[ { "id": 213551, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "116\n\nof an English-based lingua franca\n\nIn the Gazette of September 9 1685, the following notice appears-\n\n\"That excellent, and by all Physitians approved, China drink, called by the Chinese Toha, by other nations Tay, alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head, a coffee house in Sweetings Rents by the Royal Exchange, London.\"\n\nThe earliest recorded import of Tea by the East India Company is dated 1667. An early writer, in memoirs of 1726, relates-\n\n“I remember well how in 1681, I for the first time in my life drank Thee at the house of an Indian Chaplain, and how I could not understand how sensible men could think it a treat to drink what tasted no better than hay-water.\n\nThis quotation illustrates how, at the end of the seventeenth century, tea-drinking was becoming a social fad which eventually generated huge demands on European - and later American - China traders. Tea was, of course, readily available in India and the Arab world - but this particular fad grew around the Chinese teas - Bohea (Mou yi), Congo (Gung fu), Pekoe (Baak hou), Oolong, Souchong (Siu chung) and Hyson (Yue chin).\n\nThe manner of the tea trade is best understood from the books of William C. Hunter- \"Bits of Old China” (1855) and “Fan Kwae at Canton Before the Treaty Days\" (1882). Foreign traders were only permitted into Canton to trade during the tea season: they were required to retreat to Macau or further during the closed season. No foreign women were permitted into Canton and the lives and work of the traders were strictly regulated by imperial edict. The most comprehensive set of controls was brought in 1760, but this was little more than codification of regulations which had been in force for decades.\n\nThe tea trade, on the Chinese side, was carried out by licensed trading houses - the Hong Merchants. The merchants were incorporated in 1720. Foreign traders were allowed to Canton by specific sponsorship by the Hong merchants, who were personally responsible for their conduct.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215281, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "6\n\nStraits Settlements, but not to Hong Kong. The governor protested to the Colonial Office at Hong Kong's exclusion in 1907, 1910 and 1912 but the Canadian government refused to include Hong Kong within its preferential tariff on the grounds that goods from China might be shipped through Hong Kong's open port and fraudulently obtain the benefit of Canada's preferential tariff.\" So Hong Kong's exports of cement and refined sugar were taxed at the highest rate and soon lost their market in Canada. In 1912 a trade agreement was negotiated between Canada and the West Indian colonies whereby Canadian exports were granted preferential tariffs in return for Canadian preferences on Caribbean cane sugar, cocoa beans and lime juice. The West Indian colonies negotiated this trade agreement directly with Canada and the secretary of state for the colonies raised no objection. These preferences were increased by a new trade agreement in 1920 and were generalised to benefit goods from all empire sources.20 The Colonial Office invited all colonies and protectorates to consider the practicability of introducing preferential rates of duty for goods of imperial origin. But most of the colonial empire was prevented by international treaties from imposing discriminatory tariffs. Northern Rhodesia, Kenya and Uganda, being part of the Congo Basin, were forbidden to discriminate by the Convention of St. Germain (1919); Nigeria and the Gold Coast by the Anglo-French treaty of 1898; and Tanganyika, Togoland, Cameroons and Palestine were mandated territories of the League of Nations which prohibited discrimination. By 1932 the only colonies which were free to adopt imperial preference but had not done so were Somaliland, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and certain islands in the Pacific.\" Canada and New Zealand were the only dominions which granted any preferences to the colonial empire before 1932. Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Southern Rhodesia and India granted none.\n\nThe world trade depression which began in 1929 convinced British politicians that the liberal principles of free trade which had been followed for the past 70 years must be abandoned. The National government elected in 1931 quickly passed the Import Duties Act which imposed a general duty of 10 per cent ad valorem on all imports. Section 5 of the act granted an entire exemption from the general duty to imports from all colonies, protectorates and mandated territories, provided that at least 25 per cent of the value was derived from materials grown or produced or from work done within a part of the empire.\" Imports from the dominions and India were exempted from duty only until November pending the outcome of an Imperial Economic Conference.\" A circular despatch was sent by the Colonial Office to all colonies and protectorates drawing attention to the great advantages extended to the colonies by the Import Duties Act and inviting them to give similar preferences to United Kingdom manufactures", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216112, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 411, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "345\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nFROM THE BELGIAN JOURNAL AVIATION, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 14, MARCH 1946\n\n©TRANSLATION BY PAUL BOLDING\n\nGliding: How Louis de San beat the Asian duration and altitude records in Chungking, China, in 1940\n\nIn 1939, Louis de San set off for China to serve as a diplomat. A keen glider pilot, he was eager to taste the eastern thermal currents. When he set off in a Chinese glider, towed by a military plane, it was to be for a flight of more than four hours and set an Asian record. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he managed to flee Hong Kong as the bombs fell, and to reach South Africa. There he joined the RAF and passed his examinations as an aeroplane pilot. Lieutenant de San then went to Congo, where he was based until the end of hostilities and undertook various missions and operations in Oxford and SV4 planes. This is his account of how he set the record in China:\n\nIt was 1940. For a year I had been in Chungking, wartime capital of the Chinese government. There was bombing day and night, crushing heat of more than 40 degrees, tension, loneliness... There were few distractions: one was being a spectator in the virtually hopeless struggle of the Chinese people, at war for two years. I travelled the country and spent hours watching the clouds, birds, weather conditions; I rapidly concluded that the good thermals had to be as numerous as fish in the Yangtse.\n\nI knew every corner of the area around Chungking. The town was a kind of peninsula, surrounded by two mighty rivers, the Yangtse and the Kialing. Thousands of dark roofs, large areas flattened by Japanese bombing, the immediate contrast of great expanses of water, and over it all leaden skies, more oppressive than the strongest sun in Coquilhatville1 or Lake Leopold II in Congo.\n\nWhere great gliding birds untiringly traced their spirals higher, there had to be powerful thermal currents. Above the town, above the white sandbanks emerging from the river, one saw from morning to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]