acting Chief Justice, that there was no case to answer and did not offer any evidence.21 But, although Tarrant was now a free man, he found himself without a job—during his suspension the Government had combined his post with another. He proceeded to petition the Secretary of State, Earl Grey but he was hampered by lack of evidence.22\n\nIt is at this point that we return to the account of transactions in the Central Market. On 23 November 1847, Hwei's interest in the Central Market ceased when it was sold by the Sheriff to Le Kip-tye, an interpreter in the Government's employ, in execution of a writ of fi. fa.23 in the suit McSwyney v. Hwei Afoon.24 His interest was said to amount to 5/13 of the whole and this must have been his interest under the deed of 28 June of the same year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206618, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "160\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\n23 A writ of fieri facias (abbreviated to fi. fa.) is the means whereby a judgment is executed against the property of a person found liable to another in damages in a civil suit. It enables his property to be sold to meet the sums awarded against him. The writ was frequently employed at this time in suits for arrears of Crown Rent.\n\n24 Memorial 359.\n\n25 When property is mortgaged to secure sums advanced by the mortgagee to the mortgagor, the latter is said to have an 'equity of redemption'. The purpose of this is to make certain that his interest in relation to that of the lender is kept in balance, so that the lender can always be forced to release the security when the reasons for giving it are no longer present, i.e., when the sums advanced are repaid. The equity of redemption is treated as an item of property which the mortgagor is free to dispose of—it is the right to reconveyance when the security is discharged or repayment of the loan.\n\n26 Under the Ordinance No. 3 of 1844, all transactions in and concerning land, as well as judgments, wills and so on which involve land, must be registered in the Land Office. A transaction is quite effective even if the Ordinance is not complied with but subsequent purchasers or persons having dealings with property automatically have notice of any registered transaction which will therefore take precedence even over prior unregistered transactions.\n\n27 Ong Chok may in fact have been Ong Lok. The latter frequently dealt in property and is described in Memorials as a 'compradore'. He had extensive property interests in the Taipingshan district.\n\n28 Memorial 384.\n\n29 Memorial 385.\n\n30 Memorial 418.\n\n31 The Chinese used then and still do use to a certain limited extent a lunar calendar.\n\n32 Friend of China, 23 June 1849.\n\n33 Memorial 541.\n\n34 Lease Register Vol. C, f. 219.\n\n35 Lease Register Vol. F, ff. 38 and 47.\n\n36 It was suggested that Chinese merchants were not averse to bribery because they were accustomed to bribing Chinese Government officials.\n\n37 But it should be noted that there are a good many lots in the Taipingshan area in which there were no recorded dealings for a good many years. It is unlikely that there were no dealings at all. It is more likely that the dealings were simply not recorded.\n\n38 Towards the end of the 1840's and in the early 1850's the number of non-residents investing in property in the colony rose markedly, most of them coming from those districts of Kwantung Province adjoining Hong Kong and Macao. The Taiping rebellion may have caused some part of the flow of capital.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206865, "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-1973", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "136\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA few months after the festive opening of the temple, \"The Joss House Committee\" received from Government the grant of a lot adjoining the temple for the erection of a school.\n\nSometime between 1860 and 1865 a small building was built on the rocky hillside just below the Man Mo Temple. It was near Circular Pathway and Ladder Street. In the Hong Kong Rate lists its name is given at one time as \"Sam Young” Miu and at another time as \"Sam Sing\" Miu. The 1878 Rate has the notation \"removed\". This is clearly another temple.\n\nEitel states that the Tai Wong Temple in Spring Gardens was in existence at the time of the British occupation of Hong Kong. If so, title to the Queen's Road East property on which it is built was not obtained until 1847. Lee Fun-wei, a compradore, then obtained a Crown Lease for Inland Lot 257. In 1852, Lee Muy, \"carer of Joss House\", was witness to the transfer of a nearby house. He may be the same as Lee Amoy, \"formerly a butcher, but now of no occupation”, who obtained a court order in 1864 prohibiting Lee Fun-wei from selling or further mortgaging the temple property. In the following year the two parties exchanged properties. Lee Amoy conveyed to Lee Fun Wei a lot with five houses and in return received Inland Lot 257 with \"Joss House, dwelling house and building erected thereon\". Lee Amoy immediately mortgaged the temple property to Delfino Noronha, a Portuguese printer, for $1,500. The mortgage remained unpaid, and in 1869 Noronha sold the temple to a committee composed of Tam Achoy, Ho Asik, and Lee Yuk Hang. It thus passed out of the private ownership of the Lee family to the representatives of the Chinese community.\n\nIf Eitel's statement is correct, that the temple on Queen's Road East at Spring Gardens was in existence before the British occupation of the Island, its proprietors the Lee family may have been settled in the Spring Gardens area, now better known as Wanchai, before the occupation. When Crown Leases were issued for land in this area in 1847, several members of the Lee family secured lots.\n\nA notice of the Hung Shing Temple at Ap Lei Chau written by Mr. James Hayes appears in Vol. 7 of this Journal. The date of the bell in the temple is given as 1773. As we have noticed Eitel states the temple was built about 1770. Information on when and by whom it was built is given in a court case reported in The China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207148, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n213\n\nDealings in land and property were a major enterprise in early Hong Kong. An insight into the hazards of real estate speculation is given by George Duddell's testimony before the Land Committee in 1849. He speaks about his purchase of a lot at the south-west corner of Queen's Road West and Possession Street. As we walk along Fat Hing Street we shall be passing the south side of the lot. Duddell states regarding the purchase of the lots in 1844:\n\nThe lot was bought after unprecedented bidding for two hundred per cent on the original upset rental. The circumstances in palliation of my buying it at such a price are, the lot was airy and perfectly level with one rock only to clear it off before building could be commenced, combined with a great demand for houses, and the facility the lot offered to speedily erect them, with the fact I was outbid on all other lots the same day. The buildings were built and tenanted, but within a year they had left for other houses. These houses were void, vagrants plundering even from doors and glass from windows, every grate was stolen. I must hire a private watchman to protect useless property\n\nThe buildings were much damaged by the typhoon of 1848. In November of 1848, I surrendered them to Government. In consequence of requiring a Sailor's Home, I have by petition obtained back the lot, repaired the buildings and put my seamen into it.\n\nThe premises were known as the Circular Buildings. Duddell again surrendered them to the Government in 1850. Not long after, the land was resold to Quoke Acheong, the Compradore of the P. & O. Steam Navigation Company. He was a large land owner in this area. On this property and a section he had purchased across Queen's Road, he developed his own business enterprises under the firm name of Fat Hing. The firm gave its name to the lane south of Queen's Road off Possession Street.\n\nUpon the elevated promontory called West Point, Joseph Frost Edgar built a bungalow. In March, 1843, he was admitted as the resident partner of the firm Jamieson, How and Company. He was one of the first two unofficial members of the Legislative Council, serving from 1850 to 1857. An advertisement for the rent or sale of the West Point Bungalow, dated July 19, 1845 (Friend of China), provides a description of one of the early residences in Hong Kong:\n\nA substantial house consisting of two sitting rooms each 30 by 20 feet and in height 17 feet, separated by folding doors, five", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207150, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n215 \n\nThe area between Queen's Road and the present Des Voeux Road, originally the Praya, extending from Wilmer Street west to Eastern Street was bought in 1858 by a Chinese consortium consisting of Chun Afie, Pang Awah, Tso Atak and Leong Hang*. The tract purchased consisted of Marine Lots 90, 91 and 92. They were apportioned among the several purchasers. At first the property was devoted principally to Chinese ship building yards, but as population and business spread westward, the yards became crowded out. The two lanes Tsz Mi and Sai Woo were developed in the 1860's. On the old Praya there was a concentration of rice dealers and a scattering of salt fish stores, though Ham Yu** Lane was located on the lots immediately to the west, between Eastern and Centre Streets.\n\n \nLike all the land in urban Hong Kong, the area we visit has passed through successive changes in land use and ownership. The land use changes are marked by three main periods: first (1842 to around 1855) European godowns and residences; second (1851 to about 1880) ship yards, engineering works and coal godowns; and lastly (1870 to the present) Chinese shops, godowns and residences.\n\n \nThe owners of the land were originally mostly non-Chinese. But by 1876, all except a range of godowns and sheds owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was in Chinese hands, being divided between two of the largest land owners in the Colony: the Li family of the Wo Hang and Lai Hing firms***, and Kwok Acheong who was Compradore of the P. & O. Co., owner of his own steamships, and founder of the Fat Hing firm.\n\n \nAt its first settlement the area was almost rural, for it was situated at the western end of original Victoria. Because it provided a convenient spot for pier and landing facilities, two European firms selected West Point for their Hong Kong establishments, just as Jardine, Matheson and Company settled at East Point, even though both locations were somewhat distant from the main centres of foreign business in Spring Gardens**** and Central District. In\n\n \n*The Pang and Chan are the same that bought the land at the east end of Wanchai, in the vicinity of the Yuk Hui Temple—see \"Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”, earlier in this Section.\n\n \n** Cantonese for salt fish.\n\n \n*** See Smith: \"Emergence of a Chinese Elite”, JHKBRAS 11, pp. 90-92. See \"Notes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai”,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207445, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n205\n\nlights-out and a host of minor matters. They sometimes slapped patients, both officers and other ranks, for what they considered to be breaches of orders. On our side the victims could only guess at the reasons for the slapping for no interpreter was ever to hand at the time. I took up every one of these cases with Saito or Seino as soon as either appeared after the incident, and I always tried to have the matter investigated. Repeatedly I was told that a sentry represented the Imperial Army and must inflict punishment at once for any irregularity on our part. I never discovered that there was anything personal in these slappings in the sense that they might be a retaliation for what, in the British army, we used to call dumb insolence. Some tempers on our side were sorely tried but no major incident occurred. I was never approached by any Japanese officer or N.C.O. for help over medical treatment.\n\nOnly once did an opportunity occur to retaliate. Late in 1945 in the Central British School in Kowloon we had an officious guard sergeant who was nicknamed 'Slappy' because of his readiness to slap all and sundry for what he thought were offences. About the time of the Japanese surrender, but well before the guards were withdrawn, this man was waylaid by some of our sappers who had suffered themselves and who wanted to repay him on their own and their friends' behalf. I was told that they were very satisfied with the result and there were no repercussions.\n\nTRADING\n\nThe Japanese allowed us to have a shop within the hospital. We had to buy stocks from a Hong Kong Chinese compradore, a term which will be familiar to all who have been in the Far East, and we then sold the goods within the hospital. For a very long time we were not allowed to make a profit, and it was not until a year or two after our surrender that I got permission to make five per cent and use the proceeds within precisely defined limits. The shop stocked goods likely to be desired, mainly cigarettes, matches, syrup, jams, salt, eggs on occasion, tomato sauce, beans, cigarette papers, sugar, sewing cottons and needles, ginger, laces, soy bean powder, soap, razor blades etc. We placed an order one week and such goods as were available were delivered the following week.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207447, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n207\n\nsinglets at 0.50 each. Salt then cost m.y. 1.20 per pound and sugar 1.00 per pound. Many items however were quite useless to us because no one would spend money on them under our conditions. For example there were pipe cleaners, mosquito coils, leads for eversharp pencils, mirrors, after shave lotion etc., and these obviously came from peacetime stocks which the compradore could not sell anywhere else. As time went on the stock lists grew shorter and the prices higher. In January 1944 Taikoo treacle cost m.y. 10.00 a tin and syrup 10.80 a tin (two months later syrup cost 19.20 a tin). In March 1944 corned mutton was m.y. 9.00 a tin. In January 1945 syrup cost 85.90 a tin and by July 1945 the price had risen to m.y. 528.00. These figures indicate the collapse of the military currency introduced by the Japanese during their occupation.\n\nThe account I have just given might be described as lawful trading. Trading between Japanese guards and hospital staff and patients was forbidden by the Japanese, but as I have already described our guards were not notably well nourished and their clothing was poor in quality. They also were interested in trading, and a brisk business sprang up between those on our side who had goods to spare and guards who wanted goods to sell in the market outside. I knew all about this though not usually about detailed transactions and I judged it to be no concern of mine to interfere. I had however to intervene when hospital inmates began to sell hospital property in the form of sheets, blankets, towels etc. Our stocks of such items as these could not be replaced and as we needed what we had I forbade the sale of hospital property of all kinds. I would not care to assert that no further transactions of this kind took place, but the danger of running out of equipment receded.\n\nReady marketability provided a great temptation to thieving among our people. At the beginning of my charge when thefts occurred we carried out searches, but these were never rewarded since a theft would always be so timed that stolen articles could be passed at once to a sentry and so beyond our jurisdiction. On one occasion the theft of a small suitcase became known to the Japanese by some means unknown to me, for I adhered strictly to the principle of never asking the Japanese to play any part in our internal affairs. This time there was a great to-do and I was ordered to produce the culprit. I never found out who this was but even", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207465, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n225\n\ntheir heads. Though bits of protein may thus have been made available many found it hard to look their fish in the face.\n\nWe had two Red Cross inspections by Mr. Zindel in June and December. On both occasions staff and patients paraded and he made quite extensive rounds though no communication between him and us was allowed. In July though, he sent us a number of indoor games including chess sets, a table tennis outfit, two dart board sets, 18 packs of cards, four badminton rackets and two boxes of shuttles. These again had to be given prominent places in the recreation room where they could be seen. About half way through the year we began to have to pay for our four copies of the Hongkong News which we received usually each day, 15 sen each at first.\n\nIn June I was faced with a demand from Seino for reports on our compradore shop, on the state of health of our staff, on the boots and clothing of all in hospital, on patients classified by diseases, on our complaints and on our methods of dealing with mosquitoes, lice, bugs and flies. About the end of July staff, but not patients, were allowed to bathe in the reservoir provided they wore fandoshis while I required bathers to have a shower first. The supply of mains water was intermittent and low stocks of the drug forced us to reduce the daily dose of thiamine in August to 4 mgm by injection. All concerts, church services etc, had to be finished by 8 p.m. and applause, cheers for entertainers, community singing etc. were forbidden, again I think partly because of the nearness of the Japanese army's watchful critics, the Japanese navy, and partly because our own guards might take exception to noises of this kind. We had a good piano in our recreation room and a less tuneful instrument in what had been the Chinese boys' quarters. By September all concerts and piano playing in the recreation room except during church services were stopped.\n\nI failed again to get an extra rice ration for our staff and stocks of rice would not allow us to issue extra to them without reducing the amount available for patients; for my pains we were called upon to make returns to the Japanese showing all our food stocks.\n\nMembers of the staff had been allowed to store certain locked boxes containing personal possessions in our boiler house and on 3 September a sudden search of these was made by the Japanese, all locks being smashed to get the boxes open. Seven officers and two other ranks were involved as owners, and a pair of binoculars", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207480, "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": 248, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "240\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nremains though as time went on the permitted hours of use had to be restricted. The most alarming and dangerous devices were connected to live sockets by our men who wanted to heat water for some form of food. I prohibited the use of these dangerous bits of wire on the advice of the engineers to try to avoid a fatal accident. Though my order was I knew widely ignored, no one was electrocuted.\n\nAfter the first air raids in October 1942 we had to black-out the hospital, first on the harbour side and soon all over. Electricity was frequently switched off at the central stations in Hong Kong without notice during air alerts, and this caused many difficulties for our night staff who had to care for very sick men especially in the diphtheria and dysentery wards. We were not allowed to use our generator at this time and we only had six candles (a curious shortage this) when lighting problems first arose. I ordered many more candles through the compradore, our dispenser made some good candles himself and we learned that medicinal oil of paraffin burned well in hurricane lamps. Pieces of string soaked in peanut oil gave some light and our ingenious sappers constructed a few battery-operated lamps for special use. Imposed black-outs lasted at first from midnight till dawn, but later from dusk till dawn.\n\nUp to December 1943 the main consideration so far as the use of electricity was concerned was to enforce black-outs; thereafter economy in the use of current was urged upon us. In 1944 all electric heaters were confiscated by Seino and we were allowed to use our ward sterilizers only for a few stated hours each day. In February some Japanese officers inspected our larger generator which they removed in August. As the imposed economies did not show a sufficient saving, in June we were ordered to lower our consumption of light by 33% and our power by 57%, so that we had to reduce the ward services further. In July we were told exactly the number of light bulbs we could use, and all 60-watt bulbs were replaced by 40 watts. By August no gas or electricity was being supplied in Hong Kong and so we had to do without light and power. Batteries used by night duty staff were charged, using the exercise bicycle in the physiotherapy department. Water for injection purposes was prepared from filtered water which was then passed through a Seitz filter and raised to 80 degrees C. for one hour on each of three successive days. The emergency batteries", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207491, "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n251\n\n1056 packets of cigarettes costing 1.50 yen each and we sold them at a 10 sen profit on each packet. This allowed six packets per head for 176 patients and staff and all were taken up. We lost a clock from the kitchen on 19 May and concluded that trading was still going on. On 22 May we admitted an acutely ill officer from Sham Shui Po and on 24 May a Canadian soldier died and was buried at once. At this time we were very short of both Japanese and Red Cross food stores and though the compradore came on 26 May and took money he was not allowed to bring goods to us or to the other camps.\n\nOn 28 May the Japanese warrant officer in charge of rations gave Mr. Campbell a new scale to be effective from 1 June.\n\n \n \n Staff and Employed\n Patients and Non-employed\n \n \n Rice\n G.510 + 30\n 32 + 32\n \n \n Meat\n G.660 = + 60\n \n \n \n Vegetable\n 540 = + 140\n 360 = + 70\n \n \n Salt\n 10 =\n 8\n \n \n \n No change\n ** + 3\n \n \n Sugar\n 10\n 5\n \n \n Tea\n 8\n 2\n \n \n \n \n 1\n \n \n \n Nil =\n \n \n \n \n \n + 3\n \n \n Oil\n 3\n 3\n \n \n \n 9\n 9\n \n \n \n 31\n I\n \n \n Curry\n 20 + 20\n 15\n \n \n \n \n +15\n \n \n Beans\n Nil\n Nil\n \n \n \n 60\n -\n \n \n \n \n 31\n \n\nI imagine that these figures were target or even show figures for the Japanese, for the issues we could afford to make were always lower in practice.\n\nOn 29 May I was passing the R.E. shop with Saito when he went in and Q.M.S. Tyas told him how badly we needed diesel oil and cement. I remarked that I was being pressed every day for these stores, to which Saito very fairly responded that I was troubling him every day too on the same subject. We were very short of cooking oil and I reported that our present stock allowed only 0.85 litre for the whole hospital daily. Saito also promised to look into the supply of beans which I told him had vanished from our rations. I pressed him about canteen goods and said we were exceedingly short of salt, and of wood for fuel and that we fed our cooking fires only on wood which we had stripped from buildings in Bowen Road.\n\nThe same day Saito produced the old undertaking not to escape which all the staff and patients had signed in Bowen Road on 26", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207495, "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": 263, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n255\n\nThe men of the working party were not in the least bit reassured and took special care, and fortunately all members of both working parties left on 17 July unharmed.\n\nAbout now Saito, in response to further pressure by me authorised the issue of rice from stocks up to the daily amounts then authorised i.e. 660 grammes for staff and 510 for others and Mr. Campbell arranged this accordingly. Saito wanted me to spare ten men for work on a garden by the cemetery but I could only spare about three for seven of the staff were sick now, five being engineers.\n\nThe stock of multivite capsules ran out on 16 July and we resumed injections of 2 mgm of thiamin on two days out of every three. Some of the staff were pretty sick with fever at this time and we had one certain and one suspected case of amoebic dysentery. I was able to send a few mosquito nets, stretchers and mattresses to Sham Shui Po, and this was a notable advance.\n\nOn 24 July Saito handed over five cases of American Red Cross Relief Supplies. Each contained four quart tins of cresol saponated solution, one litre of 5% dextrose in normal saline, one litre of normal saline, one bottle of 100 capsules each containing concentrated vitamins A and D, 25 bottles of sterile distilled water and two packages of water purification sets.\n\nAt this time in the compradore's shop prices were as follows: — Brown sugar 254.50 yen per lb; syrup 528 yen per tin; tomatoes 20.50 yen per tin; tomato sauce 62.95 yen per bottle; rock salt 24.50 yen per lb; Chinese cigarette papers 3.36 yen per packet; matches 12.50 per box; tausi beans 50.50 per tin; white beans 215 yen per lb.\n\nMy diary for 28 July contains a remarkable entry to the effect that a Hong Kong Volunteer, a Hong Kong man, had received from a Hong Kong bank all his securities about ten days earlier. I have no idea now what the details were but this occurrence illustrates that lines of communication existed with the world outside of which I knew nothing.\n\nAbout the end of July we had to reintroduce certain economies in our use of food. By then our stock of beans was very low and the amount of vegetables coming in was small and included a lot of peppers. We were down to three sacks of rice in hand when fortunately we received another forty each containing a nominal 60 kilos.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207501, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n261\n\nI was straban while Ashton Rose was preparing a medical report on Sham Shui Po. At this time we were being asked by the British Military Administration to submit lists of our kit which had been taken by the Japanese but I imagine that this only added to the papers with which they had to deal at that time. The Colonial Secretary was installed in the French Mission at Battery Path and heads of government departments followed shortly afterwards. Commander Craven and Major Boxer left us for staff duties in Hong Kong and I arranged for two barbers to come and stay for a few days. Six of our Q.A. sisters arrived and another six came late at night accompanied by very necessary male escorts from Stanley. We were delighted to see them and put them all up and fed them but it was early morning before I got to bed.\n\nOn 27 August Saito came back and I pressed him again for our medical records and he excused himself by saying he had been so busy. The Indian hospital had 259 patients and 45 staff and I arranged an X-ray session for Indian patients including a number suffering from tuberculosis. Selwyn-Clarke sent us a gift of brandy and cigarettes, showing that though he did not use these comforts himself he would not deny them to others. Miss Dyson now back in her rightful position as Matron set about getting overalls for her sisters, a splendid boost to the morale not only of these ladies but of the patients and staff as well. Madame Lebon made these and our army promised payment.\n\n1\n\nWe finally closed our compradore's shop and agreed a business settlement with the compradore on the basis of him taking out cash plus goods to the total of $8831.06 yen. We had an excellent concert provided by Sham Shui Po, and some of the Hong Kong Volunteers, particularly those of mixed race, were slightly built and made up very attractively as girls. Members of the Indian camp and the Internee Camp at Ma Tau Wei attended and as usual in these days I was very late to bed. We found it necessary to control visiting hours in the hospital because of the very large numbers of people we had roaming about.\n\nOn 28 August we got smoke flares from our people for touching off by day to guide our aircraft when they were dropping supplies and the Japanese also sent in smoke cylinders for a like purpose. They also sent in 3 bottles of whisky, 4 of peppermint for the dispensary, 8 of brandy, 50 of port, 6 of gin and 20 of sherry. I at once arranged a general issue of 2 ounces of port per head, a meagre ration which I thought was wise at the time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207743, "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-1976", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "116\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nMrs. Andersen was one of the founders of the Chinese Red Cross Society, serving as its first Vice President. In recognition, the Chinese Emperor granted her a large honorary board. Their only daughter, K. Ruth Andersen, married in 1905, Donald R. McEuen, son of a former Captain superintendent of Police at Shanghai.\n\nA younger daughter of Chan Lai-sun married a businessman, Mr. W. Buchanan, presumably the same as listed in the 1884 Chronicle and Directory of China as a land agent and broker with J. P. Bisset and Co. of Shanghai.\n\nThis, then, is a record of a Chinese family living in a marginal situation. Both Lai-sun and his wife were born in Southeast Asian overseas Chinese communities. Both in childhood became caught up in English language missionary education, which served to further alienate them from Chinese tradition. Lai-sun started his career as a missionary assistant, but to make better provision for his growing family turned to business, associating himself with foreign businessmen, not as compradore but as assistant and partner. However, the very fact of his marginal background qualified him, as a member of Li Hung-chang's staff, to make a particular contribution to China's developing relations with foreign powers. His children received a solid western-style education. Of the two sons who grew to maturity, one was an engineer the other a journalist, and both for a part of their career served the Chinese government. The daughters left the Chinese community, but the eldest took her place in public life as a founder of the Chinese Red Cross.\n\nThis partial reconstruction of the life history of one China Coast family is perhaps more than a mere historical exercise in reconstructing a family history from scattered sources. It can also be viewed as an illustration of the social processes at work in creating a distinctive culture in the port cities of China, including Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207891, "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-1976", "page_number": 279, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "264\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe history and present significance of the Hospital. A Head of the Department of Home Affairs (the former Department of Chinese Affairs, and, even earlier, the Registrar-General or Protector of the Chinese) would possibly have his own unique evaluation of the institution. A medical doctor, a Neo-Marxist critic of elitism and the old compradore system, a sociologist or a historian all could find different things to emphasize in its history and development. The viewpoint of the writer of these notes is of one who has researched various aspects of Hong Kong history and is particularly interested in the historical development of the Chinese community in Hong Kong.\n\nI have mentioned the various overlapping roles of the Hospital in the past. One might divide these roles into medical, educational, religious, social and quasi-political.\n\nTung Wah as a Medical Institution\n\nAs a Hospital there has been a continuity in its medical service from its opening in February, 1872, but there has been a significant shift from an initial exclusive use of traditional Chinese medical treatment to today's most advanced international medical practice.\n\nThe story of Tung Wah Hospital as a medical institution is a part of the medical history of Hong Kong and the relation and inter-action of traditional Chinese practice with that introduced from the Western medical tradition. The nineteenth century foreign trained medical officer in Hong Kong did not look with favour upon the type of treatment the sick received at Tung Wah. He had little sympathy with Chinese medical lore. As an institution receiving a government appropriation, by the creating Ordinance it came within the province of the Colonial Surgeon to comment on conditions at Tung Wah in his annual medical report. His very first report was critical as evidenced by the following extract,\n\nThere seems to be a large number of attendants, but I never found them at hand when they were wanted. ... The treatment of surgical cases shows an amount of ignorance which is much to be deplored. Seeing that the Institution was endowed with such a large sum of money by the Colonial Government, I think that the Directors might be asked to set apart one ward of their Hospital for the treatment of patients by foreign Doctors.*\n\n* The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1873 p.228, No. 85. Report of the Colonial Surgeon.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208099, "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "122\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nof Fujianese attending the Yueh Fei temple gradually rose until today perhaps 70-80% of the worshippers there are Fujianese. Even so, the temple is not a Fujianese temple; both the people who run the temple and the deity itself are Guangdongese.\n\nThis arrangement was less than satisfactory to the Fujianese. Since Fujianese and Guangdongese ritual practices and religious concepts are not always isomorphic, arguments over what food was properly offered to Guan Yin (Kuan Yin) or what was expected of a medium, etc., frequently erupted. Such disputes, complicated by the language barrier, made many Fujianese feel uncomfortable about worshipping in a \"barbarian\"-run temple.\n\nTen years ago this situation began to change as the Cultural Revolution in China increased attacks on the old religious organizations back in Fujian. Temple personnel such as Buddhist monks and nuns began to arrive legally and illegally in Hong Kong and served to staff a new type of temple, a form particularly suited to Hong Kong's crowded situation. Apartments were rented to serve as temples in many of the apartment buildings which contained a heavy Fujianese population. North Point branches of Sai Ying Poon temples were likewise also begun in this manner.\n\nEach apartment-temple is dedicated to a particular god; sometimes it is a pan-Chinese spirit such as Guan Yin but it can also be a specifically local one such as Sheng Gung of Fujian Province's Nan An county. Sheng Gung's original temple is now in disrepair back in Nan An but the god's statue and objects were brought to Hong Kong a few years back. Hong Kong may thus have the only Sheng Gung temple left functioning in the world.\n\n\"I have visited this little Temple, or joss-house, and have discussed its history with one of the local Kaifong, Mr. Lo Ho Ching, of 129 Electric Road, Ground Floor.\n\n\"The little Temple is dedicated to the God of Warriors, Ngok Fei, and has been in existence about 40 years. According to Mr. Lo it was built by the late Kwok Shut Ting, Compradore of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (A.P.C.), at the time when the A.P.C.'s installation at North Point was built. At present the little Temple is looked after by an old woman appointed by the Kaifong.\n\n\"The little Temple is a picturesque little structure, half embedded in a large boulder and covered by a tree. The Kaifong and I too would be reluctant to see it removed, but if it has to be removed I do not think the Kaifong will object provided that an alternative site for it can be found in the vicinity and if it is re-erected by Government at the time when the new Police Station at Bay View is built.\"\n\nThis information was provided by the Hon. Editor of this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208152, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n175\n\nVisitors\n\n20. Mountains have always been favoured retreats, especially in the South. Herbert Giles wrote in 1911:\n\nMonasteries are built high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their funds by so doing. (Giles 1911: 9)\n\nIt seems that rich merchants from Hong Kong were among their number and have long been accustomed to take their ease, and perhaps salve their conscience, there. For 19th century examples reported by European travellers see Henry 1886:320, and Bourne (1895) who reported the death at one of these places of 'Lo Hok-pang, late Compradore of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank' (p. 35).\n\n21. The monasteries of Tai Mo Shan long benefitted from a similar connection. It is clear from the large buildings that have been erected before and after the Pacific War 1941-1945—in one case they include a splendid air-conditioned lecture hall—that they draw at least part of their financial support from a number of wealthy patrons; although the post-war urbanization of Tsuen Wan has probably reduced their attraction as places of refuge from the heat and bustle of the world.\n\n22. Over many years, such persons from Hong Kong, having no local connection other than an existing or sought-after grave for members of their family or even for themselves, have traversed the mountain's sides with geomancers and finally settled for good locations. Here a splendid grave has been constructed, and sometimes a pavilion also where the family can rest and eat during the arduous visits in successive grave worshipping seasons. In some cases only an empty grave and a ruined pavilion remain, showing that the descendants, concerned over business failures and reversals of family fortunes, have taken up the remains and placed them elsewhere, despite the heavy initial and subsequent cost necessitated by feeing the geomancer(s) and hiring mountain chairs for the party, and paying local labour to carry the construction materials.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208383, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION\n\n91\n\nThe policy of the People's Republic with respect to Hong Kong residents continues to involve encouraging individual Chinese to declare the People's Republic of China as the object of their national loyalty, of their \"patriotism\", and a steady stream of news concerning the accomplishments of the People's Republic is filtered down through the Federation and other organs of Peking bureaucracy designed to instill pride in the socialist motherland. This nationalist component of Chinese policy toward Hong Kong is manifest in preferential treatment accorded China's \"national\" as opposed to \"compradore\" bourgeoisie in Hong Kong. The pro-Peking \"patriotic\" community in Hong Kong includes some rather wealthy businessmen who deal in Chinese commodities either exclusively, or in part, or who rely on Communist China for raw materials or equipment for their businesses. This can sometimes lead to the seemingly bizarre configuration of a pro-Peking employers' association negotiating with a pro-Taipei union of workers over wage demands, as was the case in the ivory carving industry.\n\nIn any event, a somewhat less bizarre array of forces obtained in the carved furniture industry, with the left wing Woodwork Carvers' Union emerging in the 1970's in the aura of a legitimized People's Republic as the dominant voice of the workers in the carved furniture industry. While many of the union's pre-1971 efforts may have fallen on deaf ears, the international recognition of communist China, the increasing concentration of capital and increasingly proletarianized production, and the decreasing significance of place of origin have helped make the proletarian message of the Woodwork Carvers' Union more acceptable to its potential constituents on the one hand, and have provided a context conducive to the creative transformation of traditional craft practice and organizational structure on the other.\n\nThe union is more than simply the object of the larger forces, and its activities have had an important contribution to make in its emergence as the dominant force in the industry. These activities may be grouped into two not quite mutually exclusive categories:\n\n1. activity designed to promote proletarian/pro-Peking consciousness and workers' welfare\n\n2. conscious adaptation and incorporation of traditional craft practice and guild-like institutions into its organizational repertoire,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209207, "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-1981", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "96\n\nThere is no slavery carried on.\"\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nIn commenting on the questions raised in Parliament the editor of the South China Morning Post said there could not be much harm in the traditional Chinese custom when throughout the eighty years of the Colony's history no steps had been taken to abolish it. The children in domestic service had the full protection of the law and there was no evidence that they were frequently ill-treated. What few cases are brought before the courts are sharply dealt with. He did admit that some reform might be needed, \"to guarantee the child's rights and those of its parents\", but any changes should only be introduced gradually and with the co-operation of the leading Chinese, \"whose services have never been withheld in any case having for its aim the uplifting and enlightenment of the people\".3\n\nReaction in Hong Kong -- Mass Meeting at Tai Ping Theatre – July 1921\n\nThe Chinese elite \"establishment\" in Hong Kong was disturbed by the discussion in Britain of one of their long established customs. They and the Hong Kong Government were also annoyed by a letter published in the correspondence column of all four English newspapers written by Mrs. Haselwood, the wife of a Commander in the Naval Dockyard. Her husband was officially warned that unless he stopped his wife from airing the question, he would be superseded and sent home. He refused to submit and was shortly sent home where he retired on half-pay. The Haselwoods, however, continued their campaign in Britain. When the Hong Kong Government was asked to explain Commander Haselwood's early termination of service in Hong Kong, it replied that the activities of his wife were \"causing annoyance to the Chinese community\".\n\nThe leadership of the Chinese community was sufficiently aroused by the statements being made in the English press concerning the practice that it called a mass meeting to be held at the Tai Ping Theatre in July, 1921. The meeting was convened by the two Chinese representatives on the Legislative Council, the Hon. Ho Fook, brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung and one-time compradore of Jardine, Matheson and Co., and the Hon. Mr. Lau Chu-pak, compradore of Messrs. A. S. Watson and Co. Also particularly mentioned were S. W. Tso, a solicitor, Chow Shou-son, a Hong Kong-born former official of the Chinese Government who had extensive business interests in Hong Kong, and Chau Siu-ki, shipping and insurance magnate.\n\nThe theatre was crowded with about three hundred including a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209213, "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-1981", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "102\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nlittle girls of tender age living amongst strangers and in where to them is a strange country, no denial of succour is possible without outraging our feelings of humanity.\"\n\nInstructions from Colonial Office to Hong Kong Government\n\nIn March 1922 it was announced in the House of Commons by Mr. Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, that the Government of Hong Kong had been instructed by the Colonial Office to consult with both the Prevention Society and the Anti Mui Tsai Society in order to draw up a scheme for abolition.\n\nAlready the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in Hong Kong had been in consultation with the Secretaries of the two societies and both groups were in the process of selecting seven of their members to consult with him.\n\nCanton had forged ahead of Hong Kong, for the same issue of the paper which carried Mr. Churchill's remarks reported an item from the Canton Times that the President of the Southern Government had issued a proclamation abolishing the mui tsai system. The Women's Union of Kwangtung were ready to establish an industrial institution to train them.\n\nNews of progress toward abolition both in Hong Kong and Canton produced an air of elation at the first annual general meeting of the Anti Mui tsai Society held on March 26, 1922, at the Chinese YMCA. Mr. J. M. (Joseph Mau-lam) Wong, an Anglican and compradore of Messrs A. S. Watson and Co., presided. On the platform were members of the Executive Committee. These included Mrs. Ma Ying-piu (1872-1957), wife of the founder of the Sincere Co., member of St. Stephen's Anglican Church and a founder of the YWCA.\n\nThe Society had invited Mr. Hui Chien, the President of the Supreme Court of Canton and a member of the Society, to address the meeting. At the last minute he was unable to attend but sent to represent him two associates from Canton. One of them read the remarks he had intended to give to the meeting. In these he observed that the Southern Government at Canton had taken steps to abolish the system, but it would find it much easier to do so if Hong Kong also moved in this direction.\n\nSince its formation the Society had vigorously promoted its cause both in Hong Kong, China and in Great Britain. It had the active assistance of Commander and Mrs. Hazelwood, who after retirement", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209215, "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-1981", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "104\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nto prevent mui tsai from seeing the Secretary for Chinese Affairs.\n\nThe fourteen member committee composed equally of members from the Protection Society and the Anti Mui Tsai Society met with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Mr. Hallifax, to formulate suggestions for drafting a Bill for the abolition of the mui tsai system. In June 1922 their report was sent to London with a comment by the Governor that he did not think the suggestions were an altogether satisfactory solution.\n\nThe members of the Committee representing the Anti Mui Tsai Society were:\n\nMr. Joseph Mau-lam Wong (1897 - 1869), compradore of Messrs. A. S. Watson and Co.\n\nMr. Charles Graham Anderson (1889 – 1949), a Eurasian, manager of the International Savings Society of Hong Kong, also newspaper reporter.\n\nNgan Kwan-yu, Government vernacular teacher of the Gap Road School later Head-master, Congregational Church Primary School, Ladder Street.\n\nHung To-fei\n\n―\n\nRev. Wong Oi Tong (1888 – 1941), for forty years pastor of the Rhenish Church, Bonham Road.\n\nDr. T.P. Woo (1878-1941), medical practitioner.\n\nDr. Yeung Shiu-chuen (1878 – 1950), dentist.\n\nAll were members of Protestant Churches.\n\nThe members of the committee representing the Society for the Protection of the Mui Tsai were:\n\nMr. M. K. Lo (later Sir Man-kam Lo) (1893 - 1959), son of a compradore of Jardine, Matheson and Co. and son-in-law of Sir Robert Ho Tung. He was a solicitor.\n\nMr. Tsun-nin Chau (1893 – 1971), son of a shipping and insurance magnate, Chau Shiu-ki. A cousin of Sir Sik-nin Chau. By profession a barrister.\n\nMr. Wong Kwong-tin (1879 - 1936), son of a wealthy Chinese merchant. He was a Supreme Court Interpreter when young, later Manager and Director of Kai Tack Land Investment Co., Manager of China Specie Bank, Manager of Chinese Stock Exchange, etc. A Roman Catholic.\n\nIp Lan-chuen (1865 ...), one of founders of Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209216, "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-1981", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920's 105\n\nChamber of Commerce, Secretary of Chamber for many years. Managing Director of Kwong Man Loong Firecracker Co. Tse Ka-po, also known as Simon Tse Yan (\n\n—\n\n1966), son of compradore of Banco Ultramarino, Macao. Established Po Kee Shipping Co. Compradore for Nippon Yusen Kaisha. A Roman Catholic. Son-in-law of Mr. Ho Kom-tong, a brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung.\n\nWong Ping-suen (1873 - 1942), member of a wealthy land-owning, merchant-compradore Hong Kong family. Compradore of Mackintosh, Mackenzie and Co., and P. & O. Steamship Co. Tong Shau Shan, manager of the San Tak Hing Lok firm on Des Voeux Road.\n\nAfter much hedging for a number of years, the Colonial Office determined to push the Hong Kong Government into drafting a bill for the abolition of the mui tsai system. The concerted efforts of concerned groups in England and the Anti Mui Tsai Society in Hong Kong were producing results. The Secretary of State minuted a despatch on March 21, 1922 instructing his under secretary that in writing to the Governor of Hong Kong, “A fairly full answer should be drafted explaining the difficulties, but making it clear that the abolition is going to be carried into effect. There is to be no nonsense about it and no sham. One year would be a reasonable time to allow”.\n\n10\n\nThe Governor was not happy with these instructions, particularly after the Chinese he depended on for advice raised strong objections to passage of the Bill. He felt himself threatened. The Colonial Office had not been altogether satisfied with his handling of the Seamen's strike earlier in the year, and now it appeared they were repudiating the position he had promoted that it was not wise to radically change the mui tsai system. The best policy, in his opinion, was to advocate the correction of certain abuses and this could well be left in the hands of the elite Chinese establishment in Hong Kong.\n\nGovernor Stubbs took a very serious view of the implications of the opposition to the Ordinance. In a letter to a Colonial Office official in September 1922, while on leave, he said:\n\nIt means that the Chinese for the first time are setting themselves against the Government. That is the beginning of the end. I told you the other day I believed we should hold Hong Kong for another fifty. I put it now at twenty at the most.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209217, "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-1981", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "106\n\nCARL T SMITH\n\nHis trusted allies had turned against him.\n\nIn his communications with the Colonial Office he was strangely silent about the support for the Bill by the Anti Mui Tsai Society and the labour unions. It seemed to be on the opinion that the only views of Chinese to be taken seriously were those of his long-time advisers, and now they were deserting him. One of the Colonial Office administrations minuted a letter from Governor Stubbs:\n\nIt seems to me the advice we have received on the general question of mui tsai has been throughout faulty and incorrect and in certain respects misleading. It seems also the Hong Kong Government does not desire to press the Secretary of State's reform on the Chinese.12\n\nOn December 23, 1922 the Mui Tsai Bill was gazetted, and on December 28 it received its first reading in the Legislative Council as \"An Ordinance to regulate certain forms of domestic service\".\n\nThe Editor of the Daily Press, a strong advocate of abolition, felt the remarks of the Attorney General in introducing the Bill reflected the reluctance of the Hong Kong Government to implement the instructions of the Colonial Office:\n\nThe Attorney General in introducing the Mui Tsai Bill can hardly be said to have shown... fully sympathy with the object of the Bill... The attitude of the local Government to agitation for abolition has been hostile all along,13\n\n13\n\nChinese Chamber of Commerce Meeting – January 1923\n\nThe members of the Protection Society had second thoughts about the approval given by four of their representatives on the joint committee to assist in drafting a bill (three did not sign the agreement). An extraordinary meeting of the Chamber of Commerce was held early in January to air reservations about the proposed Ordinance. Mr. Li Po-kwai (1871-1963), a wealthy property owner, presided. Among the members in attendance the following were named:\n\nThe two Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council, the Hon. Mr. Chow Shou-son and the Hon. Mr. Ng Hon-tsz\n\nMr. Ho Fook, a former member of the Legislative Council\n\nLo Chueng-shiu, a compradore of Jardines and brother-in-law of Ho Fook\n\nHis son Mr. M. K. Lo (later Sir Man-kam Lo), a solicitor and\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209218, "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-1981", "page_number": 121, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920'S 107\n\nson-in-law of Ho Tung\n\nT. N. Chau, a barrister\n\nLi Wing-tin\n\nSimon Tse Yan, also known as Tse Ka Po\n\nFung Ping-shan, donor of the Fung Ping Shan Library building\n\nat Hong Kong University\n\nChau Yu-ting, a wealthy import-export merchant\n\nYung Tse-ming, compradore of the Chartered Bank\n\nHo Wing, son of Ho Fook, adopted son of Ho Tung and compradore of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank\n\nWong Ping-shuen, and\n\nIp Lan-chuen\n\nWong Ping-shuen advocated a slow approach, \"The time was not yet ripe for drastic action. Conditions in China had to be radically changed before it would serve any useful purpose to legislate on the question\".\n\nThe Secretary of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Ip Lan-chuen, contended that Hong Kong was too close to China to attempt abolition at this time.\n\nLi Po-kwai, the Chairman, vividly portrayed the dangers to the mui tsai if she were released from servitude at the age of eighteen. She would do \"mad and silly things\" which would lead to her downfall.\n\nChow Shou-son spoke out as \"being dead against the Bill\". If left alone the custom would die out in time as had the practice of foot-binding. After making his speech in Chinese, for some reason he shifted to English to conclude it, saying, “It is the opinion of the Chinese community and the Chinese people generally that the system should not be abolished”.\n\nMr. M. K. Lo interjected a moderating tone into the discussion when he reminded the meeting that it would have been better if the Chamber had expressed opposition to abolition sooner and more clearly, instead of keeping relatively silent until the Government had drafted and introduced a Bill.\n\nMr. Wong Kwong-tin objected to the Ordinance because it did not provide protection to the owners of mui tsai and was therefore grossly unfair. He gave a warning to the British Government they should be very careful in interfering with an old Chinese custom which had become an unwritten law.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209282, "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-1981", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Origins of Dr Sun Yat-sen's Address to Li Hung-chang\n\n171\n\nTheir editorial and correspondents' columns offered a ground for free political discussions, with greater attention on issues in China than those in Hong Kong. There appeared in the 1870's two Chinese-language newspapers, the Hsin-huan jih-pao founded and edited by the well-known scholar reformist, Wang Tao, and the Hua-tzu jih-pao, which was firstly issued by the China Mail as a separate paper in Chinese called the Chinese Mail. But in 1886, the Chinese Mail became an independent paper with Ch'en Ai-ting as its editor. These two early Chinese newspapers were well-known for their promotion of Western learning and China's modernization. About one-third of the Hsün-huan jih-pao was devoted to an editorial for such causes. The Hua-tzu jih-pao did not have an editorial, but a special column was reserved for publishing the writings of Chinese intellectuals in China or Hong Kong. In addition to newspapers, there were occasional pamphlets on current issues or ideas of reforms of the time. The well-known compradore-reformist Cheng Kuan-ying's I-yen, later to be incorporated in his Sheng-shih wei-yen, was first printed and published in Hong Kong in 1872. Intellectuals such as Ho Kai and Hu Li-huan also often wrote to express their views on China's modernization and reforms. Thus in Hong Kong, Sun was well exposed to these writings and ideas. Recent studies show that during these years Sun might also have written occasionally.13 At least two papers written around this time have been identified. In 1890, Sun wrote to Cheng Tsao-ju, a scholar of Sun's native county Hsiang-shan and a prominent and progressive official who had served as Chinese Minister to the United States between 1881 and 1885. The letter was later published in a newspaper in Macao.14 Meanwhile, Sun also made acquaintance with Cheng Kuan-ying, although it is not clear how closely he was associated with Cheng. Regional ties, common appreciation of knowledge of the West, and concern for the renovation of China must have helped Sun to look to Cheng. Sun wrote a paper on agricultural reforms, which, after some revision by Cheng, was incorporated in the 1894 edition of Cheng's Sheng-shih wei-yen. On the way to the north in 1894, Sun stopped in Shanghai to discuss his proposal with Cheng, through whom he also met Wang T'ao. It was through their introduction that Sun was able to meet one of Li's secretaries. The letter to Cheng Tsao-ju and the paper on agricultural reforms are relatively less well-known pieces of Sun's writings. But the ideas expressed in both, though less detailed, are similar to ideas in the letter in 1894. The superiority of Western science and technology, benefits of modern education, full use of human talents and the need for modernization of agriculture are the major themes.15", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209438, "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-1982", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "73\n\nWhen this meeting between officials and representatives of the Chinese elite met, the latter made their stand clear. Leung On, one of the founding directors of the Tung Wah Hospital, and compradore of Gibb, Livingston & Co., a man well known for his outspokenness, proposed that the Government should issue another proclamation calling the strikers to work, and handed up a draft. It contained words to the effect that the Government had pardoned the rioters on the intercession of the Chinese merchants; Stewart found the implication objectionable and turned it down.\n\nUndaunted, Leong further proposed that the military picket should be removed from the Tung Wah Hospital Hall. He gave no reason for this request, but it is obvious that he wanted to avoid the impression that the Tung Wah Hospital was collaborating with the armed forces in suppressing the people. He also suggested that the Directors of the Hospital should hold a public meeting at the Hospital gates to persuade the people to resume work.\n\nAgain, Stewart turned down these proposals. He did not think this was a matter which concerned the Tung Wah Hospital as such. No public meeting could be held without government permission, and in view of the disturbed circumstances it would be inadvisable to hold any gathering.\n\nThe merchants also proposed that, if the Government felt it could not issue a proclamation, the Hospital should issue one in its name. This provoked Stewart into telling them directly that this would amount to an abdication on the part of the Government and the assumption of governmental power by the Hospital.\n\nSince the meeting was in stalemate, one of the merchants made a diplomatic speech to reduce tension, saying that the matter was not for any one private corporation or guild, but that it was the duty of all loyal citizens to co-operate with the Government in restoring order and terminating the strike. Finally, before the meeting ended, Stewart approved a proposal for street notices to be issued to induce the workers to return to work, so long as there was no attempt to assume governmental powers.30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209460, "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-1982", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "95\n\n\"Kaifongs were self-appointed district leaders, people who showed interest in district activities.\n\n40 Marsh to Derby, 6th October, 1884, Despatch No. 340: CO129/217.\n\n\"Marsh to Derby, 11th October, 1884, Despatch No. 342: CO129/217. A police report enclosed in this despatch describes 1,000 women leaving on one ship on the 10th October alone.\n\n42 Daily Press, 9th October, 1884, China Mail, 8th October, 1884. Police Inspector D. Thomson's \"Morning Report\" enclosed in Marsh to Derby, 11th October, 1884, Despatch No. 342: CO129/217,\n\n48 \"Report on Ordinance No. 22 of 1884,\" enclosed in Marsh to Derby, 11th October, 1884, Despatch No. 342: CO129/217.\n\n\"Marsh to Derby, 11th October, 1884, Despatch No. 342: CO129/217.\n\n**Daily Press, 11th October, 1884. Ho Kai (Ho Ch'i) is another colourful personality in Hong Kong's history. His biography has been written by Gerald Choa, The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1981) and his intellectual biography by Dr. Chiu Ling-yeong, \"The Life and Thought of Sir Kai Ho Kai\" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, 1968) and Ts'ai Jung-fang, \"Compradore Ideologists in Modern China: Ho Kai (Ho Ch'i) (1859-1914) and Hu Li-yüan (1847-1916)\" (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1975) and \"Syncretism in the Reformist Thought of Ho Kai and Hu Li-yüan”, Asian Profile, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1978).\n\n40 Bowen to Derby, 1st November, 1884, Despatch No. 358: CO129/217. Daily Press, 1st November, 1884. Shu-pao, 10th November, 1884.\n\n**Chang Chih-tung to Tsungli Yamen, 4th October, 1884, telegram in Chang Chih-tung, Chang Wen-hsiang kung ch'üan-chi (The Complete Collection of Chang Chih-tung's Works), 228 chuan, 6 vols. (Photographic reprint, Taipei, 1963) chuan 73:6b-7a.\n\nChang Chih-tung to Tsungli Yamen, 9th October, 1884, telegram in Chang Chih-tung, chuan 73:7a-7b.\n\n\"Governor-General Chang to H.M. Acting Consul Hance, 12th October, 1884, enclosed in Marsh to Derby, 20th October, 1884, Despatch No. 350: CO129/217.\n\n50 Chang Chih-tung to Tsungli Yamen, 9th October, 1884, Chang Chih-tung, chuan 73:7b.\n\n1 Daily Press, 1st October, 1884.\n\n* China Mail, 23rd September, 1884.\n\n63 Bowen to Derby, 25th August, 1884, Despatch No. 298: CO129/217. Marsh to Derby, 25th September, 1884, Despatch No. 336: ibid. China Mail, 2nd October, 1884.\n\n4 Marsh to Derby, 21st September, 1883, Despatch No. 240: CO129/211.\n\n65 (Draft) F.O. to C.O., 7th November, 1884: CO129/219.\n\n5 House of Commons to C.O., 27th October, 1884: CO129/218. 67 Bowen to Derby, 23rd February, 1885 in Stanley Lane-Poole, (ed.), Thirty Years of Colonial Government. Selections from the Despatches and Letters of the Right Honourable Sir George Ferguson Bowen G.C.M.G. 2 volumes (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1887) Vol. 2, 350.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210190, "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "140\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n77\n\nSee despatch No. 76 Civil from Governor, Hong Kong to Lord Stanley, 28 December 1844 in CO129/7/9807, especially p. 323. Ako Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 57.\n\nSee J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong op. cit. D. Faure The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1986), J.W. Hayes Secular Non-Gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organisations in Urban British Hong Kong JHKBRAS, Vol. 23, 1983 pp. 113-137, passim.\n\nJ.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong op cit. p. 63.\n\n80 See D. Faure Visit to Stanley, elsewhere in this Journal.\n\nJ.W. Hayes Secular Non-Gentry Leadership op. cit. JHKBRAS, Vol. 23, 1983, pp. 127-132.\n\nSee note 10.\n\n12\n\n81 科大街\n\n陸鴻基,吳倫霩霹 A*.\" ****\" op. cit. p. 821 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong).\n\n84 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp 61-64, and 64-69, and J.W. Hayes Secular Non-Gentry Leadership op. cit. pp. 113-121.\n\n85\n\n科,陸,吳, 香港碑銘 #‚É‚1⁄2‚“ ***(op. cit.) (Faure, Luk, Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit.) p.76.\n\n*,4,5,\" *** \"(op. cit.) (Faure, Luk, Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit.) p. 102. For the Kaifong hall, see also D. Faure Visit to Stanley elsewhere in this Journal.\n\nH 科,陛,吳, 香港郈銘 (op. cit.) p. 98 (Faure, Luk, Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong).\n\n63\n\n*.,,\" \"(op. cit.) (Faure, Luk, Ng, The Historical Inscriptions 科,陸,吳, 香港碑銘 of Hong Kong), p. 152 (Foundation of Tin Hau Temple 1873 by group lead by General Managers and two grades of Managers 總理, 董理, 個事), p. 166 (Refoundation of Tin Hau temple 1876 by group lead by General Managers and Managers), p. 347 (Foundation of Tam Kung temple 1905 by group lead by General Managers and Managers #), p. 388 (Repair of Tam Kung Temple 1908 by group lead by Managers).\n\n89 The possibility certainly exists. Revd. Carl Smith's researches show that some Hong Kong village men took advantage of the new situation to acquire language skills and advance their fortunes through service as government interpreters and clerks to solicitors, or by acting as compradores for Western business firms. The most famous of them all, Sir Shouson Chau, born in Little Hong Kong in 1861, was sent to America with the \"First Hundred\" Chinese boys (of the Chinese government's educational mission) in the 1870s. He graduated later from Columbia University, served the Ch'ing government as a high official and afterwards returned to Hong Kong where he was a member of both the Executive and Legislative Council. His father was compradore of the Canton Hong Kong Steamship Company with its head office in Canton, and according to family history his grandfather, the village head of Little Hong Kong in 1841, assisted Captain Charles Elliott in posting up one of his first official proclamations on the Island in 1841. (Letter quoted at note 18 above, together with the biography in Chinese and English at pp 4-5 of Prof. Woo Sing-lim's The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, The Five Continents Book Co., 1937)). See also D. Faure Visit to Stanley elsewhere in this Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210851, "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-1986", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "185\n\nWith the promise of marriage, he induced the girl to leave the brothel and live with him, leaving behind her mother's unpaid debt as well as his own unsettled bill.\n\nThe brothel-keeper threatened to bring suit for the recovery of her debts. Tong A-chick tried to settle the two accounts with a token payment hoping to delay court proceedings. Meanwhile, he was dismissed from his Government post. This gave the brothel mistress new courage to bring her demands before the court.\n\nThe girl was imprisoned as a debtor; but when the case was tried in the Court of Summary Jurisdiction, the magistrate dismissed the claims on the ground that it had not been proper to secure the original debt by a pledge of “a body” for obviously immoral purposes.\n\nWith the case decided in favour of A-chick's friend, he took out a summons in the name of the girl against the brothel-keeper for certain property she had kept when the girl had left to live with A-chick. Before the case was heard, A-chick's uncle, who had been a compradore to a former sheriff and was still rendering service to the Government, tried to use his connections to intimidate the brothel-keeper. The girl, however, lost the case.\n\nThe publicity connected with this sordid affair did not enhance A-chick's reputation in the community. It seemed better to leave Hongkong to try his fortunes in another place. At this time his uncle was planning to go to California so it was natural for A-chick to join him.\n\nTong A-chick left Hongkong about the middle of January 1852. The departure had been delayed by the disastrous Lower Bazaar fire at the close of 1851. In the four hundred or so buildings destroyed were most of the provisions, clothing and necessaries accumulated by the emigrants for their voyage to San Francisco, together with their written contracts with the captain and charterers of the ship on which they were to sail.\n\nThe loss resulted in a dispute with the captain. An appeal was made to the Rev. S. W. Bonney at Whampoa, where the arrangements were made.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210867, "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-1986", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "201\n\npomeloes, sweet dates, melon seeds, Chinese wine, cuttle fish, dried shrimp, Chinese vegetables, preserved ducks, herbs and medicines, incense sticks, and, of course, rice.\n\nOne Hongkong shipment was signed by A-chick's brother, Tong A-ku, who at the time was interpreter in the magistracy but was doing business on the side. Another manifest was signed by a relative, Tong A-yuk. Later, when Tong A-chick had returned to Hongkong from California, he was in business with Tong A-yuk.\n\nTheir store was the Kwong Cheong on Queen's Road Central near the Central Market. It dealt in imported foreign goods, particularly from the United States.\n\nTong A-chick's brother had an interest in the establishment of Hongkong's first industrial plant, a sugar refinery. Tong A-chick, or Tong Mow-chee as he was now calling himself, managed his brother's interests as well as putting some of his own money into the venture.\n\nThe plant was installed in 1869 in a building at East Point formerly used as a Government mint. The machinery had been purchased in England by William MacGregor Smith, one of the partners in the sugar company.\n\nThe Tong brothers soon sold out their interests. Perhaps they had intimations that the project would have difficulty in making a profit. Three years after they withdrew, the company went into receivership, being taken over by Jardine, Matheson and Company. It was later incorporated as the China Sugar Refinery Co. Ltd.\n\nTong A-chick left Hongkong in 1871 and became compradore for Jardine at Tientsin.\n\nDuring the 1870s the financial position of the Tong brothers was strong and their interests had broadened. They began to play an important part in the financing and management of projects to modernise China,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210868, "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-1986", "page_number": 219, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "202\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nHOW A-CHICK CLIMBED TO THE TOP IN SHANGHAI\n\nAfter his return to China, Tong A-chick, or Tong Mow-chee as he began to call himself, in some sense rode on the coat-tails of his younger and more prominent brother, King-sing.\n\nIn 1862, Mow-chee was employing his language skills as head linguist at the Shanghai Imperial Customs Office. King-sing had preceded him there but had left to seek better prospects.\n\nAt this time their father died and Mow-chee retired for the usual mourning period. Assessing his future prospect in Chinese Government service as not good, he did not return to his job after the mourning period ended.\n\nThe position he had held was a good one, but did not offer many opportunities for advancement, as higher offices in the Chinese Government were generally open only to those who held an official degree. Though he took steps to remedy this by purchasing a degree, he felt prospects in the customs were not bright. Later, when he had more wealth, he purchased the degree that entitled him to wear the peacock feather, and finally the button of the second rank on his hat.\n\nTong King-sing had become compradore at Shanghai to Jardine, Matheson and Company in 1863. In 1870, after leaving Hongkong, Tong Mow-chee through his brother's influence took charge of the Chinese business of Jardine's shipping office at Tientsin.\n\nIn 1872, King-sing was recruited by Viceroy Li Hung-chang to manage the newly created China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. Though backed by private capital, it was under the control of the Chinese Government. The compradoreship of Jardines at Shanghai thus became vacant. It was natural that Tong Mow-chee should come down from Tientsin to take his brother's place.\n\nIn 1877 Tong King-sing was commissioned to develop the Kaiping coalfields for the Chinese Government. Mow-chee assisted...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210869, "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-1986", "page_number": 220, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "203\n\ned his brother by raising much of the capital needed to open the mines.\n\nIn 1883 King-sing was sent to Europe and America to inspect mining operations and machinery. His elder brother took over the management of the China Merchants' during his absence. It was a time of troubles.\n\nThe French were expanding their interests in south China and war broke out. As a precaution, the property of the China Merchants' was transferred to the firm of Russell and Company. This would prevent their ships from being seized by the French as they would be flying the American flag. After cessation of hostilities and peace was restored, the Chinese again assumed control.\n\nEven though Mow-chee assumed these extra duties, he retained his position with Jardines until his death. In his latter years, however, he was able to place the management of the compradore's office under the care of his son Tong Kidson.\n\nThis son had been one of the boys sent by the Chinese Government to be educated in the United States under the Chinese Educational Mission.\n\nThe scheme was initiated by Yung Wing who had been a classmate of Tong Mow-chee in the Morrison Education Society School. Several of Kidson's cousins were also students of the mission. The most famous was Tang Shao-i, a leading political figure during the Republican period, Tong Kai-son, or as he was also called, Tong Kwok-on, after following his father Tong King-sing in the administration of the Kaiping Mining Company, became the first President of Tsing Hua College in Peking. Tong Yuen-cham, a student of the mission and a graduate of Columbia University, New York City, became Director-General of the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration.\n\nNo doubt the position and influence of Tong King-sing and Tong Mow-chee enabled these students of the Educational Mission to arrive at their own high position in the Government of China in the early part of the 20th century.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210870, "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-1986", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "204\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThe Tong brothers, King-sing and Mow-chee, were strong supporters of any scheme to introduce modern scientific, commercial and industrial ideas to China. They participated in the organisation of the Chinese Polytechnic Institute founded in Shanghai in 1874. Its object, as set forth in the prospectus, was “to bring the sciences, arts and manufactures of Western Nations in the most practicable manner possible before the notice of the Chinese.\" The proposed means of doing so were through exhibitions, lectures and classes, and a library and reading room.\n\nAt the time of Tong Mow-chee's 60th birthday celebrations, it was stated that \"the Tong family had played an important part in the history of the trade relations between foreigners and Chinese in Shanghai, and they may be said to be the leaders of the party of progress in the initiation and development of commerce after the style of foreign countries.\"\n\nAs compradore of the leading foreign firm in China, Tong Mow-chee held important positions in Chinese business associations such as the Canton Guild at Shanghai, the Hankow Tea Guild and the Canton-Swatow Opium Guild. In these organisations he was called on to use his ability as arbitrator when disputes arose. In this his early experience in San Francisco in diplomatic negotiation proved of great help.\n\nTong Mow-chee died in Shanghai on July 6, 1897. A description of his funeral and a sketch of his life was published in the North China Herald. Some of the statements in the biographical account do not agree with contemporary documentary evidence about certain facts of his life.\n\nThe description of the funeral procession depicts a form of Chinese pageantry that has now all but vanished. \"The coffin was of very heavy and expensive wood which had been painted and varnished, over and over again, until the outside coat of the coffin was over an inch thick, which would enable it to defy damp and wet for years. A handsome gold-embroidered red satin pall covered the coffin, which took relays of 32 men each time to carry it. Many beautiful and expensive banners were to have been unfurled for the occasion, but rain prevented it.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210900, "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-1986", "page_number": 251, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "234\n\nMa had not reached.\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nThere was gathering opposition to the idea of a Chinese monopoly syndicate. Provincial officials viewed it as a step towards centralisation and a curb to their autonomy. Conservative forces were opposed to any scheme which might give more power to the Cantonese compradore element and feared they would combine with foreign speculators. Some of the Chinese capitalists behind the scheme were suspect. In addition some of the Chinese officials had vested interests in the cultivation of opium in China. The scheme contemplated phasing out such production.\n\nFor all the rumours, speculation and negotiation, the scheme was never realised. Attempts to solve the opium question dragged on for many decades.\n\nWith the scheme's failure, Ho A-mei lost a chance to become a national figure. The stage of his future activities was to remain the Hongkong-Canton area.\n\nMOVES TO BRIDGE GAP BETWEEN THE RULER AND RULED\n\nHe was ambitious\n\nHo A-mei was a public figure by nature and enjoyed being under the spotlight of public attention. By ability he was innovative, energetic and determined. By education he had an excellent command of English. And by financial interest, his fortunes were linked with the business affairs of the wealthy Li Sing family of Hongkong.\n\nHis public activity was in a period when the Chinese were coming to an awareness of their importance for the progress of Hong-kong. This gave them a new sense of dignity and a desire to participate more fully in the total life of the community.\n\nAccording to Ho A-mei things were different in the old days. In a speech he delivered in 1883, he said: \"In times gone by the mutual intercourse between Chinese and foreigners was of such a nature as to render communication between those who were looked down upon as being the lower classes of the Chinese, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210916, "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-1986", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "250\n\nCARL SMITH\n\ntions between the Government and the Chinese. He believed Chinese views on matters affecting public welfare should be known and taken into consideration in decisions made by the Government and its officials. He was a strong advocate of equal treatment of all groups within the Colony and was opposed to class legislation. These policies were not welcomed by a large part of Hongkong's expatriate population. When Ng Choy was named to the Legislative Council there were murmurs of displeasure.\n\nThe choice, however, was a happy one.\n\nNg Choy, a barrister educated in England, was a diplomat by nature. During the period he represented the Chinese on the council, he steered successfully the treacherous course of cooperation with Governor Hennessy's \"pro-Chinese policy\" and cross currents of opposition it aroused among the European colonials. All of his good sense, ability to relate to people, integrity of character and humour were needed, and these did not fail him.\n\nIn 1882 he resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung-chang at Tientsin as a legal adviser. It was not easy to find someone who would fill the seat so capably. Ho A-mei, never backward, was willing and eager to compete for the high prize. His competitors were only a handful. Prominently mentioned were Dr. Ho Kai, Wei Yuk, Leung On and Wong Shing. Ho A-mei aspired to join their ranks.\n\nWho were these men and what were their qualifications?\n\nWei Yuk had been educated in Scotland and was compradore of the Chartered Bank, having succeeded his father in that position.\n\nGovernor Hennessy had made him a Justice of the Peace in one of his bids to tie the Chinese more closely to the Government. The editor of the Hong Kong Telegraph described Wei Yuk as \"a gentleman of great intelligence besides his wealth and position, exercising vast influence in all local matters appertaining to the Chinese.\" He served on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1914 and became known after receiving a knighthood as Sir Wei Po-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210917, "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-1986", "page_number": 268, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "251\n\nShan. Po Shan Road is named after him.\n\nLeung On, alias Leung Hok-chau, was a man of maturity. He was the highly respected compradore of Gibb, Livingston and Company. For many years he had been prominent in affairs within the Chinese community and had been chairman of the organising committee for the Tung Wah Hospital. His standard of English, however, was a handicap in aspiring to the membership of the Legislative Council.\n\nWong Shing was Wei Yuk's father-in-law. He was a man of high principles, but quiet and reserved. He had been in the first class of the Morrison Education Society School in Hongkong and with three of his classmates had been taken to the United States to further his education by the headmaster of the school. His health, however, did not permit him to finish his studies. He returned to Hongkong and took up employment with the London Missionary Society, in a short time becoming manager of the society's printing establishment. For a brief period he was with the Chinese Educational Mission in the United States, but now he was looking after his properties in Hongkong and managing other business interests. He had no ambition to be a prominent public figure but when Ng Choy's successor as Councillor was named at the close of 1883, it was Wong Shing.\n\nIn January 1883, however, it appeared that Dr. Ho Kai was the most likely candidate for the seat. He had left Hongkong when still a young boy to receive an education in Scotland and England. He was a brilliant student earning degrees both in law and medicine.\n\nWhen he returned to Hongkong in 1882 he was thoroughly Anglicised, had a beautiful English bride and wore European clothing. He was also a professing Christian. Europeans did not doubt that such a man would be sympathetic to their views about the Chinese and Chinese matters.\n\nHo A-mei was of a different sort altogether. He had served the Kwangtung Government for a number of years in an official capacity.\n\nPage 26.8\n\nPage 26.8\n\nPage 26.8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210969, "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-1987", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "56\n\n- and these should be seen in the context of other idiosyncrasies and other errors in the published works of those Europeans who wrote about Chinese culture, society, and language English Made Easy remains an interesting and substantial effort to help others less fortunate than himself. For this reason, the life and career of Mok Man Cheung needs to be examined to enable the full significance of his publication to be gauged. As will be seen in more detail below, Mok made his effort to help his compatriots nearly twenty years after he had left the teaching profession and several years after he had ceased being a professional interpreter and translator. By 1904, Mok Man Cheung was well established as a compradore and commission agent. There was certainly no financial need behind his writing of the book. Instead, he should receive the credit for having taken up the challenge of being a middleman and go-between in the most practical and, to his fellow-Chinese, the most helpful of ways. That he deemed this task worthwhile is a comment which itself provides insight into the social history of the time and, especially into the social history of education.\n\nSignificance of the life and career of Mok Man Cheung (the setting for snapshots 2 and 3)\n\nIn many ways, Mok Man Cheung was a typical product of the interaction of Chinese culture and enterprise with British colonial, bureaucratic, and commercial power. This interaction put a premium on the development of a group of middlemen or go-between. As the details outlined below demonstrate, Mok Man Cheung's education and career qualify him for membership of several of the categories analyzed by Carl Smith for the emerging Chinese elite in Hong Kong, even though his name has not yet been singled out by Smith. He was \"English educated\". He worked for a time as a translator. He became involved in the educational and the legal professions. He moved into the compradore class and, later, as “commission agent\", also performed compradorial services on a freelance basis. As a non-official Justice of the Peace towards the end of his career, he can be counted as one of the “English-speaking Chinese advisers to the Government”\n\n20\n\n21", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211016, "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-1987", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "53\n\nhowever, it is interesting to note that Mok's universe of persons and occupations encompasses such categories, as well as the more pragmatically justified \"Broker\", \"Interpreter\", \"Agent\", \"Magistrate\", \"Justice of the Peace\", \"Compradore\", \"Stone-cutter\", \"Tin-smith\", \"Shroff\", \"Coolie Agent\", et al. It is also interesting to note that the dramatis personae of this section of the book include \"Schoolmaster\", \"Teacher\", \"Horse-boy\", \"Bad man\", \"Fool\", \"Watchman\", \"Porter\", \"Deaf\", \"Convent Sister\", \"Midwife\", various family relations, \"Tenant\", \"Kidnapper\", \"Geomancer\", \"District watchmen\", \"Juggler\", and \"Priest\".\n\nA similar ambivalence, between traditional and modern as well as between East and West, may be detected in other sections of the book. Under \"Stores and Business Shops\", for example, one finds a Bank, Foreign goods shop, Factory, Dispensary, Tobacco store, Hardware dealers, Ship Chandler's store, as well as a Compradore shop, Opium divan, Pawn-broker's shop, and Chinese Bank. Under \"Clothing and Wearing Apparel\", the reader could discover a way to pronounce \"Pyjama\", \"Silk stockings\", \"Breeches\", \"Chemise\", \"Mosquito net\", \"Knickerbockers\", \"Cholera belt\", \"Combination\", \"Pantaloons\", and \"Swallow Tail coat\", while the separate section on \"Chinese Clothes\" introduced him to the pronunciation of such objects as \"Wadded Coat\", \"Mandarin robe\", and \"Queue string\". The section on \"Crockery and Household Articles\" and the separate section on \"Household Articles\" provide an interesting glimpse of some of the personal belongings which Mok Man Cheung assumed would be characteristic of his readership. Such items include \"Wine bottle\", \"Scissors\", \"Tea cup\", \"Tea saucers\", various other pieces of crockery (including a \"Mustard cup\"), \"Nut cracker\", \"Cheese scoop\", \"Pickle fork\", \"Candle stand\", \"Soy stand\", \"Bamboo broom\", \"Feather brush\", \"Red tape\", \"Bay Rum\", \"Hair oil\", \"Powder horn\", \"Bullets\", \"Horse saddle\", \"Dagger\", \"Tooth brush\", \"Tooth pick\", \"Chessmen\", \"Thimble\", \"Gramophone\", \"Telephone\", \"Looking glass\", \"Lamp chimney\", \"Scissors\", and \"Horse whip\". Under \"Court Matters\" and \"Punishments\", the reader could also find traditional modern, Eastern and Western practices intermingled. For example, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211020, "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-1987", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "57\n\nAt least partial substantiation of these claims can be found in a Who's Who in the Far East entry under his name in June 1906. Presumably, the details of his entry were provided by Mok Man Cheung himself. A full quotation of the short passage may, therefore, tell something of how he viewed his own achievements. It reads:\n\nMOK, MAN CHEUNG (HONG KONG), Commission Agent, Translator of Legal documents and Arbitrator; b. Dec. 4, 1865. Educ. Government Central School (now Queen's College), Hong Kong. Monitor in Government Central School, 1884; Pupil Teacher, 1885; assistant teacher, 1888-92; Translator in Registrar General's Office, Hong Kong, 1893-94; Translator for the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, 1895-1900; assistant Compradore in Butterfield and Swire's service, 1901. Publications: “Tah Tsz English and Chinese Dictionary”; “English Made Easy\". Address: 267, Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong.\"\n\n23\n\nSnapshot 2: Mok Man Cheung in the mid-1880s\n\nIt is interesting that, over twenty years after the appointment, Mok Man Cheung chose to include \"Monitor in Government Central School, 1884\" as a mark of distinction. The prefect system was not established in Queen's College until 1911,24 and, therefore, Mok Man Cheung had no opportunity to add such an honour to his resume. Even though in general it remains true that absence of evidence cannot provide solid evidence of absence, in his particular case, one may assume that the fact that he did not quote scholarship successes, coupled with the fact that he is not mentioned in this respect in any of the Government sources or in Stokes' Queen's College 1862-1962, indicates that he did not win one of the prestigious scholarship awards25 during his time at the Central School. On the other hand, Carl Smith possesses evidence that Mok Man Cheung won the Mathematics prize for Class 1 (i.e., the senior class in the school) on 23rd January, 1884.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211025, "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-1987", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "62\n\ndeterioration in the relations between the Chinese and the British communities as the colonial authorities struggled to contain the first outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. Some of the less educated Chinese rioted because medical and sanitary precautions intruded on their property rights. Others, estimated as at least 80,000, fled Hong Kong. And many panicked because of superstitious rumours similar to those which were beginning to spread in China about the activities of the Western missionaries.38 It would be interesting to discover Mok Man Cheung's attitudes and activities during these tense years. The last time his name appears in the Blue Book as Chinese Clerk and Translator at the Supreme Court is 1898. It seems probable, therefore, that he left Government service at the end of 1898 or early in 1899 and, aided perhaps by family connections, entered the even more profitable undertaking of serving as an assistant compradore for a major European trading company. In January 1899, he made first use of his career experience as an interpreter and translator by publishing a very substantial (2,717 pages) English-Chinese Dictionary, entitled Ta Tsz's Dictionary, a project more notable for its industry than its originality.\n\n40\n\nShortly after he left Government service as a translator at the Supreme Court, the cause célèbre was the assassination of a radically-minded (Sun Yat-sen supporting) school teacher in his own classroom by gunmen hired by the police chief in Canton. Relations between the British, many of whom were shocked at the \"gross and daring violation of British territory” by the Chinese Imperial Government, and the Chinese in Hong Kong did not improve as a result.\n\n41\n\nIn that year (1901), Mok Man Cheung was on the compradorial staff of Butterfield and Swire, one of the leading European Hongs in Hong Kong. Thereafter, he remained in the business of commercial go-betweening, both as a fully-fledged compradore and as a free-lance \"commission agent\". In 1910, he was appointed a non-official Justice of the Peace. His name appears in the Hong Kong Government's Blue Book on the list of JPs from 1910 to 1917. One may, therefore assume that he died at the end of 1917 or very early in the year 1918.42 In 1918, his name also disappears", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211026, "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-1987", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "from the List of Common Jurors (in the Hong Kong Sessional Papers), where most recently it had been associated with his long-standing address at 267, Queen's Road East and with the occupation of Compradore for Holt's Wharf, the Hong Kong home of the Blue Funnel Line. An examination of his will and the certificate of probate shows that he died on Sunday, 30th December, 1917. On Tuesday, 1st January, 1918, the following brief news item appeared in the “Local and General” column of the South China Morning Post:43\n\nA well-known Chinese resident, Mr. Mok Man Cheung, compradore at Holt's Wharf, died at the week end. Mr. Mok passed away on Sunday morning at his residence, 267, Queen's Road East. He was an old QC44 student and very well known in the Colony. He was on the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospital, the Po Leung Kuk, the Hongkong Public Dispensary and many other prominent institutions.” He was only 53 years of age at the time of his death.\n\nQuestions which remain for consideration and which possibly taxed him at the time of his death concern the inaccuracies in the career summary which he permitted to be published in 1906. Why did he claim to be a pupil-teacher in 1884, when in fact he was already a fully-fledged assistant Chinese master? Why did he post-date his teaching career at the Central School? Why did he post-date and abbreviate his career at the Registrar General's Office? Why did he post-date his time at the Supreme Court? The simplest answer is to place the responsibility either on faulty copy-editing on the part of the editors of Who's Who in the Far East or upon faulty memory on his own part. These answers do not ring true, partly because the editors have received no similar criticisms relating to the numerous other entries, and partly because the errors are too consistent to be simply the result of an oversight. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a person in 1906, then aged 41, would forget the dates of employment only fifteen to seven years before. Another possibility, already mentioned, was that Mok Man Cheung felt that he gained face from association with the pupil teacher scheme, and that all consequent post-dating was caused by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211030, "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-1987", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "66\n\nplan to reside in, or do business with, Hong Kong after 1997.\n\nFurthermore, it is not too difficult to recognize the emergence of a new middleman (in a sense, a new “compradore class” in Hong Kong) during the years leading up to the transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997. These are individuals, usually but not invariably of Chinese ethnic origin, often with existing economic and social prestige in Hong Kong, who are attempting to serve as go-betweens with the new political masters. Even in the field of academic education, a group of facilitators and middlemen has already emerged in Hong Kong, opening doors for visits, conferences, and regular contacts with educationalists from the Chinese mainland. Mok Man Cheung was in some ways the spiritual and intellectual forebear of this group and, therefore, claims may be advanced for him to be considered, truly, as A Middle-man for All Seasons.\n\nIn a broader, international and academic context, perhaps a recognition of what can be gained from a study of snapshots will serve to open up alternatives to the classic, \"hard\" social-science approaches to the understanding of what is distinctive about education in different societies. Currently, at least some of the macro approaches are so much concerned from the very outset with generalization and comparison that they fail to incorporate important and characteristic aspects of a society's educational system. At the other extreme, some micro approaches are so excessively concerned, often in the manner of antiquarianism, with detail that it is difficult to see how they could possibly contribute to any important understandings beyond their own minute facts. The methodological burden of this article has been that there is a place for an inductive approach which starts from the details and, by focusing on them as snapshots, is capable of generating broader understandings. If Mok Man Cheung is accepted as a Middleman for All Seasons, a claim can be advanced for alternatives to macro-mania.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211031, "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-1987", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n67\n\n1\n\nThe South China Morning Post, 20th August, 1904, p. 3.\n\nSee, for example, Mark Bray, Peter B. Clarke, and David Stephens, Education and Society (London: Edward Arnold, 1986); Mark Bray, with Kevin Lillis (eds.), Community Financing of Education: Issues and Policy Implications in Less Developed Countries (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988); Ingemar Fagerlind and Lawrence J. Saba, Education and National Development: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983); Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); George Psacharopoulos and Maureen Woodhall, Education for Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); R. Murray Thomas (ed.), Politics and Education: Cases from Eleven Nations (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983).\n\nMartin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York: McKay, 1974), Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly (eds.), Education and the Colonial Experience, (2nd Revised Edition New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984).\n\nStephen J. Ball, 'Imperialism, Social Control and the Colonial Curriculum in Africa', in Ivor F. Goodson and Stephen J. Ball (eds.), Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (London: The Falmer Press, 1984).\n\nProsser Gifford and Timothy Weiskel, “African Education in a Colonial Context: French and British Styles,” in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, France and Britain in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).\n\nClive Whitehead, “British Colonial Education Policy: A Synonym for Cultural Imperialism?\", in J. A. Mangan (ed.), Imperialism, Socialization and Education (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).\n\nIt is not implied that all the works cited above suffer from this defect.\n\n10\n\nThe term \"compradore\" is an Anglicized version of the Portuguese comprador, which literally meant \"provider\" or \"provisioner\". The historical significance of the compradore class has been summarized by Carl Smith in the following terms: \"The compradores were influential in proposing, capitalizing, and managing the modernization and industrialization of China in the latter half of the century. They had received their business training and acquired their capital by functioning as 'middlemen' between the European merchant and the Chinese employees and business contacts of the foreign firm. It was a strategic position which called for a foot in two worlds. A background of ability in the language and an understanding of European thought and manners usually ensured a rapid rise as a compradore.' Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 63. It may be worth noting that several, but by no means all, of the early compradores in Hong Kong were \"middlemen\" also in the sense that they were of Eurasian birth.\n\n15\n\nSee, for example, Particulars of the Offices of three Assistant Mistresses, Education Department, now vacant in the Colony of Hong Kong, August 1913, in Colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211035, "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-1987", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "71\n\n1901 (see below).\n\n36\n\nBrewin, who was promoted to Registrar General in 1901, had also served briefly, from 1897 to 1901, as Inspector of Schools in succession to E.J. Eitel. His endorsement was, therefore, particularly valuable. He had been appointed, together with his successor as Inspector of Schools, E.A. Irving, and the Chinese member of the Legislative Council, Ho Kai, to the 1901-1902 Education Committee, the report of which contains blatant calls for the separate educational treatment of the different races and a clear recommendation, compatible with the extremes of colonialistic paternalism, that, as far as Chinese education was concerned, the Government should concentrate its efforts and finances on the education, in English, of the few who could be regarded as potential leaders. Interestingly, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at this time, Joseph Chamberlain, totally rejected this recommendation (Chamberlain to Sir Henry Blake, Governor of Hong Kong, 12th September, 1902, in CO129/311, p. 481).\n\n\"For certain individuals, this explanation is something of a euphemism since the “medical and sanitary precautions\" involved burning down their homes.\n\nThe Plague first broke out in Hong Kong in the Spring of 1894. The death rate for the first five or six months was over 2,500, and, though, it was the Chinese population which was most affected, the Europeans were not untouched. Lady Robinson, the wife of the Governor of Hong Kong, was, for example, a victim. Dr. E.J. Eitel, the Inspector of Schools, provided details of the rumours circulating among the less educated Chinese, and their effects, in a memorandum to the Colonial Secretary on 22nd May 1894. Eitel wrote to report and explain \"the panic which has suddenly decimated the attendance in the local Chinese Schools\" and noted that the rumours began to spread in districts affected by the Plague on Sunday, 20th May and reached other districts the next day. The principal rumours were (a) that \"the Government intended to select a few young Children from each School to subject them to a surgical incision of the liver in order to obtain bile, this being the only known remedy for curing the plague”; and, (b) that \"every School would be visited by officers who would examine every child and send to the \"Hygeia\" anyone having the least boil or pimple on its body\". Eitel speculated about the origin of the panic, attributing it to \"the malicious distortion of the native medical fraternity\" and concluded: “I do not think anything very effectual can be done to remove the suggestions of native malice to native ignorance and suspiciousness. Distrust of the Government is still rampant among the lower classes of Chinese. Education will remove it in time. (Memorandum No. 38 of 22nd May, 1894, by Dr. E.J. Eitel, Inspector of Schools; in CO129/263, p. 190-193). 39 In Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the Other Treaty Ports of China: Their History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources (London: Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Company, Ltd., 1908), p. 182, for example, Mok Tso Chun, “a native of the Heungshan district\" and formerly one of the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital, is described as the Chief Compradore of Butterfield and Swire. In the Anglo-Chinese Commercial Directory of circa 1915 (Chief Editor, Jan George Chance), a Mok Jao Chuen, clearly the same person as Mok Tso Chun, appears as Compradore for Butterfield and Swire, while a Choi Kung Po and a Mok Kon Sang appear as Assistant Compradores. Mok Man Cheung acted as witness to the will of Mok Tso [or Jao] Chun and the will, itself, makes it clear that Mok Kon Sang was Mok Tso Chun's eldest son. It was certainly not unusual for Compradores at this time to find positions for younger relatives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211082, "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-1987", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "118\n\nhad to bestow, made Ho A-mei a possible candidate for the Legislative Council.\n\nNg Choy, who had recently resigned, was the first Chinese member of the Council. He had been appointed by Governor John Pope Hennessy in 1878. His nomination had been part of what the English language press liked to call “Hennessy's pro-Chinese policy.\" Governor Hennessy's object was to establish closer relations between the Government and the Chinese. He believed Chinese views on matters affecting public welfare should be known and taken into consideration in decisions made by the Government and its officials. He was a strong advocate of equal treatment of all groups within the Colony and was opposed to class legislation. These policies were not welcomed by a large part of Hong Kong's expatriate population. When Ng Choy was named to the Legislative Council there were murmurs of displeasure.\n\nThe choice, however, was a happy one.\n\nNg Choy, a barrister educated in England, was a diplomat by nature. During the period he represented the Chinese on the Council, he steered successfully the treacherous course of co-operation with Governor Hennessy's \"pro-Chinese policy\" and cross currents of opposition it aroused among the European colonials. All of his good sense, ability to relate to people, integrity of character and humour were needed, and these did not fail him.\n\nIn 1882 he resigned to join the staff of Viceroy Li Hung-chang at Tientsin as a legal adviser. It was not easy to find someone who would fill the seat so capably. Ho A-mei, never backward, was willing and eager to compete for the high prize. His competitors were only a handful. Prominently mentioned were Dr. Ho Kai, Wei Yuk, Leung On and Wong Shing. Ho A-mei aspired to join their ranks.\n\nWho were these men and what were their qualifications?\n\nWei Yuk had been educated in Scotland and was compradore of the Chartered Bank, having succeeded his father in that position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211083, "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-1987", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "119\n\nGovernor Hennessy had made him a Justice of the Peace in one of his bids to tie the Chinese more closely to the Government. The editor of the Hong Kong Telegraph described Wei Yuk as “a gentleman of great intelligence besides his wealth and position, exercising vast influence in all local matters appertaining to the Chinese.\" He served on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1914 and became known after receiving a knighthood as Sir Wei Po-shan. Po Shan Road is named after him.\n\nLeung On, alias Leung Hok-chau, was a man of maturity. He was the highly respected compradore of Gibb, Livingston and Company. For many years he had been prominent in affairs within the Chinese community and had been chairman of the organising committee for the Tung Wah Hospital. His standard of English, however, was a handicap in aspiring to the membership of the Legislative Council.\n\nWong Shing was Wei Yuk's father-in-law. He was a man of high principles, but quiet and reserved. He had been in the first class of the Morrison Education Society School in Hongkong and with three of his classmates had been taken to the United States to further his education by the headmaster of the school. His health, however, did not permit him to finish his studies. He returned to Hongkong and took up employment with the London Missionary Society, in a short time becoming manager of the Society's printing establishment. For a brief period he was with the Chinese Educational Mission in the United States, but now he was looking after his properties in Hongkong and managing other business interests. He had no ambition to be a prominent public figure but when Ng Choy's successor as Councillor was named at the close of 1883, it was Wong Shing.\n\nIn January 1883, however, it appeared that Dr. Ho Kai was the most likely candidate for the seat. He had left Hongkong when still a young boy to receive an education in Scotland and England. He was a brilliant student earning degrees both in law and medicine.\n\nWhen he returned to Hongkong in 1882 he was thoroughly Anglicised, had a beautiful English bride and wore European clothing. He was also a professing Christian. Europeans did not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211198, "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-1987", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "234\n\nIf a building was to be built on the ground, where would the poor have an open space for recreation? Furthermore, the Government had put an objectionable dustbin at one end and a latrine at the other, not a very appropriate setting for receiving Chinese ambassadors and other high officials passing through Hongkong.\n\nThe building for the Chamber of Commerce should be entirely independent of Government. The community had experienced difficulties in the administration of Tung Wah Hospital because it had received contributions from Government. The Government consequently exercised some control over it.\n\nTo avoid Government interference, Ho A-mei believed that the entire sum for the new building should be subscribed by the Chinese only. This would not be too great a task if everyone would participate. Subscriptions would be welcomed from five cents upward.\n\nAfter Ho A-mei had finished, Mr. Leung On, the compradore of Messrs. Gibb, Livingston and Company, called upon any present who might not agree with the scheme to speak out. The managers of the meeting did not wish to fall into the same muddle as the foreigners. They wished to have the scheme accepted only if there was the unanimous and hearty approval of all present.\n\nOnly one speaker replied. He did not oppose the scheme but expressed the hope that when the project was adopted it would be carried through successfully. He recalled a similar plan had been advanced some twenty years before, but nothing had come of it. Recently the papers had been criticising the Chinese community because it had not fulfilled its plan to put up a statue to Governor Macdonnell after having raised money for it.\n\nHo A-mei replied that he had no doubt that the present scheme would be successful. The contributions from every guild and association would be needed, but he was confident they would generously give their support. It was a matter of community pride that the Chinese should have such a hall.\n\n:\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212239, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "158\n\n[Lower Albert Road]\n\nRoad, with trees on each side, & seats. There is a splendid sea view.\n\nHigh wall. The ground rises high.\n\nGate Way\n\nAscending foot path\n\n(40ft above road) Foot path.\n\nAscending\n\nG.\n\nน\n\nTrees\n\nTowar Room\n\nVerandah\n\nShrubbery. &c\n\n+\n\nBishop's Drawing Room\n\nShrubbery, &c\n\nRoad\n\nGarden Shrubbery &c\n\nHigh Embankment\n\nIce House\n\nStreet]\n\nOp's Dining Room\n\nPorch Hall\n\nAvenue\n\nServants' Room Pantry, do\n\nCompradora's Room\n\nStudents' Instruction Room\n\nCollege Chapel\n\nPorch\n\nStudents' Dining Room\n\nRooms of upper servants, &c\n\nTutor's Bath Room\n\nVerandah\n\nGarden,\n\nPlay Ground\n\nOffices.\n\nLower Servants Rooms\n\nKitchen\n\nLower Servants Rooms\n\n+\n\n+\n\n-\n\nLawn, laid out with trees &c\n\nTrees &c\n\nHigh Embankment & Declivity, planted thickly with Trees\n\nGarden, Trees &c\n\nTwo Houses, very much higher up than the college, whose rent goes to support the college\n\nSteep Hill\n\nGround Floor Plan\n\n(Rendering of a sketch-plan by Fryer, August 1861. The original including the Second Floor Plan, is pen-and-ink and colour wash, Original in the John Fryar Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Road names in square brackets added)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212310, "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": 252, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "224\n\nraw silk for their mills. Adanison arrived in Shanghai, on their behalf, in 1852. In 1858 he formed his own firm, exporting tea and general merchandise, and set up branches in Hong Kong, Foochow and Hongkow. There were ten European employees.\n\nIn 1872, the firm appointed a shipping clerk in its Shanghai office named George Benjamin Dodwell. He was 20 years old, born in Derby, and was paid 400 pounds for the first year of service, with a room, fire, light and medical bills met by the firm. Dodwell was allowed five per cent of all profits of the shipping business on everything earned above 700 taels per annum (equivalent to 2,100 sterling). He also had a share in other profits in an attempt to stop him branching out on his own account. Another condition of appointment was that he should 'not indulge in racing of horses and ponies'. This contrasted with the conditions of service for Jardine's who were not against their employees having a wager.\n\nIn 1876, Adamson Bell and Company's tea shipments (at the end of the nineteenth century nearly 60 per cent of China's exports consisted of tea and silk) were only marginally behind those of Jardines and Butterfield and Swires. For much of his work Dodwell was assisted by the firm's compradore. Nonetheless, a considerable amount of financial risk was involved. Dodwell and A.J.M. Carlill finally took over the bankrupt Adamson Bell Company [which is still known as Tien Cheang (天昌) meaning heavenly prosperity] on May 1st, 1891.\n\nCanadian Pacific Railways (CPR) chartered sailing ships to import goods from China and Japan. Dodwell had entered into a three-year contract with Sir William Van Horne of CPR. But, as business was good, CPR decided to run its own fast mail line in place of hiring old Cunarders.\n\nDodwell was told his contract would not be renewed, but he was asked to continue to manage the CPR services at the Far Eastern end. Van Horne was impressed by Dodwell as a man, and he offered him full control of the new CPR shipping line if Dodwell would abandon his newly established firm and join CPR as an employee. He was offered a salary and commissions totalling at least 4,000 pounds a year. Dodwell declined, preferring to head his own new enterprise which he had rescued, and would rebuild, from bankruptcy.\n\nIt is the worst day's work you have ever done, Dodwell\",", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212476, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "in a period when Chinese were only allowed to invest in European insurance companies. But at the same time, he still had large interests in traditional business.\n\nCantonese compradors in Hong Kong, of course, should not be considered as only a few persons; they could probably be identified from archives of the firms they worked for. However, we are limited by sources, which make it quite difficult, but not impossible, to assess compradors' wealth which they had accumulated when they were in office. Furthermore, most of the wealthy Chinese in Hong Kong, including compradors at that time, had investments or property in China. From their business activities, a Canton-Macau-Hong Kong linkage is shown in their wills deposited in the Hong Kong Public Records Office.\n\nNames of the Cantonese compradors in Hong Kong were probably Cheang Hoong of Philips Moore & Co., Wong Kong and Kwong A Hang of Smith, Archer & Co.; Ng A Cheong of Douglas Lapraik & Co., Law Pak Sheung of Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, Wai A Kwong of Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China, Law Sai Nam of McBain & Co., Lau Cheong of Gilman & Co. (Fuzhou), Au Yeung Shing of Russell & Co., Sung Chin Tseung of Messrs. Turner & Co., Tong Mow Chee (Tang Maozhi) of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (Tianjin), and Choa Chee Bee of China Sugar Refining Co., Ltd. They all left wills in which some indicated business connections with Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong. For example, the will of Wai A Kwong written in 1866 reads:\n\nI am a native of Tsin Shan in the District of Heung Shan, Empire of China, at present residing in Victoria, Hong Kong, and holding the office of compradore of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London, and China. At the age of eleven years, I left my native place and proceeded to Macau, where I obtained employment as a domestic servant to a Portuguese; at the age of thirteen, I was sent down to Singapore by the Reverend E. C. Bridgman, missionary to the Chinese, and became the first pupil of the Morrison Education Society. I returned to Hong Kong in the year 1843, and I have ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government. I married in Hong Kong and have several children, all born in this colony. By industry and thriftiness, I have acquired and am possessed of sundry houses, lands, shares in business, and other property and effects. Knowing\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212477, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "11\n\nthat all men must die and not knowing when I may be called away, I deem it right while still in bodily health and full possession of mental faculties to make my will.\n\nWei A Kwong, the father of Wei Yuk, had a typical story of success. He was a Zhongshan native; he left his hometown and worked in Macau as a teenager. His father was a comprador to two American merchants, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks and Oliver H. Gordon. It was known that Wei was forsaken by his family and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau. He was later sent to Singapore where he studied under the auspices of the Morrison Education Society in a school of the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions. This changed his life. He returned to Hong Kong and began his career. He served as comprador in Bowra & Co. and then in the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China until his death. Wei wrote his will in 1866. He prefaced it with a brief account of his life, particularly mentioning that he was the first student of the Morrison Education Society and that he first came to Hong Kong in 1843. He had \"ever since lived under the just and equitable rule of the British Government.\" Though we cannot prove to what extent his exposure to Western culture was related to his Christian education, he succeeded in becoming a leading member of Chinese society in Hong Kong. This contrasts with the will of Sung Chin Tseung, which reads.\n\nSung Chin Tseung, otherwise literary appellation Sung Ching, otherwise Ngok Shan, native of Kat Tai village, of Kong Sheung Division, Heung Shan District. I followed my deceased father, Mr. Shau U, to Hong Kong in 1842 to trade in foreign business as compradore. Further, in 1854, thanks to the kind support of Mr. Ryrie and others of Messrs. Turner and Co., Hongkong, I took over the office of compradore and up to the present thirty odd years.\n\nBoth Wei and Sung were natives of Zhongshan. They came to Hong Kong for business in the early 1840s when Hong Kong was already a British colony. Though they lived in Hong Kong, they maintained connections with their hometown, as Sung's father, Soong Ke, stated in his will written in 1864:\n\nIn the 21st year of Tao Kwong (1841), I came to Hong Kong and employed myself in business all the time with foreigners, always being diligent and making little profit sufficient to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212499, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "33\n\nAppendix\n\nSelected Sample of Letter of Recommendation of Comprador from Kong Ki Chiu, “An English and Chinese Dictionary'' (Hong Kong, 1875).\n\nMessrs. A & Co.\n\nSirs,\n\nThe bearer\n\nShanghai, 30th June, 1875.\n\nC.\n\nhas been assis-\n\ntant compradore in my firm for the past four years, during which time his conduct has been most satisfactory.\n\nHe tells me that you are in want of a compradore, and requests me to offer his services to you.\n\nHe really is honest, diligent and respectable, and I can highly recommend him, if you want to engage him. I am sure he will give you great satisfaction.\n\nBelieve me\n\nYour very faithfully\n\nB.\n\n大安\n\n兹有請者來人某某\n\n杲杲寶行\n\n想即請 相得益彰 開下必有任何得人之樂也此 閣下欲請月司事白當力為推舉想將來 舉止極為可靠而且忠信勤慎極顧顔面倘 寶行欲請買辦特托弟代為推薦其人行為 向在小行當幫買辦之職曾歷四年據稱\n\n列位先生嘅照\n\n教弟某某頓首", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213234, "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-1994", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "35\n\nusually known as Bernhard became a partner along with Friedrich Seip in 1888. He had charge of the Canton office (DP 14 Mar. 1888).\n\nGustav Harling became a partner in 1883 (DP 10 Jan. 1883). The firm may have been dissolved by the year 1896, for in that year George Wilhelm Gustav Harling — probably the same as Gustav Harling — was a member of the firm of Harling, Buschmann and Menzell in Hong Kong. In 1900 the name of this firm was changed to the East Asiatic Trading Co.\n\nCarl Bodiker and Co.\n\nCarl Bodiker and Co was among the German firms placed in liquidation in 1914. In a petition of German firms to the Government at that time the date of its establishment is given as 1860. I am unable to trace the company to this date. In 1912 Carl Bodiker, who styled himself as the sole partner of the company and was then resident in Hamburg, appointed Frank Esrom to hold his power of attorney in Hong Kong. The document states that by an indenture dated 28 November 1911 George Wilhelm Gustave Harling transferred to Bodiker all the business of Schuldt and Co.\n\nA compradore's bond and agreement dated 7 August 1908 names the partners of Schuldt and Co. at that time as Adolf Heinrich Ernest Schuldt, 28 Armgaistrasse, Hamburg, George Wilhelm Gustav Harling, same address, and Schelte Swart, Hong Kong. As noted under the history of Schellhass and Co., Mr. Harling was successively with Schellhass and Co., Harling, Buschmann and Menzell Co. and the East Asiatic Trading Co. The 1860 date for the founding of Bodiker and Co. must be the date for the founding of Schellhass and Co.\n\nBy the year 1923 Carl Bodiker and Co was again doing business in Hong Kong as import and export merchants and engineers. The partners in 1929 were Q. May and B. Soltau.\n\nHesse, Ehlers and Co.\n\nJ\n\nChina Export and Import Bank Compagnie\n\nThe China Import and Export Bank Compagnie was one of the firms placed under liquidation in 1914. It had its origins in the firm of Hesse, Ehlers and Co.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213571, "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-1995", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "136\n\nThe “Fan Kwae” at Canton Before Treaty Days (1825-1844). W.C. Hunter. Pb. Kegan Paul & Trench. London 1882.\n\n12 All vessels bound for Whampoa were loaded with general cargo, or with rice only, and were subject to what were called Cumsha and Measurement Charges.\n\n29 \"The position of Hong merchant was obtained through the payment of large sums of money at Pekin. I have heard of as much as 200,000 taels, say £55,000 sterling. If the licence they acquired was costly, it secured to them uninterrupted and extraordinary pecuniary advantages...\"\n\n36 [Ilouqua]: “have got too much bad news... Hwang Ho have spillum too much... Man-ta-le have come see you? ... He no come see me, he send come one piece ‘chop’. He come to-morrow. He wantchee my two-lac dollar\". \"You pay how much? ... My pay he fifty, sixty thousand so. But suppose he no contentee? ... Suppose he No. 1 no contentee, my pay he one lac.\"\n\n44 You and I are No. 1 \"olo flen\"; you belong honest man, only no got chance\"... \"Just now have settle counter, alla finishee; you go you please.\"\n\n54 The position of compradore was therefore one of great responsibility, and I never knew of but one betraying the trust reposed in him. Although his pay was comparatively small, say $250 or $300 per annum, his perquisites, from sources which had long been in existence, and had become \"olo custom\", were very important.\n\n99 Before she could open hatches, the formality of “Cumsha and Measurement\" had to be gone through. The first word signifies \"present\", and was a payment made by the earliest foreign vessels for the privilege of entering the port;..\n\n100 Measurement: 842.2.8.5, Cumsha 810 9.6.1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213883, "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-1996", "page_number": 235, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "209\n\nmembers of the Alumni Association. All of them had at one time or another worked as compradores for foreign firms; the two Eurasian families, Ho Tung and Lo Changzhao (E) had almost monopolized the compradoral posts of Jardines and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank up to the 1940s. Liu Zhubo, He and Lo's sons were at one time or another appointed Legislative Councillors of the Colony. When the First World War broke out in Europe, these three partners contributed a huge sum of money to the British Government for the purchase of an aeroplane. The plane, as requested by the donors, was named \"Da You Bank of Hong Kong\".\n\nThe wealth of this western-educated group did not derive from the joint-stock company. They owned their own native bank despite the fact that they were compradores in western firms. It seems likely that this was an attempt to avoid the disclosure of financial accounts as required by the company ordinance. As these Eurasian families monopolized the compradoral posts of many of the foreign firms, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, it is highly likely that capital was transferred between their accounts in the compradore offices and those in their private businesses.\n\nAs they had exclusive access to capital, they did not rely on a capital market in the same way as the overseas returning migrants did, though we cannot tell whether this capital market was governed by the invisible hand of the economy or the invisible hand of political intimidation, as the governor suggested.\n\nFollowing the example of the Siyi men, Hong Kong-born, western-educated groups participated in the political arena in China. In 1913, the Governor reported to the Colonial Office that \"several leading Chinese\" in Hong Kong had informed him that they would welcome the reorganization of the administration of the Canton Province under \"tactful and conscientious British supervision.\"\n\nAccording to Liu Zhubo's proposal, a loan of 25,000,000 taels was to be raised in Hong Kong to redeem unsecured currency in Canton. In return, Liu requested of the Beijing Government the privilege of establishing a central bank in Guangdong \"with a monopoly of the Provincial Government business\". To guarantee the smooth functioning of this arrangement, Liu suggested \"inviting the Government of Hong Kong\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213893, "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-1996", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "219\n\nthe second was the Zhejiang clique under Jiang Jieshi. With Soviet aid and with Jiang Jieshi, Sun decided to embark on two important programs, the establishment of a central bank, and the setting up of a military academy in Huangpu.\n\nAt this point, things came full circle. The merchants, threatened by what they believed to be a “red invasion” in Guangdong, tried to organize a heavy-armed merchant corps to fight against Sun. This is a story in itself; it will have to await another article.\n\nSuffice it to state here that it was in 1924, through the Compradore of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, that a large quantity of arms for the Merchants' Corps, a sort of militia equipped and hired by merchants for self-defence, were delivered. By late 1923, these troops numbered around 20,000, and their armaments included “4,850 rifles and 1,150,000 rounds of ammunition, 433 automatic pistols fitted with stock, and 2,060,000 rounds, 660 revolvers, large and small, with 164,200 rounds, and 40 machine guns with a huge quantity of ammunition.” These armaments, however, were confiscated by Sun on their arrival. The dispute led to a military confrontation between the Huangpu cadets and the merchant's corps at the West Gate of Canton. Almost all available forces under Sun participated in a military confrontation against the merchant corps. The attack began at 5:30 p.m. on October 14th. The Merchants' Corps had barricaded itself in the densely populated commercial section. Corpsmen fired down upon the invading corps from the strong towers which pawn shops used for storing valuables. But before the fighting really started, many parts in the West Gate were simultaneously on fire. By nightfall, much of the commercial section was in flames. The corps retreated to the roof floor of such Hong Kong-registered companies as the Sincere and Tai Sun Department Stores. Twenty-four hours later, the corpsmen were forced to surrender. They were disarmed, and then leaders fled to Hong Kong. Troops looted freely until the next day, when the government threatened looters with immediate execution. Property losses due to the fires were huge, around 600 to 1,000 buildings were burned and many others looted. With the confiscated arms, the Huangpu cadets moved northward for their national unification.\n\nFollowing this, there were several interesting developments.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213895, "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-1996", "page_number": 247, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "221\n\nThus, a new political language, clustered around the ideas of labour and trade unions soon overshadowed the existing political language, which was introduced in the late Qing and clustered around the ideas of merchants and chambers of commerce. To curb the political power of merchants, the Canton government dissolved all the existing merchant associations in Canton. The directorship of the Canton General Chamber of Commerce was abolished and the Canton government appointed their own supporters to the Chamber. Liao Zhongkai even went to the extreme of making legislation in 1925 to prohibit \"compradore merchants” from taking up government posts.\n\nPolitical regulations were changing fast during these years. Trade unions continued to expand and were politically active in Canton. This eventually led to the 1925 General Strike which in Hong Kong involved a total of 300,000 labourers. It was known as the greatest and largest strike which had ever occurred in China, and retrospectively, the Chinese Communist Party would time and time again herald its success.\n\nAs for the Cantonese merchants and the Communication Clique, they retreated from Canton to Hong Kong after 1924. I have tracked down a very beautiful piece of information from 1941 - on a Julao Hui (九老會), or the Nine Elders Club. The club was formed by the retired leaders of the regional Chambers of Commerce. These retreated Cantonese, despite their previous competition, joined together as a social club to celebrate the abundance of their offspring and their own longevity. These nine gentlemen enjoyed a total age amounting to 676 by 1941. On this occasion, Liang Shiyi sent them a couplet. It read:\n\nThe three of us in person congratulating the nine elders, altogether in one hall we celebrate our thousand years.\n\nAs far as this small circle is concerned, it sounds like a happy ending.\n\nBeyond this circle, all we can see is a Hong Kong society with its members, for a long period of time, showing little interest in the issue of constitutional reform, representative or self-government, as their Indian, African, or Malay counterparts did. Even during those noisy years after the Second World War while the issue of decolonization was very much talked about and the British Empire actually collapsed,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216286, "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-2003", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "Smimoff, George\n\nSafe harbour: commemorative centennial exhibition of Porto Seguro. Macau: Museu de Arte de Macau, 2003,\n\nSwalek, Catherine Crutchfield\n\nPeony Pavilion onstage: four centuries in the career of a Chinese drama. Ann Arbor: Centre for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.\n\nShakir, M.H.\n\nThe Holy Qur'an. Qom I.R. Iran: Foundation of Islamic Cultural Propagation in the World, [n.d.].\n\nTse Liu, Frances\n\nHo Kom-tong: A Man For All Seasons, with contributions by Terese Tse Bartholomew... [et al.]; edited by Frances McDonald. Hong Kong: Compradore House Ltd., c2003.\n\nTung Wan Tsai: a bronze age and Han Period coastal site. [Hong Kong: Antiquities and Monuments Office, c1995].\n\nNEW JOURNALS\n\nThe Siam Society\n\nJournal of the Siam Society\n\nNational History Bulletin\n\nxlv\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216337, "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-2003", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "45\n\nwhich is actually levied,' and since the dealers believed the authorities to have been personally interested in these illegal transactions, they believed it would be useless to look to them for protection or redress'.\n\n63\n\nWhilst these passages are taken from early Treaty Port days, two decades after the Canton System had been replaced, they describe a world which had otherwise scarcely changed. It was still, in its essentials, the working milieu in which the Co-hong, the officials and their minions, both civil and military alike, and the people at large, on land and sea, had been obliged to exist; and with which, and with whom, the Western traders had to contend,\n\nRough treatment by the mandarins\n\nIt was also a milieu in which criminals, and anyone falling foul of officials would have a very bad time. The Chinese personnel of the Old China trade were no exceptions to the general rule, and could be very roughly treated by the mandarins when they chose to enforce the minute and graduated regulations that governed all and sundry throughout the Empire.“\n\n64\n\nA compradore was severely beaten and tortured and thrown into prison in 1816, because the EIC's ships' captains had presented a petition at a city gate over difficulties with obtaining a permit to load, with more beatings ordered for another compradore and two linguists, whilst the Company's head compradore had to leave hurriedly because police runners were looking for him. 65 In 1831, during the Canton Prefect's unannounced visit to the EIC's hall, a linguist was put in chains, taken away, and threatened with decapitation. 66\n\nThe officials, their courts and prisons were justly to be feared. Just how bad they could be was experienced at first hand by Captain Denham, shipwrecked on Formosa with his mixed crew of 55 Europeans, Chinese and Indians, and 2 passengers, in 1842. Perhaps because their brig, the Ann, had been an opium runner, they were treated like Chinese criminals, subject to the practices and procedures usual when men were imprisoned, tried, and condemned to execution, as indeed nearly all of them were. 67\n\nThe truth is, that the Chinese government was very severe with its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216372, "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-2003", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "80\n\nHart's arrangements for separation\n\nHow the relationship between Hart and Ayaou was terminated has long been a cause of speculation. L. K. Little, successor of Maze as I. G., writes in the introduction to \"The I.G. in Peking\" - \"In a private letter to me the late Stanley Wright, author of Hart and the Chinese Customs, wrote, 'Hart was married to a Chinese lady in his early days, but she was dead before his marriage to Miss Bredon,' (1975; Introduction). B. Wang, the author of the book \"Biography of Sir Robert Hart\" also suggested that Hart's happy personal life in China ceased in 1865 when Ayaou suddenly died, and this is the main reason for Hart's decision to return home on leave and find a girl to marry (2000: 97). However, the scholars, who edited Hart's early journals, noticed that Hart received letters from Ayaou in 1870 and 1872, and they noted that she \"later married a Chinese\" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner, 1991: 363).\n\n15\n\nIn Declaration 1, referring to his separation from Ayaou, Hart declares, “she was then presented with $3000 when she surrendered her children to my Agent and herself married a Chinaman.\" In Declaration 2, a similar statement is made: \"I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars1 and she married a Chinaman.”15 This confirms that Ayaou certainly did not die in 1865 but married a Chinaman after receipt of a large sum of money from Hart, a condition of their separation. Ayaou probably did not want to sever the connection with Hart even though she must now have realised it was inevitable. Hart, who by this time was no longer a young and inexperienced assistant for the British Consulate at Canton, but a powerful man in both the CIMC and the Qing government, had to resolve the problem by making an arrangement acceptable to Ayaou. Money must have been given serious consideration, as it would have been a precondition of the relationship for both sides in the first instance. As Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith suggest: (1986:153)\n\nThe girl Ayaou was not a solitary adventuress but came undoubtedly from a proper though lower-class background under the sponsorship of a compradore or other reliable party. Hart's upkeep of her must have included a regular monetary payment, a portion of which reimbursed her family.\n\nIn Hart's diaries requests for money from Ayaou appear frequently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216401, "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-2003", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "110\n\nof China behind him, Chiang Kai-shek had made an important error.\n\nIt was against this background that HERMES was ordered south to the Yangtze River.\n\nOn 27th July, 1931 great floods had occurred when the River burst its banks at Hankow. Much land in the vicinity, especially to the north and west, lay well below river level with the result that when the enormous dyke was breached many hundreds of square miles of countryside was flooded and many thousands of people drowned. Those who were able fled across the river to Wuchang but to add to their distress then plague broke out.\n\nTransport in Hankow quickly became difficult as the water became too deep for rickshaws and wheeled vehicles. Then sampans became in short supply. Lighters and small junks were brought into use and poled down the streets. However frequently these were caught by cross currents and wind and swept away out of control. Subsequently power and telephone lines were brought down, and damage was caused to buildings. Ewo1 claim that their compradore erected a sign at their premises:\n\n\"Junks must not moor to Jardines' chimneys.\"\n\nEventually the authorities were forced to seize many of these craft in order to limit the destructive effect of their contact with various structures, and to try to exert some degree of control.\n\nIn an endeavour to assist an International Flood Relief Commission had been established. Clearly it was politically desirable that Great Britain be seen to be involved.\n\nAlso there were other problems on the River.\n\nOn the morning of Monday, 31st August HERMES anchored off Woosung. Ten hours later she continued upstream, initially steaming at 18 knots but when the river narrowed reducing to 14. While so navigating at times the behaviour of junks could be disconcerting:\n\n'When a junk saw a steamer approaching it would steer to pass", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]