[ { "id": 205585, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "122\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\nwas the effect of this development on the relationships within the old marketing area? It might be noted here that the modern system of communications in the New Territories has, necessarily, been laid down with little reference to the pre-existing marketing structure of the southern part of San On county. To what extent have these and other modern developments—such as the formation of the Heung Yee Kuk* - contributed to the overall integration of marketing areas which previously had little or no contact with each other? Has Kowloon replaced Yuen Long and Taipo as the stage on which local leaders perform to their audience?\n\nNo less striking than the change in the standard of living and the range of activities of the local \"Big Men\", is the rise in the income of farmers in Ping Shan. But although the improvement in their returns from agriculture is clearly demonstrated, one is again tempted to ask if this is not a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Those who maintain that the lineage was a vehicle for class exploitation have a strong case, and it is possible to take Potter's data as evidence that this still is so. Traditional Chinese society was relatively highly differentiated, but the range of differentiation possible in a semi-subsistence economy is limited: although the farmers' income has risen so dramatically, one can still ask whether their position has improved or worsened in relation to that of other sections of the rural population. Are the rich Tangs growing richer, while their poorer kinsmen - in fact, or in their own estimation, become relatively poorer?\n\nIn Ping Shan, now as in the past, the farmers come from the poorer branches of the lineage†; the members of the richer branches can afford not to be farmers. For the most part, then, farmers have to rent their land from corporations to which they do not belong, and they therefore get no dividend on the rents they pay. Since there is no reason to suppose that the distribution of ancestral land in Ping Shan was untypical, so far as the rich and long-established lineage is concerned, the material presented by Potter in his chapter IV \"The Ownership and Management of Property\"\n\n* See the Laws of Hong Kong, revised edition 1964, Cap. 1097 for the Ordinance establishing the Heung Yee Kuk (#) as a statutory body \"to provide for the establishment and functions of an advisory and consultative body for the New Territories and for purposes connected therewith\". Ed.\n\n† The sample used for the Farm Survey consisted of 42 farms operated by punti men, and 3 by refugee vegetable growers, (v. p. 62)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205863, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n163\n\nconnection with cremation burial was introduced by an \"iron-using people influenced by Buddhism”.\n\nThe present discovery is thus not only of interest to Hong Kong, it also serves to establish cultural links between south China and South-east Asia during the “Proto-historic” period of South-east Asia. It is hoped that this discovery will lead to more systematic work on the archaeology of the Ming period in Hong Kong.\n\nHong Kong, 1969.\n\nJAMES C. Y. WATT.\n\n+\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See J. W. Hayes, \"Preliminary Report on the Finds at Shek Pik” at pp. 122-124 of H.K.B.R.A.S. Vol. 2, 1962 elaborated by James C. Y. Watt and J. W. Hayes in \"Sung Finds at Shek Pik\" in Vol. I of the Journal of the Hong Kong Archaeological Society, (1969).\n\n2 These bowls are usually quite shallow with an incised pattern of vertical lines on the outside and often a stamped pattern in the centre. Kilns producing such bowls have been discovered in Wai Yeung county, about 100 kms. east of Canton reports in Kaogu 1962.8 and Kaogu 1964.4.\n\n3 Kaogu 1964.10. See also Kaogu 1962.2 and Kaogu 1965.6.\n\n4 Rosa C. P. Tenazas, A Report on the Archaeology of the Locsin University of San Carlos Excavations in Pila, Laguna. Manila, 1968.\n\n5 Wilhelm G. Solheim II. Archaeological Survey and excavation in Northern Thailand. Preliminary report on excavations at Ban Nadi, Ban Sao Lao, Pimai No. I. Honolulu, 1966. (Quoted by Tenazas, op. cit.)\n\n“KELLY AND WALSH”\n\nAll members of the Branch will have seen books bearing the name of this famous Eastern publishing house, and some may own a few of their many publications over the last century. Dr. J. R. Jones has contributed a note taken verbatim from an old book in his possession, which demonstrates the firm's long history. It reads:\n\nProbably the next oldest printing and publishing concern in Shanghai is Messrs. Kelly and Walsh, Limited, formed in 1876 by the amalgamation of two local booksellers, Kelly and Company and F. & C. Walsh. While this firm's main concern is bookselling, it also runs an important printing business, turning out high-class work of every description. It, too,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206306, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A\n\n# THE DISTRICT WATCH COMMITTEE\n\n117\n\nquarrymen a lawless and potentially dangerous class of people. But Chinese on Hong Kong Island, like their fellow countrymen in Hsin-an hsien (a county which then comprised the future British Kowloon Peninsula and New Territories) formed a socially well-organised community, knit together by ties of family and kinship and involved, apart from the boat people, in wider forms of social organisation such as the clan and the lineage3. They were constrained by the type of in-built social controls found typically in any rural Chinese community. On the other hand, immigrant Chinese arriving after 1842, who came mostly from Canton and the delta counties, formed a purely urban population, lacking roots and sentiments of belonging: they had necessarily few attachments at first to their new area of residence. Congregated in the mushrooming city of Victoria and soon outnumbering the old, established Chinese population of the island, they were not subject to any in-built system of social control. The new population of urban Chinese from Kwangtung Province, like newly arrived Europeans, were faced with the problem of maintaining public order and protecting their families and properties. The better-off Chinese merchants and traders were soon compelled to employ their own guards and some householders and shopkeepers engaged their own street watchmen, either paid for by the individual householder or collectively by subscription.\n\nBy the 1850s Hong Kong Chinese had developed not only their own associations, such as Kaifong, but even a rudimentary system of self-government, if the evidence is to be believed. A note in the China Review claims, for example, that in 1851 the shopkeepers of Sheung Wan (i.e., the area of the Chinese 'Bazaar', west of the European central district) 'repaired the Man-mo Temple, elected a Committee, and therein afterwards decided all cases of any public interest5'. The same writer also claims that in 1857 'the U-lan-shing-ui (a sworn mutual aid association) united Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan under one public committee, and these four districts were called the Sz-wan or four circuits'. Eitel states (but cites no authority) that around 1851 the Committee of the Man Mo Temple 'now rose into eminence as a sort of unrecognised and unofficial local-government board (principally made up by Nampak-hong or export merchants). This Committee secretly controlled native affairs, acted as commercial arbitrators, arranged for the due", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207054, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 125, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n119\n\nwho had gone over to the Manchus.1 Its adoption was due to a conviction that Cheng's campaigning against the new dynasty could not be continued if aid and supplies were denied him in this way. As the plan has it, \"the end of the enemy comes without war\".2\n\nEnforcement of this drastic measure was extended to the Hsin-an and adjacent districts of Kwangtung in 1661. Two inspections determined the areas to be cleared. At the time of the first inspection up to a distance of 50 li from the coast, it was calculated that two-thirds of the territory of the hsien would be affected. A year later the boundary was extended further inland, and what remained of the district was to be absorbed into the adjoining Tung-kuan county. By the 5th year of K'ang Hsi, Hsin-an had ceased to be a separate administrative district.\n\nWhen the new boundaries were fixed, the inhabitants living outside them were given notice to move inland. These orders were enforced by troops. The result was that whole communities were uprooted from their native place, deprived of their means of livelihood and compelled to settle where they could. The rural people risked their lives if they ignored the government edict to move, or ventured back into the prohibited area. It is recorded that about 16,000 persons from Hsin-an were driven inland. Only 1,648 of those who left are said to have returned when the evacuation was rescinded in 1669.4 The survivors' hardships did not end when they returned to take up their interrupted lives in their old homes, for it is recorded that destructive typhoons in 1669 and 1671 destroyed the new houses in many places.5\n\nThis chapter of unprecedented hardship and suffering has had a great impact on the minds of local people and their descendants. It is recalled in the genealogies and traditions of some of the long-settled clans of the district: it is commemorated in the construction and continued repair of temples to the two officials, a Governor of Kwangtung and a Viceroy of the Liang-kuang, who strove to have\n\n1 Hsieh, pp. 565-566.\n\n2 Hsieh, pp. 566 and 580-581.\n\n3 For the local areas to be cleared see Lo, 1963, pp. 94-95. See also Sung 1939, which details some local events on land and sea.\n\n4 Barnett, 1957, p. 262. A supplementary check in 1667 gave 3,667 persons still living within the district; ibid, p. 263. We cannot be sure whether the figures relate to persons or only to males over 16; or whether they are accurate.\n\n5 HNHC 13/3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "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": 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": 208039, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "62\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nThat is, the Tangs, as well as the other large landholding clans, first established rights over cultivation-value; their claims to ownership rested primarily on their identity as \"first-cultivators.\"23\n\nThe priority of cultivation-value is best revealed by a brief examination of tax assessment in Hsin-An. Land has traditionally been classified according to its production potential. At the time of British occupation, first class land (甲) yielded two crops of paddy annually, or one crop of sugarcane. Second class land (乙⺕) was capable of producing one crop of rice, or one crop of sugarcane. Third class land (丙) \"was generally devoted to the cultivation of peanuts, sweet potatoes, millet and other hardy crops.\"24 This classification scheme was recognized by the Hsin-An Magistrate in 1582, a mere nine years after the creation of the county. Different rates were fixed according to whether the land was considered to be first, second, or third class land.25\n\nThus, by the time of the great Hakka influx, little cultivatable land was available in the county. The landlords, who often lived miles away from their fields, were eager to take on tenants, and offered the migrants “reasonable rents.” Rent-value was assessed by a simple extension of the tax assessment value; i.e., rent-value was extracted from an already established cultivation-value.26\n\nOnce fixed, tax-rates and rent-rates seldom, if ever, changed. The tax-rates listed for the three classes of land in the Hsin-An Hsien-chih, which had been in force for decades prior to the publication of the gazetteer in 1819, were quoted in the petitions concerning the Tang holdings in Hong Kong, written in 1842. Similarly, there is strong evidence to suggest that landlords were generally powerless to impose greater rent-burdens, and, as we shall see, were occasionally forced to lighten the rent.27 Rent-values were often stated in all bills of sale between landlords.\n\nThe increasing alienation of rent-value from cultivation-value was reflected in the inability of landlords to locate their plots of land when called upon to present evidence to the Land Court. Furthermore, there were often significant disparities between the market-prices of the \"skin\" and the \"bones.\"28 Tenants were occasionally able to manipulate the system to their own advantage:\n\nFor generations, landowners have been content to collect their rents without ever having taken the trouble to enquire into the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208042, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CHING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n65\n\nimplied a physical division of the land itself. From the scanty evidence on tenant rings, we can conclude that the sale of cultivation-value was probably regulated within the group. In any event, it was unnecessary for the landlord to be informed of the sale.\n\nDescent among perpetual lessor clans was governed by the principle Fen tsu erh pu fen t'ien (分租而不分田: \"divide the rent but not the land.\") Gompertz, in CSO109 Ext., comments:\n\nWhen an inheritance has already been divided among the various branches of the clan the problem is very much simpler but as a matter of fact such partitions have been hitherto very rare and we are now in the dilemma of being obliged either to devise a form of title suited to this collective ownership or to refuse to take cognisance of anything but the ownership of individuals.3\n\nThe Ping Shan Tang genealogy gives this account of the origin of this principle in Tung-Kuan county (at the time of the writing of this passage, Hsin-An had not yet been formed):\n\nWe have been inhabitants of Ping Shan for six generations. From my great grandfather to my father (i.e., three generations) no ancestral property was divided, a fact which greatly benefited the villagers. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, an imperial edict forbade the uniting of different families into single households. Thereafter, my younger brother and I began to register separately as inhabitants of Huang T'ien Ch’ang (黄田昌) and Tung-Kuan respectively. The ancestral properties were divided into two portions. As for the properties in remote areas, the grain payments (i.e., the rent) and the land-tax (plus corvee responsibilities) were also shared equally between us.36\n\nOne of the strongest prohibitions contained in clan rules was that against selling land, private or communal, to \"outsiders:\"\n\nIn large clans transactions in land take place, as a rule, between different members of the clan without the property ever being disposed of to outsiders. In such transactions the deed of transfer is invariably worded as if it were a mortgage, and no period of redemption is fixed, the vendor or mortgagor, or his descendants, thus having every opportunity to redeem the property at the original price even several generations after the transaction has been made.37", "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": 208085, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "108\n\nYUEN-FONG WOON\n\nlineage of T'oh-fuk, the Kwaan of Lung-tsai She, whose ancestors had migrated from T'oh-fuk, came under its protective umbrella. Some of them had even succeeded in evading their head taxes through connections with the official leaders there. Thus, it was not surprising that the Kwaan in Lung-tsai She were eager to keep their separate identity by maintaining residential segregation from the Wong and the Tang while attending the annual Spring and Autumn Rites at the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall in Che-hom. They only co-operated with the Wong and the Tang in projects of immediate concern such as irrigation and defence, since they were numerically a minority in Ts'ung-long Heung.\n\nThe study of the centrifugal forces of the headquarters of higher-order and dispersed lineages on multi-surname villages in South China has been largely neglected by scholars in the field. G. W. Skinner, in his article \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China\" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-5 pp. 36-40) asserts that once segments of a lineage had moved away from the parent settlement and were attending different standard market towns, they would lose their connections with one another. The case of Lung-tsai She discussed in this paper tends to refute this argument. Despite geographical separation, the Kwaan in this village was economically, administratively and ritually still an integral part of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk until at least 1949.\n\nIn Taiwan and other parts of China, where lineages were weaker, members of multi-surname villages not only had more intra-village ties, they also had more contact with and reliance on affinal and maternal kin outside the village. Intra-village quarrels were as likely to be along class lines as along lineage lines. Village temples had much more educational, economic, administrative as well as relief functions than were the case in multi-surname villages in South China.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Hoi-p'ing County is one hundred and four miles (290 li) southwest of Canton. Heung (Mandarin: Hsiang) was an administrative unit above the Ts'uen (: village) but below the District. There were one hundred and three Heung in Hoi-p'ing, each administered by a Heung Office since 1930. All names in this paper are in Cantonese, following the Meyer-Wempe system of transliteration.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208189, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "212\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n24. a. Several tales contain information regarding land tenure. For instance, an elder of the 3rd Fong who related the Tang Hei-sui () tale (see Sung p. 253), mentioned that members of the Tso () established after his death each received 100 Tam Kuk each year till 1898, indicating extensive holdings.\n\n24. b. As mentioned above, the Kam Tin Tangs virtually owned the Pat Heung Valley (even the suspect Cadastral Surveys confirm this).* They also possessed land around Yuen Long and further south, Shun Fung Wai (). Ancestral land on Hong Kong Island totalled approximately 1000 Chinese acres, and clan land (shared among the five fongs) in Kowloon was extensive (200 acres in Cheung Sha Wan alone).\n\n25. Land was either communally or privately owned. The former (\"communal ownership\") is divided into a number of categories, the most important of which are Tso () and Tong (). Tong land is appropriated in the literary name of an ancestor (hence early confusion of Tongs as literary clubs). Unlike Tso, the joint holders need not be descendents of a common ancestor. Hence, while Tso land exhibits \"vertical solidarity\" within a fong across class boundaries, Tong land establishes horizontal ties across fong within class boundaries.\n\n26. For the uses to which ancestral land is put, see the material from the Nam Yeung genealogy and the section on Land Tenure (\"varieties of Tenure\") reproduced from the Hong Kong Government Gazette, No. 26, 28 April 1900. I would here simply like to add two further uses of ancestral land: 1) defence funding and 2) financing ritual ceremonies. On the former, see Enclosure 7, no. 172 from Extension of the Boundaries. [I add here what might appear superfluous; ancestral land increases in direct proportion to the distance from Kam Tin. Private holdings predominate within the heung itself]\n\n27. As we have seen, the Kam Tin Tangs acted as \"unofficial\" government of a large section of San On county. One of the essential elements to this system of control was their status as tax-lords. The former is thus explained in Cecil Clementi's report on his work in the New Territories in 1905-1906: \"On the recommen-\n\n“Suspect\" because they do not always reflect the pre-1898 situation: owing to decisions about ownership made by the New Territories Land Court.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208190, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 229, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n213\n\ndation of the Land Court, the Governor decided that 14 elders of the Northern District should be compensated for certain \"tax-lord\" rights claimed by them to have existed before the convention, but not compatible with the principles of British administration, by the grant of 252.33 acres of Crown land in the Northern District, to be selected by each \"tax-lord\" in proportion to the value of the right claimed by him.\" Also, see Enclosure 7, no. 172 mentioned above, to the effect that Kam Tin collected taxes in the Pat Heung Valley on land it didn't own. Much more is to be learned on this tax-lord system; I expect to glean more information from the records of the debate before the Land Court, 1904, which may be contained in the CSO reports.*\n\n28. The Tangs of Kam Tin existed as a power often beyond the reach of the local magistracy. There is evidence of widespread non-payment of land-taxes and squeeze. On the former point, see the San On Letters appended below. Squeeze was collected primarily from the Tai Ping Kuk and similar organizations of Structure B type. The Tangs of Kam Tin were apparently not members of this Sham Chun group [see Petition to Lockhart in Extension Papers.] Also, note Sung's tale regarding the use of the Wong Ku relationship in the successful refusal to paying squeeze, the major source of revenue in San On county.\n\n29. In summary, then, the Tangs were land-lords and tax-lords who existed and operated as a power unto themselves, dominating the local scene and ignoring the tendons of local government whenever possible.\n\n30. Two statements regarding the status of sai-man (*R,): “We give them cows, we give them houses, we even give them women”. Also, \"When the bridal procession passed through Kam Tin on its way to Pat Heung or Sap Pat Heung, the bride and groom were forced to descend and kow-tow.\" There is general agreement among Tangs and non-Tangs in the Kam Tin area that sai-man and sai-chuk (clans \"with same name\") were constantly reminded of their \"place\".\n\n31. We uncovered a great deal of smouldering resentment and bitterness in Kam Tin, directed against the Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan branches of the clan. One tale concerns a \"war\" with Ping Shan over tax-collection rights in the vicinity of Shun Fung Wai.\n\n* Kept in the Public Records Office, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209618, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 275, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "253\n\nopportunity alongside a continuing, but declining, traditional education, and finally, from 1932, the establishment of an eventually modern education within the village.\n\nRising from a humble community of Hakka origin, the Liaos [Liu] of Sheung Shui had long paid special attention to educating their sons. Since the founding of the village, they had set their sights on education and participation in the civil examinations as a means of advancement, and for centuries they had been able to win numbers of official titles and honours1. Traditionally within the village, schooling was provided in private houses, the ancestral hall, and the study halls known as shu-shih#, shu-wu#, or chia-shou*. The existence of these study halls was considered an indication not only of wealth but also of the great encouragement given by the clan to learning. In addition to their well-known ancestral hall, the Wan Shih T'ang, there were in Sheung Shui at least six study halls that operated in the nineteenth century. According to the village elders' memories, each hall normally accommodated ten to thirty students, at an average of 20 per hall. Assuming that the Wan Shih Tang was not used regularly as a classroom and there were 15 sons of rich families taught by private arrangements, the total number of children attending class in the village would be about 135. As the population of Sheung Shui in 1898 was estimated to be 1800, school-going children then amounted to 7.5% of the whole population. This figure works out to be about 75% of the male population between 6 to 14. This gives credence to the belief that \"very few males of the lineage were prevented from becoming literate.\" The length of schooling ranged from two to ten years, but the average was four.\n\nWe can find no evidence of a hierarchy among the six study halls. However, according to the brief biographical notes recorded in the Hsin-an Hsien-chih of the villagers,10 most of the few villagers who achieved distinction at the county level, and indeed, most of the small number who were prepared to take part in the civil examinations at all were tutored first at private houses within the village and then sent to schools at Nam Tau, the county capital, or at Canton.\n\n* Plate 6.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209687, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 344, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "322\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nup the experience of the 32 years since the founding of our People's Republic and has made an evaluation of the Cultural Revolution in particular. Regrettably, it has not said a word on the \"May 7 cadre schools\" that involved hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and their families.\n\nThe experience is still fresh in our minds. No doubt we can have fragments of this history written down in books like this (which are necessary and valuable). But if there were no objective work done by historians on the background and influence of cadre schools, then a void would be created for this 'earth-shaking' era of Chinese history. We've paid a high price for it. And it would be more and more difficult to fill up the void with the lapse of time.\n\nHow can we account for ourselves before the people if we pay our fees but leave behind nothing but a blank?\n\nI would like to give my humble opinions and offer some simple clues to those interested in this episode of history.\n\nMdm. Yang was sent down to a cadre school in July, 1970, about one year after I was so transferred.\n\nAs far back as 1968, the Cultural Revolution saw an end to the power struggle that was raging all over the country. Except Taiwan, all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions replaced their Party committees with the newly-established \"revolutionary committees\". The Heilongjiang provincial revolutionary committee, which was set up as early as the beginning of 1967, had those cadres who had not been absorbed into the new organ of political power transferred to the Liuhe county to be engaged in the so-called \"struggle-criticism-transformation\" campaign following Mao Zedong's \"May 7 Directive\" of 1966, after which the cadre schools were named. Mao highly commended the practice and written instructions were circulated all over the country. In the summer of that year, a struggle to seize power broke out between two student groups in Qinghua University, Mao despatched troops and workers' propaganda teams to schools and later workers' teams were also ordered to be stationed in cultural and educational organisations throughout China. Mao called upon the educated class to receive \"re-education\" and also launched a campaign to \"purify the class ranks\", which was in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211402, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "94\n\nA SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY INTO THE PAST OF\n\nTHE CHAN AND JONG FAMILIES*\n\nVIOLET MEBIG CHAN LEW\n\nIntroduction\n\nI have tried several times to get started on tracing my roots but have found several factors hindering my progress. Although I have gathered together quite a bit of material, I have been somewhat frustrated by my inability to read and write Chinese fluently or to find help with it. Also, ages given are often confusing because some are reckoned according to the lunar calendar and some according to the Gregorian system.\n\nOn one occasion I wrote, \"On this the 16th day of October, 1973, I am on a United Airlines plane with my husband, John, bound for Honolulu, which is 'home' to me. It seems that as long as one's parent is alive and is living in the same locality where one grew up, that place remains 'home'. It is the place where one has friendships bonded as far back as memory carries one. The older one becomes, the more one looks backward and recalls with pleasure incidents that have enriched one's life. I have been toying with the idea of putting down in English an account of the migration of my grandparents to Hawaii and the assimilation of the family members into the Western culture. Already, within three generations extending over a span of about one hundred\n\n* Editor's note: Violet Mebig Chan Lew was born in 1906. At the age of 71, she decided to investigate the history of her family, the Chan and Jong clans, which had emigrated to Hawaii from Hsiang-shan county in Kwangtung. Consulting public documents, genealogical records, personal correspondence, her diary and interviewing as many people as she could, Violet Lew spent ten years gathering material for this endeavour. A retired teacher and social worker, Mrs. Lew now lives in Boston and Honolulu with her husband, John. The Journal discovered this manuscript in 1986, and persuaded Mrs. Lew to allow it to be published. Mrs. Lew writes in her correspondence with the Journal: \"I wish to acknowledge the help of Dr. Wing Tsit Chan and my cousin, Toby Chen, in the translation of several sections of the Chan genealogy; the help of Pyun Kyau Minn with the organization of the project; and especially that of Betty Liu in getting this project published. I am also grateful to those who have contributed what they remembered of past events or enlightened me in the translation of Chinese characters.\" Mrs. Lew dedicates this article to her parents, Ping Yip and Jong Hung Chan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211763, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "13\n\n153\n\nPP.\n\n12 The inscription recording the rebuilding is at Faure, Luk and Ng, op. cit. Vol. I, 128-129, but it is unreadable through weathering, except for the heading and date.\n\n(4). Loe An-lim (羅安廉) (42), Qianren Wenxian (千人文献), ÑÍAL. [Collected Writings of Men of Past Ages], unpublished manuscript collection, Vol. 2, ff. 75a. (Copy in library of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Kowloon Central Library, Hong Kong). Lee An-lim was a villager of Sheung Wo Hang.\n\n(3) Lee An-lim, Qianren Wenxian, op. cit. ff 73-78.\n\n+\n\nAs honour board recording the donors to the 1920 repair has recently been found. It lists the donors by village. Every village in Ta Kwu Ling donated (except Ping Che, Chuk Yuen, Nga Yiu Ha, very probably included with their lineage brethren in Tong Fong, Law Fong, Ping Yeung), as did the villages close to the road both in the Sha Tau Kok area (Shan Tsui, Yim Tso Ha, Yim Tin, Wo Hang, Nam Chung, Luk Keng, Wu Shek Kok and Sha Tau Kok Market) and in the Sham Tsun area (Sham Tsun Market, Lo Wu, and Wong Pui Ling). Shek Wu Hui from further away also donated. See Win Wen Wei Pao (SCHEW) of 17 September, 1991.\n\nU¿÷\n\n16 Detail from the tablets commemorating the departed leaders of the monastery, and from information given by the recently deceased resident nun. The tablet of Kuk Shan Kit reads: 羅浮山寶積古寺監裤正宗第上三代主持上谷下山潔老和尚莲座. The tablet Kuk Shan Kit placed to commemorate his deceased predecessors names the \"ordained monks\" HIBA · MAZA\n\n+\n\nJ\n\n# and Ki£*, all of whom were dead by the date of erection\n\n+\n\n1\n\nof the tablet, and ✯, at that date still alive, as well as predecessors as rulers of this monastery\" ALLKILMINER and \"those monks who founded this monastery\", A WILDFORIKA BAIMM-\n\nL\n\n17 See P.H. Hase, “Notes on Rice Farming in Shatin', in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 21, 1981, pp. 196-206; D. Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China: Trade Increase and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. 46-57 and 212; and Hong Kong Annual Report: Report by District Commissioner, New Territories for Year Ending 31st March, 1950, Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, 1950, p. 5.\n\nTH The Ho clan of Tsung Yuen Ha descends from Ho Chan, the Earl of Tung Kuan in the early Ming, and the Ho family history (CBMGKR — a manuscript volume in the University of Cambridge Library) suggests this area was in Ho Chan's hands before the end of the Ming. It was certainly in Ho family control before 1393 when Ho Chan's family were proscribed. The Tang family has occupied the Lung Yeuk Tau villages, Loi Tung and Tai Tong Wu since the fourteenth century at the latest. A Tang clan also occupies Au Ha (PUF Aoxia) and Wang Kong Ha (Huanggangxia). I have not been able to discover if these two villagers are genealogically connected with the Loi Tung and Lung Yeuk Tau clan, although this is unlikely. The Man family has occupied Ping Che for **18 generations\", according to village elders, i.e. probably from the fourteenth century. The same family occupies Tong Fong, Heung Yuen Wai, and Lin Tong, Liantang), and a branch of it was resident at Man Uk Pin (**Man Family Houses\") before the present residents, the Chung (鍾) clan moved there in the early eighteenth century. The To clan has been resident at Chau Tin village for **500 years\". Local villagers consider that the Lei family has been resident at Lei Uk for as long as the To and Man clans have been at Chau Tin and Ping Che. All these clans are Punti, although sections of the Man clan at Tong Fong, and those at Heung Yuen Wai and Lin Tong, now speak Hakka. Shan Kai Wat (Lam surname, 林), Fung Wong Wu (Yip surname, 葉), and Law Fong (Law surname, 羅), are all included in the list of villages in existence in 1661 included in the 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, along with Au Ha, Tsung Yuen Ha, Ping Che (Ping Yuen 平遠), and perhaps Ping Yeung (坪洋) (Gazetteer, Ch. 3, f 12-13). Other Punti clans in the Ta Kwu Ling area (Wong, 黃, Chan, 陳, and Law, 羅, at Kan Tau Wai, and Hau, 侯)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212174, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "93\n\nthe British community to celebrate the event. H.M.S. \"Cornwall\", one of the 10,000 ton County class cruisers came up for the occasion. On Coronation morning, May 12th, a service was held on board. I had not previously seen those \"Chicago pianos\" which were supposed to be so effective an answer to the dive bomber. With their eight evil looking spouts, they looked formidable enough; but five years later they proved insufficient to save this fine ship from Japanese air attack off Ceylon.\n\nIn the evening there was to be a ball at the British Embassy. We went a bit of a splash for the occasion and gave a dinner party before going on to the ball. I remember in addition to some of our Chinese friends there were a couple from the American Embassy, a German officer and his wife, two officers from the British cruiser, the local manager of the Standard Oil Company, an Englishman with a Russian wife, and some visitors from Shanghai. Our cook, unknown to us, had decided he too would go a bit of a splash. For the fish course he produced a samli. In China the samli is considered the best of all fish, an opinion with which I disagree as it is too bony for my lazy nature. The cook's samli was a large fish, I suppose it must have weighed every bit of ten pounds. He served it whole and had excelled himself by inserting in each eye-socket a small electric bulb, connected to a battery concealed somewhere in the fish. To my wife's astonishment, as the chief guest helped herself, one eye gave a most suggestive wink, and the performance was repeated each time a portion was removed; a postmortem revealed that the winking was due to a short in the circuit and not to any humorous intention on the part of the cook.\n\nThe ball given by Sir Hughe and Lady Knatchbull-Hugessen at the Embassy was a brilliant affair. For weeks, of course, all the women had been talking clothes, Gay toilettes set off sparkling eyes; diplomatic, naval and military uniforms shone with gold lace, and the Ambassador's excellent champagne animated the conviviality. We did not know that within a few weeks he would be lying at death's door with a Japanese bullet through his back. In August when motoring from Nanking to Shanghai, the Ambassador's car, over which a large Union Jack was stretched, was attacked by Japanese aircraft and pierced by many machine-gun bullets. The Ambassador was shot through the back near the spine.\n\nIn the old days you could walk along the great wall of Nanking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212735, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 44, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "29\n\n1st Class in a sedan carried by four bearers.' This was probably no more than hyperbole. He stated in his Miscellanies that he had once possessed a very fine sedan-chair presented to him in Szechuan, with a magnetic compass let into the hand rest or bar which is placed across the chair in front of the rider to rest his hands on.\n\nImperial officials, and their principal wives, wore large embroidered square badges tacked across their surcoat's chest and back, which in addition to their hat buttons, denoted their rank. These were worn by all nine grades of civil officials and, according to Garret, by military officers of the Manchu army stationed in provincial garrisons and in Manchu quarters in large cities. This might explain why Mesny failed to mention squares, apart from five paragraphs describing them and their use, and a remark in passing that a Major-General, 2nd Class of the 2nd Degree would have a 'lion' breast badge. When he visited Amoy in 1879 he was reported in the local foreign press having worn western clothes but with the red button of mandarin rank on top of his foreign cap. As he never spelled out that he ever wore the badge and button commensurate with his military rank we shall probably never know whether he ever did wear such a badge.\n\nHe possessed a Chinese passport consisting of a large single sheet of printed white paper, usually endorsed with certain conditions but in Mesny's case it entitled him to protection in all provinces and beyond the Great Wall, unlimited as to a period of time. He was, he added, never asked for it. It called on all county officials to afford the traveller due protection, safe guidance and reasonable information. He also had at various times official Circular Dispatches [ch'uan-p'ai]. These, he explained, were issued to officials travelling on government service entitling them to named supplies of food, fodder, carts, chairs, pack mules, saddle horses, coolies and accommodation in official inns along the whole line of march.\n\nHe had an official seal when he was the General Superintendent of Foreign Ordnance for the whole of Kueichou province, an appointment he obtained during the Winter of 1875 and held until March of 1877. He explained that he observed all the due formalities of putting away his seal during the New Year annual rites and ceremonies. The seal, he claimed, bore his rank as Lieutenant-General, and Knight Ying of the Order of Pa-t'u-lu. We have no idea of the rank and grade of the Superintendent and as he does not refer to himself as Lieutenant-General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214255, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "76\n\nfact that he is listed in Soothill as one of the Twenty Deva. His image is to be seen in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. In both temples he is depicted as a ferocious guardian general with a wide gaping mouth, large round eyes and a highly decorated Buddhist crown. He holds the standard weapon, the vajra, the diamond sword, resting in his left hand and against his left shoulder, and has the swirling scarf behind his head. He is stripped to the waist, has bare legs beneath a highly colourful decorated skirt, and sandals. A mural in the Sakyamuni Pagoda in Ying county in Shansi province depicts Guhyapati in much the same form.\n\nThe Chin-kang as a group are minor deities, guardians belonging to the class of Lokapalas borrowed by Buddhism from Brahmanism. The standard four Chin-kang, the Diamond Kings, are each the ruler of the four continents surrounding Mount Sumeru and though Guhyapati Raja is a Chin-kang he is not one of the usual four. The standard four are the Ssu Ta T'ien-wang [see 23-26 below].\n\n23-26] Ssu Ta T'ien-wang XX The Four Great Celestial Kings\n\nThe Four Deva Kings, known also as the Four Diamond Kings, Ssu Ta Chin-kang X, are the four guardians whose images stand, usually portrayed much larger than life-size, just inside temple entrance doorways, in pairs, two to either side.\n\nWerner points out that these are not gods but guardians, Buddhist protectors who should be thought of as minor divinities. Chinese Buddhists adopted four Hindu Brahmin deities from Indian Buddhism, the Lokapala, the guardians of the four sides of the fabulous Mount Meru [the Guardians of the Four Corners of the World] who, in turn, were later adopted by the Taoists from the Chinese Buddhists. The Four were probably first introduced into China during the T'ang dynasty [6th and 7th centuries AD] and still today are regarded as the grim-faced temple guardian generals, enormous statues in T’ang armour, tamed demons who were redeemed and who now symbolise the seasons and control the elements of fire, water, earth and air. Although the majority of images of the Four stand up to and even over fifteen feet high they can also be as tiny as eighteen inches high. They used to be deities in their own right and offered worship, reverence and offerings. Nowadays however although most devotees solemnly place one smoulder-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215001, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "53\n\nOf those from the Chinese Customs Service in Shanghai who served with the Allied Forces, the names of 23 are on their Roll of Honour and have been buried or commemorated not only in the UK, Belgium and France but also in Greece and Turkey.\n\nDecorations\n\nMany Chinese members of the CLC received the British War Medals but this is a subject into which I have not carried out any research. The Meritorious Service Medal for devotion to duty was awarded to Zhao Wende [30828] and Wang Chenjing [30064], both Labourers of the 57th Company CLC, and to Liu Dianzhen, Class One Ganger of the 108th Company CLC. Also to Wang Yushao [15333] Labourer of the 59th Company CLC [of Da Cheng county in Zhili] for bravery, his citation reading:\n\nNear Marcoing [near Cambrai] on June 6th, 1919, he observed a fire on a dump of ammunition situated close to a Collecting Station. On his own initiative he rushed to the dump with two buckets of water which he threw on the fire and then seized a burning British 'P' Bomb [apparently the cause of the outbreak] and hurled it to a safe distance from the dump. He then continued to extinguish the burning dump which had spread to the surrounding grass in which rifle grenades and German shells were lying. By his initiative, resource and disregard of personal safety this Labourer averted what might have been a serious explosion.\n\nYan Dengfeng [91085], Class One Ganger of the 130th Company CLC was also awarded this decoration for:\n\nOn 23rd May 1919 at Bailleul [near Armentieres] following an explosion, he worked constantly for four hours removing tarpaulins from the stacks of ammunition and drenching them with water.\n\nSgt W J Yaxley [553653] British Army, serving with the 60th Company CLC was also awarded this medal.\n\nThe Chinese Order of Wenhu [The Order of the Striped Tiger]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215009, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 105, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "61\n\nChinese Labour Corps. A native of Pudsey, he died on 16th February 1919. And also the grave of Lt AE Player of the Labour Corps, attached to the Chinese Labour Corps. He died on 10th July 1919.\n\nWe also saw the graves of twenty-three seamen from the SS British Sovereign, amongst which were those of Ah Ling and Doe Gai [no Chinese characters on their gravestones] who died on 7th September 1918. There is also a grave of a member of the Japanese Merchant Marine Service, 1st Class Engineer Yioshto [or Yiosto as it appears on the gravestone], who died on 31st December 1918. His name is not listed nor his grave location shown in the cemetery register which, I believe, is only used for British and Commonwealth personnel. It is listed on the CWGC Foreign National register database. The CWGC has written to the Japanese Embassy, London, to ascertain the correct spelling of his name and await their reply.\n\nIn our wanderings in this cemetery, my wife and I also saw the grave of a young civilian who was buried alongside those who had fought and died in the War. He was Joseph Leng, who drowned at Audricq on 2 October 1917 whilst visiting his father, Sapper J Leng. He was only seven years old and on his gravestone his parents have had carved the epitaph 'Suffer little children to come to me.'\n\nAlso in this cemetery are five graves containing the remains of men of the CLC who were 'shot at dawn'. Their gravestones carried the usual epitaphs and were in every way indistinguishable from other CLC gravestones. Wang Enrong (Wang En Jung in Wade-Giles romanisation) [10299] 29th Company CLC was executed on 26 June 1918, together with Yang Jingshan (Yang Ching Shan in Wade-Giles romanisation) [10272] also of the 29th Company CLC, from Liaocheng county of Shandong province, for murdering a French woman at her estaminet [coffee house] during a robbery. The former's gravestone only carries his number and the inscription ‘Faithful unto Death' whilst that of the latter bears the inscription ‘A Noble Duty Bravely Done.'\n\nSt\n\nZhao Gongyi [Chao Hsing I (Chao Kung-i) in Wade-Giles romanisation] [46090], 161 Company CLC, from Jinan county in Shandong, having murdered a fellow-countryman, possibly as a result of gambling, was executed on 9th August 1918 and Hui Yihe [Hui I He (Hui I-ho) in Wade-Giles romanisation] [42476], 112th Company CLC,\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "1 \n\nL \n\n2. Units of the China Fleet at anchor at Wei-Hai-Wei. Correctly, the town is away over on the mainland. The base, which really was little more than a fairly elaborate recreational facility, is on the island, Liu Kung Tao, from the heights of which the photograph was taken. HERMES is the vessel with awnings rigged. The other large ships are three 10,000 ton heavy cruisers of the 'County' class and a depot ship. The floating rectangle near the shore is the battle practice target used by the cruisers when engaging in 8\" fire practice.\n\n123", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]