[ { "id": 204262, "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-1961", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n27\n\nFLOWERS OF HONG KONG\n\nSynopsis of a lecture delivered on November 2, 1960, based on Mr. F. A. Nixon's collection of colour transparencies.\n\nB. T. CHIU, B.Sc.\n\nThe flora of Hong Kong is of a mixed nature; partly tropical, partly subtropical, and partly temperate; and is famous for its exotic flowering trees and shrubs. The majority of us know little about it, because literature on the flora is scarce and hardly accessible to the layman. Bentham's \"Flora hongkongensis\" (1861), Dunn and Tutcher's \"Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong\" (1912), and most of Herklots' work of the thirties and 'forties are out of print. We are privileged in being given this opportunity in viewing examples of Hong Kong flowers at their best selected from each month of the year: some familiar, others rare; some native, others introduced; and a few very special ones, indigenous to Hong Kong. Special tribute is due to Mr. Nixon for his magnificent achievement as a photographer, and for his pursuit of the flora through the years into every corner, however perilous, of the countryside.\n\nThe following transparencies were projected:\n\nTREES\n\nDelonix regia (Flame of the Forest)\n\nBauhinia blakeana (orchid-like Bauhinia)\n\nB. variegata (deciduous Bauhinia)\n\nCassia fistula (Golden shower)\n\nC. nodosa (Pink and white shower)\n\nErythrina indica (Coral Tree)\n\nCrataeva religiosa (Spider Tree)\n\nAleurites montana (Wood or Tung Oil Tree)\n\nCamellia japonica (Camellia)\n\nC. hongkongensis (Crimson Hong Kong Camellia)\n\nC. granthamiana (White Hongkong Camellia)\n\nJacaranda ovalifolia (Jacaranda)\n\nSpathodea campanulata (African Tulip Tree)\n\nPaulownia tomentosa (Paulownia)\n\nRhodoleia championi (King of Hanging Bells)\n\nSHRUBS\n\nHibiscus rosa-sinensis (Rose of China)\n\nH. schizopetalus (Fringed hibiscus)\n\nH. mutabilis (Cotton rose)\n\nRhododendron simsii (Red Rhododendron)\n\nR. pulcherrimum (Purple Rhododendron)\n\nPage 30\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204656, "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-1963", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n123\n\nThe Peking government claims that even greater floods took place during the summer of 1954, but because of the reconstruction work carried out on the dyke system by the Communists, the damage was much less. The dyke system, they say, has been still further strengthened since 1954.\n\nIn spite of its great depth along much of its length, navigation on the Yangtse always posed special problems. The main channel changes course from time to time, while the strength of the current varies from season to season. Foreign steamers usually carried two pilots, but in spite of all precautions many steamers have been lost on the river. Towards the end of the era of foreign shipping, losses had been greatly reduced by means of more efficient pilotage, greater knowledge and better charts, improved lighting, and other aids to navigation.\n\nLife on the Yangtse was very different from that on the coast, and had a strong fascination for most of those who experienced it. The river steamers penetrated right into the heart of China, where conditions were widely different. Even in the 1920's and 1930's the countryside and towns bordering on the Middle and Upper River remained much as they had been in the previous five or six hundred years. Foreign trade and influence had barely touched the fringes of social life and customs evolved many centuries earlier.\n\nThe heyday of Yangtse travel was in the 1920's and 1930's, when it was possible to travel in comfort, and even luxury, although not always in complete safety, from Shanghai to Chung-king, and beyond to Chengtu and Sui Fu. At that period there were four large companies operating regular services along the whole navigable length of the river, with something like a hundred steamers between them. There were also several small companies operating a few steamers each. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with 31 ships had the largest river fleet, followed by the China Navigation Company and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company with 21 ships each, and then the Japanese Nisshin Kisen Kaisha with 15 ships. A German company had started a service in 1900, at the same time as the Japanese, but had been compelled to withdraw during the 1914-18 war, and had never resumed the service. At least four steamers left Shanghai for Hankow every day, where connection was made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204779, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "71\n\nPENG CHAU BETWEEN 1798-1899\n\nJ. W. HAYES, M.A.\n\nI\n\nThe object of this and previous articles is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century.\n\nWhat materials for a history of the life and times of the people still exist? Locally there are occasional stone tablets commemorating the repair of temples or the settlement of an important local dispute. They mostly belong to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Some eighteenth century ones have survived but early tablets are generally rare because local people have a habit of getting rid of them when the temple is repaired once more. If not actually thrown out, they are taken into the yard and eventually broken up by children, or taken away to serve as impromptu table tops and seats or as chopping boards for vegetables. Then there are the numerous horse-shoe shaped graves which stud the countryside, practically all of which have dated tablets. Many of those still legible date from the late CHING period (1644-1912), but time and exposure to the elements have often done their worst, especially where a family has died out and the grave is no longer visited every year. There is the mute evidence of the countryside itself, where land long fallow and houses mouldering into the ground testify to a more populated past, often at a considerable distance of time from the present.\n\nWritten records include clan genealogies. These seem to be fairly widespread, though fewer in number than before the Japanese war. In the remoter and poorer areas, where the clans are small and poorly educated, they often amount to no more than a list of names without even dates of birth and death; but those of the larger clans are often printed and include all kinds of interesting information, such as lists of property, honours and posts held by ancestors, clan rules, etc. A few land-deeds from the CHING period also turn up from time to time, but, like the genealogies, they have suffered from damp and the consuming desire of white ants to know more of their local history. It has also to be remembered that land-deeds had to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204780, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "72 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nbe shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss.\n\nFortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern \"Domesday\" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside.\n\nThere are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204977, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "76\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe countryside for miles from the coast. The leaders of such fleets were often opposed to the ruling dynasty, sometimes being disaffected former high officials. Koxinga, the greatest of all Chinese pirates, comes into this category. Koxinga was a supporter of the fallen Ming Dynasty against the Manchus, and the Chinese honour him to this day as a great patriot. His greatest exploit was the capture of Formosa from the Dutch in 1661. This type of rebel cum bandit cum pirate continued to appear down to modern times.\n\nThe expansion of the China trade, and the opening of Japan to foreign trade resulted in a great increase in British naval forces in the Far East. The first naval ships to operate in the China seas were based on the East Indies station, but very soon China became an important sphere of naval operations on her own. The suppression of piracy was only one of the Navy's responsibilities. The distance between Britain and China meant that unusual and interesting duties were often entrusted to naval officers, especially before telegraphic communications were established and when senior Foreign Office or Diplomatic officials were unavailable. Hong Kong became the headquarters of the China station, which extended from Singapore to Shanghai, and later to Japan. It continued as such until, as the result of a reorientation of naval policy in the inter-war period, Singapore became the major British naval base in the Far East. Even after that Hong Kong continued to be the headquarters of the anti-piracy forces.\n\nUntil France sent naval forces to co-operate with the Royal Navy in the Second China War, the Royal Navy was the only effective naval force in the China seas, and undertook the protection of all shipping. Even after the United States and France stationed naval forces permanently in these waters, the major responsibility for the suppression of piracy remained with the Royal Navy. It was British policy to station a warship at or near each treaty port, whether it was a coastal or a river port. This meant warships of two distinct types. There were the larger ships and their auxiliaries, which only saw action on rare occasions, and which were based in Hong Kong, with a summer cruise to Wei-hai-wei. Then there were the shallow-draft river gunboats, specially designed to operate on the Yangtze and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205064, "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-1966", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n15\n\nditti\" abounding in the countryside,' “instances of kidnapping by ex-pirates [which] were so frequent that no man could feel himself safe alone in the streets of Canton after 9 o'clock at night\".8\n\nTime and again during these years the local officials issued proclamations condemning such activities and urging the people to revert to peaceful pursuits. In 1828 the district magistrate of Nan-hai hsien urged the people at the New Year's time to remain peaceful and orderly and not to imitate \"the vagabonds\" and “local blackguards” who cause much trouble. In 1829 the same gentleman complained of the fact that \"the people of this province are addicted to gambling, opium, whoredom, and lotteries. And the city of Canton is preeminent in all of these vices.\" It was, he said, \"the shameless banditti that are to blame\". In another proclamation of about the same time, he condemned the bandits who extorted money from the peasants. \"In the vicinity of Canton, Whampoa, and Macao,\" he complained, \"and in the districts of Shun-teh, Tung-kuan, and Hsin-huy (all within the Hong Kong-Macao-Canton axis), the people who cultivate land on the banks of the rivers are particularly distressed by these practices.\"11\n\nIn 1832 it was reported that in Hsiang-shan hsien bandits were levying taxes on the people in like fashion.12\n\nVillage and clan feuding compounded the problem. In 1828 the Kwangchou prefect issued a proclamation in which he condemns the feuding between clans. \"The larger clans,\" he said, \"in villages insult smaller ones... They presume on their numerical strength and seize the best land and the most useful streams. They insult both men and women of the smaller clans. And when disputes arise about graves and debts they proceed to barbarous violence.\"13\n\nAnd in the same year the Canton authorities, condemning clan feuds, complained of how “..... in pursuance of the feuds of the halls of their ancestors, they (the clans) proceed to collect together a multitude of their own clan's people, and seizing spears, swords, and other weapons, they fight together and kill people\".14 In 1829 1,000 men were involved in a village feud in Hsun-teh hsien,15 and in 1834 400 people were reported killed in a similar affair in Tung-kuan hsien.16 In most cases the government was powerless to intervene.\n\nWhat was behind all this chaos?\n\nHere, of course, we are on tricky ground.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205068, "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-1966", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n19\n\nBetween 1842 and 1849, Canton and its environs seemed to have been rocked by a series of violent anti-foreign disturbances. Three of these were full-scale riots in which the foreign factories were either directly attacked or seriously threatened. In one case six young Englishmen were murdered while strolling in the countryside. Throughout the period foreigners, either singly or in groups, were subjected to attacks and insults. In 1849 a massive demonstration succeeded in forcing Great Britain to abandon its demand that British subjects be permitted direct access to the city.27\n\nThe 1849 demonstrations were particularly impressive. Organized by members of the upper levels of the gentry class and aided and abetted, if not actually inspired by, the local authorities, they served to convince Sir George Bonham, then Governor of Hong Kong, that should he seek to force an entrance into the city, which Britain had always claimed as her right according to the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, his troops would be met by massive resistance on the part of the populace.\n\nNow, no one would deny that all this reflected a certain degree of anti-foreign spirit on the part of the people of Canton and its environs. After all, foreigners were attacked and their property was stolen or destroyed.\n\nBut what happens when these incidents are examined more closely?\n\nIn the cases of attacks upon the foreign factories, each episode was provoked by an ill-considered act of the foreigners themselves. In perhaps half, or more, of the attacks on individuals or groups of foreigners, robbery was the primary motive. Some \"attacks\" were not really \"attacks\" at all. One involved some small boys who threw stones at a group of passing barbarians (and were severely reprimanded by their parents for doing so).28 Yet Sir John Davis made this an occasion for a formal protest to the Chinese high authorities. Another \"incident\" concerned the looting of the house of the Reverend I. J. Roberts by a \"ruthless gang of Chinese\". Investigation shows that the ruthless gang was really Roberts' own congregation, who fell to fighting among themselves over the distribution of coins which the Reverend used to reward them for attending his services.29 As to the murder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205258, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "HONG KONG MAMMALS\n\n13\n\nCarnivores\n\nvisited Hong Kong but they have not been seen now for many years. The last one was shot at Stanley during the war and its skin, now somewhat decayed, is still present in the temple at Stanley. The Shing Mun tiger of May 1965 has the characteristics of a well-planned hoax. All the prints were of the same pad and in all probability they were made by a tiger's paw on the end of a stick. That people should claim to have seen the tiger is not surprising; a large ferocious dog in thick undergrowth can be just as frightening as a tiger, especially when there is a tiger scare, and these people probably genuinely believe that they saw one.\n\nLeopards also visited the Colony until fairly recently. Both tigers and leopards are good swimmers and can travel from island to island. The last sighting of a leopard was in 1957 and shortly afterwards one was shot 8 miles inland from Sha Tau Kok. It was probably the same leopard and its skull and tail were brought back to the Colony and donated to the University of Hong Kong.\n\nToday only the smaller carnivores are present in Hong Kong: the tiger-cat or Chinese leopard cat, civets and ferret-badger.\n\nThere are only a few tiger-cats surviving (Plate 2). There are probably none on Hong Kong Island. In the wild they live mostly on rats but also catch birds and chickens. In captivity they do not fare well due to their extreme nervousness which is often mistaken for fierceness. They become so frightened that they spit and growl until they are exhausted and may die of shock. Also they are susceptible to cat 'flu and other diseases in captivity. They are however very splendid animals, being one of the most graceful and beautifully marked of all the wild cats.\n\nAnother carnivore, and one which plays an important role in reducing the rat population, is the South China Red fox. Several pairs are still living in the New Territories. The female is a light sandy colour, whereas the male is more brightly coloured with a reddish head and tail and grizzled grey flanks and legs. At a distance they resemble small wolves. (Plate 3 shows three young foxes).\n\nIt is rumoured that European foxes were introduced just before the war for hunting, but the latter was not successful. The steep Hong Kong countryside was advantageous to the fox.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205262, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "HONG KONG MAMMALS\n\n17\n\nthe populations of herbivores. These would increase until they in turn were checked by shortage of food. This may be only when most of the vegetation has been destroyed.\n\nIn Hong Kong we are losing our carnivores. There are no tigers, no leopards, no wolves, no wild dogs, no crab-eating mongooses, no five-banded civets, no badgers; and at the present rate of progress there will soon be no seven-banded or masked palm civets, no foxes, no ferret-badgers. When this happens there will be little to check the population of rats—only snakes and birds of prey which are also being markedly reduced in numbers.\n\nTons of insecticide could be put down to kill the insect pests, thousands of traps and tons of poison bait could be put down to kill the rats (this would also kill the birds). Unfortunately, even if insecticides, traps and poisons could be used in massive quantities, some insects and some rats would survive. It is impossible to kill all, or even 95% of any population by these methods and those that survive could be immune, so that new, stronger insecticides and poisons would be needed thereafter. In the meantime a great deal of damage would have been done to insect-eating birds, parasites of pests and even to man himself. Man is not immune to poisons or insecticides.\n\nBy far the best and most economical way to control animal pests is biological control.\n\nWhat should be done, and has been advocated for a long time, is the setting aside of areas of land as National Parks or outdoor natural recreational areas and other areas as nature reserves where research can be carried out. In these areas indigenous animals that have become rare could be re-introduced. Research could be carried out into methods of maintaining a balanced community. With the right publicity, people could come to value the countryside and to enjoy and appreciate wild life.\n\nThere are a number of places suitable for these parks including water catchment areas. Taitam reservoir has a very beautiful catchment area which already many people visit to get away from the stresses of the city. To be able to see wild animals on walks adds something to life, and with scientific research and a proper understanding of what these wild animals do, the countryside of Hong Kong would become a more interesting place to visit. The Jubilee reservoir and Shek Pik reservoir areas could also be used.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205263, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "18\n\nPATRICIA MARSHALL\n\nThere is plenty of cover in these places for deer and civet cats. There are also a number of exotic wild birds, that would increase if left unmolested. The Sai Kung peninsula and the area above Plover Cove are also beautiful areas which it is hoped will never be used for building. It is for the people of Hong Kong to act in a responsible manner to themselves and to future generations to ensure that a little of the natural beauty and at least some of the native mammals of Hong Kong are conserved.\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\n5.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAllen, G. M. (1938) The Mammals of China and Mongolia published by American Museum of Natural History, New York.\n\nBalfour, S. F. (1940-1941) “Hong Kong before the British”, Tien Hsia Vol. XI, No. 4 pp. 330-352 and No. 5 pp. 440-464.\n\nGrant, C. J. (1962) The Soils and Agriculture of Hong Kong. published by the Hong Kong Government Printer, pp 136-138.\n\nHerklots, G. A. C. (1951) The Hong Kong Countryside, printed by the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong.\n\nMarshall P. M. and Phillips, J. G. (1965) \"Plans for Conserving the Wild life of Hong Kong,\" \"Oryx” (Journal of the Fauna Preservation Society) Vol. VIII No. 2 pp 107-112.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205305, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "60\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nExtension in Hakka society took different forms. Banditry seems to have been one,29 occasional work in the countryside,30 tenant farming in the plains,31 employment in towns or overseas others. These forms imply different depth in the extension, and it seems reasonable to assume that such differences were due mainly to ecological factors, such as the proximity to urban milieu, and facilities of communication. My attempt at interpretation of the difference in depth of extension between Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village, based on the differences in the socio-economic situations prevailing in their respective market towns, will serve as an illustration.\n\nThose who take part in the extension process live a life oscillating between their focus of social interest and their focus of economic interest. They spend much time away from home, often the main part of their lives, but they are always planning to return to the place of origin and they seldom feel attached to their place of work. They are sojourners.32\n\nOscillation is well illustrated in the career of an elderly man from Plum Grove Village. His early contact with an urban milieu was when, as a teenager, he carried fire-wood to the market in Yau Ma Tei, on which occasions he spent some four hours in town. His experiences there stimulated him to settle in Kowloon, where for a period he worked as a cook. Next we find him working in Singapore for some time. Returning home he took up a position as a salesman in a grocer's shop in Kowloon. A labour recruitment office in Kowloon offered opportunities of coolie work in the West Indies, and a four-year contract with these people brought him to Jamaica and Trinidad. The contract period over, he went to work in the phosphate mines of Nauru in the Central Pacific. Back in Hong Kong once more he took employment in a grocer's shop, but left soon again, now as a member of a ship-crew. He spent 18 months in jail in Holland, returning to Hong Kong just before the Japanese Occupation in 1940. This difficult period he spent entirely in Plum Grove Village. Immediately after the war he succeeded in going back to Holland, where he entered illegally. Finally we find him in his own village engaged in chicken raising, ginger cultivation, and pineapple planting, all on a small scale and rather unsuccessfully. He is now living entirely on remittances from his son who is working in England. During his wandering life", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205476, "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-1968", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n13\n\nthe New Territories of Hong Kong many big lineage villages have ancestral halls containing boards or plaques which indicate the former official or scholarly status of the deceased whose tablets are housed therein,\n\nThe crowning ambition of the rich scholar or business man in mono-lineage villages is said to have been the building of a large ancestral hall or endowing it with property. Hsiao Kung-chuan quotes a case of a rural businessman who purchased a fifth degree and then built a hall, calling the gentry together to set up regulations for his kinsmen.4 It appears the hall-land complex might develop at any stage of a mono-lineage village's history providing it contained such persons. Conversely cases are known of lineage villages declining, when wealth and scholarship were no longer there. Once coordinated kinship systems fragmented and people lived apart from their kinsmen. In a poor lineage village the lineage head — most senior man in the most senior generation — might perform simple ancestral rites and try cases between villagers, but the organization of such a village was much less tight. It is noted from one poor area that there, the inhabitants did not pay attention to clan organization.5\n\nWith land available for use of the peasantry, and gentry to protect their interests, however, villagers were more likely to stay at home: the village would grow in numbers as well as wealth. The command of wealthy mono-lineage villages over economic resources of the countryside increased their influence outside the village too, of course. Poor villages and peasants living outside villages might be forced to place themselves under the protection of the powerful and rent their land from them. Families of other lineage origins might come and settle round the walls of powerful mono-lineages.7\n\nA lineage's power might be further extended through branching. Branches of such units might be established in neighbouring villages and when established in multi-lineage villages, by virtue of their link with a powerful centre, their leaders might exert power in their new home. Branches also might settle new villages, such villages then becoming linked with the parent village through its founding ancestral hall.\n\nBut segmentation might occasionally lead to conflict also. When segments or branches built separate halls endowing them", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205485, "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-1968", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "22\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nuse of by such personalities rather than Buddhism and Taoism, the two other important indigenous religions operating in China in the nineteenth century.\n\nBuddhism\n\nBuddhist monastic establishments were usually situated in the open countryside and members might be connected with a number of different villages in an area. A large proportion of the Buddhist clergy, particularly of the female contingent, consisted of persons joining at least partly for other than religious reasons: those who did not want, or could not afford to marry; those becoming unattached through death and separation, persons who found their lives unbearable; partners to unhappy marriages, and those with other family troubles.26\n\nBuddhism offered a number of social as well as spiritual satisfactions for the unattached. The unattached adult was very much outside traditional society: there was no room for an unmarried daughter at home (custom even forbade she should die in her father's house), and there was little opportunity in most parts of China for outside remunerative work for women; the unmarried male and female and those without children could not be served in the ancestral cult.\n\nMonastic institutions provided a home during life and undertook burial and the ritual needs of inmates at death. They also trained members for a religious profession and religion was regarded traditionally as a particularly suitable occupation for unattached women. The religion itself as presented at the popular level suggested both spiritual and social advantages to those who would become members of the clergy. Those practising abstinences were assured they would meet a better fate in the next life. The Lotus Sutra states that women who practise constant devotions will be born male in the Pure Land (a Buddhist paradise). And popular folk stories with a religious flavour and aimed mainly at women sometimes hint at possibilities for greater power and prestige. Cantonese \"wooden fish\" books (mu-yü shu) tell of women taking high officials and their wives as lay-disciples, and enjoying the respect and deference thereby of formerly cruel and sceptical parents, mothers-in-law and even husbands; and of others who in their next lives became themselves high officials", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205492, "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-1968", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n29\n\nabstinence. The administrative lodges of such sects are called vegetarian halls like the lay institutions of Buddhism and whenever possible were residential. Sectarians I know overseas reckon some sort of monastic institution with supervision to be necessary for members practising the abstinences at least, and for work for religious examinations. Members might live in such halls on an occasional basis however, until they reach higher rank, and it is said this was the practice whenever possible in China also.\n\nBelow the lowest administrative centre members were organized round masters who recruited them to the religion and who possessed at least the lowest degree in the examination system. For vegetarian sects there were whenever possible vegetarian halls for \"families\" in the sect. Such halls appear to have existed occasionally in towns, where they sometimes passed as Buddhist establishments of the same name, and in the rural areas dotted round the countryside. Photographs of \"ancestral\" vegetarian halls I have seen in present day premises of sects in Singapore and Hong Kong often show them situated in lonely mountain regions. Their position, together with the secrecy with which sects had to operate, must have made communication with administrative centres difficult and infrequent. There were some non-vegetarian sects of this same religion of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao in the nineteenth century (and in this century more non-vegetarian groups appeared, to attract more \"modern\" persons), which claim to have had lodges for members below the lowest administrative level but I have little information on their location and organization in the rural area. Members and organizational centres of the sects then appear to have been grouped in several ways: within an administrative area all members and the \"family\" organizations to which they belonged were grouped round an administrative lodge or hall; and within the area also, \"kinsmen\" were grouped round \"family\" halls wherever possible, the halls themselves being further grouped round “ancestral” vegetarian halls or lodges. The former type of grouping was activated for sectarian observances of various kinds, and the latter type of groupings for social celebrations and other activities of a \"family\" kind.\n\nAs a result largely of suppressive activities by the State, however, many of the vegetarian sects of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao had, by the latter part of the nineteenth century, broken down to \"family\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205497, "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-1968", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "34\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nUnder what circumstances might sects expand and include numbers of the ordinary peasantry? Did they ever include members of the local gentry or enjoy support of a whole village? The Nien is said to have recruited whole communities when getting ready to rebel.43 De Groot notes that when all villagers were members of a sect a piece of white cloth was used by the village as a mark of distinction.44\n\nRebellions and local disturbances initiated by sects appear to have taken place when economic conditions in the countryside worsened and local officials were at their most oppressive. Some sects clearly aimed mainly at the poor. One I know provided charms which when eaten were supposed to have overcome hunger for several months. In times of extreme poverty and oppression the organization of villages might have been weakened. The interests of village leaders and ordinary peasants might draw closer to each other in such conditions and also to those of the dislocated peasantry.\n\nThe objects of most religious rebellions was not to change the social order but purge the government of unvirtuous elements and sometimes change the ruling dynasty. Local village leaders in times of stress might also have desired this object. It seems that some organizations even attracted leaders of large mono-lineage villages. In times of disaster it must have been difficult to maintain a strong lineage organization to support the ancestral hall association with wealth. And other villages seeing their powerful landlords weakened might have taken advantage of the situation to resist their control. The Nien and the Eight Diagrams Sect are both said to have aided villages in inter-village fights (ultimately increasing their dominance over the villages concerned).45 The Eight Diagrams sect is said in fact to have risen as a result of antagonisms among village communities. Leaders of large lineage villages were made leaders of some organizations.46\n\nOne Nien head is said to have been leader of a \"clan\" composed of a thousand families, allying his village with more than ten others (his exact \"leadership\" status in the kin-group is not very clear, however).47 But the Nien was careful to preserve village leaders in its organization and this brought its own problems of expansion. The interests of various communities and local village heads inhibited the build up of centralized control over large areas by the Nien.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205732, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "32\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\nwas part of a system of inter-lineage relations, concludes that: \"it cannot be dismissed as the sign of a particular crisis in the society of southeastern China. The data... refer to the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, but in fact the pattern [of violence] is probably very much older.\"\n\nEven at times of optimum efficiency, the ability of the imperial government to control the activities of its numerous subjects was limited, if only because officials and military forces were thinly spread over China's large land mass. Routine police functions were largely vested in mutual responsibility systems, the heads of which were answerable to the district magistrate. During periods of social upheaval, the de facto responsibility for the preservation of parochial law and order rested, as often as not, upon members of local elites. When provincial and military officials did attempt to pacify the countryside, their efforts frequently had the character of punitive expeditions. The effects were often so disastrous that every effort was made to avoid official intervention.\n\nAs a consequence, there had for long been a tradition of local self-defence in southeastern China. Powerful lineages maintained fighting corps which protected their members against external aggression and enabled them to impose their will upon weaker neighbours. Smaller lineages and villages banded together in an effort to achieve similar objectives. The political and military potentialities of these associations were viewed with ambivalence by the officials of the empire. Their usefulness in certain circumstances could not be denied. But their capacity for violence contributed to the disorder of the countryside and posed the constant threat of an organizational capability which might be turned to sedition and rebellion.\n\nIt is generally agreed that from the beginning of the nineteenth century if not earlier the imperial bureaucracy increasingly manifested those symptoms which in the past had presaged a dynastic decline. Corruption and incompetence were rife in civil and military administration. The system of rural control \"had declined so far in one institution after another that no amount of imperial effort could revive it.\" Natural disasters multiplied, contributing to the disorder and the increasing disaffection of sections of the rural population. It was under these circumstances that the imperial government had to cope, first, with two wars with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205760, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "60\n\nR. G. GROVES\n\n* Skinner, G. W. \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China Part I: The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXIV, no. 1, November 1964, p. 32.\n\n9 Ibid., p. 5ff.\n\n10 Ibid., p. 32.\n\n11 Ibid., pp. 32ff, C. K. Yang brings out clearly the significance of the market town as the centre of a system of communication. “In times of peace and tranquility, the subjects for chatting range from the births and deaths, weddings and quarrels, conditions of crops, some strange signs in the stars, some mishaps in certain villages, to all the big things and little things that make up the interest and chores in the daily life of the village peasants. But in time of war and political upheavals, in periods when banditry runs rampant or natural calamities plague upon the countryside, from the markets wild rumours fly; seeds of fear and suspicion are sown; signs of omens are interpreted and widely scattered.\" Yang, C. K., A North China Local Market Economy. Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1944, p. 13.\n\n12 See, for example, Freedman, op. cit., pp. 82ff., Hsiao, op. cit., p. 423.\n\n13 Skinner, op. cit., pp. 21ff.\n\n14 Skinner, op. cit., p. 27.\n\n15 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 18ff.\n\n16 Ibid., p. 20.\n\n17 Ibid., pp. 20-21.\n\n18 Amyot, J. The Chinese Community of Manila; A Study of Adaptation of Chinese Familism to the Philippines Environment, Research Series no. 2. Philippines Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (mimeo), 1960. As will become clear, Amyot's analysis is important to the arguments of both Skinner and Freedman.\n\n19 Hsiang is commonly translated as 'township', a practice followed by Amyot. Freedman points out that both 'Hsiang' and 'township' have been used as administrative terms and proposes the more neutral 'vicinage' as an alternative translation, Freedman, op. cit., p. 23.\n\n20 Amyot, op. cit., p. 40. Quoted by Freedman, op. cit., p. 22.\n\n21 Ibid., pp. 52ff. Quoted by Freedman, op. cit., p. 23.\n\n22 Freedman, op. cit., p. 23.\n\n23 Ibid., p. 25.\n\n24 Ibid. It will be argued below that, even in the case of the Hsin-an higher-order lineages, the standard marketing area was organizationally significant.\n\n25 The New Territories formerly constituted roughly three-fifths of Hsin-an county. By the Convention of Peking, 6th June 1898, they were leased to Britain for 99 years.\n\n26 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 36. The term \"local corps\" is used by Chiang Siang-tseh in his work The Nien Rebellion, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1954.\n\n27 Wakeman, op. cit., p. 38.\n\n28 Ibid., p. 39.\n\n29 Ibid., pp. 39-40.\n\n30 Ibid., p. 63.\n\n31 Ibid., pp. 64-5.\n\n32 Ibid., p. 112.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205835, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "THE MAPPING OF HONG KONG\n\n135\n\nsheets would be part of an overall series at 1/4800 scale which will eventually cover the whole of the New Territories in about 100 sheets. From these sheets another special series of 9 sheets at 1/9600 scale (800 ft. to 1 inch) was produced for certain areas for town-planning purposes.\n\nIn addition to the plans produced from the 1964 high-level photography, air-photo mosaics have been produced at 1/25,000 scale which cover the whole Colony. These are in 12 sheets and together form a mosaic about 6 feet square.\n\nTOPOGRAPHIC Maps\n\nThe need for an up-to-date series of topographic maps of the Colony was realised soon after the war. Whereas the large-scale plans produced by the Crown Lands and Survey Office are essential for detailed planning, land administration, etc., they are of little interest to the average person who needs a coloured map to find his way around the Colony by road or for walking in the countryside.\n\nA series of maps at a scale of 8 inches to one mile, with 50 ft. contours, had been produced in 1904, surveyed by the Royal Engineers in 1902-03 and printed in England by the Ordnance Survey. These had been revised, partially at least, in 1924 and re-printed by the War Office (GSGS, No. 3749) but it is not known whether in fact this series covered the whole Colony. The index diagram on the sheets remaining in the Crown Lands and Survey Office indicates that 21 sheets covered Kowloon and the eastern part of the New Territories.\n\nIn the post-war years the only topographic maps available until recently were the military series (GSGS, No. L8811) at 1/25,000 scale and (L681) at 1/100,000 scale. These were based on the pre-war 1/20,000 and 1/80,000 series respectively. The former was produced in 1929-31 and was one of the first military maps to be plotted from air photographs; in this case taken by the R.A.F. in 1925. Although a certain amount of spasmodic revision had been undertaken since the war, the sheets were generally very much out of date.\n\nUntil 1962 these maps had not been available to the public but in that year their security restriction was lifted and they were put on sale by Messrs. Kelly & Walsh Ltd. in Hong Kong, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205865, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nBOOK REVIEW\n\nSHEUNG SHUI: A REVIEW\n\nARTICLE.\n\n165\n\nPROBLEMS RELATING TO SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG.\n\nMORRIS I. BERKOWITZ*\n\nThe rural resident of the New Territories is a resourceful and competent person. He wrings from a largely inhospitable terrain both a way of life and a livelihood, frequently in the face of extremely destructive natural forces. Now, however, the tremendous growth of Hong Kong and the development of his countryside for cities and industrial sites, threatens both his way of life and his livelihood. An unprecedentedly large flow of social scientists have of late descended upon these rural residents to document their way of life, hopefully before it is fundamentally changed. Among the earlier arrivals in this group is H. D. R. Baker who has done an unusual and profitable study of the village of Sheung Shui.1\n\nDr. Baker has attempted an extremely useful task: he has tried to do a major structural study of this village in an effort to carefully understand the differences between village, community, and lineage and to identify the functions of each of these entities in relation to each of the others. In order to do this, Mr. Baker begins with a detailed introduction to the history of the lineage which serves as a background for the three central chapters of his book which are concerned with the lineage as a ritual and kinship group, the lineage as a community, and segmentation within the lineage. This core is followed by briefer discussions of the leadership of the lineage, the interaction between members and those people who live within the lineage village but are not members of it. He concludes his discussions with considerations of how the lineage relates to outsiders, including other lineages, and some brief comments on the processes of change which are affecting the traditional form of lineage organization.\n\n* Dr. Berkowitz is currently Senior Lecturer and chairman of the department of Sociology and Social Work at Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, on secondment from the University of Pittsburgh, where he is an Associate Professor.\n\n1 Hugh D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui. London: Frank Cass, 1968, pp. xiv, 237, 50/-.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205986, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "ASPECTS OF HONG KONG MARINE FAUNA\n\n61\n\nThe University will have a functional Marine Science Laboratory to be completed during the summer of 1970. This establishment will greatly aid and encourage development of marine sciences in the Colony.\n\nTwo aspects of our studies may be of immediate interest to the Colony. First, we are relating bottom fauna with the fishes that feed on such organisms. This approach has been used in other places for the past few decades as an effort to aid fishermen in finding more suitable fishing grounds. We have noted 146 species of fishes in and associated with Tolo Harbour. As some of our information comes from the Taipo office of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department, there is a likelihood that fishes from Mirs Bay and adjacent areas are also included. Another important study is pollution. By investigating the physico-chemical and biological factors important in Tolo Harbour, we intend to aid Government in guiding the development of communities like Shatin and Taipo, which are located on the shores of the Harbour. A sewage treatment plant will be established at the Chinese University site at Ma Liu Shui, and pollution studies will be correlated with the activities of this plant.\n\nThe Future of Marine Resources in Hong Kong\n\nOf great importance for the future of the colony is the conservation of resources available, whether terrestrial or marine. During the spring of 1969, the University of Hong Kong sponsored the Conference on the Development and Conservation of the Countryside. The essence of the outcome of this meeting was that Hong Kong is in a critical state of planning. We must know what we are conserving, and do our best to plan all development with an eye toward future utilization and needs. Every weekend and holiday, thousands of city dwellers flock to the countryside to commune with nature. Just as a receding tide leaves layers of seaweed, these weekend tourists leave their residue. There is a tendency for everyone in Hong Kong to throw away their trash without thought of where it might land. This is true of the city, the countryside, and the beaches—extending into the water by boating enthusiasts and fishermen. This is on an enlarged scale when considering local industries, sanitary conditions, and indeed, land removal and filling processes. The Conservancy Society of Hong Kong has recently been formed. This organization will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206218, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "THE TAIPINGS AT NINGPO\n\n29\n\nNingpo, for a long time had been a difficult city to administer, but the Taiping occupation seems in retrospect to have been an exceptional period. To better appreciate this it is worth considering Ningpo in a somewhat broader perspective. For example, a year and a half before the Taipings took the city, a Jardine Matheson Company agent reported that the Ch'ing officials were unable to control the pirate-infested countryside.41 Three months after the Taipings left Ningpo, the Jardine agent gloomily reported that trade was bad and would remain so until \"a stop was put to the squeezing on the part of the Imperial Authorities.\"42 Six months after the departure of the Taipings, the agent revealed that Ningpo was in the throes of civil chaos. The unpopular tao-t'ai had been forced into hiding following a dispute with men from Frederick Townsend Ward's so-called Ever Victorious Army. The situation was resolved by Captain Dew who actually had to reoccupy the city. Dew and Harvey ignominiously had to search long and hard to find the affrighted Ch'ing official.43 Small wonder then, that the Jardine agent's report of January 1863, speaks of how the country people of Ningpo are now fondly recalling that the Taipings had always paid for what they took.44\n\nJudgment on the victorious expulsion of the Taipings from Ningpo has been varied. Consul Harvey congratulated himself:\n\nFor my part, let me state that it will be a source of great satisfaction and I may add, of pride, in after time to think that I have been placed in a position to use my feeble pen, and to have exercised my humble powers (always within the limits of my official duties) in weakening and undermining, as perseveringly and indefatigably as I have been able, the most gigantic imposture and the most blasphemous structure that ever disgraced ancient or modern pages.45\n\nForeign Secretary Russell, from London, also congratulated Harvey for the \"judgment, courage, and temper, which he displayed on all occasions....\"46 Another influential writer on these events termed Dew's accomplishment \"a brilliant feat of arms.\"47 But the Hong Kong Daily Press, for one, expressed the view of many contemporaries: \"There never was a falser, more unprovoked, or more unjustifiable act than the taking of Ningpo by the allies from the Taipings. It should, in fairness, be recorded to the eternal disgrace of Captain Roderick Dew, of HMS En-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206410, "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n+ + +\n\n201\n\nSha Wan villages about also remembers them. When I asked these ladies whether the charcoal burners were village people or outsiders, their reply was typical, and to the effect 'they weren't from our villages and probably not from adjacent ones either, but we didn't go near them to ask.'\n\nI have seen the Lantau and Lamma pits only, all linked with charcoal burning by the local people. The kilns, or rather the pits that remain, vary in size. Most are circular and fairly small, about 7 to 8 feet in diameter and a few feet deep at the present time. One of the Lamma pits, near Mau Tat, styled as ‘a big kiln' by the old village person mentioned above, is larger, being 15 feet across. Its earth walls are smooth and impregnated with tell-tale carbon. All these pits are cut into low banks or into the ground.\n\nPerhaps the last kilns to be operated in the Hong Kong area are some near the Shek O Road. According to Hok Tsui and Lan Nai Wan villagers living nearby, these were opened and operated by the Japanese during the war-time occupation of the Colony between 1941-45. They recall passing them and seeing them in operation when on their way to market in Shau Kei Wan, though giving them a wide berth for fear of trouble. Shau Kei Wan people say that the kilns were used to provide fuel for the electric plant at North Point, to which the charcoal was transported on little wooden trucks hauled by local men and women workers engaged by the Japanese.\n\nThese pits differ from the others in that they are domed, being cut into a high bank. They are apparently very similar, though newer, to those north of the Kowloon hills described over twenty years ago by G. A. C. Herklots in The Hong Kong Countryside (Hong Kong, S.C.M.P. Ltd. 1947). His description is worth quoting in full, though he was not clear whether or not the pits were used for charcoal burning and he had not sought to ask in the villages of the area.\n\n\"There are some curious dome-shaped holes by the path, one is actually immediately under the path. They are roughly six feet high in the centre and nine feet across. The sides are vertical, the roof domed and the floor space circular. The holes are holes in the ground and their roofs are level with the surface of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206522, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "64\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nFrom his headquarters at Taipo Lockhart was directly in control of the administration of the New Territories from May to July 1899. His first task was to establish law and order and this was achieved through the activity of the able F.H. May, Captain Superintendent of Police, who stationed police at convenient points throughout the area. Steps were then taken to define the Districts and Sub-Districts under section 4 of the Communities Ordinance, No. 77 of 1899. The principle followed was to adhere as closely as possible to the divisions recognised traditionally by the Chinese, which meant in most cases that such divisions followed the natural features of the countryside, so that in the main each sub-district was contained in a valley. The territory was divided finally into eight districts and forty-eight sub-districts. After these had been defined, committee-men were appointed for each sub-district. In Lockhart's words: \"These Committee-men have formed a useful link between the Government and the villagers, and have been of much assistance in explaining to the people the objects of the various measures of Government which have been introduced from time to time. The Committee-men as a rule are those who possess influence in their own immediate neighbourhood, whose advice is listened to, and whose lead is generally followed. The wisdom of affecting with responsibility those to whom the people have been accustomed to look for leadership and of using them to elucidate the objects of Government is evident.\"25\n\nBut the most important task accomplished by Lockhart was the allocation and registration of all privately-owned land. This necessitated, as Lockhart had suggested in his report of 8 October, 1898, a proper cadastral survey. The surveying began in November, 1899, and was completed by May, 1903. In the meantime the registration of land claims was being carried out steadily from July, 1899, at Taipo, Ping Shan, and in the Land Office in Hong Kong. In the following year all the registration work was taken over by the Land Court. The object was to secure the registration of all the owners of cultivated land in the New Territories in order to prepare a Crown Rent Roll.\n\nWhen Lockhart returned to his office in the Colonial Secretariat in July 1899, the day-to-day work of administering the New Territories was carried on by three cadets — E.R. Hallifax, C.M. Messer, and J.H. Kemp. But although Lockhart was no longer physically", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206594, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "136\n\n: \n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN \n\na few free-standing houses and reinforced the fronts of their caves, again there was no fuel (timber or with the scarcity of livestock, animal manure) with which to heat this type of house. These caves suited the climate. They provided a warm shelter in winter without fuel and a cool house in summer. The people of the region took pride in their cave homes which represented to them a way of life with all its social and economic manifestations.\n\nIn contrast, the predominant form of domestic architecture in the countryside of Hopei province is free-standing houses. This house is the most basic unit or type of house in China. It is a three-bay plan. The house is built on a North-South orientation with the main door facing south. As one enters the front door there is a large living room with an ancestral shrine placed on the back wall. On both sides of the living room there are the bedrooms. The k'ang, or platform beds, are placed on the south side of the rooms so that the windows with southern exposure allow the rays of the sun to warm the sleeping platforms. In regions further north, fires are built beneath the k'angs for added warmth in winter. The outside of the house is part brick and stone with a simple thatched roof. The three-bay house, being the simplest form of Chinese architecture, is the most easily adaptable to many types of geographical and economic conditions and is found with modifications in many regions of China.\n\nThe next house in Hopei combines itself with a small store.9 The entrance to the house has been pushed to the southeast corner so that the more auspicious central southern door is given to the shop door. In this way, perhaps, the local geomancers felt that the man's business would be more prosperous. It also would be giving the customers the more honored position. After entering the southeast gate one is forced to turn by the spirit wall before entering the large but private courtyard of the proprietor. The privacy of his house is further seen by the lack of windows on the outside wall. The main door of the house faces south. As one steps in there is again a living room with an ancestral shrine and a bedroom to the left. The kitchen can be reached only by going outside. In the courtyard there is another bedroom. All the buildings in this group are on a foundation requiring two steps to reach the floor level. At the rear of the house there is a vegetable garden. Thus, within this private domain, the individual can find peace from the outside", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206600, "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": 148, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "142\n\nLINDA F. SULLIVAN\n\nmale agnatic descendants of a single ancestor together with their unmarried sisters and their wives.\"22 Hence, it is not uncommon for a village to have only one surname, as often is the case in the New Territories of Hong Kong. These patrilineal groups or family lineages play an important role in the life of the community. If there is more than one lineage existing in a settlement, there may be a struggle for power and control of the area. The more powerful clans may force the small clans to leave or assimilate, thus maintaining a single lineage. In those areas where two or more lineages do co-exist, they sometimes have their own areas within the village, separated from the other group. Hence, a need for protection developed from social conflict.\n\nWhen the Hakkas moved into these areas, they no doubt did not try to assimilate. They were a proud and independent people who sought freedom for their way of life. They built their fortified dwellings to maintain themselves in a countryside already divided into small units. Since these provinces are also near the sea, pirates were a problem, not to mention bands of robbers on land. Defense, therefore, was a necessary part of community life. Perhaps this stimulated the growth of relatively independent and closely settled local lineages. The Hakkas settled by themselves in their own tightly organized, independent complexes. The circular house was simply a more effective way to protect themselves against any enemy. A circle does not provide the enemy with any obvious point of internal weakness. The Hakka lineages have also been very small. Why this is so remains an unanswered question. It is not known whether it is because of the general poverty or because of some social more which prevents the growth of powerful, large groupings. Another factor might be that the Hakkas have always been moving on to new areas of settlement seeking freedom and independence. Hence, the younger generation travels away from home and fails to continue the patrilineal line.\n\nThe walled towns in the New Territories represent another form of communal housing. Here the settlers are Punti (Cantonese), not Hakka. Their walled villages are located on the richer farming plains of the mainland New Territories amidst smaller and later unwalled settlements of other Punti and Hakka arrivals. These villages are enclosed on all four sides by a very high wall. Within these walls, the life of a \"common descent\" family unfolds.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206660, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTin Valley is characterized today by the everywhere existent, superbly thriving garden beds.\n\nThe development of intense vegetable farming in the traditional society of China seems to have been linked to the proximity of urban central places with great agglomerations of people. Urban marketing has, so it seems, been a prerequisite for a one-sided specialization on vegetable production. The geographic distribution of horticulture has been limited by one particular cultural barrier. Chinese palate calls for very fresh market goods, and every tendency in the marketed products to perish will considerably decrease the saleable price. Thus transportation to the city markets must be short or rapid. As a consequence, the urban areas were often surrounded by limited zones of intense horticulture.\n\nDuring the latter half of the 19th century, the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon emerged as a result of foreign intervention and planning. Their growth was related to the attraction the new Colony had on a countryside impoverished under the strain of a fast-increasing population. The appearance of the new urban districts stimulated the interest in the surrounding rural areas, which later were to become New Kowloon and the New Territories, for the cultivation of cash crops. This was within a sector with reasonably good communications to connect with the city markets. According to available information, the start was made on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, where the old villages seem to have taken advantage of the new development quite early. The continuous spread of the network of transportation, initiated after the British territorial expansion to the New Territories in 1898, when new roads were constructed and the Canton-Kowloon railway was laid out through the district, gave rise to new opportunities and the possibility to expand the zone of intense vegetable cultivation beyond the Kowloon Foothills. The Sha Tin valley is located just behind this range of mountains, but, contrary to what one might expect, vegetable farming was not to become important there until recently, in the post-Pacific War period. The obstacle against a switch over to horticulture may be found on the managerial side of production, but this by no means accounts for everything. An important barrier to change may be found in the social values and knowledge of the village population.\n\nIn the Sha Tin valley, paddy fields are still to be seen scattered around in the area. The New Territories are situated in the double-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206664, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "206\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe businessman's enterprise disguised as a rustic farmstead. The emergence of vegetable cultivation is a spill-over from the urban areas. What we deal with is the city's adjustment to the countryside rather than the adaptation of the rural husbandry to meet urban demands.\n\nThis is not to say that rice peasants have not switched over to vegetable cultivation at all. Obviously this kind of person is not common in Sha Tin, but he occurs and there are a few native vegetable farmers in nearly every village. Still, it is a noteworthy fact that the present village gardeners did not give up their rice cultivation until they had precedent models for action in the form of immigrant garden enterprises. The example of the successful immigrant truck garden was something to be envied and reproduced, and thus a primary incentive for a new agricultural order.\n\nParadoxically, the indigenous villagers have been able to remain in their traditional rice world by giving up rice cultivation. The main sources of change lie in the urban areas, in Hong Kong and overseas. New ideas flowing into the villages will not disrupt traditional notions concerning land, although land use may have changed in that land is rented to outsiders, abandoned or converted into building lots. The few native villagers who have engaged in horticulture did not venture the shift in land use until they had access to models in the form of outsider gardeners. I feel that the general lack of response to city needs for food in the Sha Tin valley is due to the proximity of the valley to the city, a feature which involved people directly in city life. On the other hand, we have found that city people have become involved in rural production.\n\nThus, the change in land use in the New Territories is no simple process generated by the maximization of profits. Only our awareness of the social characteristics of the actors in the drama will allow us to gain some understanding of the complexity of the situation.\n\nUniversity of Gothenburg, 1972.\n\nGORAN AijMER\n\nFootnote: This is an abstract from a report intended to form a chapter in a monograph on social life in the Sha Tin valley. Field work was conducted from June 1967 to February 1968, and in Summer 1969 for three months. The field work was supported by the Humanistic Foundation of Sweden. The writing of the report was carried out at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Mass., with the support of Carl-Bertel Nathhorst Foundation and Stockholm University. I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of these institutions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206895, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe surrounding countryside reposing in the benediction of its large standing Buddha. The museum of Sukhothai also displayed a number of very fine pieces, not least the magnificent walking Buddha, phra lila, a purely Sukhothai invention.\n\nThe sister city of Srisachanalai is further to the north of Sukhothai but of the same period. It is famous for the Sangkaloke variation on Sukhothai celadons, and it is from there that the Chalieng wares came. To get to the site one has to cross the river Yom in a boat below the rapids; the ruins are visited on foot. The entire spread of the area was seen from the top of Wat Khao Phanom Pleung. Wat Chang Lom, with its stucco-on-laterite elephants around giving it its name, dates from the beginning of the Sukhothai period. Wat Chedi Chet Tao has among other chedi the characteristic lotus-bud finial which was also seen in Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai; as in that temple, too, there were also some good stucco remains, here, of a Buddha seated under a protecting naga. Wat Uttayan Yai is another ruined temple, and between it and the high city wall still remaining are the ruins of Wat Nang Phya, the walls of the chapel containing some delicate decorative stucco work. In the ruins of the palace is an interesting covered arched sanctuary,\n\nThe site of Kampengpetch lacks the hills of Sukhothai or Srisachanalai but is surrounded by denser secondary jungle which adds to the attraction of the area. Wat Chao Awat Yai has little of particular note apart from the deep rectangular pool before it from which the blocks of laterite were cut to erect the building. The elephants surrounding the central section of Wat Chang Rob are better preserved than at Srisachanalai and finer in their detail, and there is a stucco decoration of Bo trees and demons on the walls between them. Wat Phra Si Irayabot has in the middle of the jungle a vast laterite platform for a vihara and behind it a most unusual construction with four Buddhas placed round a high core in standing, walking, sleeping and seated positions. The first two are still in good condition but little remains of the last two. All these temples lie outside the old city walls, inside which are to be found the ruins of Wat Prathat and Wat Phra Keo, with their bare outlines of laterite Buddhas and fallen chedi. The new museum at Kampengphet was also visited by special arrangement and contains some exceptional pieces, notably an U-Thong Buddha and some torsos of Hindu deities which seemed to have found more favour in Kampengpetch than in the other cities of Sukhothai.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207066, "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n131\n\nsteps taken to correct a decline of population that had seemingly begun several decades before.\n\nThere is other evidence in support of a large population in, say, mid century. My close knowledge of the hills and valleys of the Southern district of the New Territories suggests that practically every piece of land, high or low, that could be planted with rice had been opened for that purpose at one time or another. This presumes a large and settled population, since the opening of paddy fields and their irrigation dams and channels involves considerable labour, and once rice is cultivated there is continuous farming unless the number of cultivators available in a family or village drops to the point where fields go out of use. There was dry and shifting cultivation in addition, for ancillary crops such as peanuts and sweet potato that, old villagers say, were more extensively cultivated in the past.\n\nA second factor that points to a larger population is the widespread and intense fishing of local waters that was such a marked feature of village life seventy and more years ago, as revealed by my enquiries all over the New Territories. If fishing at its most intensive coincided with farming at its most widespread, one may conclude that, subsidiary reasons and incentive factors apart, all this activity was mainly required to provide for the existence of a large population in the villages.\n\nTo conclude, I have here mentioned village tradition and the evidence of the countryside in support of my belief that depopulation was an event in the later history of the Hong Kong region. Using available demographic and economic materials, much work can yet be done to show that Professor Ping-ti Ho's postulation of a 'declining rate of growth' in the population of Kwangtung, 1850-1953, covers reductions as well as increases at the local level.1\n\n1 Ho 1959: 270, 277-278. In the light of my surmises it is interesting to find that Perkins (212-214) notes a sharp reduction in the population figures for Kwangtung between 1851-1873, not fully recovered by 1893. This would, of course, take in the ravages of the Tai Ping time and the Hakka-Punti wars; but there is more to it than these, I suspect.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207097, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "162 \n\nSUNG HOK-PANG \n\nbeam into a new dragon boat. When it was launched into the water, a strange thing happened. The boat flew up into the air, and immediately a great quantity of treasure, gold, silver and precious stones fell into the boat from the sky. When it was full the boat came down to the water, and the people were able to empty it. Then it flew into the air again, and came down again with fresh supplies of treasure. This happened many times until there were untold riches for the Tangs. A few years later, they chose another lucky day and erected a new beam and the hall was completed and given the name Loi Shing Tong1. It still exists in Shui T'au Village2, on the left-hand side of Hung Shing Kung (plate 20, figure I. H.K.N., VI, Nos. 3 and 4. “Hung Shing Kung,—the oldest temple in old Ch'an T'in.\") under the name of Ts'z T'ong Tsai (small ancestral hall).3 \n\nThen followed many years of prosperity for Kam T'in until times of trouble came to all the countryside and the family had to abandon the village temporarily on account of bandits. Before leaving Kam T'in, however, they buried there what remained of the treasure. This story was handed down from generation to generation more as legend than true fact. During the Ham Fung4 (咸豐) years, 1851-1861, of Ts'ing dynasty, a man called Tang Paak Luk (鄧伯祿) of Kam Hing Wai (錦慶圍) farmed the land where the treasure was supposed to be buried. One day he sent a labourer, Ch'an A Faat (陳亞發) to work in the particular field, and in the evening Ch'an returned to the farmer's house with a gold rope which he declared he had dug up. Everyone was very pleased at first, but gradually it appeared that bad luck had come with the rope. The farm beasts began to sicken, many died and then the farmer's family became ill. So the rope was re-buried without more ado, and prosperity was at once restored to Tang Paak Luk. \n\nAnother story is of a very poor farmer who at a different time rented the same ground. One day he dug up a brick that shone brightly in the sun. As he examined it, thinking it must be silver, he carelessly dropped it on his foot, and broke his big toe. Being too poor to pay for a doctor or even to buy curatives, the farmer gave the brick to his wife to break up, and they found that it was without doubt real silver. So the wife was able to buy medicine and consult a doctor with the aid of the brick, but it was not until all the brick \n\n1 Plate 31 at rear of this Volume.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207302, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "62\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nmucous and epithelium frequently appeared in the stools.* Additionally, painful swellings or buboes commonly developed in the groin, neck or armpits usually by the second day.\n\nEven though by the turn of the nineteenth century medical science had made significant progress, little was still then known of the manner in which the disease was transmitted. It was not until 1905 that it was finally established in Bombay by the Plague Research Commission of India that the bacillus, pasteurella pestis, commonly gained entry into the blood stream by inoculation through the bite of fleas which, in turn, were carried by rats. Scientific research into the causes of the plague in Hong Kong came close to finding this answer but the plethora of other more plausible-looking theories detracted attention away from the apparently harmless flea.\n\nThe Origin of the Plague in Hong Kong\n\nBubonic plague in China was thought to have first spread from Yunnan which, itself, is likely to have been infected by transmissions over the trade routes from India.\n\nAs a prelude to the outbreak of the disease in Hong Kong in 1894, it appears that it occurred in Canton in January of that year. By June, it had reached epidemic proportions and had accounted for some 80,000 deaths. At the outbreak of the disease in Canton, many persons (particularly the well-to-do) moved into the countryside and thereby created new foci for its dissemination. Simpson thus records that it is \"not surprising that whatever affects Canton is not long in making itself felt in Hong Kong. This year when cholera broke out in Canton there was only an interval of a few weeks before the disease appeared in 1894.\" Indeed, the spread of the disease to Hong Kong was accelerated by the unrestricted entry from Kwantung Province of many thousands of workers and also junks and river boats that formed an integral part of the colony's role as an entrepot.\n\nOn the 10th May 1894, Hong Kong was declared an infected port and within the space of a few weeks the administration was\n\n* Quoted in William Hunter, A Research into Epidemic & Epizootic Plague Hong Kong, 1904, p. 6.\n\n↑ W. J. Simpson, Report on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hong Kong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures, London, 1903, p. 22.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207767, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "140\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nIt will be seen that many of the routes were mountainous, and the road near Makuchen () on the Kutsing-Luhsien (Fig. 2) run reaches 2,630 metres. The grading in almost all places was good and reflected credit on the engineers who had surveyed and built the routes, mainly with manual labour impressed from the surrounding countryside. There were no sealed or tarmac surfaces and the roads were kept in repair by filling potholes with hand-broken small stones.\n\nThe first permanent transport base was at Kweiyang where the Unit took over and extended the garage maintained there by the IRC outside the city at Shi Sang Shi (4%). (Plate 18) Cover for four trucks, stores, tinsmiths and engine overhaul shops, office and living quarters for drivers, mechanics and their families were provided. The godown was at the old IRC headquarters inside the city, a Confucian temple courtyard (M). Other bases were purpose-built. Kutsing (), opened for operation in June 1942, became Unit Headquarters in August 1942 and had a large godown. Luhsien (⇓) was a small base used for serving trucks on the arduous Kutsing-Luhsien run and forwarding supplies to Chengtu by truck or by boat down river to Chungking. A small group with one or two trucks was based on the West China Union University (#606★*), campus at Chengtu for 1942 and part of 1943 for distribution to many institutions in that area and up to Paoki (**). In early 1944 a permanent garage was acquired and extended on the South Bank at 44 kilometres milestone at Chungking, and this later became a major base.\n\nEach transport base had a garage Manager, with assistants in the large ones, and an Agent who looked after all paperwork, permits and cargo details, with an assorted force of employee mechanics, tinsmiths, carpenters etc. Drivers and mechanics also worked on their trucks when in the base. Details of garage operations and numbers are discussed fully in a later section.\n\nThe time taken for journeys varied widely according to the motive power of the truck (petrol, alcohol, diesel or charcoal gas), the skill of the driver in maintenance (especially with charcoal powered trucks) and the state of the road and the weather. When the diesel powered Fords, described in a later section, were new, convoys of 2-3 trucks would regularly complete the Kutsing-Luhsien (724 kilometres) run in 3-4 days giving, with crew rest days and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207820, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\nOther field workers, both British and American, are likely to follow them.\n\n4. My own work would have been impossible without the generous help of many officers of the New Territories Administration; I should like to thank them collectively, expressing my gratitude in particular to the District Officer Tai Po and his staff. I have also the pleasure of thanking many officers in other branches of the Government; among them my thanks go especially to Mr. K.M.A. Barnett, Mr. J.W. Hayes, Mr. K.W.J. Topley, and Mr. P.K.C. Tsui; I am in the debt of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, the Department of Co-operative Development and Fisheries, various officers of the Courts, and the Colonial Secretariat Library. To my host in Tai Po, Mr. Tsang For-piu, I am specially obliged. I should like also to thank my colleague Dr. Marjorie Topley for much guidance and several teachers at the University of Hong Kong whom I had the privilege of consulting.\n\n5. In what is to follow I shall discuss the general background to social research in the New Territories, report on some of the problems I have myself looked into, and suggest what further work could be done (and how it might be done) to promote the interests of both scholarship and administration.\n\n6. Until the advent of the Communist regime in China the New Territories did not interest social scientists. (It can also be argued that they were of little interest to anybody outside the New Territories Administration). Chinese scholars could not be expected to concern themselves with territory under British rule, while scholars from the West were far too preoccupied with China to consider the claims of a stretch of the Chinese countryside which, from their point of view, was no more than the railway route into Kwangtung. And of course it must be remembered that the number of social scientists working on Chinese themes was, before the Second World War, extremely small. Since 1949 the New Territories have come increasingly to be appreciated as a field for research: they have been politically accessible and have had the advantage of offering for study perhaps the best living example (however much affected by British rule and modern changes) of traditional Chinese country life. So far three anthropologists have completed field studies in the New Territories: Miss Barbara E. Ward, from London, who was primarily concerned with Tanka fishermen in the Sai Kung area (and who will probably be revisiting the New Territories this", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207824, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n197\n\nto the problem of ensuring law and order by means of administra-tive, legal, and police measures which in effect left people as much as possible to their own devices. But however much an adminis-tration may seek to preserve traditional institutions and modes of behaviour and very superficially the pre-war New Territories Administration resembled a Chinese form of Government—it inevitably produces some changes which spring from the framework of its own rules. One change immediately brought about in the New Territories was the removal of political and economic power from certain clans, mainly in the west, which, under the Chinese regime, had exercised control over considerable areas by virtue of their access to the government and their tax privileges. More fun-damentally, however, the new regime set into decline a system of local leadership which had hitherto rested on principles inherent in imperial Chinese society.\n\n13. At the edge of China the county of San On (about three-fifths of which became the New Territories in 1898) was not remarkable for producing scholars, but, as an integral part of the Empire, it sent its men into the examinations and, as a result, furnished the country with some administrators. I have not yet had the oppor-tunity of checking the examination quotas operating at the end of the century, but at its beginning—I do not have the source by me as I write there was a quota of eight graduates at each three-yearly examination at Canton for San On, and an additional quota of two for the county's Hakka population. (In the last decades of the Empire, moreover, the sale of examination equivalents was very common; the number of titled scholars in San On was therefore likely to be considerably greater than that suggested by examination quotas). According to Lockhart, who surveyed the New Territories in 1898, there were about 150 sau ts'oi* in the county. See J.W. Hayes, \"The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962, p. 11. Those who studied for the examinations were com-paratively few, and they were almost certainly members of clans, and families within these clans, which, by reason of their riches and connexions, were in a privileged position. But the idea was widespread that all respectable men (a category including all the farmers) were eligible to offer themselves for examination and, ultimately, to assume administrative office. And there existed many schools in the countryside to set children going on the ladder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207825, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "198\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nwhich only a very few would eventually scale. (At the time of the British assumption of power there were roughly 100,000 people in the New Territories; it was then established that there were over three hundred schoolmasters in the area.) Most of the pupils in the country schoolrooms attended for only two or three years, but some of them managed to stay long enough to lay the foundation which, built upon in town academies, formed the basis for the classical education demanded of graduates.\n\n14. There can be no doubt, from our general knowledge of Kwangtung during this period, that the scholar-gentry (shan sz: 'shen-shih') created by the examination system and its attendant institutions formed in San On a category of 'natural leaders' for the countryside. The scholar-gentry were not the formal headmen of recognised administrative units; far from it; their status in society was too high to allow them to occupy so humble a position. They could not be subjected to routine control by the county magistrate (although he had a certain responsibility for keeping young scholars in order), and the authority they enjoyed within their local communities rested precisely on their ability to speak with a privileged voice to the magistrate and those standing above him in the official hierarchy. They were not necessarily large landowners, but in the nature of the case they were not peasants (nor, except rarely, the sons of peasants), their economic strength being based in general on income drawn from rents, interest on loans, and sometimes (despite the apparent contradiction between gentry status and officially despised commercial activity) business. Culturally they were the elite of their society. Socially they made themselves responsible for initiating and maintaining public works which in the eyes of the bureaucracy were a matter for local enterprise; so that it is possible (although I have seen no evidence to support my guess) that their disappearance in the twentieth century brought with it a decline in the care of bridges, paths, public buildings, and so on, in so far as the responsibility for these works was not taken over by the new government.\n\n15. The scholar-gentry would have vanished from the New Territories scene—or, more correctly, faded to the sad remnant now sought out by research workers and otherwise largely ignored—even if British rule had not been extended from Hong Kong. The examination system came to an end in 1905, several years before the final collapse of the Empire. British administration made far", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207826, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n199\n\ndeeper inroads into rural society than the undermining of the scholarly elite. The Chinese legal system had assumed (more: it had required and been adapted to ensuring) that people would try to look to the settlement of their own differences and stay away as much as possible from the yamen as a court of law. The system of political control was loose and a large measure of autonomy, by default of efficiency if not by design, was accorded to local communities. The early British Administration was thin on the ground by comparison with what has been seen in very recent years, but by Chinese standards it was intense, and it quickly established for itself a reputation for accessibility and quick justice that attracted to it many of the disputes which had earlier been settled, or had lain unsettled, at the local level. Moreover, by preventing some disputes from being literally fought out in traditional feuds (an institution which the Chinese government often thundered against but hardly ever took steps to suppress), the British increased their burden of dispensing justice. (The feud-fights which in recent times have been witnessed in the Yuen Long District—interestingly enough in the area of the fullest development of deep clan organisation—are but shadows of their former selves). It cannot be said that the new Administration succeeded at once in imposing law and order. There was banditry in the early years; some of the village watchtowers were put up after 1899. But, within the limits of poor communications, the new Administrators made a determined effort to eliminate violence from the countryside. Certainly, they brought to their work a conception of positive government quite alien to the ideas informing the system operated by their Chinese predecessors.\n\n16. I cannot in this report document all my historical statements about China and the early New Territories, but in connexion with the previous paragraphs I should like to quote what seems to me to be an important passage in an administrative report written thirteen years after British rule began:\n\nReference should also be made to the waning influence of the village elders throughout the Territories. It was the intention of Sir Henry Blake that, 'existing village organisations should be maintained and utilised', and that the village tribunals should continue to decide local cases. But it soon became clear that the authority of the village elders was of no account, with the stronger authority of the Magistrates so easily accessible, and the idea of local tribunals had perforce to be dropped. Under", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207851, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "224\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\n-\n\nthe big business man in his mansion. How far there was in traditional China what sociologists call social mobility is a matter still in hot academic debate; but there can be no doubt that in the kind of Chinese setting of which the New Territories is a twentieth-century sample men were morally entitled to take steps to raise themselves and their descendants—by scholarship, by the accumulation of riches, and by the religious pursuit of good fortune.\n\n56. When a person dies he is first buried in a rough grave from which, after a few years, his bones are removed to be placed in an urn. All, or nearly all, men and women pass through the cycle of burial and removal up to this point. The urns are stored, but those belonging to families for whom geomantic burial has become important and possible are at some point put into new graves. These are the omega-shaped tombs which are so prominent a feature of the southeastern Chinese countryside. They are constructed according to fung shui and may take years to prepare, because the choice of a good site may call for a protracted search and the correct time for entombment may be long delayed by both practical difficulties and religious restrictions. The geomancy of burial is concentrated about this second internment, for although fung shui may well enter into the selection of the first grave and the siting of the urn, it is then of secondary importance, since virtue flows essentially from that which is intended to be a permanent habitation.\n\n57. Sooner or later the geomantically sited grave will bring prosperity to the descendants of the man or woman buried in it. If it does not, then alterations may be made to it or, in the extreme case, it may be moved, 'sooner or later': the geomancer is not usually prepared to tie himself down to a guarantee of quick results. Indeed, with that keen selective scepticism marking the way in which they scrutinise their religion and its practitioners, Chinese joke about the latitude that geomancers allow themselves. 'Like a geomancer', a Cantonese saying goes, 'who cheats you by predicting within eight or ten years.' (If one's own ancestor's grave shows results in, say, five years when the geomancer has stipulated a waiting period of ten years, it is a matter for self-gratulations and gratitude; but somebody else's patience with the passing of the years may be a matter for jest). The lapse of years is necessary for the collection and concentration of the Breaths; they settle in the bones, and in a particularly successful case cause them to glow. From the bones this virtue passes to the living descendants, not in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207852, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n225\n\nany physical sense, for there is no mechanism for such a transfer. Filial children benefit from the virtue of their parents' graves; how is a mystery. If they live close enough they must tend the graves, but their separation from them by mere distance is no bar to their receiving the virtue.\n\n58. Few people seem to doubt that descendants are affected by fung shui. But there is also a popular belief, not shared by some geomancers, that the virtue stored up in a grave can be tapped by strangers. And from this idea stem the attempts at poaching on sites; attempts, that is to say, to bury one's dead in the immediate neighbourhood of a grave which has demonstrated its efficacy. Geomancers may say that the virtue is confined to one tiny spot in the grave, the site having been chosen to accord with the special characteristics of its occupant, and that the area round the grave will avail nobody. On the other hand, they will also certainly say that a new grave close by the old may well destroy its virtue by altering the conformation of the site. So that poaching is a serious offence and may be the cause of bitter disputes. I came across no such case myself, but there is evidence that quarrels of this sort have been known in the New Territories. (For early evidence see the Administrative Reports on the Northern District for 1909 and 1910; a system of grave registration was introduced in 1909 to overcome these difficulties). Generally people in the New Territories are able to protect their graves against encroachment and it is only in special cases that one can see the effect of the belief that the virtue of a site may be tapped. In a valley leading from Fei Ngo Shan and overlooking Hebe Haven there is a large official cemetery (Pak Fa Lam) which appears to have come into existence because it contains the tomb of Sun Yat-sen's mother. Sun's success is attributed by many people in Hong Kong to this grave; in consequence, it has attracted to it a host of other graves, despite the prohibition placed by the Administration on burial there. (Sun's failures as well as his successes can be read from the grave of his mother, as I shall show presently, but people who 'buy' plots in the cemetery are presumably not concerned with this qualification).\n\n59. Geomancy in the open countryside entails scattered burial. Each new omega-shaped grave involves the search for a new site. Burial grounds amounting to cemeteries are very rare, and when they are found they usually turn out to be used for people who were not old residents of the New Territories. A New Territories\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207856, "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": 244, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 229\n\nher grave was on the head her descendants would be very great men: but if on the tail they would be more humble people, perhaps officers of low degree, and, although prosperous, none would succeed to high rank.' The princess chose the tail because she preferred her descendants to stay humble, she herself having suffered so much. See Sung Hok-p’ang, ‘Legends and Stories of the New Territories”, IV. Kam T'in (continued)', The Hong Kong Naturalist, vol. VII, no. 1, April 1936, pp. 34f.)\n\n62. The term fung shui is often used to mean simply a grave, and there is no need to stress the point that burial lies at the heart of geomancy. But in fact fung shui covers all aspects of men's dwellings on earth. Every territorially defined unit of society has its fung shui, from the household up to the state. The residence of the head of the state affects the prosperity of the country. (For this reason great emphasis is often placed on the geomantic excellence of Government House). The fortunes of cities, towns, and villages depend on their physical arrangement and dominating buildings. Political units take their fate from government offices. (The fung shui of the new Fanling District Court has impressed many locals). The fung shui of an ancestral hall determines the fortunes of members of the clan. (For this reason it is hardly ever to be found inside a wai, a walled enclosure; it must have free access to its site). A house shapes the destiny of its master and those for whom he is responsible. Consequently, geomancers are often employed to advise on the siting, orientation, certain architectural features (especially height), and work—and opening-dates of domestic and other buildings. Indeed, there appears to be some specialisation among fung shui sin shaang in the New Territories, some of them putting themselves out to be experts on graves and others on buildings.\n\n63. Burial and the fung shui associated with it differ markedly in city and countryside. Only the rich among the people in the urban area can afford to escape the regimentation of their dead in cemeteries and seek geomantically favourable sites in private plots. (Some in fact acquire the right to bury their dead in land forming the traditional preserves of village communities. They may have to pay dearly for the privilege. Along one of the main roads in the New Territories there stands a pavilion, now many years old, which was put up as part of the compensation to the local people for the geomantic disturbance caused them by the burial in their area of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207857, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "230\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nrich man from Hong Kong). Similarly, the fung shui of buildings plays a less important role in the city than the country. There are naturally severe limits to what can be done in the urban area to extract the best geomantic possibilities from a given site and to avoid places which have been labelled as bad fung shui risks. By and large, I think we may say that in the city fung shui is a retrospective explanation of fortune rather than a prediction of it, and that in urban conditions far more reliance is placed on the dominant geomantic effects of crucial sites (government offices and other public and semi-public buildings). City-dwellers conducting a stranger around their streets point out to him the residences of rich men which have brought them good fortune or the houses which, because of their unfavourable sites, have exerted a malignant influence on their inhabitants. (A new road, pointing like a deadly arrow to Mr. A's house, brought him disaster. Mr. B enjoys the protection of wind and excluded and static water). In the countryside, in contrast, the geomancy of buildings is both forward-and backward-looking. The height of a new village house must take into account the height and position of the ancestral halls and other houses, in order that the fortunes of other people may not be prejudiced by one's efforts to improve one's own. In a remarkably interesting case being argued out during my stay in the New Territories a disproportion in the two halves of the roofs of new houses was the cause of an agitation which cost the people responsible for the houses much money and frustration. It was held that, the front sections of the roofs being longer than the rear, the future of the inhabitants would be cut short. As for retrospective geomancy, misfortune - disease, death, lack of male children, poor harvests, and so on - may come to be attributed to faults in fung shui which are then put right. The entrance to a wall round the village (wai) may need to be protected by new 'arms' or skewed to alter the orientation of the whole village. A building thought to be too high may be lowered. Again, good or bad fortune may be attributed to earlier fung shui actions for which in fact there is no evidence. It is a common feature of New Territories village organisation that communities which are now solidly or predominantly composed of one clan were in time past made up of several. The disappearance of the weaker ones, through emigration or failure to reproduce, is often said to have followed from their geomantic indiscretion or, as in a case which has impressed itself on me, from the superior geomantic techniques of the survivors. In this case the sole clan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207870, "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": 258, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n243\n\n£5 orders; these will presumably have been sent into town by the bank to be cashed through a city post office and, along with orders actually presented at city post offices, fail to appear in New Territories figures. The indications from the travel agencies in the last month or so of my stay in Hong Kong were of few men going to Britain; the main agency has almost stopped any new business; and it seems unlikely therefore that remittances will increase further. On the contrary, the probability is that after a while they will fall as men remain away longer, their ties with the New Territories being reduced and their commitments abroad increased. And the question will arise whether hardship will result for the New Territories. It is not simply a matter of people being deprived of extra money; if there is any resemblance between the New Territories and the emigrant areas of Fukien and Kwangtung in respect of their economic response to overseas migration, then we should be prepared to find that economic standards and activities have become so adjusted to external income that its falling away occasions disruption and distress.\n\n81. It is of course artificial to treat the matter of overseas migration apart from the movement between the New Territories and the urban areas of the Colony. The city has always attracted New Territories people to it and provided the countryside with an income. It would be extremely interesting to have material showing where absent members of a village are at a given time and what they are doing for a living. I discovered that on one of the islands a local committee was keeping records on emigration and I was able to obtain the data which are presented below. They can have no general value for the study of the problem as a whole, but they suggest the possibility that some Rural Committees have gathered information of this sort and that others might be encouraged to do so. The total number of emigrants involved in this case is 183. Of these 62 are overseas and the remainder in the urban area of the Colony. Of the 62 overseas, 33 are seamen, 23 are in the United Kingdom, 5 in the U.S.A. and 1 in Borneo. All these are men, but 22 of the 99 people in the urban areas are women. Of the 23 men in Britain 5 are in their twenties, 7 in their thirties, 9 in their forties, 1 in his fifties, and 1 in his seventies. Of the 5 in the U.S.A. 2 are in their forties, 2 in their fifties, and 1 in his sixties. The sole man in Borneo is in his thirties. Over a dozen communities are involved in these figures. The distribution of overseas migrants and seamen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207876, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n249\n\nclearer picture of what is being thought in the countryside about development would no doubt be of help to it. On the housing question itself I suggest that it would be worth organising an enquiry into the present arrangement of space and the uses to which it is put; the current modifications which are being made by villagers (increasing daylight by making windows, altering kitchens and bathrooms, re-arranging sleeping accommodation, and so on) to old houses; the departures from tradition in the design of new houses; and the social causes and consequences of these changes. In connection with the last point, it hardly needs stressing that changes in family structure may both precede and follow changes in accommodation. Some of the assessment of housing in relation to new needs and tastes will be made in the course of community studies, for it is an inevitable part of the work of a student of family life; but it might be an interesting and useful exercise to get an architect and a social investigator to work together on the many sides of the question.\n\n87. If an anthropological field worker with the necessary economic skills were available it would be sensible to put him on to a study of land tenure in conjunction with the other economic institutions and activities of a community where both new and old forms of agriculture are being practised. The new agriculture would probably imply the presence of immigrants and there would be an opportunity to study the extent to which the old-established population has taken over the new forms and techniques. A rounded economic investigation of this sort would, of course, need to go into questions of credit, capital accumulation, marketing, investment, management (of both farms and small businesses), the penetration of industry (as in domestic work on plastic flowers and toys and in factory labour), and the sources and nature of entrepreneurial enterprise. I envisage a study in depth and therefore confined to one or two communities, but a list of crucial indices might emerge from it which could be used as the basis for a wide-ranging enquiry by questionnaire methods. Presumably the Agriculture and Forestry Department and the Co-operative Development and Fisheries Department might consider taking part in such an investigation.\n\n88. I was much struck in the New Territories by both the success of the efforts of recent years to provide schools and the strength of the desire on the part of some people to go beyond what official policy is thought to contemplate for the near future. There is now,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207877, "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": 265, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "250\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nit seems, a demand for education which, in some places, is not satisfied by the lower grades of schools. I do not propose to discuss the educational problems of the New Territories; I am not competent to do so; but there are some interesting social questions which present attitudes to education suggest. For many New Territories parents the schools are not institutions for producing better-educated versions of themselves; they are avenues of escape from the purely rural way of life—which has lost its charms. Ambition is no longer focused on movement within the traditional range of occupations, and demands are made for people to be fitted for something grander. I came across several families aiming to put their children through university and some who had succeeded in doing so. It would seem that it is not easy for New Territories men and women to gain entrance to the University of Hong Kong and a similar problem of standards prevents universities in the United Kingdom from becoming realistic targets, although British technical and commercial colleges can be aimed at. In consequence, Taiwan and the U.S.A. (where in the one case university education is cheap and accessible to the Chinese-educated and in the other there is a multitude of lesser colleges and universities admitting undergraduates with only moderate qualifications) become attractive. The numbers of New Territories people at universities must of course be tiny, but they are likely to increase, and it remains to be seen whether the trained talent will have been creamed off or whether the new university-educated class will have a role to play in New Territories life. In fact, there is a case to be made for a close study of education at all levels in the New Territories in relation to social mobility. The academic careers of children could be traced through school records and an attempt made to follow them up as they move into their working lives. One side of the interest of such a study would be the light thrown on the degree to which long-established New Territories people are moving out of farming and other ordinary occupations to leave their places to be filled by newcomers,\n\n89. This last point brings me to wider matters touching the 'new' population of the New Territories and its adjustment. Aesthetically (it has often been noted) they have been the ruin of much of the countryside, transforming a delicate landscape into eyesores. (But I have never heard this complaint from New Territories people themselves). Economically the newcomers have been a cause of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207879, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "252\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\n91. Development in the New Territories has been so massive that the displaced population is not composed exclusively of refugees. Old communities have been resettled. Again, this is not something to be undertaken for the first time in New Territories history, but a novel element of recent removals has been the choice by many of the people resettled to alter their way of life completely by taking up residence in urban blocks of flats and abandoning agriculture for commercial and industrial pursuits. How have they fared? It seems to me that there is an excellent opportunity here for a scholar interested in urban sociology. What kind of community is being created in resettlement blocks? What is a neighbour and how far does one neighbour depend on the other? To what extent are pre-existing loyalties of kinship and village community built into the new networks of relationships? But in fact in raising these matters my report has come to a point at which research in the New Territories can no longer be discussed separately from research in the Colony as a whole; for if there is to be planning for investigations into urban and industrial subjects then it must be done on a basis which ignores the formal boundary between the New Territories and the rest of Hong Kong. Social organisation within factories; the growth of an entrepreneurial class within industry; kaifongs; voluntary associations such as those based on surname, origin in China, and trade; the family and marriage in an urban setting; religious life in the city—all these are topics which are relevant now to both the old urban areas and parts of the New Territories, and I do not think I should be justified here in making detailed recommendations for research involving the whole Colony.\n\n92. On the other hand, there is a kind of urban sociology which is specifically relevant to the New Territories: the study of small towns. And I should like to suggest that an investigation carried out in, say, Tai Po would greatly enhance our understanding of modern social change in the New Territories. The market towns there have not been urban enclaves. They have not formed a frontier between the rural and the urban. They grew out of the countryside, were peopled by countrymen, and, although in some cases outsiders have built up economic centres in them, they remain largely under the control of the rural areas they serve. The country town is in fact the knot that ties many village communities together. Village people have businesses there; local leaders congregate there; information is collected and disseminated there. And despite the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207880, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963\n\n253\n\nmodern buildings, the banks, the cinemas, and the daily shopping, the country town still has many of the characteristics of the place it was in former times when the market was held only on certain days of the month and formed the only means by which people in different parts of the area kept in regular touch with one another. Marriages, business deals, and politics were and remain important elements in the body of transactions which the country town stands for. But not all the issues are to be prejudged; it may be that as the town grows in size and economic significance it develops an urban autonomy, and a kind of small-townsman emerges whose interests and values are no longer so tightly correlated with those of the villager. The town of Yuen Long, for example, may prove to have gone far in this direction already, and the advent of new business men into the market towns, some of them with bases in the city, may point the way to an increasing tendency for the small urban areas of the New Territories to set themselves up as independent social entities with their own mechanisms of internal order (chambers of commerce, kaifongs, and trade associations). It is for this reason that I hope that one of the two students from London who will be arriving in the New Territories in the autumn will be able to concentrate on a market town and its relations to the countryside. There is of course another kind of market town in the New Territories: the one which depends on fishermen and in which, as a result, there has traditionally been a social cleavage between the buyers and the sellers, such that the town has not been under the control of the people of the surrounding area. Such a town fell within the scope of Miss Ward's study. An outstandingly interesting example (especially attractive because its historical background has been explored in a paper, now in press, by Mr. Hayes*) is Cheung Chau; it should certainly be borne in mind for future investigation. It offers the promise of our being able to see the results of a long period of tight urban organisation, resembling very strikingly, I suspect, the kind of urban settlement built up by Chinese emigrants in many parts of South-East Asia.\n\n93. I have been brought by questions of urban organisation to touch on fishermen. The Tanka were the first group of the New Territories population to be studied by an anthropologist, and there is little likelihood that fishermen, whether land-based or boat people,\n\n* \"Cheung Chau 1850-1898: Information from Commemorative Tablets\" in JHKBRAS, 3, 1963: 88-99. — Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207881, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "254\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nwill be overlooked in future studies. The Hoklo-speaking group has never been looked into in any detail and might well make the subject of an interesting investigation—partly because their spoken language appears to have acted as a barrier which administrators have found it difficult to cross. (There is, however, nothing specially exotic about the language; it can be handled by anybody with some background in one of the Min dialects—Amoy, Chiu Chau, etc.) On the other hand, it seems to me that the accent in studies of fishermen should fall heavily on modern developments. Among boat people there seems to be an increasing drift to the land for dwellings; fishermen have joined in the emigration to the United Kingdom; marriages have been noted, perhaps on a growing scale, between Tanka and landsmen; and there are many signs that the separation of boat people from land-based institutions is likely to diminish progressively. (I do not know enough about the boat people who are not fishermen to include them in my remarks). How these processes are taking place and how the modern fishing industry promotes and reacts to the changes are matters on which both the New Territories Administration and the Co-operative Development and Fisheries Department must have collected a great deal of information, and there is a case to be made for someone to prepare an analysis of the available data as a step towards detailed on-the-spot studies.\n\n94. Fishermen are not the only marginal groups in the New Territories. While great areas of the countryside have undergone economic development it is still possible to walk over tracks which suggest the Ch'ing dynasty rather than the twentieth century into villages where only packets of cigarettes, photographs, and the odd transistor wireless set forbid the illusion that one has stepped back into a fully traditional Chinese community. And in the island settlements the sense of the new world kept at a distance is reinforced by the sea. In reality no community in the New Territories is today isolated, but many, because of their poor communications, are remote, and, given that roads are being planned which will bring new possibilities of marketing crops and attract the attention of outsiders to areas now ignored, there is a need to study communities in the process of being brought closer to the mainstream of contemporary New Territories life. If there had been enough talent immediately available for research I should have suggested that such a study be undertaken at once, but it will probably have to be put aside for a while.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207901, "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "274\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTung Wah as a Political-Judicial Institution\n\nThe Tung Wah Hospital Committee is of particular interest in the relation of a Chinese community to a Colonial Government. It performed an important function in providing self-identity to the community during the early years of the Hospital's history.\n\nThis function is related to the development of social control within Chinese society. In general, there are two levels of such control: central, from the top, represented by the Emperor and supported by the gentry and literati, and local control. In the countryside, local control was represented by clan organization and village councils. In mixed communities, such as cities, some market towns, and fishing villages (such as Cheung Chau - see J.W. Hayes, \"Cheung Chau, 1850-1898\", JHKBRAS, 3(1963), pp. 13-23), by Temple Committees and Kai Fongs.\n\nThe local village organization based upon clan could not be operative within urban Hong Kong with a mixed population drawn from various areas and Chinese language groups. Direct central control in the form of Mandarin officialdom was obviously impossible in a place under British control. To fill the vacuum, institutions grew up which were similar to those found in urban and commercial centres in China: commercial and craft guilds, street associations (Kai-fong), and temple committees. The 1872 Hong Kong Directory lists three Chinese organizations, possibly in the order of their importance: the Chinese Hospital Committee (Tung Wah), the Man-Mo Temple Committee (or, as given in the Chinese designation, the Kai-fong), and the U Lan Procession Committee.\n\nA Chinese article published in translation in 1876 (China Review) gives an account of the origin of these institutions. In 1847, only a few years after the establishment of Hong Kong as an urban centre, two wealthy and prominent members of the community, Loo Aking, the alleged leader of the major criminal syndicate in Hong Kong, and Tam Achoy, a respectable businessman who had lived previously in Singapore and acquired his wealth in Hong Kong initially as a contractor, were connected with the Man Mo Temple. Both had been in Hong Kong since shortly after its occupation by the British. Their association in the building of the Man Mo Temple illustrates the thesis set forth by Mr. Lethbridge that during the early years of Hong Kong's history, the presence of strong Triad Society organization served as a buffer against social control by a foreign government which often seemed to the Chinese as \"bizarre, erratic, at times even hostile, aggressive, and cruel\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208020, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN, 1946\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe purpose of this paper is to record some experiences of a truck journey in early 1946 from Chungking, the wartime capital of the Republic of China, to Yenan, the Headquarters of the 18th Group Army, the Chinese Communist Party and capital of the Kansu-Ninghsia-Shensi Border Region, and back. This three-truck convoy carrying medical supplies was the first delivery to take place for a period of about four years, and a very brief review of the political background is perhaps required to set the scene.\n\nFollowing the Sian incident of December 1936, there were moves towards a united anti-Japanese front between the Nationalist Government (Kuomintang) under Marshal Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists (Kungchangtang). This was followed on July 7, 1937, by the Marco Polo Bridge fighting and the start of the Japanese invasion of the heartland of China. In this period, there was a nominal united command of Kuomintang and Kungchangtang with Marshal Chiang Kai-shek as Supreme Commander. The New Fourth Army, based in Anhwei, had been formed from the Communist guerilla groups left behind in Central China, but friction developed between this and the Kuomintang forces, and in January 1941, it was attacked in South Anhwei and partly destroyed. This marked the end of the united front, and the Kuomintang re-introduced the blockade of the Liberated Areas under 18th Group Army control. These Liberated Areas were basically the provinces of Kansu, Ninghsia, Shensi, Suiyuan, Honan, Hupeh, Hopeh, Shantung, Anhwei, Kiangsu, and Jehol. Much of these areas were also under Japanese occupation of the cities, railways, and roads, but the countryside was effectively under the control of the Liberated Areas Regional Councils.\n\nThe reintroduction of the blockade meant that a proportion of the Kuomintang troops were engaged in this exercise rather than\n\n* Paper delivered to a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch on 31st May, 1977. Mr. Reynolds is head of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208026, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n49\n\nit was mid-winter, the countryside around was bare, brown, and dusty, and many people wore white surgical masks to keep out the fine dust. The hillsides in Yenan and on the way there were all seriously eroded, and there was little sign of the spectacular reclamation work on terracing slopes and damming streams of later years, the result of which can be seen by today's visitors.\n\nOccasions in Yenan\n\nHaving unloaded our cargo, checked the manifests, and visited the hospital, we spent a day servicing the trucks. We were staying at the Guest House, a row of very comfortable caves with a terrace and a courtyard in front. We were in the middle of servicing, with petrol drums and wheels scattered around, ourselves under the trucks greasing and checking, when we were informed that Chairman Mao Tse-tung was coming to see us! The courtyard was rapidly tidied, overalls and dirt removed, and the party went to the ketang to wait. We then discovered that the Chairman had been at the Guest House for some time seeing someone else and had arrived unnoticed while we were under the trucks. We were all introduced and thanked for our assistance and help, to which I replied that this was part of our normal work and not something to earn especial thanks. The impression, which I recorded then, was of great confidence and quiet strength.\n\nTwo or three days later, we were invited to a performance of the well-known opera \"Ta Ming Fu\" (★1⁄2#) part of the \"Liang Shan P'o\" (b) series, which has a very suitable theme. We found ourselves sitting three rows behind the Chairman and other leading Party members, including Marshal Chu Te, all of whom enjoyed themselves as there was a strong cast with some excellent comic character performances. This was, of course, well before the growth of revolutionary opera.\n\nOn one evening, we were entertained by, I think, members of the Lu Hsun Academy of Art (or the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary University). There was a yang ke dance team with a performance extolling improved methods of pest control on crops, some songs, and then dancing for all, mostly folk dances but including some foxtrots and quicksteps played on er hu and pi pa. We were presented with a set of woodcuts by various artists working there, including Zhang Wan, Yan Han, Xia Feng, Gu Yuan, and Weng", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208027, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "50\n\nW. A. REYNOLDS\n\nLiu-Chi. The group we met were lively and interesting, many having been expelled from universities under Kuomintang control. Another evening we were invited to see a film at the American Army Observer Section which was established there under Colonel David Barrett in July 1944. There was also an invitation to mid-day meal with Marshal Chu Te. My memory is that there was not much conversation as Yu Chin-lung found him taciturn, my Chinese was inadequate, and the others were tongue-tied in the presence of the famous soldier. On leaving Yenan we were each presented with a warm woollen blanket of local manufacture (I still have mine) and I was given a painting, which I had uncautiously admired, by the Bureau chief of the Medical Service. I was also presented with a made-to-measure Army uniform complete with cap and badge.\n\nMedical Work in the Border Region\n\nThe day after unloading we were taken to see the hospital named after Doctor Norman Bethune. Plate no. 17 shows the operating theatre. One of the famous 'three constantly read articles' of Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a eulogy of Bethune, delivered on December 21st 1939 soon after his death.\n\nAt the Bethune Memorial Hospital we were shown how supply difficulties had been overcome, including steel dental picks forged from railway line. We asked about medical supplies from the USSR since 1941 and were told that there had been some, perhaps five, plane loads (say 15 to 20 tons). The supplies we had brought included a portable X-ray with a petrol-driven generator.\n\nThe problems of civilian and military medical work in the Border Region are fully described by Margaret Stanley in a current series of articles in Eastern Horizon*. She was a member of the Friends Service Unit (the successor organization in China to the Friends Ambulance Unit) Medical Team 19 which went to work in the area in 1947. She revisited Yenan in 1972 and writes not only of her memories of the medical work but also the contrast between then and now.\n\n* Vol. XVI No. 3, March 1977 & No. 4 April 1977 onwards. There is also a good picture of what life in the Shensi countryside was like to be gained from the accounts given in Gunnar Myrdal's book Report from a Chinese Village. Penguin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208030, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n53\n\nit helped prevent disappearance of vital parts of the trucks (and also the precious cargo) and one did not have to contend with the intelligent West China bed bugs which were liable to infest the inns.\n\nReturn to Chungking\n\nComing through the passes and down into Szechuan the first signs of spring appeared, the delicate pale green of the young willow leaves and the rich red earth contrasting with the dry, dusty, harshness of the Shensi countryside. Most of our passengers had not, one gathered, been to Szechuan before and were seeing all this fabled richness of the province for the first time. Crossing the Fu River ferry at Mienyang brought us into the plains and we came next to Ching Mo Kuan (Green Pines Pass) where the main customs and control station for Chungking was situated. This was another place where we had anticipated difficulty, especially if the negotiations had taken a turn for the worse since we left Yenan two weeks before. We pulled up near the barrier and everyone stayed in the trucks. We kept the engines running while Yu Chin-lung and I took our documents for checking to the duty officer. When asked what passengers we had we truthfully replied \"Forty members of the 8th Route Army\" which he solemnly wrote down and then chopped our pass. We were in the trucks and handing this to the sentry before the officer could report to higher authority. So, much relieved, we drove on to Chungking, off-loaded our passengers outside the city and then returned, via the upper ferry, to our South Bank base. Distance covered about 3200 kilometres in a travelling time of 32 days and, apart from our initial crash, no accidents, and few roadside repairs.\n\nThree days after our return we were again entertained by the 18th Group Army and General Chou En-lai personally thanked us for what we had done. Later we were invited to send medical teams up into the Border Region working directly with the medical authorities there. The FAU/FSU continued after Liberation and the last member left China in 1952.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208032, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH’ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN, KWANGTUNG\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm*\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nThe British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was carved, in three successive steps, from the Chinese county of Hsin-An (新安). These essays represent attempts to reconstruct modes of economic activity which prevailed in this remote county during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reconstruction will eventually serve as the groundwork on which an analysis of mercantile capitalism, in terms of its impact on local Chinese social structure, will be built.\n\nIn the first year of Wan-Li (1573), Hsin-An Hsien was formed from the division of Tung-Kuan Hsien (東莞縣) into two jurisdictions. Except for a brief period during the reign of the Kang-Hsi Emperor, the county remained one of the fourteen counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture throughout Ch'ing. As with most other magistracies in rural imperial China, Hsin-An was characterized by a high degree of self-government. The magistrate seldom intervened in local affairs, and relied heavily on the indigenous social order for the day-to-day administration of the countryside.\n\nThe dominant stratum of the local hierarchical order consisted principally of landlord-gentry patrilineal descent groups, commonly referred to as great clans (大族). Of these clans, the Tangs (鄧) and especially that branch of the clan which resided in Kam Tin (錦田) -- were probably best representative. Much of the data presented was collected during field work into the social history and oral tradition of this Punti \"power brokerage.\"\n\n*\n\nMr. Kamm states, The essays were written in fulfillment of seminar requirements for an A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies-East Asia program. The work is based largely on research undertaken in the New Territories (including a brief stint as coordinator of an NTA-Yuen Long \"oral history\" project in Kam Tin) and in the archives of the Public Records Office, Hong Kong. Writing and editing was supervised by Professor Yang Lien-Sheng of Harvard during late 1974.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe cession of Hong Kong Island was ratified by the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The Kowloon peninsula was added in 1860. Britain obtained the New Territories (on a 99-year lease) in 1898.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208061, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "2\n\n84\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nThe clans and farmers agree that the farmers are absolute owners of the soil in perpetuity, but have been paying money or produce to the clans for generations, which the clans claim to be rent payable to them. The case for the farmers is that the land has always been theirs absolute free from rent, and that the amount paid by them to the clans was the Government land tax.\" p. 23, Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong.\n\n42 Chinese civil administration across the border offers interesting contrasts to the British colonial model. After the fall of Ch'ing, the county was renamed Pao-An (†), and was subsequently divided into seven \"wards\" or ch'ü (E). These wards generally followed the topographical features of the countryside, with the result that tung and ch'u were probably quite homogeneous (the evidence for Sham Chun certainly indicates this). As we noted above, agricultural production within the tung tended to follow specific, if not unique, patterns; the authors of the Kwangtung Nung Yeh Kai-K'uang T'iao-ch'a-pao-kao Shu Hsuan-pien (***)'s chapter on Pao-An link this phenomenon, which they note in the various ch'u, with the relative availability of arable land within the district. Aside from the presence of elements of the police force, the Nam Tau government kept a low profile in the ch'u, and depended on these areas to collect the land tax and hand it over by themselves (see Kwangtung Ch'uan-sheng t'i-fang Chi-yao (✯✯✯****★)), p. 189.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208097, "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": 136, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "120\n\nGREGORY E. GULDIN\n\nethnicity in North Point. Primarily concerned with community and social welfare projects, the Association sponsors performances of Fujianese provincial operas, folk dances and songs; organizes film showings and outings to the countryside, operates health clinics, a Guangdongese language program and a Fujianese discount grocery; and arranges for inexpensive trips back home to Fujian (Zheng Yi 1974:2-4).\n\nWith all these services and activities the Fujian Province Association is a genuinely popular and community-wide organization among North Point's Fujianese. All Fujianese are familiar with at least some of its services and activities whether or not they have ever personally visited its offices or benefited from its services. They know that the Association is there to help Fujianese, and especially Southern Fujianese, with the problems of housing, jobs, travel to Fujian and access to Fujianese products. With its 3000 active members (2.3% of the 1975 Fujianese Hong Kong population) the Association serves as the main organizational terminal through which many of little Fujian's ethnic and social currents are strengthened and channeled.\n\nAlthough not physically located in North Point, but in the old Sheung Wan district of Fujianese and other trading corporations, the Fujian Commercial Association has exerted a guiding force in the Fujianese community's development. In addition to facilitating PRC trade with the Overseas Fujianese of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, the Association has acted as the unofficial coordinator of the other pro-PRC Fujianese organizations in Hong Kong.11 Composed of the wealthy, influential and active members of an already unusually depleted older male population, the Commercial Association is usually the prime mover in the few community activities that do occur.\n\nOne such activity, and one in which the Commercial Association's role is most conspicuous, is in the organization and direction of the annual \"All-Fujianese National Day Banquet.\" Although the Fujian Province Association, the Fujian Middle School and the Fujianese Physical Education Association all co-sponsor this \"patriotic\" affair, it is the Commercial Association that foots the bill for the evening and which handles all questions of etiquette and policy. If anything in Hong Kong comes close to being a \"center of Fujianese power,\" the Commercial Association does, diffuse and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208131, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "154\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nbefore I handed him over to the Police: thus I was able to show that on balance Government had in the end not lost a single cent. Both shroffs were arrested and sentenced later. I then spent a good deal of time, especially on voyages to the islands, drawing up rules for the financial guidance of my successors, but Mr. Wynne Jones, who took over from me in late 1926, thought them too cumbrous, and discarded them.\n\nOne of the subjects which used to excite much feeling in the Chinese countryside was the disturbance of graves. In 1930 this occurred at Tai Wan in Lamma, on the big sand bank later excavated by Father Finn, once a leading local centre of Bronze Age culture. The sand diggers had cut away so much sand that coffins buried 2 feet deep in the bank were sticking out, and their contents could be seen. I at once ordered digging to stop till the coffins could be properly disposed of. Enquiries in the village showed that the villagers were not interested; so it was clear no local cemetery had been violated, and the persons buried had most likely been boat people. I believe the sand contractors got the Tung Wa Hospital authorities to remove the coffins: certainly there was no trouble with any local people. The high level and good preservation of these coffins showed that their burial took place long after the Bronze Age.\n\nOne troublesome class of case was the 'fung shui' difficulty caused by digging a new grave on a hill ridge not far above an older one. If the family owning the latter lost a child or two by smallpox or other complaint, they would conclude that their ancestor was displeased with them for letting a deceased stranger ‘ride' his grave, and so hinder the good influences of the site reaching him. Such cases might have to be settled by removal of the later grave, or by some compensation to the aggrieved family.\n\nOne crime that often came before my court in the office was stealing sand for building. Sand collecting was regulated by a system of permits, allowing junk masters to collect sand at selected beaches, each junk having its own collecting beach. Sand shortage was serious from 1924 to 1926, when concrete was coming into fashion for building, and between the demands of builders, and the interests of New Territory cultivators of land behind the sand banks, there was acute conflict, which sometimes grew into a shooting match. One such conflict took place at Sha Lo Wan in Northwest Lantau; this village was very jealous of the fine sandbank protecting its fields, and had licensed gun owners; so the junk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208138, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n161\n\nd) Just beyond the concrete ford on the right-hand side, note the profile of the krasnozem.\n\ne) Beyond the Gun Club, note the picnic places set out by the Agriculture and Fisheries Department on both sides of the road.\n\n2. Stop A—car park at road junction (altitude ca 480 m.)\n\nThe countryside around the car park is essentially a grassland—probably maintained by repeated fires—which is now being changed in various ways, e.g.\n\n(i) pine trees (Pinus massoniana, a native species) have been planted extensively, and the process of succession is taking place beneath them.\n\n(ii) the adjacent hillside has been planted with Acacia confusa, also native.\n\n(iii) the grassland is being invaded by shrubs, as a stage of natural succession to scrubland.\n\nAt Stop A, note the following:\n\na) Between car park and road, there is a large grave. One may surmise that before the car park was made, the fung shui (feng shui) of this site was probably better than it is now.\n\nb) To the west, below the car park, there is a large patch of even-aged Pinus massoniana. The broad-leafed shrubs beneath the pines are mainly Eurya japonica; this species is typical of scrubland in Hong Kong, and here is flourishing beneath the canopy of the pines.\n\nc) Beside the car park are scrubland species such as Rhodomyrtus tomentosa, Rubus reflexus (cf “blackberry”) and Eurya as well as the fern Dicranopteris linearis; there is also some \"European bracken\" (Pteridium aquilinum). Although the vegetation is moving toward scrubland, the insects are probably mainly grassland forms.\n\nd) The number of insects to be seen is highly dependent on the weather conditions. Many flying insects (butterflies etc.) are temperature-dependent and fly only when the temperature is above a certain minimum value. In grassland, as in other vegetation, the distribution and species of animals will depend on the availability of food. One may distinguish three arbitrary groups—plant eaters, eaters of debris, and predatory animals.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208140, "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": 179, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n163 \n\nneat grave on the far side of the burnt-out area; where the fire may have started. \n\nh) The cutting beside Tai Mo Shan Road (about 100 metres up hill from the car park) shows the parent rock quite well. The soils in this region, and from here to the summit, are red-yellow podzols. \n\ni) Small mammals that have been identified from the adjacent countryside in recent years include: Paguma larvata (masked palm civet or 果子狸), Melogale moschata (ferret-badger or 獾) and Rattus rattus sladeni (Sladen's roof rat or 司氏屋顶鼠(田鼠)). \n\n3. Stop B-car park near summit (altitude ca 700 m.) \n\nOn many days of the year, as on the day of the RAS visit, this site is covered with drifting cloud or mist which undoubtedly increases the effective precipitation. The vegetation here is a grassland, probably maintained by fire and lack of seed etc. of other life forms. However, improvement is feasible, as may be seen from the reasonable growth of planted trees. \n\na) Extensive views can be obtained from this site: see inset on the sketch map. In order to see Deep Bay (后海灣) it is necessary to walk ca 100 m. down the road & on to the knoll beyond the signals hut. \n\nb) To the west of Tsing Yi Island can be seen the badly eroded hills surrounding the Tai Lam Chung (大欖涌) reservoir. These hills are composed of granite of several kinds. Granite weathers much more readily than the volcanic rock of which Tai Mo Shan is composed, so that the hills are denuded of vegetation and are pale brown in color. \n\nc) The sloping terraces on the far hillside and close beside this car park are intriguing because their original purpose is seemingly unknown. However, recent investigation suggests they were concerned with control of water flow, either retention of water or control of run-off; a record of these terraces is being prepared for submission to the JHKBRAS. Tea bushes (Camellia sinensis) were formerly cultivated on Tai Mo Shan and the sloping terraces", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208141, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "164 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nmay have carried tea bushes, though plucking would not have been easy. \n\nd) Note that small trees and shrubs in and around the stream-bed were not seriously damaged by the fire of late 1975. The survival of trees beside water-courses, when the surrounding vegetation is burnt, is one of the bases for the existence of riverine forest or gallery forest in parts of the wet tropics that are influenced by man. \n\n4. The Return Journey \n\nOn the Society's excursion, the party retraced its route to Tsuen Wan. However, it is more interesting to return to Route Twisk, and then proceed northward to Shek Kong. Two other points of interest between the Stop B and Shek Kong will be described below, both of them relating to management of the countryside. \n\nCountryside Management I \n\nAbout 400 metres up Tai Mo Shan Road from Stop A, on the up-hill side of the road, is a site where some effects of fire have been studied. \n\nAbout 1970 the hillside was planted with Acacia confusa so that there was a rough grassland with some shrubs (grassland in transition to scrubland), and with small trees of A. confusa spaced regularly within it. By January, 1976 the Acacia had grown to a height of about 1.5 metres and their crowns covered perhaps 50% of the ground below. In that month a hill fire burnt part of the area so that there was a clear boundary between the burnt and unburnt portions. Obviously, this provided an opportunity to study both the effect of fire on the vegetation and the influence of establishing trees in a grassland. \n\nThe effect of an increasing cover of trees will be considered first by reference to changes taking place at the unburnt site. By October -- November 1976 the canopies covered 56% of the ground beneath and a year later this had increased to about 67% so that, on a sunny day, the amount of sunlight reaching the ground beneath the canopy was about 15% of that reaching the ground surface outside the canopy. Partly as a result of the reduced sunlight, the dry weight of plants beneath the acacias (grasses, herbs etc.) was \n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208142, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n165 \n\nonly about 70% of that outside the canopy. Also, within the Acacia community the windspeed was markedly reduced. \n\nThe initial effect of fire was to kill the leaves and most branches of the Acacia trees, and to remove essentially all of the grasses and herbs, and the plant remains (litter) on the surface. Subsequently, the acacias produced new branches and the understorey plants grew again. Some of these changes can be summarized as follows: \n\nAcacia confusa: % cover by living crown Understorey plants: weight in g. per sq. metre Bare ground (without living plants): % Litter: weight in g. per sq. metre \n\n1976 1977 \n\n5 24 \n\n318 523 \n\n80 38 \n\n56 447 \n\nObviously the vegetation was re-establishing itself rapidly after the fire, but the effect of planting the trees had been put back by roughly four years. As will be suggested below, a cover of trees can improve the countryside in several ways so that their destruction must be prevented as far as possible. \n\nCountryside Management II \n\nIf anyone doubts the long term importance and value of protecting the countryside from damage by fire he should stop at the pavilion on the left hand side of Route Twisk as it descends to Shek Kong (altitude about 400 m.). Below is the air-strip at Shek Kong. To the north, the hills are covered with rough grasses and are yellow or brown in color for much of the year; these hills centre upon Kai Kung Leng (#572 m.). The impression is one of neglect. To the south, the ridges running down from Tai Mo Shan toward Tai Lam Chung are tree-covered and remain green throughout the year; the impression is one of well-being. \n\n(雞公嶺) \n\nThe difference is due simply to the kind of management given to the two regions. The northern hills are outside the forestry management areas of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department and receive little or no protection from fire. By contrast, the ridges to the south have long been given protection from fire and have been planted with trees. Quite apart from the visual improvement, this kind of long-term management gives a tangible return in higher recreational potential, reduced soil erosion, and a better yield of water to reservoirs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208143, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "166\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThese two examples may serve to emphasize the importance of extending provisions for countryside management throughout rural Hong Kong.\n\nLITERATURE CITED\n\nAllen, P. M. and E. A. Stephens, 1971. Report on the geological survey of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer.\n\nDavis, S. G., 1952. The geology of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer.\n\nGrant, C. J., 1960. The soils and agriculture of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer.\n\nHong Kong Government, 1968. Land utilization in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer.\n\nThrower, L. B. (Edit). 1975. The vegetation of Hong Kong structure and change. Proceedings of a Week-end Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch.\n\nCAPTIONS TO PLATES\n\n(repeated here for readers' convenience)\n\nPlate 1. Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (✯✯✯(RA))\n\nA-Flower (diameter ca 4.0 cm).\n\nB-Ripe fruit (length ca 1.5 cm.), the sweet contents of which is squeezed out and eaten. The short hairs which give the name \"tomentosa\" can be seen clearly on the fruits and lower surfaces of the leaves.\n\nPlate 2. Two plants of the scrubland\n\nA-Gordonia axillaris (*)-a member of the tea family, which grows in sites that have long been protected from fire. (diameter of flower up to 7.5 cm.)\n\nB-Dendrotrophe frutescens (syn. Henslowia frutescens) (##) a member of the sandalwood family which parasitizes the roots of other plants. The leaves and stems are yellowish-green.\n\nPlate 3. Cassytha filiformis (A)—a parasite of the aerial parts of scrubland plants.\n\nA-habit of C. filiformis which is here parasitizing R. tomentosa; the flowers and fruits of Cassytha can be seen.\n\nB-enlargement to show haustorial cushions by which the parasite attaches itself to the host.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208297, "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": 21, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "in China we have taken steps to initiate a Society tour to major cultural areas particularly Luo yang (Long Men caves), the Gong Xian caves and Anyang (all in Henan), Da Tong; Tai Yuan and the Yun Gang caves (all in Shansi) and Sian. It seems unlikely that a visit can be arranged before early 1979. Meanwhile interested members can visit Kwangchow and/or Kweilin by joining the regular tours offered by major travel agencies in Hong Kong.\n\nPublications\n\nDuring the year the Journals for both 1975 and '76 were published and distributed, and Dr. Hayes, our editor, has already assembled most of the material for the 1977 Journal. We are very fortunate to have Dr. Hayes as our editor. Editing requires a great deal of time and work and despite his own heavy responsibilities as Town Manager for Tsuen Wan he has continued to work to bring our Journals up to time on publication. This has been no mean effort. I would also like to take this opportunity of congratulating Dr. Hayes on the publication of his own book based on his Ph.D. thesis and entitled The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside,\n\nThe Photographic Survey\n\nWork is also continuing on our intended publication of a book of annotated photographs of Hong Kong, in connexion with the Photographic Survey project of the Society. For the benefit of our more recent members, this survey was started in 1974 with the object of making a photographic record of Hong Kong as it appears today and before all the older buildings disappear beneath the swell of redevelopment. This record includes not only buildings but also street scenes and shots of such everyday sights—but for how long one cannot say—as hawkers' stalls, small workshops, fortune-tellers' booths. Such things have of course been photographed before, but rarely with full documentation of date or place. Work on the Survey has been greatly delayed since the departure in 1976 of Mrs. Edmunds who was responsible for organizing the files of prints and negatives. We have been fortunate, however, in finding two new volunteers to take over: Mrs. Mona Davies and Mrs. Maurisette Mellor, to both of whom I take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude. The collection is now taking shape. Nine schedules have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208351, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "ANCESTORS IN THE SPRING\n\nTHE QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\nGöran AIMER*\n\nİ. Guessing at China\n\nThe study of traditional Chinese society is a multidisciplinary task of many facets. The enterprise is of a general historical nature as it aims at a reconstruction and understanding of a civilization which is part of the past. The study of China has seen an exciting cross-fertilization of styles and methods of investigation. Recent decades have brought about a tremendous development of the knowledge of Chinese traditional social life, although the formidable size of the undertaking explains why our knowledge is still fragmentary and in many respects unsystematic. What then is the place of anthropology in this broad field of enquiry? There can, of course, be no simple answer to that question and anthropologically minded students of Chinese society will offer, and have offered, widely different opinions. One possible contribution, which I will advocate here, is that the anthropologist could provide 'anthropological' readings of the source material, which is shared property of all disciplines involved in the study of China.\n\nFrom the point of view of the anthropologist our knowledge of the traditional rural society is very scanty indeed. And yet there is no immediate remedy for this state of affairs. The reason for this is partly to be found in the nature of the Chinese documents and sources on which the anthropologist will have to rely. Sometimes we obtain very full and detailed descriptions of aspects of social life, often we find rich prescriptions for various social undertakings, but generally speaking we will have to content ourselves with glimpses rather than full records of rustic life. Quite often, notes on life in the Chinese countryside are of an anecdotal character. There is, however, a vast amount of interesting data contained in such documents as local gazetteers, kin group chronicles, and ethnographic essays. Local 'gentry', despite their Confucian education, were often keen ethnographers eager to describe and sometimes boast about\n\n* Professor Aijmer, a previous contributor to this Journal, teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208366, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "74\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nconnection between the rice growth cycle, the agricultural activities and the grave ancestors, a connection suggested already by the information from Wuchang and Chongyang, quoted above, that grave worship was conducted on She ri.\n\n9. Willow Twigs.\n\nIn Wuling people inserted willow twigs over their doors and also carried willow twigs in their hair. There was a term for this custom: neng pixie 'ability to punish evil'. The same convention was observed in other places in the Dongting area, like Taoyuan,80 Hanzhou,81 Jingshan,82 Chongyang, where it was called 'nun lo'83 'tender willow', and Yingshan.84 It seems as if the twigs were protective and their function was to guard the house, or doorways, and the individuals living behind them. It is hard to say against what willow provided protection. It is interesting, though, to note that willow twigs were used in Jiangling on the full moon day of the first moon when, again, they were inserted above the doors.85\n\n10. Strolling in the Wilderness and Treading on the Green.\n\nSeveral chroniclers report that Qingming was an occasion for strolls and wanderings away from built-up areas. These excursions may well be seen in connection with the visits to the graves, the latter being situated outside the villages. Such ramblings in the countryside are recorded from the prefecture Changde (around Wuling),86 Hanzhou,87 Chongyang,88 and Wuchang.89 From the latter two places it is also reported that men and women 'tread on the green', ta qing, in connection with their strolls in the 'wilderness'. The latter term seems to be a name for strolling and eating al fresco. Earlier I have interpreted this practice as a feature which stresses periphery as contrasted with centre, the latter being emphasized, for instance, at Duanwu. It is interesting to note that the chronicler of Changde says that there were no such customs in that area as ta qing or qui qian 'swinging'. Swinging is reported as part of the Lantern Festival in Zhongxiang,91 Swings are referred to in a Liang dynasty calendar, Jingchu suishi ji,92 in connection with the Cold Food festival. Ta qing was part of the Flower Dawn celebrations in Zhongxiang,93 in this area generally observed on the second full moon of the lunar year. It is probable that a number of notions were expressed in such\n\n90\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208440, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "148\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nevent of threatening floods to repair embankments.1\n\nTaxation, the primary interest of the government, is also carried out with the help of the Ti-pao. This individual is supposed to know all about every bit of land owned by the members of his village, and the exact tax set upon it. This is no easy matter since most farmers own many small bits of land scattered hit-or-miss over the countryside. Under the Ch'ing dynasty the land tax was set for all time in 1713.2 This does not mean that in reality taxes did not increase steadily, for the burdens seem constantly to be getting heavier.\n\nThis increase was affected by several means. In the first place the permanent settlement takes no account of the cost of collection. This cost is a matter of yearly battle between the collector and the land owners; but once a precedent is set it becomes an accepted part of the tax thereafter, and is merely the starting basis on which further additions will be placed. A second manner in which accretions are made rests on the fact that originally all or part of the tax was to be paid in kind. The magistrate, however, often demands a cash settlement, and places the conversion rate well above the market price of grain. Another method is for the magistrate arbitrarily to fix the conversion rate between cash-coin and the tael at a point highly unfair to the land owner who has only cash-coin to pay in. By these and other devices Morse reports that the permanently settled land tax of 1713 is often increased to over five times the statutory amount.3\n\nThe Ta Ch'ing Lü Li (׆†##1) describes the correct machinery of collection as follows:\n\n[ Jamieson, George; Chinese Family and Commercial Law, p. 72. A good account of the modern working of a modified form of corvée is found in Smith, Arthur H.; Village Life in China, p. 230-231. Also, Boulais; op. cit., p. 161-162, 181-185, 213-214.\n\n2 Morse, Hosea B.; The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, p. 86. (Jamieson; op. cit., p. 94, wrongly gives 1711 as the date of permanent settlement, but this is the date of the census which was made the basis for taxation.) This permanent settlement had several important results. In the first place, it practically did away with the old method of taking the census of the number of people liable to a poll tax, and led to the establishment of modern census taking of the whole population, as started under Ch'ien Lung. Secondly, the establishment of an immutable poll-tax led to its amalgamation with the land tax for ease and saving in collection. Huang, Han Liang; The Land Tax in China, p. 99-100.\n\n3 Morse, op. cit., p. 87.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208548, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "194\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nNew Territories to find beef cattle that could be sold to slaughter houses in Kowloon City. But in the countryside, livestock never quite recovered its pre-War level.90\n\nThe fishermen, however, were apparently less adversely affected. Mr. Shek Kwong Lin, a fisherman from Kau Lau Wan, remembered that fish were plentiful during these years.\n\nMr. Chung of Kau Sai said that he went to sea as he did before the War, and although the Japanese sometimes came up to inspect his boat, they did not greatly disturb him. He continued to salt fish, and sold them in Shaukiwan as he did before. At Nam Wai, the fleet of forty boats remained active throughout the occupation, and Mr. Shing Uen On remembered how fish-mongers gathered at the bund outside the village to buy fish from them. Mr. Lok Kau Kei was possibly among these fish-mongers. He remembered that he collected a lot of fish and hired porters to take them into Kowloon. The porters carried back rice on the return trip. Mr. Chung P'oon also started a shop in Nam Wai in 1942 and sent out a boat at 5.00 every morning to collect fish from the fishermen. He also sent his fish into Kowloon, and sold it to wholesalers in a co-operative market in Kowloon City. Fish fetched a dollar for several catties at that time. Mr. Cheung Wing of Wo Mei also bought a boat during the occupation, collected fish from the fishermen, and hired people to carry it into Kowloon City. He paid cash to the fishermen in return for fish.91\n\nIn Sai Kung Market, life was very difficult in the first few months of the occupation. After the bandits, Mr. Chau T'in Shang remembered that many people sold the wooden beams of the houses they were living in because they had nothing else that they could sell. Gradually, as the harvest came in, conditions improved. Mr. Chau successfully put away his reserves in Lung Mei and Tso Wo Hang. His family continued to live in their own house in the Market until the last year of the occupation, when the Japanese took it and turned it into a brothel. Mr. Lok Kau Kei also accumulated some reserve rice, which he stored in the coffins that were sold in the Market!92\n\nSome time in 1942, to meet the rice shortage, the Japanese Government began rationing. Every one was entitled to purchase", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208754, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "184\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nusually built by the people of the local community by means of public subscription. Consequently, they are ruled by a locally selected committee headed by a chairman. Although on special occasions Taoist priests or Buddhist monks and nuns are invited to perform the appropriate rituals, still, these priests are outsiders and have no authority in running the temple affairs. They are paid for their services and once the rituals are over, they return home or to their own temple.16\n\nA large number of (smaller) temples in the cities and in the countryside have their own mediums, used by the locally worshipped gods. Their function in the local community varies, but is often very significant for the well-being of the whole group or of individual families.\n\nEach temple has its own yearly celebration (paipai) and occasionally a grandiose sequence of rituals: the chiao (rite of cosmic renewal). The latter takes place more often nowadays: some temples have it every 5 years. Many (usually smaller) temples organize yearly pilgrimages (chin-hsiang) to their mother-temple. Large temples, on the other hand, specialize in receiving these groups and have built accommodation facilities for their numerous pilgrims.\n\nBesides these special temple rituals, people may go and visit the temple at will. Some days there are numerous visitors (1st and 15th day of the month); at other times, the noise of falling divination blocks is only rarely heard in the shrine. The worship performed by individuals is standardized and appears as a purely ritualistic performance. Not often one sees people kneeling down and concentrated in mental prayer.\n\nTemple visits very often include consultations of the temple oracles or a person-to-person interview with a divination specialist having a small desk on the temple premises.\n\nAlthough the rise of an industrial society has greatly influenced all aspects of life in Taiwan, religious life in the countryside and in many urban centers still involves the whole local population. However, in many city temples, temple activities continue to flourish, but the people involved in worship are not necessarily living in the neighbourhood. The devotees of a Buddhist temple may be spread out in an even wider area: they visit the temples of their choice rather than the one that happens to be their own community temple.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208921, "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-1980", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE\n\nB. ENGLISH\n\n51\n\nAijmer, G.\n\n1967 \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society.\" Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 7:42-79.\n\nAnderson, R. T.\n\n1971 \"Voluntary Association in History.\" American Anthropologist, 73(1): 209-222.\n\nBanton, M.\n\n++\n\n1968 \"Voluntary Associations: Anthropological Aspects.\" In D. L. Sills, (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 16, pp.358-379. New York: Macmillan.\n\nCh'en, T.\n\n1939 Emigrant Communities in South China. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh.\n\nCoser, L. A.\n\n1956 The Functions of Social Conflict. Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe.\n\nDavis, S. G.\n\n1962 \"The Rural-Urban Migration in Hong Kong and Its New Territories.\" Geographical Journal, 128(3): 328-333.\n\nFallers, L. A. (ed.)\n\n1967 Immigrant and Associations. The Hague: Mouton.\n\nFoster, G. M. et al (eds).\n\n1978 Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology, Studies in Social Anthropology. New York: Academic Press.\n\nFreedman, M.\n\n++\n\n1960 \"Immigrations and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth Century Singapore.\" Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3(1):25-49.\n\n1961 \"Overseas Chinese Association: A Comment.\" Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3(3):478-480.\n\n1963 \"A Chinese Phase in Social Anthropology.\" The British Journal of Sociology, 14(1),\n\nGamble, S. D.\n\n1929 Peking: A Social Survey. New York: George H. Doran.\n\nHayes, J.\n\n1977 The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside. Hamden, Conn., Archon-Dawson.\n\nHeidhues, M. F. S.\n\n1974 Southeast Asia's Chinese Minorities. Hawthorn, Australia: Longman.\n\nHodder, H. W.\n\n1953 \"Racial Groupings in Singapore.\" Malayan Journal of Tropical Geography 1:25-36.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209000, "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-1980", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "130\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthat he had not seen before, particularly in the countryside. He was surprised by what he saw. His closest Chinese friends in Peking and Shanghai had not told him about such things. Perhaps they were unaware of them. China is a large country.\n\nMy experience and his raise an important question about methodology, about epistemology. How can we learn what is really happening in China? The answer is: not by going there. By going there one can learn much, particularly if one is lucky (as I was). If one has spent many years reading about China, one can learn particularly much. One is able to observe what is meaningless to those with no background in Chinese studies. My own visit in May helped me to understand a great deal that I had not understood before. It also confirmed a great deal that I had understood correctly. Chinese friends have admired my article, \"The Chinese Art of Make-Believe,\" published in the May 1968 Encounter. One Chinese friend gave me the ultimate compliment: \"I do not see how you, who are not Chinese, could have written this article.\"\n\nThere are many reasons why it has been hard to learn much about China by going there. Before 1977 there were too many Potemkin villages, designed to make a desired impression on the visitors to whom they were shown. More important is the fact that at any time in the past two millennia the people in China's principal cities have tended to be poorly informed about life in the countryside. So far as I know, every major revolution has started in the countryside. Equally important is the Chinese preference for talking about the way things are supposed to be rather than about the way they actually are — the preference for orthodoxy. All of us prefer orthodoxy in certain situations. But for us it is less natural to let our preference lead us into make-believe.\n\n——\n\nFor example, the abbot of Chin Shan told me in 1960 that it lay in the middle of the Yangtse River. He was very firm about this. But others had told me how they had walked on foot to the monastery gate. I confronted the abbot with their statements. He was indignant. “I did not tell you a lie,” he said. “Chin Shan is in the middle of the river. It is true that before the years when I was abbot the river had changed its course and silted up on the south side of Chin Shan.” The orthodox location of the monastery was still in the middle of the Yangtse, which had been changing its course, back and forth, for centuries. Why pick the years after 1900 as the time to locate the monastery?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209037, "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-1980", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "BOOK LISTS\n\n167\n\nFor these reasons the work is thoroughly recommended. It is to be hoped that, when he finds time, Dr. Baker will produce similar work on the city, which is just as fascinating as the countryside. A last word of thanks goes to Mr. Robin Hutcheon, Editor of the South China Morning Post, who saw a good thing and made it all possible.\n\nOne regret perhaps? Each volume cites its own guide to reference books and the third has a useful index to the whole, but I'm lazy and would have liked page references to help me track down the originals of quoted passages.\n\nHong Kong, 1981.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nCHINESE WALLED CITIES: A COLLECTION OF MAPS FROM SHINA JŌKAKU NO GAIYŌ, Benjamin E. Wallacker, Ronald G. Knapp, Arthur J. Van Alstyne, Richard J. Smith, eds. (1979, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press). 266 pp.\n\nThe reader who wants one hundred sketch maps of traditional Chinese walled cities—as they stood in the 1930's—will find them in this book.\n\nLest this brief statement seems to do less than justice to a volume of 266 pages, let me quote from the description of Chinhsiang (page 130) in Shantung: \"The city is 45 kilometers southwest of Chi-ning. Population is given as 3,000 households and 15,000 individuals.\" On the right-hand side of the page, there is also a drawing of the city wall, noting that it is 8.0 m. high, 3.0 m. wide at the top, and 10.0 m. at the bottom. On the map of Chin-hsiang, you can also see that there is a north gate, an east gate, a south gate, and a west gate.\n\nThe Introduction notes that these maps were made by Major Ishiwari Heizō of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces in China, and were originally published by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1940 under the title Shina Jōkaku no Gaiyō (General outline of the walled cities of China). The editors added a few photographs to break up the monotony, but no extra research.\n\nChinese University of Hong Kong, 1980.\n\nDAVID FAURE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209039, "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-1980", "page_number": 201, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "BOOK LISTS\n\n169\n\nference on Records, Salt Lake City, Utah, 12-15 August 1980 \"Chinese Clan Genealogies and Family Histories: Chinese Genealogies as Local and Family Histories\", published in Volume 11 of its Proceedings, \"Asian and African Family and Local History\". These are from the Tsuen Wan sub-district of the N.T., mostly in manuscript. I have also collected on Lantau Island. In all cases a xerox copy has been taken and the original has been returned to its owner.\n\n(b) Handbooks of family and social practice\n\nThese are available in printed and manuscript form. Those purchased and included in this list are a sample of the types that come onto the local book market.\n\n(c) Almanacs\n\nI have collected modern editions of various Hong Kong publishers from 1949 on, by the following firms: 聚寶樓, 廣經堂, 永經堂, 福安堂 and 明記. Besides these, I have also purchased the listed earlier works, variously from Hong Kong, Canton-Fatshan, and Shanghai.\n\n(d) Collections of couplets for every occasion\n\nThis was a popular field, judged by the numbers seen.* The attached list shows how Shanghai publishers took over collections earlier published in Canton.\n\n(dd) Riddles and Proverbs\n\nI attach a few titles from this interesting sub-group. \"Proverbs are not devoid of attractiveness and charm, especially as they often appear as couplets, sometimes rhymed\", writes Patrick Pichi Sun in his foreword to Seven Hundred Chinese Proverbs translated by Henry H. Hart (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1937). Riddles were\n\n* They abounded in the towns and countryside. An interesting collection of couplets from buildings of the Ch'ing period in the Sha Tou Chen sub-district of Nan Hai county of Kwangtung is given at pp. 101-110 of the 36th anniversary bulletin of the Nam Hoi Sha Tau Association, Hong Kong, published by the Association in 1964. Couplets by famous Cantonese are featured in two articles by Chin Yung (A) entitled TSLA LO in Vol. 12, Nos. 1 and 2 of a Taiwan publication ✯✯ A, 71st Year of Chinese Republic, 31st March and 30th June (1982).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209156, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 45\n\nIntellectual conditions which are implied by the modernizing process in Taiwan should go hand in hand with significant changes in religion. The fact that there are connections between social and religious change is too obvious to be doubted. What is less obvious are the kinds of religious changes which are connected with modernization in Taiwan. To be sure, one tendency has long been observed, i.e., secularization. Yang has given an excellent analysis of secularizing tendencies in modern China which can also be applied to Taiwan. Moreover, it can easily be seen that the factors mentioned above do in fact undermine the social base of many traditional forms of religion. The socio-economic frame of many traditional religious activities has been the peasant village community. To the same degree that industrialization reduced the relative importance of agriculture, the religious rites and festivals which were strongly related to the cycle of the farming seasons lost their significance for the society as a whole. Urbanization, a seemingly inevitable concomitant of industrialization, brought many people to the fast-growing cities, which lack the intimate social contacts of the villages. While in the countryside residential community and religious community were nearly identical, symbolized in the village temple; in the modern cities, new social relationships are formed, which normally do not coincide with the residential neighbourhood. As a result, the traditional religious life which formed an integral part of the village community loses its social base and is weakened. Finally, cultural contact in Taiwan has taken place to a degree that it can properly be named 'westernization'.\n\nWesternization in Taiwan has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the integration in the capitalist world economy, which resulted in a socio-economic readjustment after the model of the Western industrial nations. On the other hand, there is the strong impact of the Western intellectual tradition, above all of science, but also of philosophy, political thinking, and religion. The rationalistic and materialistic coloration of Western science and philosophy induces many well-educated people to disregard traditional forms of religion as superstitious. At the same time, the Chinese cultural heritage is no longer the sole repository of social and cultural values; people are turning more and more to Western ways of life, which are fashionable especially among the middle and upper classes in the cities.\n\nThere cannot be any doubt that industrialization, urbanization, and westernization affected many traditional forms of religion and diminished their structural as well as their functional position in Taiwan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209248, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING\n\n137\n\nWhen it does occur, however, the construction of one's Shui-sheung-yan identity as something ethnic, not constrained by one's occupation as fisherman, waiter or student, permits a cool and instrumental approach to education, that is neither a frantic embrace of the hope of escape and social mobility, nor sullen submission to imposed indoctrination. The villagers of Ap Chau value literacy for the pursuit both of their religion and of business. In Scotland they organise voluntary Chinese classes for children.\n\nThe F.M.O. school in Ap Chau stands a little further up the hill than the houses, with two classrooms, living quarters for the staff, a physical exercise ground, and 40 pupils. Among them, living with grandparents, are three children who have actually been sent back from Scotland by their parents, that they might have the advantage of being brought up in Ap Chau - a substantial vote of confidence in the school! Little or no attempt was made by the villagers to convert the teachers; but there was a clear relationship of friendship and respect between villagers and teachers, instanced in such things as the school's fine collection of marine specimens. In some of the other schools in remote locations it was apparent that a much greater social distance was maintained between teachers and parents.\n\nNonetheless, in both of the island schools that I visited, Ap Chau as well as Kau Sai, the teachers were very frank about their hopes that sooner rather than later they would be given a position in one of the F.M.O. schools in the urban area, such as that at Aberdeen. Complaint was made of the isolation of the island and the fact that some of the teachers had houses and families away in the urban areas, that they could visit only at weekends. Even so, neither teachers, nor F.M.O. officials felt that if married quarters were provided, it would lead teachers to inflict also on their families so remote a dwelling-place; it would mean, for example, that their wives would not be able to work. Although most Hong Kong residents complain how overcrowded the territory is, nonetheless, they still prefer the urban area to the empty mountainous greenery (and some recently deserted rice fields) which, contrary to general belief, covers most of the land area of the territory of Hong Kong. It seems regrettable, however, that more effort has not been made to find teachers who take as much pleasure in fresh air, sea and countryside as do the \"remote islanders\" themselves, especially when one bears in mind that “remote” in this context still means no more than 3 or 4 hours journey from the centre of the urban area - less when the underground railway has been fully developed. Perhaps, too, such", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209465, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "100 \n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT \n\nat the operations level consisted almost entirely of hastily trained students or political cadres, amateur in approach and guerrilla in methods of work. Thus, while the Chinese Communists may have had some intellectual appreciation of the need for formal laws and institutions, the slightest excuse in the name of survival was sufficient for a reversion to revolutionary expediency.3 Moreover, Mao Zedong himself, with his hatred for bureaucratization and emphasis on the mass line, was never willing to consider law any more than a mere tool of the revolution, to be used or rejected as changes in the political scene dictated.\n\nThe basic guidelines for the new China were set out in a series of Mao's speeches and writings involving his concept of \"New Democracy,\" culminating in his essay \"On the People's Democratic Dictatorship\" released on June 30, 1949 just before the founding of the new People's Republic. In this latter document in particular, Mao does not mince words; good people belonging to the four classes of the New Democracy (workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie) would be entitled to democratic rights, people belonging to the enemy classes (landlords and bureaucratic capitalists) would be subjected to repression and dictatorship.\n\nWhen Communist forces took over the country in 1948-49, local areas first came under military control commissions. In the cities these brought together \"conferences of all circles\" which formed people's governments beginning at the local level and then expanding upwards. In the countryside peasant associations formed the basic units which were to conduct land reform and form the bases for local governments. As local people's governments developed, powers were increasingly turned over to them by the military control commissions. However, the military control commissions retained power in all cases affecting security through their public security forces. The military control commissions also continued to maintain military tribunals in some areas for trying counter-revolutionary cases as late as 1954. People's Courts were formed immediately following 1949, largely in accordance with the demands of the situation and types of personnel available. In Shanghai, for example, a new People's Court was constituted by giving some 200 former judicial personnel and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209469, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "104\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\nof presenting their opinions to the Party. The opportunity was too much for judicial workers to pass up, and the speeches which followed were often extremely vitriolic. Almost every aspect of existing judicial practice came under attack, particularly the role played by the Party. The editor of the Association's journal, Zhengfa yanjiu, demanded that high Communist cadres “get down out of their sedan chairs\". Some of the more important demands presented, as reported by the New China News Agency on May 29, 1957, included: 1) reform of law schools and the broadening of legal education to include such subjects as international law, which had been neglected under the Communists; 2) relaxation of the dictatorship and stress on the protection of democratic privileges; 3) immediate codification of the laws which were said in many fields to be entirely lacking or so vague they could not be used as a basis for sound legal judgments; 4) elimination of mass movements which usurped the function of the courts; 5) assertion of judicial independence and elimination of Party interference in judicial matters. What was even more surprising was that among the strongest critics were members of the Party, including Jia Qian, chief judge of one of the two criminal divisions of the Supreme Court. In spite of the highly emotional language used in expressing these demands, there was little questioning of the basic leadership role of the Party in society at large. Yet, when the counterattack came in the context of the well-known Anti-Rightist Movement two weeks later, it soon became clear that the Party was going to interpret these demands in that light. Extensive purges followed. Many leading judicial figures were declared “rightists” and relieved of their posts and some were sent to the countryside for reform through labour.\n\nThe attack on the \"rightists\" continued throughout the rest of the year and on into the spring of 1958. The arguments that filled the law journals during these months indicated a complete reversal of the former trend toward an independent judicial system and its attendant professionalism. The anti-rightist arguments of this period are well represented in a January 19, 1958 radio speech of Wu Defeng, Vice-President of the Chinese Political Science and Law Association. Wu presented a series of statements which he claimed represented the views of the \"rightists\" along with his replies:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209473, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "108\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\nwere usually removed and their activities closely controlled by whatever leftist faction happened to be in control at the moment. At this time, the procuratorate was eliminated, as had been the Ministry of Justice in 1959. One of the most important developments during this period was the expansion in the cities of so-called non-criminal sanctions, generally ranging from warnings to three years reform through labour, imposed by local mediation or residents' committees in conjunction with the local police station. The mediation of neighbourhood disputes and the handling of petty local crime and anti-social behaviour by properly supervised local institutions has been, in principle, one of the more constructive developments in China since the Revolution. However, during the Cultural Revolution a vast expansion of informal and arbitrary punishment, including beatings and long-term imprisonment or deportation to the countryside, was instituted by Red Guard and other leftist groups operating in such places as schools, factories, government organizations. These leftist groups merely charged their victims with being \"rightists\" and then proceeded to take any suppressive action that seemed desirable to them.\n\nViolence and factionalism reached such proportions that in September 1967 the Army was ordered to restore order, but major outbreaks continued to occur throughout 1968 and into 1969. In April 1969 the Ninth Party Congress was held, this marking the official end of the Cultural Revolution, and though some semblance of stability began to emerge thereafter, tension throughout the society continued, especially as many purged Party officials were returned to office and the split between Mao and Lin Biao intensified. During the early 1970s, the Party machinery was restored and under the leadership of Zhou En-lai the country seemed to be entering a new period of stability. However, even after the death of Lin Biao, the leadership remained divided, with the Cultural Revolution forces now being represented by what was later to be called the Gang of Four. It was not until January 1975 that the NPC met to pass a new Constitution designed to formalize the changes in China's political and social life over the past twenty years. According to the new Constitution, the People's Republic was no longer a \"people's democratic state,\" but a \"socialist state of the dictatorship of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209662, "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": 319, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n297\n\n北\n\n* H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, Sheung Shui (London, Frank Cass, 1968) 79-83, 128 for details.\n\n'James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975) mentions the San Tin Village watch at 27, 42, 177, 183 but gives no details of its organization.\n\n5 Useful comparative information about the night watch in villages in Hopei, Shansi, Shantung and Hunan is given at pp. 109-112 of Sidney D. Gamble, North China Villages, Social, Political and Economic Activities before 1933 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963). See also pp. 22-23 of his article \"Hsin Chuang, A Study of Chinese Village Finance\" (1907-1931) in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, VIII (1944-45), 1-33. Ordinarily the paid watch, sometimes replaced or augmented by volunteers, operated in these villages from the first of the tenth month until the end of the twelfth month, and sometimes into the second lunar month of the following year, whereas in the Hong Kong region it seems to have been permanent. However, more information is needed on this point, as there are cases here, such as Muk Min Ha, Tsuen Wan, where the former Village Watch was active mainly in the winter quarter.\n\nVILLAGE RULES; FIRECRACKERS IN THE SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES AND IN TOKEN OF FINES\n\nIn rural society in the Hong Kong Region, there was until very recently and certainly up to the discontinuance of the padi farming that was the basis of subsistence agriculture a great reliance on local customary rules. These were generally unwritten, and carried in the heads of the elders, available for use when required. They were generally known to, and accepted by, the villagers, who would know when rules were being infringed or broken, and the appropriate remedy or penalty. Sometimes the rules would be put in writing, and in matters deemed to be important would be placed on a wooden board in the community temple or cut on a stone tablet let into the wall of the temple. Copies of the rules would often be written into the handbooks held by the village scholars. Copies of individual rules were also, on occasion, written out and posted up in a public place for all to see.\n\nThis much is generally known, but one aspect of local practice in connection with the settlement of disputes that has come to my attention in the Hong Kong countryside is not so well covered in modern studies of village life in China. This was the provision for the letting off of firecrackers, to an appropriate but always", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209711, "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": 368, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "346\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nanything else known to me. This book is a real mine of information for all interested in traditional China. The second value of Things Chinese is the short bibliography attached to each major article: this makes the book an indispensable index to all other early European books on China a feature of great value.\n\nThe Hong Kong Guide 1893 and Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China are much slighter, although both contain a wealth of comment on Hong Kong and its surrounding countryside at the turn of the century. The most interesting point from these books to me is not the “quaintness\" of the picture given of Hong Kong a century ago, but its pride in itself, in its commercial drive and success, and in its modern and metropolitan facilities. It is obvious that much of modern Hong Kong's self-image is very deep-rooted in the city!\n\nThe only criticism of these volumes (with the exception of The Hong Kong Guide 1893 and Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China) is their unwieldy and bulky format. The works are all long anyway, but become impossibly thick when printed on heavy paper and bound in boards. Things Chinese in this reprint is a good 3 inches thick - a full half inch thicker than the Concise Oxford Dictionary and awkward and cumbersome to use in consequence. Thinner paper and a less bulky book would surely be more desirable, even if this would result in a somewhat less \"turn-of-the-century\" feel.\n\n-\n\nThese volumes are strongly recommended to all students of traditional China, they are still today of very great practical value, as well as being of unfailing interest. I for one await the next volumes in the series with eager anticipation.\n\nP. H. HASE\n\nPeter Y. L. Ng and Hugh D. R. Baker, New Peace Country: A Chinese Gazetteer of The Hong Kong Region, Hong Kong University Press, 1983\n\nIt has taken a long time to produce a work on the historical background to Hong Kong. Nearly 90 years ago, E. J. Eitel published his Europe in China. This was in fact a detailed history of British Hong Kong which gave scant notice to the\n\n!\n\ni", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209877, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "114\n\n$\n\ntemple's immediate vicinity take their place? Practically from the start, for example, the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road, Tai Ping Shan, became identified with a city-wide group of merchant and trade guild elite figures that, by 1870, had been further elevated by its incorporation into the management of the newly established Tung Wah Hospital, an institution that could speak for all Chinese in Hong Kong. But was this to imply that all new urban and suburban temples and shrines were subject to merchant and trade guild elite control? Was a new, elite-leadership pattern imposed from the outset in all localities by the leaders of the merchant community in what, after all, was not a very large or widely dispersed population, given the tendency to congregate near the workplace in the central districts of Victoria? Or did any new urban and suburban village-type shrines and temples emerge according to the well-established self-managing patterns of the countryside from which most of the new population had come? And did the older, pre-British temples also fall under the sway of this merchant elite, or did they continue under their own local management?\n\nThis article endeavours to answer these questions, being mostly concerned with the new communities of British Hong Kong, established after the island passed under British rule in 1842. The first of the communities studied was located on the small island of Ap Lei Chau, a coastal market centre and boat people's anchorage on the south side of Hong Kong Island and was centred on a long-established temple. Five others were geographically organized inter-dialect communities organized to arrange the worship of street shrines serving their localities. Three of these shrines were located in the older and well-populated western part of early urban Hong Kong; the others were in the Shau Kei Wan area on the eastern part of the island, in what were originally scattered small communities of vegetable farmers, stone cutters, boat builders and shopkeepers settled along the shore and on the hillsides, just outside the long-established fishing port.\n\nIn every one of these cases the inspiration and continuance of these shrines was due to local initiatives and local management, perhaps because their universally desired end — namely, communal good fortune and prosperity under the protection of the gods was the concern of residents in each place.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209896, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "133\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See John A. Brim \"Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong\" in Arthur P. Wolf (ed) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974) pp. 93-103. More recently, David Faure has given examples from the eastern New Territories in articles published in this Journal. See pp. 76-85 of \"Hong Kong and China in the Village World” in Vol. 21(1981); pp. 172-179 of “Saikung, the Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\" in Vol. 22(1982); and his Note (with Lee Lai-mui) \"The Po Tak Temple in Sheung Shui Market\" in the same Volume, pp. 271-279. A book is forthcoming.\n\n2 This is the theme of my own studies, particularly in The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn, Archon Books with Dawson, Folkstone, 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983), hereafter Hayes 1977 and Hayes 1983.\n\n3 A study of one of the smaller villages of Hong Kong island, Tai Tam Tuk, is given at pp. 61-73 with 250-255 of Hayes 1983. This provides some information on the coastal market centre, Shau Kei Wan, to which the villagers went regularly (pp. 65-6 and 253) but, generally speaking, this entire subject is still badly under researched.\n\n4 The Hong Kong government's census returns, printed in the Hong Kong Government Gazette from 1853 (and before that in the China Mail into which government notifications were placed) show the rapid growth of population, almost all of it newly urbanized. G.B. Endacott's A History of Hong Kong (London, Oxford University Press, 1958) devotes half its length to the first thirty years and gives population figures at pp. 64-66, 85, 98, 116 and 125 for this period. The population rose from 20,338 in 1848 to 121,825 in 1865.\n\n5 See Revd. Carl T. Smith \"The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong\" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter JHKBRAS) 11(1971), pp. 74-115.\n\n6 The native place of the Chinese land population of the Colony was overwhelmingly Kwangtung province (227,615 out of 234,443 at the 1901 Census, with the population of the newly acquired New Territory taken separately. The Report was published in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) 1901, No. 39 of 1901. See paras. 23-24, and the detailed breakdown of origin by districts of the province at Table XI. This detail is not available for earlier printed reports and is included here to indicate the diverse origins of the urban population, most of whom may be presumed to have been from the rural countryside of Kwangtung.\n\n7 \"It is not regarded as a promising missionary station, because it is the resort of the lowest class of the natives\", wrote Revd. William Aitchison, a newly arrived American missionary to China, in 1854, a view imbibed from English and American Colleagues at Hong Kong, Revd. Charles P. Bush, Five Years in China The Life and Observations of Revd. William Aitchison, Late Missionary to China (Philadelphia, Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1865) pp. 91-2.\n\n8 Ap Lei Chau or Aberdeen Island () is an island, 0.455 square miles in area, on the southern side of Aberdeen Harbour—see the Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960) p. 97.\n\n9 Evidence given by a local inhabitant (b. 1815) in a hearing under the Squatter Ordinance 1890—see Notes of Proceedings of the Squatters", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "218\n\n• There are four in the year, but the principal one falls on the nineteenth day of the second moon.\n\n* See my \"Secular Non-Gentry Leadership of Temple and Shrine Organisations in Urban Hong Kong\" pp 113 to 136 of this Journal.\n\n* See my article \"The Japanese Occupation and the New Territories\", South China Morning Post, 15 December 1967.\n\nA COMMUNITY SHOOTING BUNGALOW NEAR CHINKIANG, KIANGSU, AND ITS LIBRARY ABOUT 1905\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThe following extracts are taken from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader, published by Constable of London in 1954. Mr. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Customs Service at Chinkiang, where there was a small, lonely British concession. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. At this time, as he relates, he was lucky enough to find relaxation and renewal of spirits brought low by the conditions of life and work in shooting wild pig, and in finding a library and visitors' books in a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near the Chinkiang concession. Let him speak for himself.\n\n\"When the Concession really got me down I 'lifted up mine eyes unto the hills' and got new strength from them. A ride of about eight miles took me to a hill called Wu Chow where for many years there had been a community shooting bungalow for those who were keen on wild boar-shooting.\n\nIt was rather an expensive sport as it required about fifteen beaters at fifty cents (or one shilling) each a day. Moreover, a rifle had to be bought and fortunately I came across an ancient Lee-Metford single-shot carbine used in the Boer War. I bought it for fifteen dollars.\n\nIn view of the daily cost it was important to get shooting companions to share in the beating expenses. No serious shooting had been done out there for several years, and no one in the port seemed to know the ropes. I went out one week-end to investigate and to get away from everybody, most of all from my old bored self.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210012, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 270, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "248\n\nagents of incense merchants and conveyed by land to Tsim Sha Tau (now Tsim Sha Tsui) whence it was transported by junks to Shek Pai Wan (now Aberdeen) and thence to mainland China, southeast Asia and places as far away as Arabia. Hence Shek Pai Wan was known as \"Incense Harbour\" or \"Heong Kong” the harbour of Incense or \"Heung\" produce, and the whole island eventually came to be known as \"Hong Kong”. \n\nThe cultivation and trade in \"Kuan-heung\" reached the height of its prosperity during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.). However, during the reign of Emperor K'ang Hsi (R) of the Ch'ing Dynasty (1662-1722 A.D.), the Manchus, as a preventive measure against counter attacks from Taiwan, where Cheng Shing-kung (*), a faithful vassal of the Ming Dynasty still held sway, adopted a \"scorched earth strategy\" by destroying everything within 50 Li (Chinese miles) of the coast, including incense trees, before the inhabitants were evacuated inland. Thus the industry suffered a stunning blow, and then, as the coastal areas were subsequently infested by pirates, its doom was finally sealed. \n\nThe \"Incense Tree\" (**, £*) is a medium-sized evergreen tree with a small compact crown. Leaves are oval in shape, about 6 cm long and 3 cm wide, with a pointed tip, and shiny on both surfaces. Flowers are small, scented yellowish-green, borne in clusters on the ends of the branch, and open in May. The fruit is a woody capsule, shaped like a compressed egg about 3 cm long, densely covered with short grey hairs and can be seen dangling from the branch tips when ripe. It is a rather slow-growing, insignificant tree whose presence in the open countryside is often masked by more vigorous plants. \n\nThe statement that it was introduced from North Vietnam must be questioned. Aquilaria sinensis is in fact a species indigenous throughout this region, and it may be found growing wild in many different places and at different altitudes in Hong Kong. The misunderstanding may have been caused by the reference to another incense-producing tree (Aquilaria agallocha) which was commonly grown in the western part of Kwangtung, and in Hainan Island, North Vietnam and Thailand. \n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210013, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "Aquilaria Sinensis is by no means rare in Hong Kong. In Dunn and Tutcher's Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong which was published in 1912, it was stated that in a one-acre plot of fung shui woodland in the lower ground of Hong Kong, 31 out of 125 trees enumerated were Aquilaria sinensis (then known as Aquilaria grandiflora). Even today it would not be difficult to find this tree in various parts of Hong Kong. They usually occur in natural woodland on lower hill slopes and in fung shui woods behind villages. There are good specimens in Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve, Ng Tung Chai in Lam Tsuen, and Pak Tam Chung, Sai Kung.\n\nThe publication of Professor Lo's book generated some local interest in the Incense Tree. In the 1960's and 1970's, both the Urban Services and Agriculture & Fisheries Departments planted a number of these trees in public gardens and on hill slopes. Seed supply is in abundance and there is no difficulty in raising young trees in the nursery. However, when planted out in open sites, the survival rate is disappointingly low. Moreover, the tree is quite slow-growing and is rather susceptible to wind damage. A seedling of half a metre high planted in Kowloon Tsai Park in 1974 reached a height of only 3.2 metre in 10 years. Even when planted in mixture with other tree species in plantation conditions the species fared little better. On this basis, A. sinensis is unlikely ever to rival the more robust and fast growing species which now commonly occur in our parks and countryside.\n\nNotwithstanding its growth habits, the local historical significance of the Incense Tree has been well recognised. As a matter of interest, the cultivation of the Incense Tree has been used as the main theme in the information displays in the Aberdeen Country Park Visitor Centre. Visitors to the centre, in addition to learning of the interesting historical events concerning this tree, can take the opportunity to have a close look at several live specimens growing by the side of the entrance.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210079, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "29\n\n2. Historical precedents: many of the sets of temple oracles, and certainly the major ones (B-1, B-2), contain somewhere near the edge of the printed slips short sentences which are rather titles than complete sentences. W. Eberhard has done a preliminary examination of these and states that they refer to historical or legendary events from China's past often known to the general public through popular dramas. Although traditionally the majority of the rural people in China were illiterate, they would naturally know the stories referred to in the oracle slips from their own experience of stage performances in the village. Drama, and in modern times puppet theatre, have been effective ways to educate the people in the countryside, especially since these stories usually contain a moral lesson, and extol such national virtues as filial piety, righteousness, integrity, loyalty, patriotism, etc. By attaching a reference to a famous event of the past to the oracle, the ordinary uneducated worshipper would understand the basic meaning of the oracle: what happened long ago to hero so-and-so, also applies today to the problem at hand. Eberhard quotes eleven examples from set B-2 (the Kuan Ti oracles), from which I pick the following one:\n\n“No. 10: Meng Chiao passes the examination at fifty”, thus very late in life. Meng was a friend of the scholar Han Yu (768-835)... The oracle indicates that success will not occur until very late...\"22\n\nThe application from the story to the particular request made by the worshipper seems to be very clear: Whatever was asked for will not be immediately granted but the petitioner will succeed in the end. The worshipper is encouraged not to give up but to remain patient.\n\nIn a table at the end of his article, Eberhard lists for B-1 and B-2 the number of plays or stories that he has been able to identify, i.e., to find the corresponding drama and/or story in literature. Very likely some titles refer to local dramas and are thus not easy to identify. In B-1 (the 100 Kuan Ti oracles) 83 are identified, whereas for 10 oracles the titles are missing (I presume in the set available to him). What is interesting is that the titles of the two sets under study (B-1 and B-2) are not the same, and they are probably", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210186, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "136\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\np. 78. There was a custom-made school building on the edge of Wong Nei Chung village which is shown on maps from Collinson's survey onwards.\n\n13 By \"town\", Collinson means village.\n\n14 The Last Year in China by a Field Officer actually employed in that Country (London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 2nd edition 1843) p. 75.\n\n15 Cited from the Canton Press for January 1842 by G.R. Sayer op. cit., p. 121. For information on present day So Kon Po, see the Notes by Revd Carl T. Smith and myself in JHKBRAS, Vol. 23 (1983) p. 7-77.\n\n16 Wright and Allom, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 17 and again at p. 33, \"Bamboo Aqueduct at Hong Kong\".\n\nFor a fuller account see J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Land and Leadership in Town and Countryside. (Hamden, Conn., Anchor Books, 1977) pp. 25-32.\n\nE A copy of this letter from Mr. Chow Yat-kwong, JP, dated 30 March 1967, is now in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong,\n\n19 This statement can be found in the manuscript volume Summary Report of the Squatters Commission 1891-1906 in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong, under the date of hearing 6 July 1893. By \"100 years\" is meant \"from before anyone now alive can remember,\" as normally in local village usage.\n\n20\n\n21 Ibid, hearing of 26 January 1891 of claims at Wong Nei Chung.\n\nReport of the Hong Kong Mission, Vol. 23, June 1843, November 6, p. 157, in American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions Archives, Valley Forge, Pa., by courtesy of Revd Carl T. Smith.\n\n22 American Baptist Mission Archives, folder of Revd I.J. Roberts, No. 1 — China, also by courtesy of Revd Smith.\n\n23 Captain A.A.T. Cunynghame, quoted in Sayer, op. cit., p. 104.\n\n24 Stanley and Aberdeen in 1841 would seem to have been very similar in size and composition to the New Territories Market Towns in 1898 and earlier. Thus, Sai Kung had 50 shops and 150 houses in 1898 with a population of 512 (cf. C. Fred Blake Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town. (Hawaii, 1981 p. 27-28), Tai Po New Market had 38 shops within eight years of its foundation (J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region, op. cit. p. 36 and n. 78), and Yuen Long Old Market had about 160 buildings of which at least 100 were shops (see unpublished Report 24 (Yuen Long Kau Hui) produced by Antiquities and Monuments Section, Hong Kong Government). 100 shops specifically noted as being from the Yuen Long Old Market donated to the restoration of the Tai Wong Temple there in 1837. At the Yuen Long Old Market many of the families working in the Market lived in the adjacent villages of Nam Pin Wai and Sai Pin Wai. As well as the 100 shops donating in 1837, 7 residents in the Market, 52 in Nam Pin Wai, and 22 in Sai Pin Wai donated, suggesting a total community of about 200 families, about half of which had shops. Tai O must have had more than 100 shops: 119 shops donated to the restoration of the Tin Hau temple there in 1838, 98 to the restoration of the Hung Shing temple there in 1841, and between 105 and 126 to the restoration of the Man Mo temple there in 1852 (in each case counting \"workshops\" and \"ferries\" as shops).\n\n科大衛,陳總集,吳倫電位,合術 香港碑靠藥衚\n\nMOMSKOM * (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong) (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986), pp. 86-90, 90-93, 95-97, 103-107,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210357, "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": 328, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "307\n\nWAI CHEUNG ( Mk),\n\nA KIND OF RURAL LEADER\n\nIN THE 19TH CENTURY HONG KONG REGION\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nLeadership in the villages and market towns of the Hong Kong Region has always fascinated me, and I have touched on the subject in The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hampden, Archon Books 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983).\n\nBesides the more common terms encountered in my enquiries as described in the two studies mentioned above, I have come across the less familiar one which forms the subject of this Note. Fortunately, there is both verbal and documentary evidence for its existence.\n\nIn speaking twenty and more years ago with old people born in local villages in the late 70's and early 80's of the last century, the term wai cheung (#1) was used in several places for another category of local leader.\n\nIn Sha Kok Mei village in Sai Kung, for instance, I was told by a leading elder born in 1885 that this was a post pertaining to each of the accepted clans in this large village, of which there were no less than eleven in the late 19th century (the implication is that there were other, newer clans which were not permitted to have a wai cheung). Clansmen were to serve by rotation in the post for one year. The post carried responsibility for the guardianship of the common property of the lineage, and also an obligation to join with the wai cheung of the other clans to hear and settle dispute cases, though the council so formed had no collective name or other description. This council had little to do in this line in his youth, as far as he can remember, as the times were quiet.\n\nIn the Tung Chung villages, according to an old lady born in one of the local settlements in 1879 and married into another of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210621, "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-1985", "page_number": 228, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "209\n\nchange in 1949 of land ownership and marketing systems in the producing areas in Guangdong, resulted in a continuing decline in supply.\n\n1\n\nThe decisive change came in the 1960's when Hong Kong metamorphosed to a highly commercialized society with profit-making as the prime goal of many business people. With this change in values, the peach blossoms, although not favoured by the older generations as they associated the flowers with \"jilted love\" (MEX), gradually won acceptance by the local population. The younger generation consider the reddish blossoms of the peach a symbol of prosperity. Moreover, there are now many peach gardens in the New Territories where customers can choose their plants on the spot; this is not possible in the case of Tiu Chung.\n\nThe unethical business behaviour of some hawkers also contributed to the demise of Tiu Chung. They sometimes adulterated their stock with branches of other plants such as Michelia species. The buds of these branches, though bigger, are in fact leaf buds and will naturally not produce any flowers. This is a very bad omen for the buyer, and indeed, with increasing numbers of people having this kind of bitter experience, Tiu Chung has gradually fallen into disfavour.\n\nThe fall in demand has naturally resulted in less illegal cutting. This is evidenced by the steady decline of prosecutions. There was only one case in 1985, as compared with an annual average of over 100 in the 1950's. The decrease in cutting has certainly helped the preservation of this lovely plant in the countryside.\n\nOld custom is changing — in this case for the better, at least from the conservation viewpoint!\n\nK. C. IU", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210658, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "6 October, 1986:\n\n19 January, 1987:\n\n17 February 1987;\n\n16 March 1987:\n\n31 March\n\n(still to come):\n\nDr. Betty Wei Peh T'i\n\n\"Treasures from an Attic in Pennsylvania: Letters from the Chinese Countryside 1901-6\"\n\nDavid Lung\n\n\"Vernacular Houses in Fujian and Guangdong\"\n\nDr. Ronald Skeldon\n\n\"Ladakh: Land, Peoples and Plays\"\n\nAnthony Lawrence\n\n\"The Long March: The Story of a Joint Venture\"\n\nMr. Geoffrey Emerson\n\n\"Yankee on the Yangtse\"\n\nBesides the lectures, eight local visits were made during the year to places of interest. They comprised the following:\n\n9 and 30 August, 1986:\n\nVisits to the Museum of Teaware and Hong Kong's 1941 Underground Military headquarters David Pannach, Robyn McLean and James Hayes\n\n25 October, 1986:\n\nTa Chiu at Kat O island\n\n9 November, 1986:\n\nJames Hayes\n\nWalk from the Peak to Kennedy Town to view the fortifications which guarded the Western approaches to Hong Kong Phillip Bruce\n\n29 November, 1986: Ta Chiu at Tuen Mun\n\nJames Hayes\n\n6 December, 1986:\n\nFung Ping Shan Museum\n\nDr. Michael Lau\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210771, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "105\n\nit has in the rest of the countryside, but its long-term effects remain as yet limited in the minority regions. The most obvious signs of these changes, the reappearance of both daily morning and periodic rural markets, are very much in evidence (not for the first time since 1949). In general the minority areas lag behind the slow development of China's rural economy, and efforts at both county and provincial level are being taken to remedy this situation. Although ethnic minorities are estimated to account for 6.1 million sq. km. or 60 percent of China's total land area, much of this is barren and infertile, particularly when one takes the requirements of fodder for animals into account. At the same time there has been a great revival of religiosity among the minorities, which if anything supersedes that in more predominantly Han areas. As a medium of ethnic nationalism, religious beliefs play a crucial role in articulating the identity formation and maintenance of many of the ethnic minorities, and recent official policies have encouraged the growth of a kind of religious revivalism, which I consider below.\n\nEthnicisation\n\nThere have been four major trends in the development of the Southern Chinese ethnic minorities since the Liberation of 1949. The first of these has been the growing politicisation of ethnicity. Bracketing for the moment the question of whether ethnicity itself is not a political phenomenon (Cohen 1969), ethnicity and ethnic conflict were particularly strong in Southwest China before 1949 (Winnington 1959). Positive discrimination by the state towards the members of officially designated minority nationalities since 1949 has resulted in a strengthening of ethnic separatism rather than in assimilation or integration. Pass marks at colleges and universities are lower for minority members than they are for Han students, in specific areas members of minorities may have up to three or four children, in contrast with the official one-child one-family policy adopted in the majority of the Han areas. And in certain jobs, in China's growing service industries for example, minority members can be favoured. Posts are reserved for minority representatives at Central Committee, Provincial and County level, while at the same time what particular representative of which particular minority is chosen may depend very much on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210777, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "111\n\nkept, rather than the simplified Dai script which has been in use for some time.\n\nOne of the strongest historical divisions between the Han and non-Han peoples in southern China has been that marked by the ability to write and to possess a form of writing, which 37 of the national minorities are listed as not having, and many groups which traditionally lacked any form of writing, such as the Hani and the Hmong, have legends attributing the loss of an original form of writing to the persecutions of a dominant, literate, majority population (in the Hani case, the Dai, in the Hmong case, the Chinese). Since literacy has historically been so strongly associated with the state in China, and since education has remained for so long an unattainable ideal for the minorities, we can, I think, understand something of the jealousy with which those groups possessed of an indigenous form of writing have guarded it, and those who have not, have, wherever possible, adopted one.\n\nIn the Chinese context, there could be no more adequate emblem of ethnic identity than the possession of a unique form of writing, and the importance currently attached to minority writing systems leads not only to important conclusions about the sense of ethnic consciousness among many of the minorities, but also points clearly to the quasi-religious significance with which some forms of writing can be invested. It is particularly significant in this regard that no fewer than ten writing systems have been invented for minority nationalities, while two others have been reformed and romanization introduced for a further two (Hsieh 1986), since this is in accordance with the original Article 53 of the 1949 Common Programme adopted by the Chinese People's Consultative Committee that ‘all minority nationalities shall be free to develop their own dialects and written languages'.\n\nEconomic liberalisation\n\nThe fourth major trend evident in the development of the minority nationalities has resulted directly from the abolition of the people's commune system and the economic reforms introduced into the countryside. While the growing disparities between rich and poor (officially sanctioned in the notion of encouraging some", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210778, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "112\n\nNICHOLAS TAPP\n\nto become prosperous before others), and the replacement of much grain-cultivation by new cash-crops associated with the introduction of the household responsibility system, have by no means affected the minority areas to the same extent as other, more fertile, areas of the countryside, and indeed were not introduced into most minority areas until 1982 (after the Third Session*), there is no doubt that the limited family farming permitted, and in particular the increased power to control land, has led to marked improvements in the economic circumstances of most minority nationality people. Indeed, in some areas it has been only this which has averted the threat of ‘not having enough to eat'. As elsewhere in China, house-construction has dramatically increased, boosting the allied trades of carpentry (as has the revival of coffin-making), forestry and quarrying, while in minority areas located near major town settlements or market centres, for example in the Dai and the Bai areas, some minority entrepreneurs have emerged as middlemen, money-lenders, and even rice-hoarders, often former leaders of rural production brigades who have the necessary foresight, experience, and connections to forge new links and contacts. In certain areas the introduction, over the past twenty years, of hydro-electric dams, mining, food-processing plants, textile and other light industries has of course resulted in a measure of occupational specialization for minorities which antedates the recent changes. On a lesser scale, the growing policy of opening some of China's less developed areas to foreign-based industries such as tourism and even hunting, has led to the involvement of minorities in sales of quasi-traditional handicrafts and artefacts, performances of quasi-traditional cultural items of songs and dance, and some work in the hotels and allied industries. This can be seen, for example, in the much-visited ‘Sani’ area of Shilin in Yunnan, as also to an extent in the Yao countries of Northwest Guangdong, and although it is too early as yet to predict whether this will become a general phenomenon, certainly the carefully choreographed performances of provincial minority troupes and the locally superintended production of handicraft items, may have an impact in the future in which minority entrepreneurs will seriously challenge state control of these enterprises. Coupled with the emergence of minority entrepreneurs in rapidly developing areas, and the fact that some cash-cropping is already occurring in the autonomous regions, this adds up I think", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210802, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "136\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\noften limited to existing cultivated lands and to grain production which increasingly cramped our efforts.\n\n\"Our policy is to spare no effort in promoting grain production and diversified undertakings, [but] we should strive to protect existing grasslands, use them rationally, step up their development, rear as much livestock as possible, and at the same time encourage the raising of domestic animals and poultry in the vast countryside and so significantly develop animal husbandry.\"\n\nAs part of this planned expansion of beef output, officials in the southern province of Guangdong identified the dry tropics of Hainan Island as a region suitable for beef production for two reasons: first, unlike other parts of Guangdong, low rainfall and infertile soil preclude production of economic crops, and, second, the region already has an abundance of native Yellow Ox cattle and a large area of wasteland which could be used more intensively for beef production (Michalk et al, 1985).\n\nPresent output from cattle grazing native rangeland in this region under traditional management (i.e. herded by day and coralled at night) is extremely low: 30-60 kg LWG/ha/yr. Inadequate nutrition, especially during the seven month dry season, is the major cause for low beef production in western Hainan. Experience in the dry tropics of northern Australia has shown range improvement with Stylosanthes legumes to be a successful means of increasing beef output in situations where \"fixed area management\" is practised.\n\nWhile the Guangdong Government perceived the value of this type of technology for improving cattle production in Hainan, they also recognized that a lack of indigenous expertise in range science was a major constraint to the introduction, adaptation and popularization of appropriate range improvement technology for use on state farms where \"fixed area management\" is presently practised. To expedite technology transfer, Guangdong sought assistance from New South Wales, its \"sister state\" in Australia, to set up a \"model farm\" where field research could be undertaken to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210818, "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "152\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nDutch parentage from Malacca, who soon became dissatisfied and left for a more adventurous life at sea; J.H. Moore, born in Macau, who left after a few years, married a beautiful 15-year-old girl from Malacca and then took up newspaper editing and some unprofitable business ventures at Malacca and Singapore; and a student from overseas, William Hunter, an American.\n\nHunter's reminiscences of his days at Malacca indicate he enjoyed them. He studied hard, for it is no easy task for a foreigner to acquire competency in written and spoken Chinese. He enjoyed the companionship of J.H. Moore. When not studying they took long walks, explored the countryside, observed the ways of the people, joined in the excitement of local festivals and shared in the homely life of the missionary staff of the college.\n\nHe studied at the college for 18 months. He had arrived a boy of 12, he left a confident young man of 14. He returned to Canton where he continued studying under the direction of the Rev. Robert Morrison, but he also began learning the business of the counting house and godown. The firm to which he was apprenticed went into liquidation and Hunter returned to New York. But the \"China bug\" had bitten him, and when an opportunity came to return to China in 1830 under the patronage of Russell and Company, he eagerly accepted it.\n\nThis firm had a long history in China trade. Its roots go back to 1789; it took on the name Russell and Co in 1824. It was the largest of the American firms operating in China. It finally failed in 1891, though some members of the firm reorganised in Hongkong as Shewan, Tomes and Co. The latter is still operating in Hongkong.\n\nOne gathers from his reminiscences and references to him by others that he was a pleasant, agreeable, but not an aggressively ambitious person.\n\nWhen Hunter was visiting one of his former business associates in England, a young son of the family met him. Later he described Mr. Hunter as \"a handsome, courteous man with a brown face and white moustache, like a fine type of Anglo-Indian, and speaking Chinese for our amusement with so soft a voice that I have often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210863, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "197\n\ndisturbance. Tong A-chick was in charge. Some of the combatants of the previous night were present. They were from the E Shing Society which was a bitter enemy of the Yeung Wo Association, of which Tong A-chick was one of the directors.\n\nThey questioned his impartiality. Tempers flew, threats were made, and blows exchanged. The climax came when a group of armed men rushed into the meeting from the street attempting to break it up. A-chick sought the nearest exit, a window. Flying through it, he landed on a sheet iron awning which collapsed with a terrible clatter.\n\nHis unceremonious exit and consequent clatter stopped the turmoil inside the building, but it roused the neighbourhood.\n\nIn due time the police arrived. The whole lot were hauled into court for disturbing the peace and riotous behaviour.\n\nThe E Shing group tried to claim that it was all due to the presence of Tong A-chick, who had tried to act as mediator. He, as usual, ably defended himself, “reciting every circumstance of the occurrence in a clear and impartial manner, in the English language, with which he was perfectly conversant.”\n\nOccasionally the associations were given a favourable notice in the press. In 1853 a band of desperadoes had been harassing the countryside. A Company of Rangers had captured the leader of the gang, a man named Joaquim, and thus brought an end to the terrorising.\n\nTong A-chick, as representative of the Chinese district associations, presented a cash gift to the Rangers in appreciation. The San Francisco Herald commented: “The Chinese here, although in no manner bound, have with commendable liberality come forward with this contribution of $1,000 in token of their appreciation of the Rangers' services. They have proved themselves in this city on many occasions a liberal and public-spirited people.”\n\nTong A-chick as leader in the Chinese community during its first decade in California guided it through a difficult period. His", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211225, "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": 286, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "261\n\nhistory have been struggling for a long time to get rid of some major preconceptions, but not always successfully. One of these is the theory that the Chinese countryside was controlled by the imperial bureaucracy and the gentry, and that the Confucian values inculcated by their education formed the basis of the most essential organisation in the clan or the lineage, through which social behaviour was directed and moulded.\n\nWell the issue is less apparent if you don't work in the field: but if you do walk about and have to ask your way around, it dawns on you that the chap who guides you through all these things is not just a pawn in the system, oppressed under some rigid rules controlled by some outside force. You get to see him as a free agent in his own right and to know something of his social, religious and economic behaviour. It was a mistake it started round the 1920's especially among Chinese sinologists to have put village religion into the category of superstition, and to conclude that because villagers were superstitious they were not worth studying. Consequently, modern Chinese history has very little to say about village religion, and there is much to learn on this subject, too.\n\nI was rather lucky with the Project because in 1980 two rather unexpected things happened. We had two requests to do some history writing: one from the Sai Kung District Board, and the other one from Sha Tin.\n\nIt was known in Sai Kung that the local villagers were involved in the resistance movement during World War II, and I was asked if I would be interested to write it up. The District Board would provide the funds. This seemed too good an opportunity for me to miss. I was very interested in what happened in the Second World War, and it was another chance to get behind the theory. Again, team work was needed. The late Barbara Ward, Bernard Luk and I worked along with our research students.\n\nI must stress that working on a historical project with research students and through interviews is a more demanding task than copying inscriptions, though I must not sound ungrateful because we had some very good student assistants on the project, in particular Lee Lai-mui and Wong Wing-ho. They were extremely fluent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "T'sing (i) dynasty, when the \"History of Sun On District (ïZ)\" was finally revised by the district magistrate Shuc Mau Koon (47), all written references to the place used the words Taai Po (X#). (See Note 1). But since that date Taai Po (iii) has been the generally accepted name, although Taai Po (4) meaning big wharf was occasionally written on account of a wharf having been built there.\n\nThe earliest known history of Taai Po refers to the finding of pearls in the sea nearby, in the fourth year of Hoi Yuen (72) A.D. 761 of Tong (WF) dynasty, and in the fifth month of that year. The method of collecting the pearls was crude, a man with a weighted rope was dropped over the side of a boat, and left until he was hauled up again at the discretion of those in charge of the boat. The loss of life was enormous, and after some time a high official of beneficent character named Yeung Paan Shan (PME) called attention to the fact, and the collecting was stopped.\n\nIt was started again, however, in the Naam Hon (M) dynasty when Kwangtung and Kwangsi became one kingdom, separated from the rest of China. In the sixth year of Taai Po (A) A.D. 964, the emperor changed the name of Taai Po to Mei Ch'uen To (I) beautiful stream town, raising it to the status of a military post and stationing 8,000 soldiers there to protect the pearl industry. Not only were pearls collected in great number, but tortoise shell of great value was obtained from Taai Po, and sent up to the capital Canton, then called Hing Wong Foo (EA) and used for decorating the emperor's palace there.\n\nIn A.D. 969 the Naam Hon dynasty came to an end, the palace with all its beautiful decorations was destroyed, and in the fourth year of Hoi Po (BH1%) A.D. 971 of Sung (*) dynasty the industry was again stopped. The soldiers who formerly guarded the pearls were turned into a form of police to protect the countryside and keep order.\n\nAt the end of the Sung dynasty when the Mongols came down from the North and the Yuen (6) dynasty began the emperor Chi Yuen (DC) in the seventeenth year of his reign, A.D. 1280, ordered the pearls to be collected again. In A.D. 1299, the third year of Taai Tak (A$) it was suggested by two men, Lau Tsun (3) and Ch'ing Lin (DE) to appoint more than seven hundred families of boatmen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211384, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "76\n\nLEGENDS AND STORIES OF\n\nTHE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n[E\n\nTS'ING SHAAN UI OR CASTLE PEAK*\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nThe original name of Tsing Shaan was Yeung Haang Shaan (meaning \"Sheep or Goat Ditch Hill\", and nearby there is still a village called Yeung Siu Haang \"Sheep or Goat Little Ditch\", but later on the Peak was called simultaneously Shing Shaan “Saint Hill\", and T'uen Moon Shaan “Military Colonist Gate Hill\". The latter name was given because in olden times the Chinese Emperor sent soldiers there to cultivate the soil, and at the same time protect the countryside from the numerous pirates that infested the coast.\n\nIn A.D. 428 a certain monk named Pooi To became abbot of the monastery, and then the name of Pooi To Shaan was used.\n\nNearly five and a half centuries later, in the 12th year of Taai Po of Naam Hon dynasty, on the 18th day of the 2nd month (A.D. 969) the Emperor gave the hill the special name of Sui Ying Shaan \"Good omen hill\", and caused a stone tablet to be erected on which was carved the history of the monastery. This stone recorded that in the 11th year of K'in Woh A.D. 954 a military officer named Ch'an Ts'un had paid a stone mason to carve a figure of Pooi To which he put in a cave near the monastery, and which can still be seen. In the 4th year of Yuen Yau A.D. 1089 of Sung dynasty a general in Canton named Tseung Chi K'ei wrote an account of the hill, and put it on a stone tablet in place of the old one. This second one has now disappeared, but fortunately the account is in the \"History of the Sun On District\", and from it can be learnt that formerly there was a castle at the north of the hill, and to the west\n\n* The Hong Kong Naturalist July 1935.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 257, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "DEZAKETTRE DWUKISME)\n\nJames Hayes\n\n233\n\nNOTES\n\nSee the list of printed papers given at pp. 271-272 of my book, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1977). Perhaps I should add that whilst the progress of the survey and land settlement are described, the records of hearings in cases where disputes could not otherwise be settled are not now available, save for some reports in the local English-language newspapers.1 See Chapter 4, \"Shek Pik, A Multilineage Settlement of Cantonese Farmers\" in Hayes 1977, op cit, pp. 104-128. I have also used some of the documentary material in my paper Education and Management in Rural South China in the Late Ch'ing at pp. 575-592 of Vol. 1 of Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Asian Studies 1984, (Hong Kong, Asian Research Service, 1985).\n\n1 Although surviving “Chi Tsai” from the New Territories are few in number, they are not rare either. I have come across them here and there in my research, but unfortunately dismissed them as being of no particular interest or value, compared with the Block Crown Leases and actual customary deeds of sale and mortgage.\n\nOne entry from my Notes, for instance, taken at Chuk Yuen Village, New Kowloon, in July 1963, states, \"Her husband's father was Lam Hei (), and she showed me a few chits for lot numbers claimed at the Land Court in 1901. They included one interesting receipt for 13 tax receipts, presumably Ch'ing land tax receipts, which must have been submitted as proofs of ownership at the land settlement following the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain in 1898“. A collection of some dozens of chi tsai from New Kowloon villages is in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong (HKMS104): these will be the subject of a separate note in due course.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211681, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "71\n\nof the boatswain's whistle the Union Jack was hauled down, while the sailors presented arms and the civilians stood to attention: then we all stooped to collect our chattels, and the party in single file, laden as if returning from an especially successful jumble sale, passed over the Bund under cover of an additional guard detailed from the hulk. A surprised and now silent crowd of Chinese looked on with enquiring eyes at the strange procession, as it moved up the gangway, round the hulk, and on to H.M.S. \"Wyvern\", which had been brought alongside.\n\nWhile this withdrawal took place at Butterfield's hulk, a similar retreat was in progress from the other point of concentration further up the Bund, across Jardine's hulk, to H.M. gunboat \"Scarab”. The small group of American residents in Kiu Kiang had withdrawn to their own ship several days before.\n\nThe two warships cast off and anchored in mid-stream. The evacuees numbered three dozen males of several nationalities and various walks in life. With proverbial hospitality the Navy set about finding berths for them all; I was lucky to be detailed to one of several houseboats which had made fast alongside,\n\nThese motor-houseboats were designed for travel along the creeks and canals that formed an extensive inland water system throughout the Yangtze valley. Business men were thus able to visit in comfort the numerous cities of central China, to discuss affairs with their Chinese agents and dealers, check stocks, arrange remittances of funds through the native banks, and survey the market. The convenience was great in a country entirely devoid of motor roads. The boats were also ideal for week-end shooting trips. In season, the countryside teemed with game: snipe, woodcock, every species of duck and teal, geese and bustard; hare, hog-deer, quail, bamboo-partridge the best eating-bird of the lot and the king of them all the magnificent Chinese pheasant.\n\n―\n\nJ\n\nM.H.B. \"Hsun Si\" was a typical craft of her kind. She was fifty feet long and drew four feet of water. Right forward over the companion-way stood the small wheelhouse, where the \"laodah\"* sat to steer. Down\n\n* \"Laodah\". Name by which chief member of the Chinese crew was called. Translated literally it meant \"old great one” — generally old in skulduggery and great in prevarication. As a class, delightful. They would blandly fleece the unwary on coal, firewood, kerosene, cleaning materials, and market purchases; and more especially on mops, which would wear out at a phenomenal rate. But the real \"clean-up\" would occur during the annual overhaul, which often led to a change, but not for the better, of laodahs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212032, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 447, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "422\n\nMao Zedong translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Roger R. Thompson Report from Xunwu, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 1-1x. 1-278.\n\nThis is Professor Thompson's translation of a social enquiry report compiled within the short space of ten days in a small Chinese county town on the borders of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi in 1930, not in peaceful times but in a period of turmoil as the Communists took over towns and villages in the surrounding countryside. Eleven persons including Chairman Mao as chairman and secretary produced the Report (p. 47).\n\nThe translator has also provided a most helpful introduction (pp. 3-41). This sets the scene and explains why the report was not included in the 1941 edition of Mao's Rural Investigations and had to wait until Chairman Deng Xiaoping sponsored its publication in 1981.\n\nProfessor Thompson calls the Report \"an extraordinary document, far exceeding in scope and depth the other investigations Mao made in Jiangxi and Fujian 1930-34\", which were published in 1941. The high degree of care taken with the text prior to eventual publication involved the editors in spending 51 days in retracing Mao's steps of half a century before. In all, they travelled 5000 li (1600 miles), talked to 35 organisations and 14 families, and conducted discussion sessions, making, all told, 800 textual emendations of information in categories like proper names, place names and the names of goods and products. As Thompson puts it (p. 37), there was an \"intense scholarly effort to prepare the text for publication\". He supports the authenticity of the text and explains how Chairman Deng found the report a useful vehicle to demonstrate his own legitimacy and to underwrite his call for accurate fact-finding to help solve the problems of the present (pp. 31-32).\n\nThe long Chapter 3 dealing with shops and commerce in Xunwu is especially interesting. It is almost as long (67 pp.) as the chapter on Traditional Land Relationships, Chapter 4, indicating the importance Mao attached to the subject. Mao's frankness is engaging. He says in the Report (p. 64) that he lacked \"understanding of what a market town is\". He had recognised the problem, but had never found people who could supply sufficient data. \"Two old gentlemen\" had been introduced by Comrade Gu Bo (the local communist leader). \"Many thanks to these two gentlemen\", he continued, \"for allowing me to become like a young", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212033, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 448, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "423\n\nstudent and to begin to understand a bit about town commerce. I was overjoyed.\" One of these two, then aged 59 sui, was the owner of a general store in Xunwu and a former president of its Chamber of Commerce, the other, aged 51, was a poor peasant and a County Soviet official (p. 46).\n\nLike the Chairman, I also want to know more about petty commerce, still a rather neglected topic in the Chinese field, though now being addressed by the Chinese Business Studies group.\n\nAs a long-time researcher into the rural history of Hong Kong and South China I have found both the Report and the Introduction equally fascinating. I strongly recommend them to readers of this Journal and especially to those who wish to know more about the Chinese countryside in the 1920s and 1930s, a crucial time in China's modern history.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nREVIEW NOTES The following books have been received by the Journal from the publishers and are briefly noted here. They have been placed in the RAS Library.\n\nTHE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR\n\nHugh Baker, Hong Kong Images — People and Animals, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 1990. 172 pp. Maps, Photographs, Notes, Index. A reprint of Professor Baker's highly successful book published originally in 1979, and subsequently in 1980 and 1981, this paperback continues to inform and entertain readers interested in the Chinese tradition as practised in Hong Kong.\n\nTun Li Ch’en (English translation by Derk Bodde), Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987, reprint of 1936 edition. Illustrations, Glossary, Index, Bibliography. This brief but beautiful volume brings the reader through the Chinese year, including customs and festival celebrations as practiced at the turn of the century in Peking.\n\nCraig Clunas, Chinese Furniture, Victoria and Albert Museum Far Eastern Series, 1988; printed in Hong Kong by Oxford University Press, 1990. 118 pp. Illustrations, Notes, Index. With traditional Chinese woodblock prints and modern photographs by Ian Thomas of pieces from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212082, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE OLD POPULAR CULTURE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTRIBUTION\n\nTO STABILITY IN TSUEN WAN\n\nJames W. HAYES*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThis article is aimed at investigating the very marked social stability which was so clear a feature of Tsuen Wan society in the early post-War years. What were the factors which, in the virtual absence of external controls, enabled so many people to live for so long in an orderly and peaceful manner in unhygienic and sometimes unsafe conditions in hillside squatter huts and urban hovels, or in the over-crowded conditions of the early resettlement estates? What was it that the incoming squatters shared with the indigenous villagers which allowed both groups to run their affairs so peacefully and effectively, and with so little external pressure or assistance? Finally, what were the roots of the generally co-operative attitude towards removal and relocation upheavals which were essential for development of the Tsuen Wan New Town, and a prerequisite of steady progress with construction and modernisation, but nonetheless always traumatic for those affected?\n\nPART ONE: The Influence of the Past\n\nAs I see them, the answers to the questions posed above lie in the Chinese character; but more specifically in some leading features of the traditional upbringing and education.\n\nThat traditional upbringing and education was deeply rooted in a reverence for the past, and for the moral standards which the heroes of the past were believed to exemplify. This reverence was invariably noted by those Westerners with a familiarity with the Chinese countryside and a rapport with its inhabitants, as the following statements from the 1940s show:\n\n* The author was District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan from 1975 to 1982. He has recently completed a book about the growth and development of this, Hong Kong's first New Town, which is expected to be published by Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, in mid-1993, under the title Transformation: a Century of Tsuen Wan and its People. (Editor),\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212084, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "early post-War generation of Tsuen Wan folk to their mostly very exiguous circumstances.\" Among the more positive attributes to be seen at that time there were, firstly, their pragmatic, realistic attitudes towards their living conditions and livelihood, and the invariable availability of leaders from among their own ranks, and, secondly, their generally co-operative and accommodating response to the Government's various demands upon them, especially with regard to clearances for development. At the same time, the limits of this co-operation were occasionally reached, and these cases I also had to deal with at first hand.\n\n1. The Legacy of Self-Management and Local Leadership\n\nOne of these legacies from the past relates to the practice and acceptance of self-management. As Lin Yutang has said, \"The Chinese people can always govern themselves, have always governed themselves\". Local self-management characterized life in town and countryside, both under imperial rule and after. It did not amount to democracy, for much was left to a practically self-appointed group of local people: but the important thing to keep in mind is that they exercised their authority with the consent of the remainder.\n\nEvery town ward, every lineage, each village and sub-district had its local leaders. These men would control the people within their own circles in accordance with accepted norms, combining their wisdom whenever weightier matters demanded consultation and concerted action. In political science terms, such men constituted a genuinely local, lower-level management structure. It was a vital under-pinning of the usual and almost too well-known alliance of gentry and officials, though strange to say this fact has still not been sufficiently grasped by many of the leading historians of China.\n\nThis buttressing from below, and the managerial skills that were available at the ordinary levels of society, was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable features of traditional Chinese society. These self-management, managerial, skills were to be found wherever Chinese were to be found, inside and outside China. Even though Chinese communities on foreign soil mostly comprised former coolies and erstwhile peasants, they nonetheless exhibited these skills to a marked degree. It is, to a large extent, precisely because these traditional communities enjoyed these skills that their subsequent transition to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212104, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "23\n\n2\n\nChina: The Land and the People (New York, William Sloane Associates. 1948), pp. 152-153.\n\n3\n\nA most useful survey is given in chapter 4, Autonomous Hong Kong, 1972-1982, of Ian Scott's Political Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Hong Kong (London, Hurst and Company, 1989).\n\n4\n\nMy government service was mostly spent in departments and in direct contact with the population.\n\n5\n\nLin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York, Halcyon House, 1938), pp. 203-206.\n\n6\n\nMy The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut, Archon Books, 1977) and The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) are directed at this theme. See especially the Introduction to the former, at pp. 11-13. See also David Faure, \"The Hong Kong History Project”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 27 (1987), p. 261.\n\n7\n\nPersonal letter from Walter Schofield (1888-1968) dated 27 July 1962.\n\n8\n\nAustin Coates, Summary Memoranda on the Southern District of the New Territories, Spring 1955 (Unpublished). He was District Officer between May 1953 and July 1955.\n\n9\n\nEverard Cotes, Signs and Portents in the Far East (London, Methuen & Co., n.d. but 1907), pp. 110-111,\n\n10\n\nRev. R.H. Graves, D.D., Forty Years in China, or China in Transition (Baltimore, R.H. Woodward Company, 1895), pp. 18-19,\n\n11\n\nReginald F. Johnston, Confucianism and Modern China (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934), p. 66, citing Mencius, Book 1, Part 2, Chapter viii.\n\n12\n\n13\n\nStuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1967), p. 21.\n\n14\n\nHerbert Giles gives numerous examples in the chapter \"Democratic China\" at pp. 75-106 of his China and the Chinese (New York, The Columbia University Press, 1912). Many others are cited by Kung-Chuan Hsiao, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 433-440.\n\n15\n\nI am uncertain whether this record was engraved on a stone which has since been lost, or whether it only ever existed on paper. Either way, the original is now lost, and I cannot now recall who was kind enough to give me a copy.\n\n16\n\nMy early lectures came from male and female indigenous New Territories villagers living in remote places at a time when modernization had not yet set in; it was seemingly part of the tradition.\n\n17\n\nIn Leonard A. Lyall, China (London, Ernest Benn. 1944). p. 99.\n\n18\n\nE.R. Hughes, The Invasion of China by the Western World (London, Adam and Charles Black, 1937), p. 157.\n\n19\n\nArthur H. Smith, China in Convulsion (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier. 1901), Vol. 1, p. 6. Striving to convey to his readers and listeners the power of these teachings, he explained that ... the tenets of Confucianism, as a whole and in detail, [are] intellectually and psychologically appropriated by the Chinese as on a par with a law of nature.\n\n20\n\nYang Kang, Daughter, An Autobiographical Novel, (Beijing, Phoenix Books: Foreign Languages Press, 1988) pp. 225-226, and see also pp. 67-74, 80-83 of this fascinating book.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212173, "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "92\n\nto present a neatly typewritten note in English, carefully preserved in a cellophane envelope, stating that the area was prohibited.\n\nThe pheasant shooting season continued until the Chinese New Year holiday, which falls late in January or early in February. It was generally possible to get two or three days off for this holiday, and at this date in 1937 two of us found ourselves some ten miles up the Yangtze above Nanking in the neighbourhood of the Three Hills. We had come in the houseboat, now so seldom used owing to the opening of the countryside to the greater convenience of the motor car. Only where the river bank was steep-to could we bring the boat sufficiently inshore to throw a plank across and step off; and so having disembarked we had to walk awhile until we reached a small creek, which we crossed in a borrowed sampan, before arriving at the extensive reed beds for which we were heading.\n\nAt this late season great stretches of the reeds had already been cut by the country people for use as fuel, leaving small clumps and narrow strips standing here and there. Inland, the fields, turned over by the shallow Chinese plough, showed long rows of soft green where the shoots of winter wheat sprouted. The country was ideal for pheasant. Unfortunately it was drizzling and blowing hard. Sandy, the smooth-haired black Labrador was at the top of his form, but nonplussed by the poor shooting. In such weather the birds would as a rule sit tight until the last moment, when they would get up suddenly at your feet; for some reason today they were wild and rising almost out of range. As we approached each patch of reeds, inside which pheasant might be sheltering from rain and squall, we would carefully move to the lee end and beat our way back upwind. My wife worked with us, and two of the boatmen, who also served to carry the bag. The pheasants were reluctant to fly, and would run unseen out of the reeds through the more open stretches of stubble to start up cackling indignantly at unexpected moments. The expenditure of cartridges was considerable, but so far as I remember, the bag only held six brace. Late in the afternoon, soaked, we boarded the houseboat. Luckily the run down with the tide was much quicker than the outward trip, and there was something in the icebox to keep the damp out. Little did we realise that was to be the last shoot for many a season!\n\nThat year was Coronation year: great preparations were made by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212222, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "141\n\nvehicles, with much kind assistance from my Chinese friends, I found my way, frequently changing buses, to Kinhwa, the large commercial town to which the capital of Chekiang had been removed after the fall of Hangchow. A stretch of the Kiangsi-Chekiang railway was still in operation, though the terminals at either end, Nanchang and Hangchow, were in Japanese hands. The railway carried me to Yintang, where I again took to the bus, and eventually made my way, via Kanshow, to Laolung, the roadhead above Hongkong, at the head of junk navigation on the East river. My progress was often delayed by air alarms, as in accordance with their usual practice, the Chinese would not allow vehicles to enter a town while the alarm was on, and you might spend half a day waiting in the country outside.\n\nOn the way I was struck by the enormous numbers of Chinese migrating from occupied to unoccupied parts. These mass migrations, which have been extended by each subsequent Japanese advance, cannot but have a great influence on conditions in China after the war. The people of the provinces are getting mixed up in a way which has not happened in China before. The effect should help to break down the exclusive provincial barriers which have handicapped unity in the past. Also, owing to the bombing, it was the habit, in many towns, to close down until about four in the afternoon. Everyone who could manage it would walk out into the countryside early in the morning, only to return late in the afternoon after any chance of bombing might be over. The shops would then open and remain open till late at night, and all the intercourse of the town would be...* ...good progress, but the boatman refused to travel at night; muttering about the danger of bandits, he tied up alongside a number of other junks - they always go into a huddle at night for safety - and proceeded to light his opium pipe. Next day we reached a town whence a launch service connected with Waichow. The launch only travelled at night to avoid the risk of being shot up by Japanese aircraft; so we reached Waichow early in the morning and breakfasted off the hot steamed rolls which are popular amongst the Cantonese.\n\nFrom Waichow the track led overland to Mirs Bay in Hongkong waters. For about half of the sixty miles, the recognised form of conveyance was on the carrier of a push-bike propelled by a muscular coolie. We distributed ourselves and our baggage over the necessary\n\n* 27 lines missing here...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212359, "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": 301, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "278\n\nhad been manned once. It is possible that the District had seen a steady decline in the effectiveness of its official government since the early nineteenth century, so that inter-village disputes came more and more to be settled by fighting rather than by an airing in the Yamen. The onset of the Tai Ping rebels must have reduced the effectiveness of the Magistrate to a very low level (groups claiming to be Tai Ping rebels, threatened Sha Tau Kok and captured Kowloon in 1854, although the Hong Kong Government doubted to what degree these groups were really Tai Ping, and not just opportunistic bandits using the name to frighten possible opponents). By the end of the nineteenth century there seems to have been a definite improvement in effectiveness, as the action at Sham Chun in 1903-1905 shows. The period of ineffectiveness seems to have lasted from the 1830s to the 1880s, with the low-point in the 1850s and 1860s. Most of the known inter-village warfare in the area occurred within these years.\n\nThe importance of control of the nodal points of the traffic system is quite clear, as can be seen from the table below. There can be no doubt that the Sham Chun dispute, as a dispute over control of markets and traffic nodal points, fell into a clear local pattern.\n\nThese inter-village disputes were often blood-thirsty and implacable, and the nineteenth century has evidence of enough inter-village wars to make it clear that Krone was in no way exaggerating the lawlessness of the period. The list below is not exhaustive, but merely lists those inter-village wars in the immediate Hong Kong region known to me.\n\nIt is interesting to note, as a measure of the ease with which local politics could degenerate into warfare, that the single village of Wong Pui Ling was involved in local wars at least four times between 1850 and 1875.\n\nBetween 1911 and 1925, the District Officer, in his Annual Reports, every year mentioned as a serious problem cross-border armed raids by \"bandits\". Some of these bandits were, certainly no more than that \"enemies of the people\". Some, however, were probably recrudescences of old inter-village rivalries. Not all \"bandits\" in the area were necessarily seen as bandits by themselves. In the warfare at Po Kat in 1853, the Basel Mission station which was outside the town, in the countryside between the two sides was at first", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212423, "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": 365, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "342\n\nview of the world, its acceptance had been prepared by anarchist and socialist ideas already current since the nineties. Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu were the progenitors of the Chinese Communist movement. Both were university intellectuals. And, as Luk points out, although Chen Duxiu has been portrayed as a determinist who favoured bourgeois leadership and a bourgeois dominated period after national revolution, this view of him is unfounded. He believed in revolution by the masses and saw, early on, the importance of the peasants as a means of achieving it.\n\nLuk awards a relatively minor role to Mao Zedong in the development of party ideology and buries, once and for all, the simplistic idea propagated by some popular writers that Mao's was the first lone voice that revolution was possible only through the countryside. Mao brought the weight of personal knowledge and experience to bear on the question, but there were others, more influential, who thought as he did.\n\nThe greatest difficulty experienced by the Communist party-founders in China was in applying Russian Bolshevik doctrine to a Chinese situation. What did Lenin mean by \"feudal conditions\"? How important was the Chinese proletariat, numbering only a few millions, even though for the Russians its role was crucial? There were many more such questions giving rise to internal contradictions and differences.\n\nThe Communists in China, as we know, joined the Guomindang as a \"bloc-within\" and in 1927 Chiang Kaishek turned on his unwelcome allies and nearly destroyed them. But despite this catastrophic set back the ideologies already developed in the party were largely maintained. According to Luk, Mao Zedong was later to take over all the main ingredients of the revolutionary model of the 1920s. The major difference now was that the CCP, after 1927, was on the one hand more determined to establish itself as an independent political and military force and on the other hand, was by now well aware of the limits of class struggle and willing to adjust its policies accordingly. It is said that, to carry out revolution successfully, both ideology and organisation are indispensable. By the late nineteen-thirties the CCP had developed both these weapons to a formidable degree.\n\nANTHONY LAWRENCE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212598, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "132\n\nNOTES\n\nThis paper is based largely on the author's own experiences while attending and being involved with Chinese funerals over a period of four decades.\n\n2. B.D. Wilson, 'Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 1 (1960-1), pp. 115-123.\n\nMartin K. Whyte, 'Death in the People's Republic of China', Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, Eds. James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, University of California Press (1988), pp. 289-316, (p. 313); Laurence G. Thompson, Chinese Religion, An Introduction, Fourth Edition, The Religious Life of Man Series (1979), pp. 50-54.\n\nPatrick Hase, 'Traditional funerals', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 21 (1981), pp. 192-6; Patrick Hase, 'Observations at a Village Funeral', From Village in the City: Studies in the Traditional Roots of Hong Kong Society, Ed. Davis Faure et al., Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (1984), pp. 129-163; Hugh Baker, 'Burial, Geomancy and Ancestor Worship', Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Week-end Symposium, 9th-10th May 1964, pp. 36-39.\n\n5. VR Burkhardt, 'Funerals, Requiem Masses and the Path to Purgatory', Chinese Creeds and Customs (1982), pp. 96-110.\n\nEvelyn S. Rawski, \"The Imperial Way of Death: Ming and Ching Emperors and Death Ritual\", Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., pp. 228-253 (p. 238).\n\n7. T.C. Lai, Husein Rofe, and Philip Mao, Things Chinese, ed. T.C. Lai (1971), p. 70.\n\n9. Ibid., p. 71.\n\nJohn Z. Bowers, 'Surgery Past and Present', Medicine and Public Health in the People's Republic of China, ed. Joseph R. Quinn (1973), pp. 53-62.\n\n10. Linda Chih-ling Koo, Nourishment of Life: Health in Chinese Society (1982), p. 7, and discussion between Dr. Koo and the author, 18 June 1992.\n\n11. Hugh Baker, 'Soul', More Ancestral Images, A Second Hong Kong Album (1980), pp. 5-8.\n\n12. Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital (1989).\n\n13. James Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911, Institutions and Leadership in Towns and Countryside (1977), pp. 67-8.\n\n14. James Hayes, The Rural Committees of Hong Kong - Studies and Themes (1983), p. 45.\n\n15. Frena Bloomfield, The Book of Chinese Beliefs (1983), pp. 100, 101, and 112.\n\n16. The author has visited this 'Coffin Home' on various occasions.\n\n18. Harold Ingrams, Hong Kong (1952), plate vi; James L. Watson, 'Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society: Pollution, Performance and Social Hierarchy', Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, op. cit., p. 109.\n\n19. James Hayes, 'Sandal Wood Mills at Tsun Wan', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 16 (1976), pp. 283-3.\n\n20. Gems of Langzhu Culture, exhibition at Hong Kong Museum of History, 11 April to 9 August 1992.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212627, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "161\n\nwhich could talk sceptical generals into agreeing to his suggestions. Not that the generals were not most co-operative: they usually went out of their way to meet us. In fact, we found it was true here, as it is always true of all wars, that the best elements of the nation were up at the front.\n\nIn May, the party of two Americans and one Englishman, already mentioned as having escaped from Shanghai, came through our camp, and I decided to proceed with them, in the lorry by which our two officer reinforcements had arrived, to the headquarters of the British Military Mission in Hunan. There were so many things of which we were in urgent need, and the replies to our signals were so vague, this seemed the best course. We covered the 1500 kilometres to Hengyang in six days. After a night spent with American missionary friends, we were turned out at dawn by an alert, and we were picking our way in the lorry through the crowds making for the countryside, when I saw an officer in British uniform moving with the crowd. I stopped to speak to him and discovered he was a Russian doctor, who had been recruited in China the year before for work with the British Army in Burma. He had been granted leave to proceed to Eastern China to try and get into touch with his wife to get her out of occupied territory. He was making his own way as best he could, had arrived by train that morning, as the alert sounded, and so found himself moving into the country with the crowd. His hope of reaching Eastern China without adequate credentials was vain. I suggested he should jump into our lorry and go back to Headquarters, to return with me to Chin Ya, as I felt sure his best hope of getting into touch with his wife would be through our guerilla connections. That was a great stroke of luck because one of our most pressing needs was a doctor and medical supplies, and Dr. Petro was to remain with us for half a year and do much very useful work. The Mission had no other doctor they could spare for us.\n\nAt Headquarters there was a good deal of confusion as the British troops were on the move, and then received counterorders. I was disappointed in my hope of receiving any further officer reinforcements, and all that could be spared in the explosive line was mostly ammonal. Ammonal is an explosive with a slower rate of detonation, so that it has more of a pushing or lifting effect. It is used for cratering roads and destroying buildings, and though that type of demolition was not likely to be of much use to us, it was better than nothing. It comes packed in 25 lb tins, about the size of 5-gallon kerosene tins. Two tins of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212631, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "165\n\nrain had caused a number of minor landslides. At several places large rocks lay across the road, but we were able to move these sufficiently to allow the lorry to pass; then about midday we were told the road further on was entirely blocked by a heavy landslide. At the village nearest to the scene we stopped to collect as many labourers as Michael could get the headman to round up, and then went on to investigate the damage. We found it would be possible in time to clear the road, except for a large rock about the size of a billiard table. We could only blow it up, unfortunately we had not packed our lorry to meet such a contingency and, of course, the primers were stowed under everything else. However, in time the necessary material was collected and a Chinese engineer officer, a casual passenger, and I got down on our stomachs in the mud to scoop out a hole under the rock in which to place the charge. After you place a charge in a hole it is necessary to tamp it well with earth to ensure that the blast does not merely blow back along the hole you have made. Our first attempt was not very successful as the tamping was inadequate and most of the blast came back through the hole and blew the tamping, like a shrapnel fougasse, out over the countryside. For the second shot we used a larger charge and tamped it better, and on returning after the explosion found the rock shattered. Willing hands had soon rolled the pieces over the hillside, and we set to with shovels to clear the rest. It was late afternoon when we reached the Tsien Tang river ferry, to find that a regiment of soldiers had arrived on the opposite bank and had seized all junks and ferry boats for use in crossing. The invaluable Michael went over to see the commanding officer, who readily released one of the ferry boats which was sent over for us. The Japanese were only a few kilometres down river with a large fleet of junks and motor launches, and I was very glad when we had successfully negotiated the crossing. That day, owing to the various delays with which we had met, we were only able to cover about 100 kilometres.\n\nWe stopped for the night at a village, where we had previously made friends when passing through. All the lights were out, and the village seemed deserted; the military police told us that only that afternoon they had opened fire on some farmers, whom they took to be Japanese plain-clothes men. The fact is that when Chinese troop movements take place the soldiers need coolies to carry for them; they impress these wherever they can find them with the consequence that on the approach of bodies of troops it is usual for the population of a place to lock their houses up and hide in the mountains. The soldiers are naturally annoyed when they arrive in a place to find everyone gone; no one to help them make fires,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212652, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "187\n\nremember from hearsay, Dr. H. Belval had come to Shanghai and worked as Head of the Chemistry Department at the University of Aurora where he researched plant sugars. He was replaced at the Dept. of Chemistry by one of my colleagues, Dr. Georges Durr, a Marist.\n\nDr. Belval was also a keen botanist and as such he was Director of the Musee Heude. He was responsible for the transfer of the Museum to its new premises and was its Director from 1929 to 1931. During this time, he prepared the publication of Courtois' Collection Petite Flore des environs de Changhai et de Nanking (Little Flora of the Shanghai and Nanking areas). It has never been published.\n\nBelval was succeeded by Octave Piel S.J., an entomologist with an interest in Chinese Archaeology and Art.\n\nNow I come to my own connection with the Heude Museum, its activities and its staff.\n\nBr. Paul August F.M.S.\n\nWhen I arrived in Shanghai from Beijing in September 1935, I had the good fortune of being appointed at St. Joan of Arc's College, a bilingual school of English and French media. There, I met Paul August. This humble man was Assistant Headmaster and Bursar of this school, full-time teacher of English, Mathematics, French and Latin. In spite of that heavy assignment, he took time to accumulate an enormous amount of scientific data and personal observations: notes on plants and insects collected by himself, study on chemicals, geology, petrology, weather observations, etc. His notes fill six large books written in a perfect handwriting. He had provided the Heude Museum with thousands of specimens of insects and hundreds of plants carefully packed and fully annotated.\n\nSo, for 10 years, this was one of the men I was going to live with. We soon found common interests and I owe to him, not only the development of my scientific studies in Natural History but also the scientific discipline of mind and action which transcends that of an amateur.\n\nFor 10 years, we used to take long walks in the countryside that was Hungjiao, Lunghua, Jiangwan etc. in the 40s and 50s and come back with plants, insects and other specimens collected there. Then, at home,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212670, "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS \n\n205 \n\nAnn Paludan. Chinese Tomb Figurines, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Images of Asia series, 1994, 66 pages. Illustrations. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. HK$95 \n\nIt is always a joy to behold a book by Ann Paludan, whether as a scholarly study or for general reading. Her smaller work, The Ming Tombs (Images of Asia 1991), possesses the same high quality of meticulous attention to scholarship as The Imperial Ming Tombs (Yale 1981), an academic publication. The book under consideration here, Chinese Tomb Figurines, is a smaller rendition of her The Chinese Spirit Road: The Classical Tradition of Stone Tomb Statuary (Yale 1991). \n\nThere is no need to have a trained eye or any knowledge of Chinese aesthetics to appreciate tomb figurines as they are shown by Paludan. She describes two types of figurines found in ancient tombs from the pre-Han era to the end of the Tang dynasty in chronological order - those made of clay and those made of stone. Despite their ‘ambivalent' attitude towards objects specifically made for tomb use, the Chinese 'dead were provided with replicas of worldly goods or talismans to help them' in their life in the nether world. Among the figurines reproduced in the book are mounted horsemen; acrobats and musicians; jesters and storytellers; houses for humans and a sty for pigs; and, above all, the ubiquitous 'fat lady' of the Tang dynasty. \n\nIt is wondrous indeed to wander into the countryside of ancient China through the figurines, not unlike perusing Egyptian relics at the Metropolitan Museum for the first time. Readers will encounter colour, pageantry, glorious ceremonies and mundane everyday happenings; and, above all, 'there are no representations of death, illness, mutilation, or violence.' There is, on the other hand, a great deal of humour for readers to savour. \n\nWEI PEH TI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212835, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "129\n\nfloor, on one or two sides; while the upper storey is reserved for the various members of the family. Almost always a fire is kept going on the open verandah which looks onto the courtyard, and here the old men sit and smoke, the women boil the kettle, and the children play about. A kitchen somewhere in the background will generally be full of babbling women attending to the day's cooking.\n\nThe difference between Burma and China was noticeable immediately on crossing the border. Years of peace and security, but recently disturbed, told their tale. In Kokang the people looked more prosperous; they were more independent. Off the beaten track you could find chickens in plenty, pigs, cows, bullocks, mules and ponies. One day we suddenly came across a whole flock of sheep. The men all carried arms; generally a dah, sometimes with copper and silver bound handle. The headmen were usually attended by a follower or two armed with ancient muskets: and the hill-top people carried cross bows, beautifully made, fitted with a trigger to release the string. The arrow, a short length of hard wood, would be dipped in a deadly poison of which they retained the secret.\n\nIt was at Nancha that we had our first trouble with our escort. The parachute party had particular cause to complain of the officer in charge of the escort, who would leave them no freedom to do what they wished, but continually interfered, especially when it came to communicating with the natives. The officer, dubbed Percy, apparently received his appointment because he had misled his superiors into believing that he understood a lot of English. He only understood a little. I thought I had made it clear that I would not welcome any interference between myself and the local population, so when Percy was also appointed to command my escort I did not worry. But he began to behave in exactly the same way as before. He had obviously threatened the old circle-headman, who was terrified of being seen in solitary conversation with us: not that we had much opportunity for it; Percy was always on his heels. We even several times caught Percy eavesdropping on us, and when I had established some outside contacts and discovered how the whole countryside was held under intimidation, and that the people had been instructed to give us no co-operation or information, I decided the time had come to do without an escort. We were due to move further into Kokang and I told Percy that on arrival at our new destination I should no longer require the services of himself and his men. I thought there would be some trouble in getting rid of them but they left without fuss, only to be replaced next day by an entirely new detachment. I ordered\n\nH :\n\n-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212878, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "172\n\nThis letter is both a classic of its kind and rather special—in its content warranting translation in full. It was composed in the literary style, and the writer's calligraphy is of a high standard. It is altogether a superior production, and of a kind now seldom seen. The writer was either an old village scholar or a retired schoolmaster, since the younger generation no longer has these literary skills or is trained in them. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the grave tablet erected in 1962 by the four branches descended from Ancestor Shui-tai, and by a list of all male descendants in the after generations, including mention of those who had gone abroad. It is beyond doubt that the clan took the government's notice to remove the grave very seriously indeed.\n\nAccidental Damage to Graves and Urns\n\nSuch statements by those concerned—and they can be many times multiplied since they were the rule—indicate how very concerned villagers became if an old grave, and especially a founding ancestor's grave, was likely to be interfered with by the authorities. Sometimes the files record damage by accident or even by intent. Where accidental damage to graves occurred in the early postwar years, when a large military garrison engaged in frequent exercises across the countryside, the British Army was sometimes the culprit. In 1963, the District Office received a letter from the Tangs of Kam Tin about one of their ancestral graves on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. 'It has recently been discovered that this ancestral grave has been damaged by military trucks... We are anxious to have it repaired; and as we cannot afford to do so, shall be much obliged if you will sympathize with us and provide the cost of building materials, so that we may proceed to repair the grave as possible in order to pacify the souls of our ancestors and calm ourselves.'8\n\nOn another such occasion, the then District Commissioner, New Territories, upon learning that an ancestral grave had been damaged during a military exercise, arranged for a ceremonial visit to be paid to the village by the brigade commander, the command land agent, the district officer concerned and himself. This was done to show respect to the family and to acknowledge its concern, as well as to show the authorities' desire to make speedy reparation for the damage caused.9 The villagers no doubt appreciated this gesture.\n\nSuch actions could be two-way. Meritorious actions by officers of the District Administration were also recognized. I once received a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212910, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 219, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "204\n\nbombard the enemies with mud balls.\n\nAs children we did not go often into the town except to walk to church. This we did along streets paved with enormous stones laid five at a time along the road and then five across. The roads were elevated above the fields and along the creeks with which the whole delta is riddled. In times of flood these dykes protected the fields. Occasionally they would be breached and then a general alarm would be raised as the whole population rushed to repair the damage before the countryside was flooded.\n\nThe creeks, one of which passed at the foot of our garden, carried the commerce of the villages and, in the fifth month, the dragon boats. For weeks before the actual festival, dragon boats would be paddled along the creeks of the delta and, from time to time, one would pass our garden. These were magnificent vessels bearing only superficial resemblance to those used for racing here. The largest had over a hundred paddlers. In the centre was an enormous drum with two drummers. Gongs were placed at other parts and large ornamental, cylindrical umbrellas, beautifully embroidered with colours and mirrors, added decoration. They had a frightful time negotiating the bend in the creek outside our house, a feat which was only accomplished with tremendous shouting added to the cacophony already supplied by the percussion. As the fifth month approached we were on the lookout for the dragon boats which we could hear long before we could see them. With the first sounds of the drums and gongs we would drop everything and rush down the gap in the bamboo hedge from which we had a grandstand view.\n\nLast Visit to Fatshan\n\nAll these events occurred in the period from about 1928 to 1933. After that we went on leave from which I returned to school in North China. I did however make one last journey to Fatshan in the spring of 1938. Normally our long school holidays were in the winter but, with the Japanese war starting in 1937, we had a short holiday that winter and a long holiday in the following spring. It was great fun to return to the old house and try and pick up a bit of Cantonese again. Canton was under attack by the Japanese who would fly over and bomb the city from time to time. We were close enough to hear the bombs but not to suffer from them. Nevertheless we had a sandbagged air raid shelter in the garden. Out of curiosity I went into this gloomy recess one day only to scurry", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213141, "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-1993", "page_number": 209, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "No. Name of Shop\n\n191\n\nAddress\n\nof Shop\n\nName of Owner\n\nVillage of Owner\n\nSource\n\nComments\n\nTobacco\n\n67\n\nGuesthouses\n\n68-71.\n\nWIS\n\nC\n\nC\n\n'3 or 4\" guesthouses See below under \"Others\" Basel missionaries. 1859\n\nOpium Divan\n\n72\n\nWIS\n\nLunie-burners\n\n73-74\n\nYin Lou\n\nC\n\nC\n\nFt.L\n\nOilers\n\n75\n\n=\n\n}\n\nWH\n\nC\n\ngroceries\n\n76\n\n77\n\n仙\n\n78\n\n利\n\n79\n\nSE\n\nB\n\n1 or 2 limekilns\n\nLockhart's Report, 1899\n\nsweets and small\n\n) these may be two of\n\nB\n\n) the guesthouses\n\nB\n\nJ\n\nB\n\n)\n\nHO\n\n...\n\nB\n\n) nothing is now\n\n18\n\nW\n\nB\n\n} remembered about\n\n82\n\n87\n\nK\n\n4\n\nB\n\n> these shops\n\nB\n\n}\n\n#4\n\n¥\n\n}\n\nProstitutes\n\n85-96\n\nRow neat\n\nCity\n\nC\n\nLS\n\nSaltworks\n\n97-115\n\n-\n\nYon In EL\n\nC\n\nHawken\n\nC\n\nWIS\n\nPunti girls from City\n\nOffered opium to clients\n\nHL workers from\n\nSwabue, sold salt retail\n\nDetail of works in Block Crown Lease\n\nFish, meat, vegetables, cooked food (including noodles), handicrafts\n\nfuel. Also at Yim Liu Ha\n\nE\n\nNOTES\n\nSee G A C Herklots, The Hong Kong Countryside, Hong Kong, 1951, pp 86-89 for tigers and leopard on Ng Tung Shan, and the Hsin An County Gazetteer (1819 Gazetteer, ch 3. Chung Lap Pao Edition, 1979, p. 45) for tiger, wild boar, and deer in the area\n\n2 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, ch 3, 127\n\nA salt commission was established at Nam Tau (Nantou) just outside the present borders of Hong Kong, probably in the Nan Yueh period, in the second century BC This was later divided into 4 commissions, probably during the Nan Han period (tenth century A.D) Of the 4 Nan Han commissions, the Kwun Fu commission certainly covered the Mirs Bay area in the Sung; the headquarters of the commission were moved temporarily from Kowloon City to Tip Fuk (Deep Fuk) on the east coast of the Bay in 1163; and probably did so from the establishment of the commission The borders of Tung Kuan County and its predecessors bent round to include just the coastal strip of Mirs Bay.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213272, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "74\n\nthere are many forms of geomancy some of which are linked to their Four Elements* namely Air, Fire, Earth and Water, which, in turn, are linked to the four corners of the earth. North American Indians also have their forms of geomancy.\n\nLey Lines in Britain\n\nThere are also aspects of Chinese geomancy that bear comparison with European beliefs. 'Dragon veins' for instance, are similar in some ways, to the invisible 'ley lines' that crisscross Britain (see Oxford English Dictionary, vol. VIII, 2nd Edition). This pre-Christian network, 'woven' across the countryside, crosses bogs and mountains, links salient points such as hilltops, and, in some cases, follows ancient tracks which were once trodden by merchants when transporting commodities like salt and flint. Ley lines embrace, symbolically, rich identifying features like sacred sites, stone circles, menhirs, encampments, watchtowers, earthen mounds, wishing and holy wells associated with saints, moats and ponds, and graveyards (Miller, 1989). Key positions, often at crossroads, were formed at intersections of the 'ley' (or lay) which included sites like Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. From the latter, various astronomical observations can be conducted. Like watching the sun rise at mid-summer from the centre of the stone circle over the heel-stone.\n\nThe first stone churches were often built on pre-Christian sites, where symbolic rites had been performed, such as in the old 'Serpent Temples'. Some believe Saint Mary (the Virgin Mary) Churches are really Christianised versions of the old 'Shining Earth Goddess'. With the importance of life-giving solar energy and its involvement in everyday life, such events as the fire festival were important in ancient Britain.\n\nThis network of ley lines (Saxon 'leye'; an obsolete word for fire) which can be traced across the English landscape, is visible only to those who have 'eyes' to see it. Prehistoric tracks, sometimes pilgrimage routes, often followed ley lines. Roman or medieval roads were frequently not primary arteries but simply followed the ley. The Icknield Way running from the Wash down to the Thames, and on to the Berkshire Downs, is an example of a pre-Roman Track. There is also the famous Saint Michael Ley Line, with the Michael and Mary currents, which serpentines from the tip of Cornwall to the coast of East Anglia (Miller, 1989). Such lines are really 'routes' or 'corridors' rather than straight lines.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213274, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "76\n\nto the homing instinct of some birds, the salmon's sense of smell and the robin's sensitivity to stellar radiation.\n\nA trained person can walk across a field with a forked twig and he or she can say with certainty whether water is present below. The influence given off by the movement of water has been likened to an electric field (Pike, 1945:16 and 24). Similarly, horses during periods of drought will locate an exact spot where water is to be found below in an otherwise waterless district. Dead horses have been seen at such spots, with hoof-marks left on the ground, where the unfortunate animal tried to paw his way to water.\n\nAs a leftover from our animal past, the skill of divining in which the 'human radio set' picks up cosmic waves, magnetic energy or radioactivity is possessed by different people with varying degrees of sensitivity. 'Listening to the earth' has been likened to developing the powers of clairvoyance. Such fields and lines of currents radiate patterns of energy. They vitalise the countryside. Some spots produce more life, in the form of trees, flowers, animals, birds and minerals, than others. Cows, for example, prefer to stay in parts of a meadow which are places of energy (Pennick, 1979:38). Dowsing, with its 'inner eye', has sometimes been used to trace leylines in Britain (Miller, 1989:26). The author, however, knows of no cases where dowsing has been employed to try to trace the 'dragon veins' of fung shui.\n\nLinking Chinese fung shui and dowsing; it is interesting that an old Hakka village in Tsuen Wan, in Hong Kong's New Territories, has a well which was sunk in the position advocated by a fung shui consultant. And even during bad droughts, like that of 1963 when water was on tap for only four hours once every four days, villagers maintain the well always remained 95 per cent full (Leung, 1986:19).\n\nCase Study One\n\nThis paper now examines an actual case of fung shui, at Realty Gardens, 41 Conduit Road, Mid-Levels, on Hong Kong Island, where the author has lived since 1976. The flat in question is situated in the centre block of five blocks. A fung shui master visits the flat annually. It is said to be situated in a good geomantic spot. Many uninitiated Westerners would more likely phrase it as, 'the flat has good spatial orientation'. Both", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213277, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "Fung shu' originated from the love of, and the worship of nature. It consists, simply, of geographical advantages and orientation rules similar to requirements home builders take into consideration in many parts of the western world today (Maitland, 1977:11). Often, with the landscape being manipulated so it falls into line with culture and cosmological requirements, 'the setting can be more important than the Jewel'. For example, a house on low-lying ground may become flooded and water can affect the foundations. Fung shu doctrine maintains that dry soil which is arid and does not support vegetation is bad. Earth which is dark and moist and has an appropriate bearing pressure will bring happiness.\n\nIf the architect prepares a good design the occupants will be contented living there. A home shapes the destiny of its master and his family. If a Chinese makes a fortune while living in a particular house he is likely to believe it brings him luck. He will be loathe to move. The flat under examination in the case study has a superb view. That makes sense in any language.\n\nIn Chinese culture vital cosmic breath and magical currents, known as hei shar (*) and described as a form of primordial force, animate superbly landscaped countryside. This may be studded with pagodas, grottoes and temples. Generally, highland and ridges are yang and valleys are yin. But in every type of ground, in every range of mountains, in every bluff or rock, nature has laid down a certain quantity of yin. Or terrestrial breath. Balance between the two is important. In an idyllic place, where life forces flow from heaven along the veins of the earth, obviously, people are more likely to be content. If there is not a 'bond' between person and place, then he or she will feel miserable, and, in the extreme, illness, paralysis or death will result.\n\nBruce Lee, the popular martial arts expert and film star who died tragically in 1973 at the age of 33, lived, many believe, in an 'unlucky house' (Block, 1974:passim). A fung shu master would more likely say, 'compatibility between Lee and his home in Hong Kong were lacking.'\n\nFung shui has been described as the doctrine of nature's breath in which one 'inhales and exhales nature'. Fung shui enters every stem and every fibre (Eitel, 1882:37). Just as acupuncture is about subtle energy in the body, so fung shui is about discriminating energy in the earth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213317, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "120\n\nThe First China War was the culmination of many years of irksome restraint. The British, as did other nations, objected strongly to being treated and listed with Burma, Vietnam and Korea as tribute bearers. The immediate cause was the destruction of all the opium in Canton brought in by foreigners and in 1840 the Chinese fleet attacked a British warship, followed by, amongst other incidents, Canton being bombarded by the British, and the war was on. Palmerston was Prime Minister in Britain during this, the First China War, now possibly better known as the first of the two Opium Wars. It began with a desultory naval engagement and little further happened until Major General Sir Hugh Gough arrived from Madras in March of 1841. The British plan was, first, to capture Chusan island off the coast of Chekiang to use as a pawn in the demand for Chinese agreements to British demands. This proved to be a futile gesture and during 1841 and 1842 British forces, with the continued aim of pressuring the Chinese into legitimising foreign trade within China, proceeded to attack several ports one after the other up the China coast, creeping ever further north towards the capital of Peking, causing the Chinese greater apprehension about the future. The campaign eventually ended with the imminent attack on Nanking, the former capital situated on the Yangtze in central China, avoided last minute by the agreement by the Chinese finally to the terms of a treaty signed in August 1842. One of the attacks on the China coast was on the then city of Chapu, which was to be followed up with an attack on Hangchou.\n\nChapu had a tolerable harbour, with a great rise and fall of tide, so much so that the smaller junks were left high and dry at low water. Together with its suburbs the town, perhaps five miles in circuit built in a square and intersected by numerous canals, lay about half a mile from the coast. The Reverend Gutzlaff in his third voyage up the China coast in January 1833 arrived in Chapu and described the surrounding countryside as the Chinese Arcadia with nothing able to exceed its beautiful and picturesque appearance. He further described the canals, neat roads, plantations and conspicuous buildings, adding that the whole country (of China) from the Yellow River south was flat until one came to the high lands which formed the harbour of Chapu city. The sea, he added, was receding from the land and flats had formed along the shore, visible at low water and constituting a barrier to the whole coast. Gutzlaff found nowhere so much openness and kindness, the (residents') intelligent questions respecting Britain were endless with them never seeming to be satiated with (British) company.\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213361, "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "166\n\nHai Journal, no 12 | August 1981, pp 191-201)\n\n1\n\nLo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842 The History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival (Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963)\n\nBarbara Ward, \"Rediscovering our social and cultural heritage\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (JHKBRAS) 20, pp 116-124, p 124\n\nSee Jack Potter Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant. Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley, Calif University of California Press, 1968) He contradicts the theory that the industry and commerce of the treaty ports were the principal reasons for the bankruptcy of the Chinese countryside by showing how in Ping Shan, the effects of capitalism were beneficial to peasants.\n\nJames Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut Archon Books, 1972), The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983), Tsuen Wan Growth of a New Town and Its People (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1993)\n\n7 For the special nature of the District Officer's duties, see Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin Memoirs of a Special Magistrate (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1975)\n\nSelina Ching Chan, \"Tradition Inherited, Traditional Reinterpreted. A Chinese Lineage in the 1990s\", (Unpublished Ph D thesis, Oxford University, 1995)\n\nAlan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years the Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45 (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1982) and Captive Christmas (Hong Kong. Heinemann, 1979)\n\n10 Most of the Rev Smith's work was published in articles in various, often obscure, journals, but more recently they have been collected in anthologies - Chinese Christians, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co, 1995)\n\nSee especially, DJ Dwyer (ed) The Changing Face of Hong Kong. Proceedings of a Weekend Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1971)\n\n12 Editorial, JHKBRAS, vol 7(1967)pp 1-3,p 2\n\n13 PH Hase and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Beyond the Metropolis Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd, 1995)\n\n14 Marjorie Topley, (comp) \"Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars\" Proceedings of a Symposium, February 8-9, 1969 (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969)\n\nSee Ian Diamond, \"The Paper Chase - Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213584, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "150\n\n(Hase, P. pers. comm.). This tended to reinforce the fung shui layout of the village by protecting the primary and secondary fung shui woods. It is largely because woodfuel is rarely gathered from the hills any longer by villagers, due to the use of alternative fuels and because the reduced population can obtain its fuel needs, if necessary, from the abandoned fields, that such songs and prohibitions are being forgotten by the old women. This in turn has two effects. It allows fung shui woods to spread and colonize the hillsides, yet at the same time the precise working knowledge of fung shui is being lost.\n\nHowever, it appears that substantial amounts of woodfuel are still used in more remote coastal villages. When visiting Lai Chi Wo in December 1990, large amounts of fuelwood were seen cut and stacked, but whether this was solely for the use of the villagers is not known. Some of the coastal village restaurants, which cater for hikers and junk trips on a regular basis, such as at Sam A Tsuen, Plover Cove, use only firewood for cooking. At Ma Tsuek Leng near Sha Tau Kok in late 1993 there were large stacks of woodfuel, mostly cut branches, which the elderly people purchase from elsewhere, as it is cheaper than buying bottled gas.\n\nDuring the Japanese occupation, and the years immediately after, the pressure on the countryside for fuel was severe. Grass was shaved from the hills, scrub and remnant woods were cleared, even from remote areas, and inroads were made into fung shui woods, especially those of secondary importance. Such was the pressing demand for fuel that those trees and woods that can be seen on the US Airforce airphotos of 1945, taken prior to liberation, must only have survived purely because they were of such fung shui significance (Hase, pers. comm.).\n\nDaley (1975) gives an indication of the extent of this immediate post-war felling. \"Woodcutting extended further and further from the towns and gradually the hillsides as far as Mirs Bay and the western side of Lantao were stripped of trees. The prevention of all this cutting was an impossible task in the circumstances. Very few large trees survived this onslaught during the war years and just after. Perhaps the biggest was the pine felled at Ping Shan Chai, near Tai Po, in 1960. It measured almost 3ft in diameter at 4ft above ground, and 69ft in height. It was 159 years old.\"\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213585, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "151\n\nRecent Developments\n\nThe Government formally re-adopted a forestry policy in 1953, the aims of which were to afforest the waste hills of the Colony, many of which were eroded and bare and as such were a threat to effective water catchment; to manage the forest so that it would produce a sustained yield of poles, fuel and small timber; to encourage private forestry and assist the villagers in the New Territories to establish and manage their plantations. By 1963 there were about 10,000 acres (4166 ha.) of Government plantations and around 2,000 acres (833 ha.) of Government-assisted village plantations. The erosion control planting in particular was often on a heroic scale, and it is this planting which characterizes much of Hong Kong's Country Parks today.\n\nAround this time, however, the programme was scaled down considerably. The village population was declining as people emigrated or moved to the urban areas; the demand for wood fuel was declining as alternatives became available; and the problem of hillfires was as serious as ever. In 1966-67, the area of Government coniferous forest alone which was burned was 1,265 acres (527 ha.), and village plantations and naturally regenerating woodland also suffered. From 1970 to 1985, the total number of trees killed exceeded those planted, and the total area affected by fire was nearly twice as large as the woodland cover in 1985. In the event, the total planting programme was reduced, and the replanting of village woodlands was discontinued (Daley 1975).\n\nFor better facilities for informal \"countryside\" activities, such as walking and observing wildlife, more effective management of the hill areas was required. In 1977, the first Country Park was established in Hong Kong (Neil & Harding, 1983). Some 40% of the area of Hong Kong and the New Territories, covering most of the upland area, had been designated under 21 Country Parks by 1979. Under the Country Parks Ordinance, all development within the Country Parks is strictly controlled. As well as the Parks, the conservation framework in Hong Kong includes 13 special areas and 37 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which are sites chosen for their rare flora, fauna, and geology, or because of special educational, archaeological, or historic interest.\n\nThe Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, which manage the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213629, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "199\n\n# THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR LABOURERS BURIED IN FRANCE\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nThis article complements the piece by Keith Stevens (RAS Journal No. 29), about Chinese Labour Corps members buried in England during or just after the First World War (1914-18).'\n\nBy 1916 there was a shortage of manpower in Britain. Conscription was introduced into the armed services and more men were recruited from various parts of the British Empire. These included Chinese who actually mostly came from Shan Tung (Shandong), but some were recruited from Honan (Hunan) Province. Together with British missionary and sinologue officers, many labourers were shipped from Weihaiwei (now called Weihai). This was British Territory and served as a naval base from 1898 until the Union Flag was lowered in 1930.3\n\nServing under British military discipline, in the region of 100,000 Chinese were shipped to France to dig trenches and construct fortifications for the allies. About 2,000 died from illness, wounds, or injuries sustained during or just after the war. Some were blown up by mines as they cleared battlefields after hostilities had ceased. Others succumbed to the influenza epidemic that swept Europe in 1919. A handful were shot dead in a mutiny near Boulogne. Those that did not return to China lie far from their native soil, in such places as Abbeville Communal Cemetery Extension, Albert French National Cemetery, Arques-La-Bataille British Cemetery, Asco Communal Cemetery, and Ayette British Cemetery, in France. The largest and most decorative is the Noyelles-sur-Mer Cemetery, which has a portico built in Chinese style.\n\nOne September morning in 1995, my son, Barry, and I drove from Brussels to Foncquevillers, a village situated in the fertile, undulating French countryside between the Arras-Doullens and the Arras-Amiens roads. There are a total of 645 graves in this military cemetery, which is bounded by a brick wall and a hornbeam hedge. It is planted with catalpa and other trees. Many of the graves here are seldom or never visited by outsiders. In this well-cared-for tranquil spot, there are two graves of Chinese Labour Corps labourers, one of a French civilian.\n\nPage 225\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213766, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "89\n\n5%\n\n2.992 females aged 25-30 in 1911, 2,795 in 1921\n\nCensus Report 1911, Table XXI\n\nCensus Report 1921, Tables XXIV-XXVII\n\nBased on a figure of double the female population since the male population is clearly significantly distorted by immigration\n\n* See JW Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions in Town and Countryside.\n\nHamden, Connecticut, 1977\n\n** Census Report, 1977, Tables IX and X. No detailed breakdown of Place of Birth of the\n\nFloating population is included in the 1911 Census\n\nC. I\n\nThe statistics for Place of Birth in the 1921 Census give a somewhat different picture. There (Census Report, 1921, Table XI) the place of birth of 34,724 Northern District males and 36,311 Northern District females are given, of which only 88% (males) and 82% (females) were born within the New Territories. The sharply higher figures for persons born outside the New Territories seems to be due to three factors. The first is the time of the Census. The 1921 Census was taken during the cooler weather (March-April) as compared with the 1911 Census (April-June). Numbers of stonecutters, itinerant weavers, etc., are likely to have been higher in 1921 as it is known from oral evidence that many of these village-to-village traders went back to their own families in villages outside the New Territories for the summer and harvest seasons, and would thus have been enumerated in 1921 but not in 1911. This is doubtless the reason the 1921 Census shows a far higher figure for males born in Kwai Shun District (997 compared to 354), and also for males from the area north of Canton (241 as compared to 23), although the numbers from Ka Ying and other East River areas were lower (142 as compared to 177). This may also be the reason for higher recorded numbers of males from other inland areas in 1921 (Sze Yap 77 as compared to 25, and Shiu Hing area, 95 as to 19). With the exception of Kwan Shun, all the 1921 figures for these areas show far fewer females than males (Kwan Shun, 1507 females; north of Canton, 1-42; East River, 72; Sze Yap, 16; Shiu Hing, 45). The effects of the Ching Ming Festival, and the remaining 1920 refugees are responsible, almost certainly, for the much higher numbers of San On born males (1213 in 1921, only 243 in 1911), and may in part also account for the increase in Tung Kun males (385 in 1921, 163 in 1911). Most of the difference, however, must be due to a more careful enumeration of the boat people in the area. The higher numbers recorded in 1921 for males born in the Delta (750 as against 234), the Chin Chau area (143 as against 9), Hong Kong (226 as against 10), and Macao (25 as against nil), must be due to this factor. The reduction in the numbers of women recorded as born in Hong Kong (1208 as against 2383 in 1911) may be due to errors in the 1911 record. Because of these differences, it is difficult to compare the two Censuses directly with regard to these statistics. It is considered likely that the 1911 figures are closer to the actual position of long-term land population residents born outside the area. The information in the 1921 Census does not permit any direct comparison with the Place of Birth figures for Southern District in 1911, since the 1921 figures include New Kowloon as well as the Islands.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213832, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "157\n\nlimited by the size of its villages and their economic status, Tung Chung did not adopt the tso-she ceremony in the earth god worship as Kwangtung's countryside did in the 1920s. Again, worship is mainly on a personal, rather than village, basis.\n\nThe most important supra-individual/lineage inter-village social activities in Tung Chung, as remembered by the older generation, were the chiao ceremony and the Houwang's Birthday Festival. Literally meaning sacrifice or offering, the chiao is a large-scale Taoist ceremony, performed to wipe away evil, forestall calamities, restore peace, and renew life in the way of cosmic harmony for the entire population of a community. It consists of a series of rituals, which are commonly called ta-chiao (arranging sacrifices or making offerings). In spite of its rich meaning, the chiao can be better understood as a festival with a dual purpose: giving thanks to the deities and offering sacrifices to the spirits of the dead. Basic items of activity include chanting by Taoist priests, called nun-mo-lao (chanting fellows), inviting local deities to the altar placed in a matshed, going to the puppet show and the communal meals, and joining a parade through the villages. Beginning in the late Ch'ing, the chiao ceremony was held in Tung Chung regularly in the 14th lunar month, and especially after plagues had taken many lives there. The Shek Mun Kap village, being the oldest village in the area, served as the locale. According to an old villager, the village became a local venue of social and economic activities after some shops were established there. Villagers liked to gather at the place to gamble and chat. It was, therefore, a suitable centre for popular festivals.\n\nAs an inter-village ceremony, the chiao required donations from all households at every village. From each village, a man was chosen as yuan-shou (leader of worship) by casting the divining blocks in front of the earth god at the entrance of Shek Mun Kap. He had to pass the divination three times in a row. These men took charge of money collection, the preparations for the occasion, and the hiring of matshed and stage builders, the puppet show troupe and the nun-mo chanters, etc. They also acted as the village representatives in assisting the ceremony. At the site of the chiao ceremony, in front of the earth god shrine at Shek Mun Kap, a matshed was set up temporarily to enshrine the Houwang image \"invited\" from the local temple. Oblations, joss sticks, and candles were put in front of the idol. Erected behind the earth god shrine was the gigantic bamboo and paper figure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213911, "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": 263, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "239\n\nSUPPLICATING THE DEITIES\n\nIN MAINLAND CHINA'S TEMPLES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIt was interesting to note that in recently rebuilt or refurbished Buddhist and Taoist temples in Shanghai city there was no evidence of fortune sticks and blocks or of any equipment such as sand tables used for spirit communication. Temple keepers when questioned about it were quite clear. It was forbidden as superstition [mi-hsin]. In retrospect I have now noted a similar absence of spirit communication paraphernalia on altars on photographs taken in other cities and even in the countryside which I had overlooked during my visits.\n\nIt would appear that devotees in mainland China are permitted to offer incense and oil for the ever-burning lamp, and in some areas they also can burn charm papers before the images of the deities after which they can, orally, though virtually silently, put their pleas and offer prayers to the deity. However, in Shanghai at least, they were not, under any circumstances, able to obtain the immediate response which is the practice in Taiwan, Hong Kong, SE Asia and formerly, in China itself. They have to wait for their wishes to be responded to positively, or otherwise, by the deity. One of the temple keepers added that, as he understood it, 'this was the foreign method of worship'.\n\nIt must be added that outside mainland China possibly the prime reason why many devotees ever visit a temple is to obtain an immediate assurance and response to a question or problem which is worrying them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214132, "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-1997", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "The two walled villages that our Group did walk around, in this basically Hakka Chinese region, struck the author as being, both in layout and construction, similar to the Hakka Tsang Tai Uk walled village in Hong Kong's Sha Tin. All, for example, have communal soul tablets above their altars in their ancestral halls, unlike Cantonese ancestral halls which have individual soul tablets for passed leading members of the community. The walled villages we inspected also have wok i gables which are supposed to denote scholarship among the persons living there. In these walled villages in China, there was also the odd coffin or two stored in their ancestral halls. These are sometimes bought by old people and kept in storage ready for when the last trumpet call sounds. The author has read of coffins being bought and stored in this way but has never actually seen it practised in Hong Kong.\n\nExcept for bad pockets of pollution, including both dust from construction sites and smoke from factories, parts of the countryside in the Huizhou region reminded the author, very much, of the Hong Kong he knew in the 1950s. As we sped along a new highway with many tollgates and little traffic, a wide variety of vegetables were being grown occasionally by the People's Liberation Army which has to earn its keep. On one occasion, our minibus was held up by a column of ducks waddling, single file, across the road!\n\nBut, in addition, there was a great deal of paddy with rice harvesting in progress. Winnowing machines were being used similar to those you sometimes see today stored in ancestral halls in Hong Kong's New Territories where they are no longer required. Although there are some small tractors in the Huizhou Region, in the main, the water buffalo is still the beast of burden. On one occasion, the author counted a herd of over 20 out grazing.\n\nWe saw, of course, many fish ponds on our trip in 1997, and, although we did not see any salt-pans as one could see in Tai O, on Lantao, in the 1950s, and even up until the early 1960s, they still exist in out-of-the-way places in China. The small group of RAS members that visited this eastern Guangdong region, in 1995, did see salt being harvested at a place called Ping Hoi. Before World War Two, salt farming in Hong Kong was usually undertaken by Hakka Chinese, and, in addition to Tai O (previously the most important place for salt farming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214288, "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-1998", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "109\n\nships of the line. The largest ships employed were the equivalent of battleships. They were mounted with up to 74 guns generally of a size of 32 pounders (the calibre of guns was usually quoted as the weight of the round shot, the cannon ball, which they fired), but up to 64 pounders. Field pieces were of smaller size so that they could be moved about the countryside. The forces in the first China war had six and nine pounders as well as 12 pounder howitzers. The main projectile was round shot. The guns would fire round shot to demolish the walls of forts etc. and they could do this very effectively, especially with the larger sizes of shot. Round shot would also plough through troops.\n\nThe other projectiles that the cannon used were shells and grape or canister. The common shell was filled with explosive which exploded when the fuse burnt down. The early fuses were not very reliable and it was not until the 1850s that accurate and reliable fuses had been developed. However, even in the first war, there are reports of shells being effective against the Chinese forts. In the second war, the Chinese were surprised by the effectiveness of the improved fuses, when their troops were shelled behind Canton. Caseshot, grapeshot or canister was also used, which was a tin of the size of the bore filled with bullets which burst open as it left the muzzle allowing the bullets to spread out in an arc. The number of bullets used varied, but the following were the normal loads:\n\n9 pounder gun\n\n41 5-oz. bullets\n\n6 pounder gun\n\n41 1-oz. bullets\n\n100 2-oz. Bullets\n\n24 pounder howitzer\n\nA variation of caseshot was the spherical caseshot which was fitted with a fuse so that the casing did not burst until it was well on its way to the target, thus increasing the effective range. Grapeshot could be used to clear men from the decks of ships as well as any massing on shore. Lieutenant Ouchterlony describes the effect that it could have in a confined space: \"The effect was terrific, for the street was perfectly straight, and the enemy's rear, not aware of the miserable fate which was being dealt out to their comrades in the front, continued to mass forward, so as to force fresh victims upon the mound of dead and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214304, "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-1998", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "126\n\nSian and Lanchou where once more they remained for a while. Here people were more hostile. The area already barren was also suffering from a drought. Clark decided to move south towards the Tibetan border where the situation was more favourable; however, before they could do so the Indian surveyor of the party had set up his instruments on a local peak known to the local population as the seat of the deities controlling the wind and rain. The locals saw him carrying out mysterious incantations on the top of their holy mountain and believing that he was the cause of the drought they beat him to death. This was the end of the expedition, which promptly returned to Peking.\n\nClark took the large collection of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and botanical specimens back to the US National Museum in Washington and in 1912 a book embodying the results of the expedition was published by T. Fisher Unwin in London under the joint authorship of Clark and Sowerby entitled Through Shen-Kan. This was the start of Sowerby's fame as a scientist and explorer and for the next twenty or so years he continued his collecting expeditions, financed by Clark, with the specimens being sent to the US National Museum.\n\nOnce more we have no idea what he did between the end of the Clark expedition in 1909 and the end of 1911, apart from getting himself married. In late 1911, one year after the revolution which brought the Republic into being, he took part in what came to be known as the Shensi Relief Expedition. The expedition's task was to rescue and lead to safety as many foreign missionaries as possible. Setting out in December 1911 they trekked to Sian where the whole area was in a state of political upheaval following the overthrow of the dynasty. Bandit hordes were rampaging and had taken over much of the countryside. After a number of hair-raising experiences they were successful, returning to safety and Peking in early 1912. He was twenty-seven at the time.\n\nHe described this in some detail in an appendix to P H Kent's The Passing of the Manchus, published in London in 1912 by Edward Arnold. The appendix, written in the third person was pseudonymous, though a note at the bottom of the page reveals that originally it had been written by Mr A de C Sowerby for the Peking and Tientsin Times.\n\nHe returned to Tientsin where his family had been taken to safety from Taiyuan and from which he planned to set out into the peaceful areas of Manchuria to explore and continue his collecting of specimens. He made four separate expeditions into Manchuria and parts of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214355, "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-1998", "page_number": 213, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "178\n\namends. King Wu also held an audience at which he announced that certain Daoists and generals who had bravely fought and died should be regarded as heroes and revered as such. At that point a number of Daoist mythological heroes stepped forward and declared that as they were uncultured, having lived in the mountains and countryside, they now wished to return to report to their masters. They added that they were unable to accept honours or rewards as they had simply followed the orders of their masters. All seven left the Court, and the following day after a feast, they were reluctantly permitted to leave by King Wu.\n\nMy daughter, a friend and I during a visit to Song Shan in Henan province, one of the Daoist holy mountains, came across a large modern temple which, as we approached its entrance, looked real enough until we came to enter it. There were several young women in a uniform of sorts knocking a badminton cock around to while away the hours and, of all things, a turnstile. We then saw the name of the temple was Fengshen Gong, the Palace of the Investiture of the Gods, and entered wide-eyed wondering what could possibly be inside.\n\nOnce inside we were taken by our guide down a short corridor and out into what proved to be a massive wax-works, images of scenes from the Fengshen Yanyi as well as images of the major local deity, the Lord of Zhong Yüeh, the Lord of the Central Peak [Song Shan]. The exhibition, we were informed, had been built by the Tourist Board of the local city, Deng Feng, for Chinese visitors. Well over 200 images, mostly static but with some dozen or so automatons, lined the winding path leading through the large exhibition hall. With a not too subtle gesture our guide switched each on and off until, apparently bored by her foreign guests who spent quite some time at each exhibit, she abandoned us and returned to her badminton. The place was deserted apart from four small boys who were delighted to be alone with us and took enormous pleasure in switching on and off the various exhibits for our benefit without any guide being there to chastise them.\n\nScenes included the wicked Zhou Wang ascending his throne; Na Zha, the Third Prince, Causing Trouble with the Dragon King; Duke Fa [King Wu] subjugating Zhou Wang; the Terrace of the Investiture on which Jiang Ziya is reading out the decree canonising the heroes, and the Five Sacred Ones returning to Heaven. Several of the automated exhibits had the small boys in fits of giggles; one in particular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214363, "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-1998", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "187\n\nTEMPLES ARISE\n\nFROM THE ASHES OF REVOLUTION\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nReturning from each of our tours of temples in Mainland China the question most frequently posed is the extent to which religious freedom exists in China? I find this difficult to answer. I have yet to visit an area where we have observed any form of obvious religious discrimination or evidence of current iconoclasm. At the risk of being accused of being a 'blind' observer in a country with a record of political suppression, I know that constraint of religion by the State exists as I have read numerous articles in the Chinese press about Chinese government calls for crackdowns on illegal temples and superstitious practices, but the extent to which these instructions have been carried out has not been apparent during our tours around the countryside. Indeed, there are few signs of religious suppression in any form. In late 1997 we came across a small rural temple in one of the loess canyons some fifteen or so miles north-east of T'aiyüan in Shansi province and were told by one of the villagers that the local Public Security Police had ordered it be pulled down as it was 'a bad element, a manifestation of superstition'. The small modern shrine, constructed some eight years ago, contained just one deity, a very rough and amateurish, modern baked-mud and concrete image of the local protective spirit, Ts'ai T'ai-yeh. The PSB had passed through the village many times during the two years since they issued the order for the destruction of the image; however, the villagers had simply ignored it and even when crowds of visitors drove in by car during the annual festival on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, the PSB again had simply turned a blind eye.\n\nChina's constitution theoretically protects the freedom of religion in China with party members being dissuaded from practising. Whilst permissive religion is unquestionably allowed within certain bounds I suspect 'tolerance' should be substituted for the word freedom. The Bureau of Religious Affairs under the State Council in Peking permits the five major organised religions to worship as they wish, within reason. These are Taoism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism [known in China as 'Christian'] and Islam. The Bureau does, however, frown on and frequently clamps down on popular religion, [also known as folk religion and even as Taoism by foreigners who have not perceived the difference] and some of the smaller proselytising western", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214366, "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-1998", "page_number": 224, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "190\n\nfor\n\nmany years. Although the government had turned a blind eye to such activities in the past, mainly in the name of making tourist dollars, it now focused attention on these 'superstitious rituals' which were said to be daily corroding the ideology of the people. The magazine, saying that market forces had prompted a resurgence of 'backward' religious practices, described how the system of traditional beliefs which had been finding fertile ground in the countryside was now creeping towards urban centres. This would seem neither to have inhibited nor prevented Taiwanese pilgrims flying into mainland China bearing Taiwanese images of deities to their particular cult centres in Fukien and Chekiang provinces for their 'power' [ling] to be renewed. It has to be remembered, however, that Taiwanese visitors are treated as privileged guests.\n\nProblems of luck and fate are as real today in China as they are in any rural society, and as they were in pre-communist China. Some private firms are reported maintaining altars on company premises and are making offerings to the traditional God of Wealth in the belief that this would help ensure their success in business. Buddhist statues have been placed in cultural centres and tutelary deities adorn the roofs of schools. Children too seem to have succumbed to the craze. A survey of 1,622 children between 11 and 12 in Changchun showed 50 per cent believed in fate and 40 per cent believed in the immortality of the soul. A further 40 per cent of boys and nearly 60 per cent of girls believed in spirits and in Heaven and Hell. It went on to describe the resurgence of superstitious practices and the appearance of several 'reactionary sects.' The September 1996 issue of Democracy and Legal System magazine said that tens of thousands of temples dedicated to China's colourful assembly of gods were being illegally built or restored. It quoted 20,1692 in Fukien province, 9,000 in Honan and 10,000 in Shansi provinces had been destroyed, and even 597 state-run restaurants in Peking had taken down and removed Buddhist shrines during one month alone. A further report described a similar crackdown in Hupei province where 1,600 'pagan' shrines, mostly dedicated to the Earth God, had been destroyed as part of the nation-wide crackdown. Similar action had been taken in Kueichou province where nine illegal temples had been closed in one month. A report about Chekiang province about the same time claimed that provincial officials had brought under control 17,900 Taoist, Buddhist or Christian [sic] temples and monasteries.\n\nThe mainland newspaper, Paok'an Wenchai, had about this same time criticised the widespread superstitious practices in the building", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214606, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Appendix One\n\nActivities - Talks\n\nDate 1999\n\n23 April: Writing a History of Hong Kong, Challenges and Rewards, by Frank Welsh.\n\n7 May: In Search of the Gods: An Anecdotal Miscellany of Memories, by Keith Stevens.\n\n28 May: Korean Palaces, by Dr James Hayes\n\n25 June: The Social History of the Jewish Community in Hong Kong 1842-1949, by Dr Caroline Pluss.\n\n27 August: A Bird's Eye View of Hong Kong, by Dr David Melville.\n\n10 September: Should Geographers Take Feng Shui Seriously? by Dr Elizabeth Teather and Eddie Chow, followed by dinner at the Mariners' Club.\n\n22 October: Voices of Macau Stones, by Jason Wordie.\n\n26 November: Speak English, Will Travel, by Drs Gillian and Verner Bickley.\n\n29 November: August Borget in China and Macau, by Barbara Giordana.\n\n10 December: The Yaumatei Book Project, by Drs Patrick Hase and James Hayes, followed by dinner at the Foreign Correspondents' Club.\n\n2000\n\n21 January: My Century, by Anthony Lawrence.\n\n3 March: Hong Kong's Countryside-Conservation for the New Territories Lowlands, by Edward Stokes,\n\nXX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214683, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "62\n\nmarket clearly grew in the later nineteenth century, but it was already large and prosperous by 1846.\n\n\"The map is the Coastal Map of Kwangtung of 1553 of Ying Ka (MW l), reproduced in Hal Empson, Mapping Hong Kong: A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong, Government Information Services, 1992, Plate 1-2. Kowloon is not included in the list of Markets in the 1688 San On County Gazetteer (at least, not under an easily recognisable name), but both a \"Kwun Fu Village\" (九龍墟) and a “Kowloon Village\" (九龍村) are, as well as Nga Tsin Wai, Po Kong, and Ma Tau Wai Villages. Despite this, however, it seems likely that a market was in existence at Kowloon City from well before the late seventeenth century. The Kowloon City Market is equally not included in the 1819 County Gazetteer, by which date there can be no shadow of a doubt that the market was very well, and very long, established. The earliest surviving land-deeds for the market date from 1751 and 1755, by when, clearly, the market was well-established: see J. Hayes, The Hong Kong Region: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside, Hamden, Connecticut, 1977, p. 235, n. 14. In 1822, when the Hau Wong Temple near the market was restored, 85 shops from Kowloon City Market donated to the restoration, together with 5 (probably apothecaries), 31 quarries (石場), presumably from the surrounding hills, 4 ferryboats and 29 fishing-boats, as well as 8 shops from other markets. Clearly, the market was, in 1822, a vital and very well established place. See D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit. Vol. 1, pp. 75-78.\n\nWE\n\nThe dates of 1354 and 1724 are included on a tablet giving the history of the village placed by the villagers in the Tin Hau Temple in the village. The details of the three founders' connections with the late Sung court are from statements made by village elders to Dr Hayes, and again to me, at various dates.\n\n14 I have used a copy of one of the Nga Tsin Wai hand-written versions (kindly given to me by Mr Ng Hung-on, 吳雄安), the (privately printed) Nga Tsin Wai Wai Clan Genealogy (寶安縣衙前圍吳氏族譜), and the hand-written version from Siu Lek Yuen, a copy of which may be found in the “Historical Literature of Sha Tin\" series in the library of United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\n15 A copy was kindly given me by Mr Chan Wai-hong (陳偉康). This Tsuk Po was produced some years ago, from genealogical information written on the back of the clan Ancestral Tablets.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214718, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "97\n\nin tun fu and other religious ceremonies. 'It is not really worth making a fuss about and upsetting the system', seemed to sum it all up.\n\nBut by comparison, even if western women would probably not accept a 'second-class citizen' situation in a similar way, nevertheless it should be remembered that only men are allowed, still, to become Catholic priests. Women have however been accepted, in a number of cases not so long ago, as clerics into the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church. Again showing leanings towards men, even in the West, the Author recalls his 90-year old English mother saying, in the 1980s, \"It's a pity Mrs Thatcher (the then Prime Minister of Britain) isn't a man. People would respect her more.”\n\nWill tun fu die out?\n\nWith the population of Hong Kong expected to reach somewhere in the region of eight-and-a-half million by the year 2010, this can only mean additional new towns and greater urbanisation in the New Territories. Such growth must bring drastic changes in lifestyles as has happened in the past. Western style bars, karaoke and other hostess services are now not uncommon in the Yuen Long and Kam Tin area, signifying the move towards globalisation (Chu; 1999)(Yu; 1999). In addition, what sociological changes will Route Three Highway, the West Rail Link and a possible new town close by bring to the district (Shum; 1996, 41)?\n\nBut in spite of inevitable changes, Sheung Tsuen, where the main Pat Heung tun fu ceremony that the Author attended was held, is still a pleasant, peaceful village. In spite of paddy fields having long disappeared and derelict cars being dumped together with other eyesores, there is still a country atmosphere. The Koel and other birds call from atop camphor and banyan trees. To an observant person, the number of tun fu ceremonies held in the New Territories still does not appear to be exceedingly small. But with the continuing rapid increase in population and concomitant developments, they are likely to become endangered, although the custom is likely to be around, in smaller numbers, for some time to come.\n\nConclusions\n\nTun fu ceremonies are held because a previously quiet area of the countryside and its feng shui are threatened. Perhaps a hill in which the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215116, "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-2000", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "169\n\nthe hills. In temples in and around Hsintien and Mucha Wang Gong is revered as the protective deity (with the pair being revered in a few places but still known as Wang Gong) with his [their] annual festival celebrated on the 10th day of the fourth lunar month, but largely without the great majority of devotees realizing the original identity of the deities. Wang Gong A is also referred to as Weng Gong and Huang Gong A, both of which are almost certainly erroneous titles due to mistaken homophones.\n\nIn and around Hangzhou they are known together as Er Da Ming Huang [The Two (Generals) of Tang emperor Ming Huang]. A fierce image of Zhang, with his mouth wide open used to stand on a minor altar in a small temple near Donghu, a city some sixty miles upstream from Hangzhou. Devotees there believed that pain could be cured merely by touching the abdomen of the image whilst throwing a few coppers into its mouth. Two large images of Zhang and Xu in an old temple some fifteen miles east of Hangzhou, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been replaced with modern images with the image makers being guided by the elderly from memory. This temple stands out in the countryside with the nearest village some half a mile away and with the catchment area for contributions for the rebuilding extending some ten miles in all directions. The refurbished temple has yet [early 1994] to have the two dozen aides flanking the side of the main hall completed, though the images of their main deities and their consorts have been finished. They are regarded as the local protective deities.\n\nIn 1963 in Hong Kong, in a Chaozhou community squatter-shack temple on Lion Rock hillside above Kowloon [now long demolished], the two deities, represented on a framed paper icon on the main altar as two relaxed, seated mandarins in floral robes, were first identified as \"The Two Loyal Dukes\" or \"the Two Loyal Saintly Lords\". The two deities were later identified by several devotees as Wang Zhang Ek and Wang Xu Elf. The two mandarins, with long black beards, were identical and were prayed to as the patron deities and protectors of Chaozhou people.\n\nIn 1927 Goodrich in Beijing recorded seeing images of “two famous generals of the Tang dynasty, Zhang Xun and Xu Yuan” in the Dongyue Temple to the east of the city.13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215369, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "95\n\nCHINESE BABY CARRIERS:\n\nA HONG KONG TRADITION NOW GONE\n\nVALERY GARRETT\n\nNine o'clock on a sunny morning in April 1989, and I was standing on the pier that juts out like a finger into Starling Inlet, a stretch of sea separating Hong Kong from China. About fifty fisherwomen were yelling at the top of their voices and pushing scraps of clothing in my face. My goal, apart from the immediate one of not falling into the murky waters below, was to acquire traditional clothing from the people of Sha Tau Kok, the fishing village that straddles the border with China.\n\nI was taking part in a research project for the Hong Kong Museum of History to collect and document material culture, through purchases and donations, from the farming and fishing communities in the New Territories, before urbanization changed the area forever. It was a timely mission, for today the paddy fields have gone, and market towns have been absorbed by high-rise apartment blocks housing the refugees who arrived from China in the 1970s and 80s.\n\nI became aware in the late 1970s, that change would soon affect the rural areas, and had paid numerous visits to the New Territories in search of traditional dress. Then, together with an interpreter to help with unfamiliar dialects, I made forays into the countryside each week, visiting remote villages where life had changed little for the past hundred years. Although I was viewed at first as a crazy gwaipo, before long the villagers were yielding to my requests for old clothing they no longer needed. The loose black pyjamas, shady straw hats, colourful children's dress and brightly decorated wedding outfits were collected, photographed and carefully researched.\n\nBoth periods of collecting produced large numbers of children's clothing, kept for sentimental reasons, as well as good fortune, until the child was grown. Cloth baby carriers were some of the most common items collected. Carrying a baby on the back was long regarded in southern China as a safe and convenient place for a mother or servant to keep a child out of harm's way. Many women had to work and care for children at the same time, either in the fields growing rice or vegetables, or helping with...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215640, "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": 417, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "369\n\nThere was plenty of time apart from these formal occasions to look around Jehol. Macartney is full of admiration for the parks and countryside. He describes the West Park in the following words:\n\nIt is one of the finest forest scenes in the world, wild, woody, mountainous and rocky, abounding with stags and deer of different species, and most of the other beasts of chase not dangerous to man. In many places immense woods, chiefly oaks, pines and chestnuts grow upon perpendicular steeps and force their sturdy roots through every resistance of surface, and of soil, where vegetation would seem almost impossible. These woods often clamber over the loftiest pinnacles of the stony hills, or gathering on the skirts of them, descend with a rapid sweep, and bury themselves in the deepest valleys. There, at proper distances, you find palaces, banqueting houses and monasteries (but without bonzes) adapted to the situation and peculiar circumstances of the place, sometimes with a rivulet on one hand gently stealing through the glade, at others with a cataract rumbling from above, raging with foam, and rebounding with a thousand echoes from below or silently engulfed in a gloomy pool or yawning chasm. The roads by which we approached these romantic scenes are often hewn out of the living rock, and conducted round the hills in a kind of rugged staircase and yet no accident occurred in our progress, not a false step disturbed the regularity of our cavalcade, though the horses are spirited, and all of them unshod.\n\nAlthough Lord Macartney was unable to establish a close rapport with the first Minister who accompanied them, the journal, nevertheless paints a picture of them having an enjoyable and interesting time, in contrast to the usual descriptions of the visit which concentrate on the refusal to perform the kowtow and instead to go down on bended knee, an alternative which, after some discussion, was accepted amicably when it was agreed that it was sufficient to go down on one knee, but not to kiss hands.\n\nFinally the Embassy party left for 'Pekin' on 20th September and arrived on the 26th after an arduous journey, Macartney himself being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216036, "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": 335, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "269\n\nthe time ripe for an insurrection..\n\nThe rebellion began among the Hakka people in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and by 1853 was spreading north and west, led by Hong Xiuquan, a schoolmaster who had picked up a smattering of Christianity. Whilst suffering from an illness he experienced severe hallucinations and saw that his mission was to free the Chinese from Manchu rule. He also convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Christ and a son of God sent to save mankind. The Taiping rebels were known colloquially by the Chinese peasants as the Long-haired Rebels, Chang Mao, as they refused to shave the front of their head. [China's Manchu conquerors had ordered that all Chinese males would shave the front half of their head and wear the rest tied into a lengthy queue or 'pigtail'.] Hong Xiuquan's liberated territory was known as the Kingdom of Great Peace, Taiping Tianguo and by 1860 he had more than a quarter of China under his control. Much of the fighting between the Manchu Imperial forces and the Taiping rebel armies took place across Zhejiang province and down the Yangzi, especially around the Taiping capital at Nanjing. With Zhenjiang captured by the Taiping in April 1853 [a mere eleven years after the British had taken the city], their control of the southern bank of the Yangzi was virtually complete. Zhenjiang lay deserted during the Taiping era, being no more than a fort occupied by the Taiping rebels. The pagodas and temples were all destroyed with the usual Taiping iconoclastic fervour, and in many places their stones used as fortifications. The city, surrounded on three sides by a remarkable line of Taiping trenches some ten to eleven miles in length, was besieged several times by the Imperial forces. Each time they were driven off, with the city remaining in Taiping hands until compelled by a failure of supplies the rebels were forced to evacuate it early in 1857. Zhenjiang never fully recovered. The Taiping were finally defeated in 1864 when their capital at Nanjing finally fell to the Imperial forces - assisted by several foreign-led armies of Chinese and western mercenaries, one of which was the Ever-Victorious Army under General Gordon. Rasmussen in 1905 refers to the decayed trench system as 'Gordon's trenches', with some of his guns still to be found sunk deep into the soil of their old embrasures. He added that 'the only reminder now [1905] of the Taiping Rebellion was the thousands of graves covering the countryside, and the ghost-ridden walled city where the whole population had been put to the sword'. Thomas Adkins, the British Consul in Zhenjiang,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216047, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "280\n\nfood and shelter with money he collected from foreigners. He always wore straw sandals, Chinese clothes and cap, and had a strong Chinese complex. The local Chinese adored him, but not so the missionaries; they detested him, even refusing him food and shelter, or any assistance whatsoever - consoling themselves with the reflection that he was a 'disgrace to the cloth'.\n\nDr. James Hayes has reminded me that he produced a note for Volume 23 of this JHKBRAS[1983] in which he provided extracts from A. H. Rasmussen's China Trader21 describing the westerner's community shooting bungalow in about 1905. Rasmussen was barely twenty when he joined the Chinese Maritime Customs at Zhenjiang, a small, lonely British concession. When first posted there he had been assured by others that Zhenjiang was a very nice and clean Concession, with a good club and excellent shooting. He found this to be a good description of the Concession but not of the native town. During his first four years, two of the original thirty-five Europeans died, two went mad, two cut their throats, and he himself was twice nearly murdered by smugglers. After several years with the Imperial Maritime Customs he was offered a job representing a foreign firm still in Zhenjiang and found himself now one of the upper set. No longer could he walk down the crowded streets of the Concession but must ride in state in his sedan chair, borne by his four chair bearers garbed in his firm's colours. Rasmussen's sanity was saved by the presence of a small shooting bungalow in the countryside near by, looked after by a caretaker. It was about eight miles away on a hill called Wu Chow where he would stay during his off-duty hours either reading or hunting wild boar. Though it was relatively expensive in ammunition and tips for the beaters he was able to lessen the latter by sharing expenses with shooting companions. Rasmussen spent many happy hours scanning the visitors' book finding out more about previous hunting successes and failures. He describes how he relieved his boredom by walking up and down the Bund, three hundred yards there and three hundred back, and for a change he walked along the only cross street to the south gate of the Concession, two hundred yards there and two hundred yards back.\n\nOne of the most lucrative trades around Shanghai and Zhenjiang used to be that of being shot. Foreign merchants often went up creeks in house-boat parties, or wander about the fields in the outskirts, looking for snipe. There were no hedges or game laws and innumerable", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216095, "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": 394, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "328\n\nThere was a great deal of respect for Britain in the 1950s and when I bargained with a stall holder to buy a piece of electrical equipment he said to me: “This is not Japanese you know. It's best quality. It's British!' As late as the mid-1960s one of my Chinese staff, teaching surveying, refused to use a theodolite because it was made in Japan. War time memories died hard!\n\nAlmost wherever one went in the colony during the 1954-55 winter one could hear the song, Whatever will be, will be, blaring out over loudspeakers or being hummed or sung. I was told that I should not tip more than 20 cents for odd tasks and, at the end of the month, I should tip my hotel room boy and my waiter each $10. I could go out then and have a haircut, a shave, a shampoo and a manicure for $2.80, and, being a generous sort of chap, I gave the 20 cents change as a tip. As I have said, I did not arrive immediately after the Second World War when people were prepared to work for two bowls of rice a day.\n\nThere was no income tax in Hong Kong until 1939 when a 10 per cent \"war tax\" was levied. This was supposed to come off when the war ended but it never did. When I arrived in the mid-1950s the maximum salaries tax one could pay was 12 per cent. It had been increased from 10 per cent in 1950.\n\n1\n\n2\n\nI started teaching at the old Technical College in Wood Road, Wan Chai. On my first visit a \"big man coolie team\" was grunting and manhandling heavy engineering equipment up the stairs. We did not move to Hung Hom until 1957. With the help of \"academic drift” my old College became the Polytechnic University, on the Hung Hom campus, in 1994.\n\nShortly after I arrived in the colony there was a rumour a leopard was on the prowl in the New Territories. It was probably no more than a rumour but I do believe that there were instances of South China Tigers briefly visiting the New Territories in the 1950s. If you don't believe me you should read The Hong Kong Countryside, by zoologist GAC Herklots (1951).\n\nI was taken the rounds of Hong Kong by a Yorkshire colleague within a few days of my arriving. First we went to the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (as it was known then) where I opened an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216240, "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": 539, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "473\n\nmodernity' (p.10) and is a very good read: in places, simply riveting.\n\nThe Introduction sets the style and the content (and quality) one can expect (and get), from the whole book of 371 pages. The chapters are devoted to different aspects of China's modernisation, as seen through the eyes of persons from many levels of society. We see them benefiting, or in many cases suffering, from rapid urban and economic change, in Beijing (especially fast-tracked owing to the coming 2008 Olympics), Shanghai, and in the countryside. We visit West China, and listen to those affected by the immense scale of the Three Gorges Dam. Tibet and Taiwan are also on the menu. There is a chilling and most compelling chapter on \"subversion,\" including an enlightening account of Falun Gong. Interspersed, are fascinating chapters on the writer's family background in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and on her own life in the Colony, from birth until she left to study journalism in Australia in 1981. There are final chapters on the social upheavals caused by the ongoing shift away from state capitalism, and on the new-style problems affecting China's progress towards becoming a developed nation.\n\nMany topics come alive through the wide range of personal stories resulting from the author's oft demonstrated ability to create and utilise opportunities for meaningful discourse in a country where this is, quite clearly, far from being an easy task; whilst her frank and engaging descriptions of how she circumvented difficulties that would have stymied less determined mortals, is itself a valuable commentary on China's bureaucracy and the relationship of government and people.\n\nThe book's popular style is deceptive, because a relentlessly probing approach makes this essentially a serious book, in which the author describes, graphically and convincingly, how China finds herself at present, with all her attendant problems and difficulties. Despite being able to reveal much that is still wrong, and harmful to the nation's progress, she is essentially optimistic in her Epilogue, emphasizing how far China has come in the last decade, and advising her readers that 'China isn't going to collapse' though in need of greater transparency, especially in the financial sector.\n\nWe are left pondering how China's rulers are going to cope with a runaway situation. For this reviewer, the author's experiences whether", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216323, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "31\n\nright, presently near a road bridge spanning the river at this point, has the picturesque name now, as it did then, of \"Lady's Slipper,\" in Cantonese Ah Niang Hai. The merchant ships had to anchor here and report themselves to the Chinese force guarding the passage, and show their permits. This done, they were on their way upstream to the Whampoa Anchorage, twelve miles from Canton.\n\nThe Whampoa Anchorage (Plate 3) was the furthest point to which merchant ships could come. It was a trans-shipment centre, a very busy place, year in year out, for centuries. Its warehouses, docks and repair yards, its hospital, its cemetery, all point to a long existence as the place in which - more than Canton itself - the real business of the China Trade was carried on. That is, other than at Lintin (“Solitary Nail,” a reference to its single peak), an island in the outer waters of the Delta which, since the 1820s, had become an opium depot and the port for a large volume of illegal trading, the amount (astonishingly enough) tripling the authorized regular trading conducted through the Co-hong, and under the official regulations.7\n\nWhampoa was the Chinese countryside beside the river, lush and heavily populated. The Daniells, English painters who visited the Whampoa anchorage twice, in 1785 and 1793, particularly noted ‘...its sweet, romantic scenery. Nothing indeed can exceed the beauty of the country in this vicinity.’ Another visitor wrote in 1848: \"Whampoa was beautiful. The vessels were displaying their different flags; Chinese boats were crossing and re-crossing in every direction, and the setting sun was shedding its gilded light on everything around, giving to the low, flat island, covered with rich, green-like velvet, the pagodas and the foliage of the trees, a touch of enchantment'. Above Canton, it was much the same story. \"The river sides were planted with orange-trees, plantains, and lychees; while nothing but rice fields appeared inland'.10\n\nWhampoa's famous seven-storey pagoda, built in the late Ming period, features in many China Trade paintings, and in paintings on porcelains and fans. The pagoda itself attracted the more energetic visitors. A 16 year old American girl who accompanied her sea captain father on his China voyage in 1856, climbed up the pagoda and wrote in her journal, '(after you arrive at the top, I found I was repaid for my trouble. Oh! There was such a beautiful view, for miles and miles I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216346, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "54 \n\nChina Coast Pidgin English in JHKBRAS, Vol.35, pp.113-141. See also note 75 below.\n\n56 Morse, International Relations, Period of Conflict, p.75.\n\n57 cited in Parkinson, op.cit., p.341.\n\n58 See pp.179-180 of my The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside. Hampden, Conn., 1977.\n\n59 Chinese text at No.28 in Vol. 1 of the three volume set of Hong Kong's Historical Inscriptions published by the Hong Kong Urban Council in 1986.\n\n60 Inscribed tablet dated 11th lunar month of the 6th year of Daoguang (1826) at the \"New Temple\" near the Barrier gate at Macau, which refers back to an earlier tablet on the subject dated in early Jiaqing.\n\n61 China No.4 (1864) Commercial Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls in China for 1862, p.62.\n\n62 Ibid, p.39.\n\n63 Ibid., p.67.\n\n64 See Bodde, Derk, and Morris, Clarence (1967). Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases. University of Pennsylvania Press.\n\n65 Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.263-9\n\n66 Ibid., Vol.IV, pp.281-3.\n\n67 The journal kept during his imprisonment was later published. See 'Edited by a Barrister', Journals kept by Mr. Gully and Capt. Denham during a captivity in China in the Year 1842. London, Chapman and Hall, 1844. This episode, and the much worse one involving the nearly 300 passengers and crew of a military transport from India, the Nerbudda, are also mentioned by Ouchterlony, pp. 499-509).\n\n68 Journals, op.cit., pp. 3-4.\n\n69 Gutzlaff, Sketch of Chinese History, op.cit., p.42.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "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 } ]