[ { "id": 205217, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n167 \n\nsufficient water. The bottom of a padi field has an impervious layer of clay with a loamy layer of earth above it.\n\nNone of this work is done without first consulting a book called the Tung Shing(a) or Tung Shu(b), the “Universal Book\". This is the Chinese \"Old Moore's Almanack\", except that the Tung Shing does not prophesy world events but merely lists the day-to-day signs which indicate when a field should be ploughed, which are good days to wash hair, or when to conclude a contract, dig a well or plant fields. The book also lists the lucky hours of each day during which these events should be performed.\n\nThe lucky day and hour having arrived, the village womenfolk turn out with flat hoes and baskets. With the hoe, clumps of padi sprouts six to eight inches long are lifted from the nursery, placed in the baskets and carried to the padi field. If the field is first-grade land, then the clumps of padi seedlings are planted by pressing them into the mud in fairly thick clumps, about eight inches between clumps and in nearly straight lines. Should the land be rated as second-class, then the clumps are not so thick, although the spacing is about the same. In consequence, if one tau of seed was planted in the nursery, then by transplanting the sprouts into first-class padi land, a lesser area is required to grow that tau of seed than if it was transplanted into second-class padi land. However, in each case, the area of land required to grow the tau of seed is still called a tau chung. To the European mind, this method of land measurement is confusing, but regardless of these differing factors, the tau chung is the area on which tenant rentals are fixed, agreed, and paid.\n\nTo standardise these variants and to arrive at a reasonable basis on which to fix statistical information in the Colony, the Director of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry related the tau chung to the acre by declaring (about 1950) that in future, six tau chung would be considered as one acre. For most areas of the New Territories, this is accepted as a fair rate, being generally in line with old custom. Under this calculation, the tau chung becomes equivalent to 7,260 square feet.\n\nIt was then found that on the southeastern portion of the New Territories, a different type of measure was used, which reduced the tau chung from 7,260 square feet to 4,365 square feet. The various villages and areas which used this smaller", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205383, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "138\n\nSALT MANUFACTURE IN HONG KONG\n\nS. Y. LIN\n\nEditor's Note. This article, which is of considerable ethnographic and nearly thirty years after-historical interest, first appeared in the pre-war publication The Hong Kong Naturalist (1930-41), Volume X, No. 1, January 1940. The editor of this interesting series, Dr. G. A. C. Herklots, Reader in Biology at the University of Hong Kong 1928-45 and Principal and Director of Research at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad 1953-60, has kindly given permission to reproduce it here. It is hoped that the article will be of interest to present-day residents of Hong Kong as well as providing for scholars a record of salt-production on the South China coast by both the leaching (percolation) and solar (evaporation) processes, now practically defunct in Tai O where the salt pans have been almost deserted for several years past. The author, Dr. Shu-yen Lin, who is now with the Fisheries Division, Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction Taipei, Taiwan (Formosa) has also expressed his agreement to the article being reproduced. I have added a few notes which, it is hoped, will be of some interest and may encourage others to take up this interesting subject in more detail.\n\nIn three places only is salt prepared from sea-water in the Colony namely at Tai O, a fishing village on Lantau island, Sha-taukok on the frontier in Starling Inlet and San Hui in Castle Peak Bay. Of these the first is the most important.\n\nThe salt marsh at Tai O, which occupies an area of about 70 acres and is enclosed by high dykes to prevent flooding at high tide or by storms, is owned by three companies, two of which are slightly bigger than the third. The annual production in 1938 amounted to about 25,000 piculs (1,488 tons) valued at about $27,500. A small portion is consumed locally, chiefly by the fishermen in the salting of fish, and all the rest is exported.\n\nThe companies lease the salines from Government and sub-let to individual salt-makers or hire them on a piece-wage basis in the form of shares in the profits. In the former case each salt-farmer leases a small saline of about 1/10 acre from the company, paying a rental of $2.00 per month, and endeavours to produce as much salt as possible from this limited area of land. The salt produced, however, must be sold to the company from which the saline has been leased. The company should be able to pay the farmer at a fixed price (50 cents per picul for 1938-1939), immediately on receiving the salt. On the average,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 206, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "200\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nU.S.A. and Britain. One day, his uncle, an expatriate Chinese in New York, noticed a Water Pine in a garden bearing the Village Representative's name as donor. Mr. Man was obviously very proud of this. He also recalled that some 15 years ago the Director of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had given him ten seedlings to plant in the village, but unfortunately none had survived.\n\nMany prominent persons have come, paused to admire the longevity of these two trees and heard of the interesting story about them. They are probably the oldest living trees of this species in the New Territories. They are valued not only for their longevity but also for their capacity as producers of viable seed. In 1969, germination tests were carried out with this seed and results showed 60% germinative capacity. Requests for the supply of seed have frequently been received from overseas by the Conservation and Forests Division of the Agricultural and Fisheries Department.\n\nThe condition of these two remarkable trees remains reasonably healthy but they will undoubtedly lose vigour with advancing age. How to perpetuate them is a matter of concern. The best way of achieving this would be to propagate seedlings and to plant them out in localities similar to their natural habitat. In the last two decades seedlings of Water Pine were planted in the Royal Hong Kong Golf Course at Fanling and at Tai Po Kau and Tai Lam Chung forest reserves, but only a few have survived. The largest surviving group is on the Golf Course where 10 trees are growing. The biggest of these is now 18 feet tall and 15 inches in girth, with an average growth rate of 0.2 inches per year over the last 10 years. In view of the rarity of the species, it is advisable to plant more of them in suitable localities throughout the New Territories and on Hong Kong Island. The species has not yet been included in the collections in the Botanic Gardens but planting stock is being made available and this omission will be rectified in the next planting season.\n\nEditor's Note. This article is reproduced with kind permission of the Director, Agricultural and Fisheries Department, Hong Kong, from the department's publication Wildlife Conservation, Newsletter No. 12, April 1971. The bulletin is prepared for game wardens, and is in English and Chinese. Persons who are interested may be provided with copies, if available, on application to the Department. The author, Mr. Shen Dze-chia, Assistant Forestry Officer until his recent retirement, is a graduate of the University of Nanking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n189\n\nWoodlands forming a part of the \"Fung Shui\" of a village are jealously guarded by the villagers, and the destructive influence of man is thus reduced to a minimum. The happy result of this has been the preservation of a series of mature and well-developed areas of natural woodland which must surely otherwise have been destroyed.\n\nIt is likely, then, that these woodlands are remnants of the natural forest type which might have been expected to cover a large area of the Colony if a similar standard of protection had been applied over the whole territory. A study of a well-developed \"Fung Shui\" woodland may be expected therefore to furnish information on the physiognomy, structure, and floristic composition of this vegetation type which may then form the basis for comparisons with other similar woodlands elsewhere in Hong Kong.\n\nSuch a study has been carried out in a well-developed \"Fung Shui\" woodland near the north-eastern end of Jubilee Reservoir. This woodland was related to the existence of a village which was evacuated in 1929 as part of the water catchment scheme in the area. Having enjoyed good protection since this date, there are few other places in the Colony which exhibit, in a compact area, such dense, tall, natural plant cover with such an interesting collection of hardwood trees.\n\nThe study, which will be written up fully in due course, gives an indication of the complexity of the floristic composition of the area, where 3,100 trees all over 4\" in diameter and of 76 different species were recorded in an area of 3.5 acres of woodland.\n\nIn modern parlance, these \"Fung Shui\" woodlands are really \"Village Shelter Belts\". Historically, they were also of importance to the villagers as a place where many materials were collected for a variety of uses—culinary, medicinal, ceremonial, structural, and so on—in addition to the normal collection of fruits. It is emphasised, however, that it was the natural \"increase\" and \"produce\" from the trees which was collected. The trees themselves were carefully guarded against abuse, children and strangers being severely dealt with if they caused harm to the woodland grove.\n\nD. C. SHEN\n\nThis article first appeared in Wildlife Conservation Newsletter No. 14 (October 1971) published by the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Department of the Hong Kong Government, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Director.\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207386, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "146\n\nBRIAN MORTON & P. S. WONG\n\n2.0\n\nWEIGHT OF OYSTER PRODUCED (METRIC TONS)\n\n1500\n\n1000\n\n500\n\n*\n\n中\n\n**\n\n\"+15\n\n-1.0\n\n55\n\n-0.5\n\nVALUE OF OYSTER PRODUCED (MILLIONS OF HK DOLLARS)\n\n1954 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73\n\nFigure 2. Annual production of oysters in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1973. (Data obtained from the Hong Kong Annual Departmental Report by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1953-54 to 1973-74.)\n\nland receive less profit each year and eventually fail. The great reduction in the availability of man-power is probably the greatest factor, since the younger, educated and more urbanized generation prefer less labour-demanding employment. There is a shortage of manual labour especially during the busy season in Spring and early Summer. The political sensitivity of this border area is also a problem so that as the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries reported in 1951-52 “flotillas of up to twenty boats manned by about one hundred oyster pirates not being uncommon.\" A dispute in 1966-67 over oyster bed No. 5 reduced production figures considerably (Fig. 2).\n\nImprovement may be possible by introducing new methods of culture. The bottom-laying method of culture is primitive and keeps the oyster industry in a more or less unmanaged state. In the United States, a comparison of public and private oyster grounds reveals striking differences in yield between management techniques practiced in each area (Bardach and Ryther, 1968). Investigations into new methods of cultivation have been made by the Agricultural and Fisheries Department of the Hong Kong Government.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207388, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "148\n\nBRIAN MORTON & P. S. WONG\n\nchi, 1966) by the application of anti-fouling paints. Undoubtedly the main disadvantage to this technique is that a large capital investment is required with high maintenance costs and a greater chance of damage and loss during a typhoon. As noted earlier oyster culture in Deep Bay is at present being run on a family basis lacking a large capital investment. The adoption of the more expensive raft method of culture would appear, under present socio-economic conditions, to be impossible. The setting up of a co-operative system by the oyster farmers concerned, together with an extension of the Government loan scheme for fisheries development to the oyster industry could enable the oyster farmers to obtain the necessary finance to improve the industry. With an available source of funds for investment and with further detailed research to determine the modifications required to ensure the success of a programme of modernisation in the special environment of Deep Bay, Hong Kong's oyster industry is not without a future.\n\nLITERATURE CITED\n\nBardach, J. E. and J. H. Ryther, 1968.\n\nThe Status and Potential of Aquaculture. American Institute of Biological Science, Washington, D.C. Vol. I (261pp.), Vol. II (224pp.).\n\nBromhall, J. D., 1958. On the biology and culture of the native oyster of Deep Bay, Hong Kong, Crassostrea sp. Hong Kong University Fisheries Journal, 2; 93-107.\n\nCahn, A. R., 1950. Oyster culture in Japan. The United States Fisheries and Wildlife Services Fisheries Leaflet, 383; 1-80.\n\nFurukawa, Atsushi, 1968. The raft method of oyster culture in Japan. In: Proceedings of the Oyster Culture Workshop (Ed. T. L. Linton). Marine Fisheries Division, Georgia Game and Fish Commission, Brunswick, Georgia, pp. 49-54.\n\nHong Kong Annual Departmental Report by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1953-54 to 1973-74. The Hong Kong Government.\n\nKnight-Jones, E. W., 1952. Reproduction of oysters in the rivers Crouch and Roach, Essex during 1947, 1948, 1949. Fishery Investigations, London, 18; 1-48.\n\nKorringa, P., 1947. Relations between the moon and periodicity in the breeding of animals. Ecological Monographs, 17; 347-381.\n\nLeung, C., B. S. Morton, K. F. Shortridge and P. S. Wong, 1975. The seasonal incidence of faecal bacteria in the tissues of the commercial oyster Crassostrea gigas Thunberg 1793 correlated with the hydrology of Deep Bay, Hong Kong. Proceedings of the Pacific Science Association Special Symposium in Marine Science, Hong Kong 1973; 114-127.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209231, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF \n\nFISH MARKETING \n\nT. A. ACTON* \n\n\"The mighty rolling ocean is very deep and wide but cannot daunt the training of our bodies and our minds. So come, come together, children of the fisherfolk, let us all sing together. \n\nThe provinces of knowledge are boundless as the sea, our schools' maternal care endures like the sky. So come, come together, children of the fisherfolk, let us all sing together. \n\nFish are the treasure of the ocean, knowledge is the treasure of books, for us, the children of the sea, industrious, hard-working and brave. So come, come together, children of the fisherfolk, \n\nlet us all sing together. \n\n** \n\nSchool song of the Fish Marketing Organisation Schools, \n\ntranslated from the Chinese. \n\nEvery year some eight hundred children sing this song at a prize presentation ceremony at the end of a five-day summer camp organised by the Hong Kong Fish Marketing Organisation (the F.M.O.). From more than three and a half thousand children in fifteen schools they have been selected to make new friends, attend barbecues and handicraft classes, widen their general knowledge and take part in sports, and win prizes in competitive games, whose honesty is guaranteed by the fact that they are organised by volunteers from a local office of none other than the famed and feared Independent Commission against Corruption. The prizes are presented on the last day by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, currently the Hon. J.M. Riddell Swan J.P. \n\n3 \n\nLecturer in the Sociology of Social Policy, Thames Polytechnic, Vice-President, National Gypsy Education Council. \n\nThe author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the British Academy, which financed the visit to Hong Kong during which the research for this paper was undertaken, the many fishermen, F.M.O. officials, members of organisations discussed in the text, members of both Hong Kong's Universities, and his wife and members of her family who discussed these matters with him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209249, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "138 \n\nTA ACTON \n\nindividuals, though rare in Hong Kong, might find their way through the system more easily if the F.M.O. schools were to become part of the general educational system, which they now so closely resemble. \n\nConclusion \n\nSpeaking at the closing ceremony of the 12th annual summer camp of the F.M.O. schools, at Wukaisha Youth Village, the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Hon. J.M. Riddell-Swan J.P. said: \n\n\"There are clear advantages in completing secondary education, whether a child wishes to follow a career in the fishing industry or ashore. In common with other industries, fishing and fishing vessel technology are advancing rapidly, and the well-educated fisherman will obviously be able to take better advantage of this and so increase family prosperity.' \n\n* 46 \n\nThe two major themes of this education policy appear in this speech: its benefit to the efficiency of the fishing industry, and its contribution to slimming it down (“a career in the fishing industry or ashore”). It is noteworthy, however, that the speaker applies these themes specifically to secondary education. The battle for primary education has already been won (give or take the odd thirteen-year-old who suddenly appears at a remote school, refusing to admit to any previous schooling; but this happens far less often than in Gypsy school projects.). \n\nThis is an indication of how much more educational policies for the Shui-sheung-yan in Hong Kong have \"achieved\" than those for Gypsies in Britain. There has been a much greater penetration by the schools system, and by the dominant attitudes of industrial society to education among the Shui-sheung-yan than among the Gypsies. This paper quoted the SOCO study which showed that 32.5 percent of 263 poor Shui-sheung-yan respondents declared they wanted no more than primary education for their children. If such a question were asked of a sample of nomadic Gypsies in Britain, the figure would be nearer 90 percent, one would guess. \n\nIn Hong Kong progress towards better education for the Shui-sheung-yan is general throughout the territory. The 11 British West Midlands Local Education Authorities, with their claims of achieving 800-1,300 children attending out of their estimated 1,500–2,000 constituency, are merely the brightest spot in Britain. Many other local education authorities are doing nothing, and the Department of \n\n47", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210251, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "201\n\nfrom both the primary producers and protein-enriched detritus.\n\nResults from a Venezuelan lake suggest that the influence of detritus may be even more far-reaching than has been suggested here. Bowen (1980) has analysed detritus and reported that it contains significant quantities of a range of non-protein amino acids. On the basis of this finding, and on investigation of the physiology of the fish's alimentary canal, he attributed the rapid growth of tilapia to assimilation of non-protein detrital amino acids. Obviously this subject would repay investigation in the case of other fish and shrimps (vide Table 5).\n\nIn any event, removal of the mangroves from around the kei wais would remove the main source of detritus and thus lead to diminishing productivity of the kei wais. This points up the practical importance of maintaining the mangrove community.\n\nA kei wai, such as No. 7, gives a reasonable return of economic produce which is both varied in kind and distributed throughout the year. The actual financial return depends on the amount of rent paid to the landlord; in some cases this may be so high as to make the operation financially unattractive. Given the periodic nature of the work, operation of kei wais would seem to be best suited to a small cooperative which owned the freehold.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nMost of this work was carried out during the period June-December 1978 when C.Y.H., K.Y.T. and S.W.T. were employed under the Summer-work programme of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department; we wish to thank the Director for arranging that financial support. In addition, we wish to thank Mr. Chan Sau and Mr. Wong Chiu for allowing us to investigate conditions in the kei wai and for answering our many questions so helpfully. Our thanks are due also to Mr. Lau Sin Pang, Mr. D.S. Melville, and Mr. Wong Pak Hei, all of the A.F.D., for their advice and help in carrying out the project, and to Dr. Chan Kwong-yu for kindly advising us on bacteriological methods. We acknowledge, with thanks, Mr. Melville's permission to use two photographs taken by him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "55\n\nTHE HONG KONG BOTANICAL GARDENS, A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW\n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU\n\nThe Victorian era in Europe was obsessed by the idea of cultivating exotic plants which had become more readily available as plant hunters explored more distant regions of the world. The culmination of this concept was the establishment of large botanic gardens where both local and exotic plants could be admired (often under unnatural conditions) by an incredulous populace eager to learn more of the distant parts of the Empire. In addition to this botanical zeal in Europe, the idea spread to various other areas of the British Commonwealth and botanical gardens soon sprang up in Rangoon, New Delhi, Madras, and Singapore, where for the first time local people were able to familiarize themselves with plants from their own as well as other regions of the world. In addition to this seemingly cosmetic role, botanical gardens also served other, more pragmatic, interests as the growth characteristics of more economically important plants could be examined for the first time under controlled conditions, enabling them to be exploited by commercial interests with an eye towards export trade.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the idea of establishing a Public Garden was mentioned officially for the first time in 1848, but even prior to that date, on March 27th, 1844, a letter of thanks from the Governor of Hong Kong was sent to the Deputy Governor of Bengal thanking him for a copy of the printed report of the Honorable Company's Botanic Gardens, indicating that the idea of a similar garden in Hong Kong had already been mooted. The first indication that Hong Kong was to be blessed with such a garden was made by Charles Gutzlaff in a statement to the Hong Kong branch of the\n\nAUTHORS' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:\n\nThe authors wish to express their gratitude to the staff of the Library and Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, and the City Hall Public Library, Hong Kong, for their kind assistance.\n\nS.P. Lau wishes to acknowledge with thanks the permission given by the Director of Agriculture and Fisheries to pursue a Ph.D. project at the University of Hong Kong, this article being a section of the thesis under preparation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 } ]