[ { "id": 204404, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "44 \n\nCURRENCY PROBLEMS \n\n27 \n\nconsideration. Though the official rate of exchange was issued by the Chamber of Commerce, considerable manipulation was possible on fluctuation, scale, and the grading of the cash. For instance, it was a foregone conclusion that the weight of the piece of silver you offered for exchange, would not agree on the shop scales with your own scales. For the law allowed the exchange shop to weight their scales up to 2% against the customer to defray \"exchange expenses\". Anything over 2% was an infraction of the law and punishable by such. Therefore the exchange transaction was always preceded by a long wrangle on the question of weight. A very good story is related by Abbé Huc in his \"Travels in Tartary & Thibet\" in which he tells of the \"guileless\" Mongol who visited a cash shop in the big city in order to exchange a large \"shoe\" of silver. The \"shoe\" had been doctored but this was not apparent to the smart young shop assistant who served him. The assistant took care to effect a considerable discrepancy in weight in favour of the shop. Finally the Mongol professed himself as satisfied but asked for a written statement of the weight and exchange rate so that he would be able to clear himself with his master. The assistant complied and the Tartar returned to his camp with his camels laden down with cash, the proceeds of the deal. When the accounts were made up at the end of the day the assistant presented his returns with considerable pride expecting fulsome commendation from his master for the amount he had been able to fleece the innocent Mongol. What was his surprise, then, to be met with a storm of abuse at his denseness in having failed to detect the adulteration. The following morning the assistant rode out to the Mongol camp and haled the offending Tartar to the court of the district magistrate where he was charged with having circulated spurious currency. When the shoe of silver was produced in court the wily Mongol asked that it might be weighed on the official scales. When this was done he produced the cash shop's own receipt and claimed that the shoe produced could not possibly be the one he had exchanged as the discrepancy in weight far exceeded the 2% allowed by law. The Magistrate was forced to dismiss the case and the exchange shop was only too glad to drop the matter before they attracted further unwelcome publicity.\n\n44", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n81\n\nweddings and funerals, repairs to the ancestral temple, and so on. In \n\nAnother and less formal method of securing these aims is the setting aside of joss and oil fields, sometimes known by the obscure title of ching sheung 1, whose proceeds, again, are used for the proper observance of ancestral rites and other family needs.1 One need hardly emphasise the integrating effect of these land measures,\n\nTo understand the people and their outlook and background it is necessary to see to what sort of government they were accustomed.1 The government of the San On district was essentially Confucian, like that of every other administrative division; by which I mean that Confucian principles were ostensibly followed. This was sealed by the state worship of the sage. In every district city there was a temple to Confucius styled a man miu in which the District Magistrate, his senior staff and the local gentry paid the customary respects to the sage and his seventy-two disciples on his birthday (twenty-seventh day of the eighth moon) and at the spring worship or chun chai 1 in the second moon. The same thing happened at the prefectural and provincial capitals. At the head of the San On district was the District Magistrate whose superior was the prefect of the Kwang Chau prefecture which embraced at least five large districts. He was subordinate to the provincial governor and he in turn to the Viceroy of the two Kwang Provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The nature and duties of the provincial officers had been established since the T'ang dynasty and for well over a millennium the pattern of government had been cast in an identical mould. The District Magistrate was usually a scholar who had taken one of the metropolitan examinations at Peking and he was always a native of another province than his native one, this being a long standing rule. He spent three or six years in one post and was then moved elsewhere, and was promoted in due course to be prefect or to higher office through merit, connections or good fortune. Some persons began and ended their official careers as District Magistrates.\n\n1\n\nThe District Magistrate's duties were many and his competence was most extensive. He was, in truth, the father-mother official1 of the people so called by them and also so styled in official documents because of his authority over all their affairs, criminal or civil. He certainly regarded himself as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204461, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "82 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\n10 \n\nstanding in loco parentis to the people of his district. An instance of this outlook is a proclamation issued by the Canton Viceroy in April 1899 in which he told the people of the New Territory that the English government had agreed that \"the people are to be treated with exceptional kindness \".10 On the reverse side of the medal the magistrate could also, like his followers in the tribunal, use his authority to evil purposes and be referred to as being as (fierce as) a tiger\" 如虎 or a dog-official\"35 whose extortions and venality were a byword \n\n44 \n\nin the district.1 \n\nC4 \n\n+ \n\n17 \n\nIn his government the Magistrate was usually assisted by an indoor and outdoor staff. The former might consist of personal adherents from his own home district who followed him from post to post, and partly of local personnel of the tribunal or yamen4 such as a legal adviser, secretaries, and land clerks, whose local knowledge it would be difficult to dispense with. All these were entirely dependent upon the magistrate for their livelihood, and upon what they could pick up in the course of their duties. To maintain his position and put food into the mouths of the members of his personal staff and their families the magistrate was given an inadequate salary by government. There were in addition the outdoor staff which comprised a considerable number of police, watchmen, runners and the like, who may have been paid by Government despite what Lockhart says to the contrary, but used their opportunities as they came, \n\nIn the San On district the Magistrate's yamen was at Nam Tau, which lies beyond the northern or further shores of Deep Bay on the far side of the Nam Tau peninsula. This was the district city where the treasury, jail and examination halls were also situated. It also contained a Confucian temple. The seat of government therefore lay outside the borders of the New Territory which, however, was served by several of his subordinate officers. He was assisted by an assistant magistrate10 whose office was at Tai Pang north-east of Mirs Bay and outside the New Territory and two deputy magistrates, one of whom was stationed within the walled city of Kowloon. They had power to make arrests and conduct preliminary enquiries but were bound to refer most cases to Nam Tau for final decision. The Kowloon deputy, like his colleagues, had a lock-up for detaining persons pending trial and there was also one each for the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204462, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n83\n\ndivisions of the district, or tung, several of which were within the present boundaries of the New Territory.\n\nThere were also military officers in the district, a battalion commander at Tai Pang, who also had quarters at Kowloon in which he was more often to be found. He had subordinates with him at Kowloon City and also in the Islands, at Tung Chung and Tai O on Lantau, whilst there appear to have been other subordinate officers on at least Lamma and Cheung Chau.20\n\nIn addition to the military posts (Lockhart does not mention any naval forces) there were the police, of which there were two kinds. First, there were the chai or runners, of whom there were about sixty, stationed in Nam Tau under the direct control of the magistrate. “They are sent, as occasion requires, throughout the district for a variety of purposes, including the making of arrests, the collecting of the land tax, and acting generally as the eyes and ears of the magistrate. They receive no pay from Government, but manage to earn a fair livelihood by illicit squeezes,” says Lockhart. There were also village constables, from two to six, according to the size of a village, appointed by the village and paid by village contributions levied according to the size of land holdings. Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power of arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village.\n\n**\n\n7\n\n**21\n\n+\n\nThe elders played a great part in maintaining the status quo. Together with the headman of the village and the local gentry, they formed a local tribunal which dealt summarily with all minor matters in the tung and heung into which the district was divided.22 Inside the villages, the headmen and elders acted likewise. A form of genuine local self-government existed in 1898. Its raison d'être was probably nothing more high-flown than because the District Magistrate, traditionally an overworked official, would have been completely swamped with work of a trifling nature had they not existed.\n\nTo quote Lockhart,\n\n“The gentry and elders in the village council determined summarily cases of theft, disputes about land, domestic squabbles, and cases of debt. As a rule, the decision of that council is accepted as final. But if either of the parties to a case is dissatisfied, he can appeal to a council of the Tung,”", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204463, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "84 \n\n+ \n\n+ \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nor to a general council, made up of representatives of the different Tung. \n\nEach council of the Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section, which is practically that portion of the district of San On contained in the map attached to the Convention. This general council is styled the Tung Ping Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its council chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section. If the decision of the council of the Tung, or of the General Council is not regarded as satisfactory, an appeal lies to the magistrate of the district.24 \n\nVillages must occasionally have made their own rules. There is an interesting survival of these written on a wooden board which hangs in one of the side rooms of the Yeung Hau Wong temple at Tung Chung on Lantau Island, which is dated in the third moon of the nineteenth year of the Kwong Shui reign (1893). The text refers to the passing of the good old days and lays down measures to deal with offenders. For stealing crops, cutting down pine and bamboo trees, for letting pigs or buffaloes graze on other people's fields, there were fines in cash \n\na proportion of which went to the person who caught the culprit. He was to be escorted to the Heung council office, and should he refuse to pay after a hearing there, he was to be taken \n\nbefore the magistrate. It was drawn up by the Tung Chung Hap Heung or all the villages of the Tung Chung \n\n東涌合鄉 valley. \n\nA few words on the elders and gentry may be appropriate here. An elder was an older villager whose character, influence, and senior generation in the clan entitled him to a say in its affairs. He was more to the fore in the remoter villages of the district, which were generally the poorer ones, and could not afford to support literati, as they are sometimes styled, which is what the gentry really were in the Chinese context. These were persons of considerable influence who came generally from the larger, richer villages of the plains, which had one or more village schools where the elements of a classical education could be obtained. In course of time, by dint of hard study at home or in Canton, the cleverer among the local scholars, after successful", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204464, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n85\n\nexamination by the District Magistrate at Nam Tau and by the Kwang Chau prefect at Canton, proceeded to the Viceroy's yamen in the same city where eventually a favoured few would manage to pass the first degree of sau choi. This in theory entitled the scholar to qualify for an official post. In practise there were many more sau choi than there were posts and a scholar had to pursue further study and pass other examinations before he stood a real chance of becoming an official. In every district there were sau choi who would never obtain posts. Many became local schoolmasters. Others by virtue of wealth and position became the local gentry who, by report, were sometimes a help to the magistrate and frequently a nuisance, both to him and to the litigant or criminal public. They sat on the local tribunals kuk and advised the magistrate on local affairs. Being literati like himself they had ready access to his yamen and to his ear. Sometimes they even outranked him. Elders, on the other hand, rarely sat on the kuk. Lockhart estimated that there were one hundred and fifty sau choi in the whole district.20 In 1898 the elders of important villages like Ha Tsuen and Ping Shan were literati. Several of them played a leading part in the planning of operations against the British take-over.27\n\n20\n\nSometimes the wealthier village elders enhanced their position by purchasing degrees. In the late Ch'ing period the sale of examination titles appears to have been considerable. Smith mentions it in his Village Life in China** and I have come across several such persons in villages in the Southern District of the New Territory. They were usually substantial villagers. Such a one was CHAN Tak-hang4 of Cheung Kwan O in Junk Bay who died in the seventeenth year of Kwong Shui (1892) at the age of sixty-four. According to his descendant, the present Village Representative, he was a man of substance who built a guest house in the village which is still standing to-day, gave money for the upkeep of the stone tracks which linked the villages of the area with Kowloon, and was well known locally. His portrait, painted at the age of fifty-seven, shows him in his borrowed finery as a kwok hok sang, for which he paid an unknown consideration to Government. A man such as this would obviously play a considerable part in the affairs of his immediate neighbourhood.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204465, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "86 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nDespite the presence of troops, military posts and police of two types in the Territory, besides the assistance of the local kuk, the magistrate's power to prevent crime appears to have been limited. Piracy, in particular, was rampant at different times, and ranged from the anti-dynastic activities of Koxinga in the mid-seventeenth century on behalf of his former masters the Great Ming, (which occasioned the removal from the coast) through the widespread depredations of large pirate bands at the beginning of the nineteenth, to the milder but still disconcerting activities of the period under review. \n\nIt is necessary to emphasise the prevailing unrest, since until quite recently the only striking difference between the New Territory in 1898 and the territory we know to-day was the imposition of the pax britannica. Until the British Government got into the saddle and established its police stations and patrolling launches, the people were subject to piracy, robbery and other forms of violence as from time immemorial. The Governor mentioned specifically in a despatch to the Secretary of State in April 1899 that “the (Tai Po) district is well known in Canton (i.e. to the Viceroy) to be turbulent, that to the N.E. of Mirs Bay being noted for piracy, and so ill-disposed that I am informed no Customs Official dares to land there except with the support of a revenue cruiser”.30 He probably had this from \n\nLockhart, his main source of reliable information at this time. Of course, the local population were sometimes not averse to such efforts themselves, and as a British Consul wrote at the time \"The old free-booting spirit still survives among many who are now apparently peaceful traders and fishermen [of which] we occasionally get startling proofs in some unexpected daring act of piracy on the high seas or along the coast\".31 Smuggling was also common, whether of salt or opium.** \n\nLooking outside the district to the province and its capital city Canton, the political scene, as revealed by the Trade Reports to the Foreign Office of consuls in the several British treaty ports of Canton, Amoy, Samshui and Pakhoi was the reverse of satisfactory. Though written by a succession of men of obviously varying temperament and outlook they reveal a sad state of affairs. Everywhere there were disturbances which the civil authorities were slow, or incapable to correct, and clear signs that the dynasty was held to have exhausted its mandate from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n87\n\nHeaven. In Canton itself there was a serious plot to seize the city in October 1894, which led Consul Fraser to write in his next report\n\nThere is little doubt that dissatisfaction with the administration of their native country is growing among the Southern Chinese, and if no attempt at reform is made, may result in a serious insurrection\". He mentioned the plot but remarked that its failure was due more to the ineptitude of its organisers than to the vigour of the local authorities.33 His colleague at Pakhoi, in the south-east of the province, was more critical.\n\nSuch as is Chinese civilisation, Pakhoi is of its outskirt only and shows a lower level than I have seen anywhere else in this country. Piracy is in the blood of the race. A glance through the year's diary shows a monotonous record of petty coast raids, hoverings of pirate junks (which still terrorise the neighbouring coastline) and robberies of every degree of dignity from the sacking of the larger pawnshops to the plunder of a returned emigrant from the Straits or Sumatra. Of Chinese local authorities at Pakhoi itself there are practically none, the highest native Civilian within 20 miles being an officer of the rank of sub-district deputy magistrate armed with an amount of authority that barely enables him to call in question the theft of a matchbox. It would be invidious to say this much of the Pakhoi neighbourhood without adding that most of the adjacent areas are worse.34\n\nWhilst these reports were confined to individual districts there can be little doubt that the general unrest was known and felt in the New Territory. It will be recalled that SUN Yat Sen was a Cantonese and some of his followers are credited with swelling the ranks of the village bands which offered resistance to the British troops who entered the New Territory in 1899.35 This tale of unrest and lawlessness, and weakness on the part of the civil authorities, provides a background to the unsuccessful reform movement of 1898, sponsored by the southern party at Peking, whose sequel was the incarceration of the emperor by his formidable aunt, the Empress Dowager, the stringent capital measures against the reform party and their dispersal overseas or in foreign concessions in China. The leader of the movement and adviser to the emperor was KANG Yue Wei, a prominent scholar and mandarin, and himself a Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204467, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "88 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\n36 \n\nDisturbances apart, the common people preferred to be left to themselves. They rarely had anything to do with the magistrate and his followers and preferred it that way. The magistrate, in his turn, was glad to leave routine affairs to the local tribunals. The price paid for these attitudes was the prevalence of crime. Poor communications were no help. The magistrate was often rendered powerless by unrest and disturbances of all kinds. Robberies and descents on shore by pirate gangs could take place with impunity since, even if help came, it invariably arrived far too late. Crime might eventually be punished but it was seldom prevented. No one would inform on disturbers of the peace for fear of reprisals or being entangled in the meshes of the law. Commenting on coastal piracy in 1897 Consul Brenan wrote, \"The boat people never attempt to effect an arrest; there would probably be bloodshed and they would then be involved in judicial proceedings almost as unpleasant for themselves as for the pirates. They are thankful enough if they can get rid of their dangerous passengers, and persuade them to go off and try their fortune elsewhere\"** \n\nHowever, it is only fair to state that the people of the district were also apt to create trouble among themselves, especially when circumstances conspired to make life difficult as in the dry season. This was especially true of the more closely populated agricultural areas, with villages in close proximity to each other, often sharing the same water supply for their fields and personal needs. The volatile Cantonese temperament is not suited to a cautious settlement of complicated personal problems: it is easier by far to fly off the handle and strike an attitude than to sit down and think. Hence difficult situations often were made intolerable by proximity and a quick temper, and clan fights were not uncommon, especially in the Yuen Long area. Hostilities between southern villages were well known at the time.** A tablet in the Tin Hau temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, refers to the death of seventeen male villagers by armed conflict between this village and Shing Mun Pat Heung in three years of intermit-tent strife which began in 1861. To these disturbances between the Punti villagers can be added a general antipathy between Hakka and Punti which sometimes erupted into violence and was still smouldering after the Hakka rebellion thirty years before.\"\" \n\n38", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204469, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "90 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nin the area, where presumably they would be seen by the worshippers who congregated there in large numbers at festival times. \n\nFE \n\nThere is a spirited account of a dispute between tenants and a new and rapacious landlord at Kat O in 180243 which was complicated by the clerks of the yamen who, obviously for a consideration, deluded their magistrate and were in collusion with the landlord. The tenants petitioned no less a person than the Viceroy of the Two Kwang provinces in his yamen at Canton and his instructions, relayed through the Governor and Prefect, are set out in stone so that justice could be done, and seen to be done, ever after. Everything worthwhile, every precedent or decision of importance, seems to have been set forth on stone: to ensure compliance44; for observance by both parties45; 'to follow the judgment';46 for fear that this would be forgotten as time goes by, thus leaving endless troubles in the future47; for the general information of the people48 and so forth. The tablets were either set up by the people, or as in most of these cases, by order of the magistrate with the written approval of the Viceroy; by the community of Tung Chung, Sai Chung, Keung Shan etc.; by the fishermen of Peng Chau since approval had not been given for the erection of a tablet by the Viceroy49, (later given by the magistrate); by the Inspector General and like cases.49 \n\nK \n\n46 \n\n44 \n\nPerhaps to compensate for the severities and uncertainties of this life the inhabitants of the District fortified themselves by a devotion to religion that was marked by its generous diversity. To the usual galaxy of gods such as Tin Hau6, Kwun Yam 觀音, Hung Shing 洪聖, Kwan Tai 關帝, Pak Tai 北帝, Tam Kung, and Yeung Hau Wong, they added local officials who had acted as their benefactors and anyone else who took their fancy. Whilst there may be some who are not so well known and whose memory has faded in the minds of the people, the two who have left an indelible mark in the New Territory are WONG and CHOW, successive Viceroys of the two Kwang provinces who were responsible for obtaining the cancellation of the edict of 1662 which ordered all inhabitants of coastal areas to remove50 inland in order to deny their assistance, forced or otherwise, to the pirate bands which were attacking the new dynasty in the name of the Ming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204470, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n91 \n\nwhich it had supplanted eighteen years before. Great hardship was encountered which is hardly surprising, and the people were eternally grateful to their benevolent officials and commemorated them in several temples dedicated in their honour. One of these was burned down in 1955 during the fire which destroyed Shek Wu Hui near Fanling, and others are to be found at Sha Tau Kok and Kam Tin, and Sai Heung in Chinese Territory. In addition a school was named in their honour at Kam Tin, and when it was repaired in 1744 the San On magistrate of the time composed a Confucian discourse which was inscribed on the wall of the restored building, to instruct the pupils and their parents. An interesting survival which still existed in 1898 was the appearance of an old beggar in the Yuen Long villages every Chinese New Year who brought statues of WONG and CHOW for the people to worship, and incidentally to supply him with food and money.'' To these men-become-gods for whom the construction of a temple was necessary to ensure their better worship and resulting favours, there must be added an equal and possibly much older faith in sacred tree spirits and the multitude of earth spirits known as pak kung ih, tai wong ★, and ordinary she taan 4, who look after villages and localities such as passes, bridges, and fords over streams.\n\nThis insurance with the spirits who ruled this world and would assuredly be encountered in the next was expressed in the continual reconstruction of temples. A great many of the temples in the New Territory to-day owe their present fabric, or a great part of it, to repairs made during the last fifty years of the Ching dynasty. It was evidently a highly necessary part of the proceedings that the god should be informed of the names of the contributors so that his benefits should not pass anyone by, since their names, and often the amounts they gave, were scrupulously inscribed on the commemorative tablet which was always let into the wall to mark the occasion. Sometimes over a thousand names had to be recorded in this way, most of them in respect of trifling amounts, even for a small and out of the way temple, as in the reconstruction of the Tin Hau temple at Cheung Chau in the second year of the last Ch'ing Emperor (1909).\n\nThe magistrate, too, was expected to play his part in warding off disaster. The District History mentions that CHAN Kuk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204471, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nwrote a prayer for divine help to the city god of Nam Tau after a dark mist resembling the shadow of a black dog haunted womenfolk in the third moon of the third year of Ch'ung-cheng (1630): and the magistrate LI Ho Shing wrote the \"Lamentations\" or odes and addresses burnt in sacrifice, when a severe typhoon hit the district city in the fifth moon of the twelfth year of K'ang-hsi (1673); this was preserved among the literary works recorded in another chapter of the history. There is no mention of later imitations.\n\nBesides this preoccupation with spirits of all kinds and a general disposition to ensure against all possible acts of ill will on their part which was, one almost thinks, a by-product of the bad times and the uncertainties which usually surrounded the Chinese peasant and his city counterpart, there was a regular and intense devotion to the ancestors of the clans which was carried on through the centuries. This, of course, was Confucianist, as opposed to the Taoist and animist forms of religion to be seen inside temples and on the fields and hillsides. There is no doubt that the clans were kept together by the regular attention that was paid to the ancestral duties and the particular reverence accorded to the first ancestor who had settled in the village. I have already explained how, on the material side, management of land by the clan for the clan assisted in keeping both land and people together. On the spiritual plane the ancestral duties had the same effect.\n\nAt the heart of the clan was the ancestral hall.52 Here the soul tablets of past generations were ranged in rows on an altar: these can still be seen in a few ancestral halls to-day, notably at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen, two villages of the TANG clan, whose green and gold tablets date back to the Sung dynasty. Most villages in the New Territory, large or small, appear to have had ancestral halls at the time of the lease. Many of them are standing to-day and I have traced the presence of others which have mouldered away since 1898. Each clan had its own hall and here its members gathered to perpetuate its corporate identity on occasions like births, weddings and funerals, and regularly each year at the New Year festival.\n\n53\n\nAs an adjunct to the tablets in the ancestral hall, the graves of ancestors were also the subject of regular attention by the villagers, particularly the grave of the first ancestor and his wife.54", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n95\n\n2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, \"Hong Kong before the British\", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin.\n\nIt is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory.\n\nThe market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had \"seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc.\" Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs\". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there \"used to be over two hundred shops trading here\". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204475, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "96\n\n5\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nSee a tablet in the Chow-Wong School at Kam Tin.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 188.\n\n'Lockhart's figures, given in Appendixes 3 and 5 to his Report are not exact, and he has emphasised his sketchy estimate of the land population \"in default of any reliable statistics possessed by the Chinese Government\" and said he had been unable to obtain even an estimate of the boat people Papers 1899 pp. 187,189. Taking areas within my own detailed knowledge I have found that villages established long before 1898 have not been included in the returns or else have been linked with other villages without special mention, The population figures for the Islands, in particular, are not above suspicion and are probably greater than shown in Appendix 5.\n\n* Papers 1899 p. 189.\n\nPapers 1899 p. 189.\n\n10 Universal ownership was clearly shown by the land survey which followed the lease of 1898. This was carried out by surveyors and staff on loan from the Government of India, and was followed by a registration of titles which was enlivened by land courts which sat to determine possession in disputed cases. The survey sheets and the Crown Rent Rolls which form the schedules to them can be found in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration and they are a valuable record of land ownership and land classification at the time of the lease.\n\nAt Shek Pik and Fan Pui in 1958 out of sixty-six families four owned between 3-4 acres, nine between 2-3 acres, nineteen between 1-2 acres, fourteen owned between a half to one acre, twelve owned between a quarter to a half, and eight between 10 to 25 acres. Except a few late arrivals, therefore, every family owned land of its own. The position was much the same as in 1898.\n\nThe same was true of Wei Hai Wei, of which Johnston wrote Lion & Dragon, p. 148, \"Whatever the faults of the Chinese social system may be there is no doubt that in Wei Hai Wei it very largely accounts for the complete absence of pauperism (though no one is rich) for the orderliness of the people (nearly everyone has a stake in the land and has nothing to gain and everything to lose from disorder), for the uninterrupted succession of father and son in the homesteads, and for the long pedigrees attested by family graveyards and ancestral tablets\".\n\n11 See Johnston Lion and Dragon pp. 134-54. I have compared customary deeds of sale and mortgage from the New Territory between the years 1898 and 1958 with those cited by him and find that they invariably follow the same form (see especially Johnston pp. 144-145). These deeds are known as white deeds (as in Ching times) and had not been put through the formal process of registration in the District Office which would turn them into legal documents; or, as formerly in Ching days, in the Magistrate's yamen when they became red deeds (RI #). They were common until the Pacific war and even now are occasionally known to be drawn up in addition to the Memorial registering the conveyance in the Land Office. To select an example at random here is one from Shek Pik on Lantau Island dated the second year of the Republic (1913) which reads", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204477, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "98\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\napproval. This authority, with powers of discretion, was given to the D.O. to help preserve the traditional way of managing land within the clan, and to provide a cheap and impartial arbiter in case of dispute.\n\n13 In Shek Pik village the TSUI, CHEUNG, HO and CHI clans owned 1.1, 0.39, 0.55, and 0.04 acres of agricultural land in 1898. With the exception of the HO clan, they were intact in 1959. The TSUI tso probably dates from the fifteenth generation, and is therefore three hundred years old. The FUNG clan in Fan Pui owned 9.2 acres in 1898 but this was sold in 1953.\n\n14 At Fan Pui I dealt with a disputed case of ownership in which the defendant stated that eight lots totalling 9,581 square feet of agricultural land had been specially set aside as joss and oil fields (shen you tian). Fields are also set aside for the worship of earth spirits. At Cheung Kwan O village in 1898 the two clans of CHAN and NG administered 1.41 acres of agricultural land under the name of a to tei wui. The rentals were originally devoted to the maintenance of the to tei or earth spirit who looked after the village, but for many years the revenue has simply gone to the clans. Many other cases are known at Mui Wo and Tung Chung.\n\n15 See Chapter III (iii) and (iv) of H. B. Morse The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1908) which is based on an article by Byron Brenan \"The Office of District Magistrate in China” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society XXII, (1897-98), 36-65, and incorporates his own wide experience of China and her officials in the course of over thirty years' service in the Imperial Maritime Customs. Brenan himself (1847-1927) had served in China from 1866 and was H.B.M.'s Consul-General in Shanghai 1898-1901. Of the district magistrate Brenan wrote, \"The magistrate is the unit of government; he is the backbone of the whole official system; and to ninety per cent of the population he is the Government\"; op. cit. p. 37.\n\n16 Papers 1899 p. 583.\n\nThe text of the stone tablet outside the Tin Hau temple at Kat O, referred to elsewhere in the article, uses this picturesque phraseology. Contrasting their sorry lot beside the power of the yamen officials they had written in their petition to the Viceroy \"We, civilians, whose lives are cheap as ants... who are we to start a lawsuit against the district yamen's worms?\" An interesting feature of this inscription is that it follows the customary form of Ch'ing document in which reference is made in the text to other papers, by summary or quotation, instead of the western method of adding enclosures. See John K. Fairbank, Ch'ing Documents, an introductory syllabus, (Harvard University Press 1952) p. 21.\n\n18 When I asked an old gentleman who graduated sau choi in 1896 about extortion and venality among magistrates, he replied in distinctly extenuating tones \"Some did; but then they had so many people to look after\". He observed that there were some rich districts in Kwangtung in which a magistrate had to do nothing to obtain money as it came rolling into the Office in the way of presents, inducements, additions to land and other taxes etc., whilst there were others which were so poor that the magistrate could squeeze very little from them even if he tried very hard. This is curiously echoed in Morse, Trade and Administration p. 92 “In Kwangtung we (the Imperial Maritime Customs) have regularly applied to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n99\n\nthree districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally \"sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come\" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in\".\n\n12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited.\n\n20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station,\n\n21 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west.\n\n23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says \"The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety\". He calls him \"often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities\". His is experienced and impartial testimony.\n\n24 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. \"The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204624, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n14\n\nphilanthropic work, probably one of many such, since the Po On tablet (1866) also mentions that \"our Tung Kwun natives are flowing in for business\". The lists of donors on the various tablets in temples and old buildings underline Cheung Chau's business and kinship links with the outside world. The local members of the WONG Wai Chak Tong seem to have maintained close contact with their parent body in Nam Tau; and, in much the same way, persons who had come to Cheung Chau to farm or do business, and had prospered during their stay, kept in touch with their families and friends in San On, Tung Kwun, Wai Chau, or from whichever district of the province they happened to come.\n\nRelations with the minor officials in the immediate area also seem to have been close, as one might expect. The officers of the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the regular land forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts throughout the eastern half of San On, seem to have contributed quite often to various repair schemes, whilst the salt, stamp, and Customs posts on the island automatically became victims for the collection of funds.15\n\n17\n\n1G\n\nSome of these contacts were useful when it came to collecting subscriptions and also when it was necessary to contact or bring pressure upon the district government; in this case the district magistrate of San On, whose yamen was at Nam Tau, the seat of their own WONG Wai Chak Tong. Fortuitously, the tablet in the defence bureau provides an instance of an approach to the district government. Four graduates, three of them almost certainly members of the Tong, and the managers of four large shops, besides other persons, petitioned the district magistrate WU16 when piracy and lawlessness threatened the lives and property of island people in the Hsien-feng reign (1851-61). It is interesting to note that they did not request the magistrate for direct assistance, but asked only that he issue a public notice urging the people of Cheung Chau to unite and provide \"brave and strong village guards\" for the defence of their island. One of the reasons why the magistrate was approached when this security organisation was being debated was very likely because his permission was required to raise and arm any body of men for defence purposes.18\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106\n\n¦\n\nF", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "94\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nOtherwise, the local leaders do not seem to have requested the magistrate's permission to carry out their various projects or even to have invoked his assistance. In the case of the repair of the Po On study in 1866 they seem to have acted without consulting the yamen. Again, there is no mention of the district magistrate on the tablet commemorating the establishment of the Fong Pin hospital in the years 1872-78, though this act seems to have owed much to an enlightened and energetic military official LAI Chun-pin, who was commander of the Kowloon garrison at the time.19 According to the tablet LAI stated: \"I happened to be stationed in Kowloon in the ting-ch'ou year (1877-8) of the Kuang-hsü reign and was so pleased to hear about this man (CHOI Leung) that I paid a visit to him. I found him to be a merchant with an untiring devotion to philanthropic works, so I compiled a subscription book urging contributions by officials, gentry, scholars and merchants to help make this scheme a success.\n\nThe names of the donors on the commemorative tablet show that LAI had cast his net wide, but he did not secure the district magistrate, even as a subscriber.\n\nWhether the magistrate knew officially of these proceedings is not known, but perhaps the sponsors did not inform him. Had they done so, particularly in respect of schemes for a poor house-cum-hospital and a school, both public amenities for which he had a measure of personal responsibility by virtue of being district magistrate, he would probably have been obliged to show his interest in one form or another.\" Perhaps he chose to ignore them as it was likely that he had lost face by LAI's actions; or he may well not have known what was going on.\n\nA considerable degree of self-help seems therefore to have been both necessary and unavoidable in isolated communities like Cheung Chau. Whilst the district government might take an interest in local schemes, it could not be expected to do much more; partly because of poor or inconvenient communications, but principally because there was very little money available to assist deserving projects.1 Local communities were expected to help themselves, and to set aside the means whereby an institution could be perpetuated and the structure kept in good repair. Cheung Chau was no exception to this general requirement, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204627, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU \n\n95 \n\nthe tablets state that upon its establishment the Po On study was endowed with a shop and a house, both with their title deeds; and the Fong Pin hospital with two shops. \n\nThis abstention from many of the basic duties of local government on the part of the district authorities could lead to abuses when a powerful group of local leaders became unscrupulous through continued exercise of power, and lack of control and supervision from above. On Cheung Chau, as I have said, this group was represented by the WONG Wai Chak Tong, with whom the larger shopkeepers and important individuals were probably prepared to make common cause. The Tong owned all the land; its parent branch at Nam Tau must undoubtedly have included senior graduates and possibly retired officials; and the tablets show that some members of the Cheung Chau branch were junior graduates by examination or purchase.**\n\nThis group must have been able to exert a considerable pressure on the district magistrate and his secretaries regarding Cheung Chau affairs, and during their short three-year tour most magistrates must have felt that the Tong and the Cheung Chau people were capable of looking after themselves on what was, after all, a small and remote island, with a population less than that of many of the larger villages in the district. In short, Cheung Chau interests were well represented if the Tong was honest and well-meaning, but not if its members were corrupt and ill-intentioned. \n\nTurning again to the tablets, that relating to the Po On study is of great interest because of its connection with a prominent feature of Cheung Chau society which has so far only been mentioned in passing: the district association.**\n\n25 \n\nThe district association is a social and charitable organisation organised on the basis of mutual assistance from among natives of the same district when living in another place. In a mixed settlement like Cheung Chau, where Hoklo and Tanka rubbed shoulders with Hakka, Chiu Chau, and Punti from various districts of Kwangtung province, it was a distinct advantage to be part of a community which had troubled to organise itself for welfare purposes, as had several district groups on this small island a hundred years ago. These traditional media of mutual assistance warrant a closer look, especially as their existence is proof of the diversity of persons settling on Cheung Chau, its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "102\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n36 shops from Hong Kong, 28 from Peng Chau and 15 from Tai O contributed to the Po On study (presumably all or mainly of Tung Kwun origin); a few outside shops sent donations to repair the Tin Hau temple; hardly surprisingly no outside shops contributed to the Defence Bureau; but the subscriptions for the Fong Pin hospital came from a wide area and the list included over 20 shops and 40 individual persons (including 2 tongs from Tung Kwun and Hok Shan), from Canton, Pun Yue, Tung Kwun, Nam Hoi, Shun Tak, Macau, and other areas of the province,\n\nMost of the temples still contain tablets and other dated items which record their repair from time to time. However, the series is far from complete and many tablets have been lost. A typical instance is the loss of commemorative tablets from the Tin Hau Temple at Tai Shek Hau (the local place name). A prominent citizen remembers seeing a whole row of them fronting an outside wall when he was a young man, about thirty years ago, but they have now all vanished without trace.\n\n15 For mention of these Cheung Chau posts see the following tablets: salt (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), stamp (Tin Hau and Fong Pin), customs, e.g. tax on kerosene (Fong Pin). There was also a customs post on Lamma (Fong Pin), and there were various patrol boats (both tablets). The officer in charge of the military post on Cheung Chau is mentioned on the Tin Hau tablet, whilst the Fong Pin tablet lists eight officers of the Tai Pang battalion.\n\n16 Only the defence bureau tablet gives donors their official ranks, though comparison with others shows that some of the graduates are mentioned there without their titles, i.e., persons mentioned in these tablets may also have been graduates. A comparison of the Tong's genealogical record with the names on the tablets is at first sight disappointing. The genealogical record does not record titles for the later generations, i.e. those of the generation whose names appear on the tablets. An additional confusion is that the clan generation names may not have been used on the tablets where business or personal names may have been recorded instead. However, I think we can be fairly certain that most of the WONGS on the tablets belonged to the Tong.\n\n17 I have translated \"WU\" as \"petitioned the district magistrate\".\n\n18 See Kung-Chuan HSIAO Rural China; Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1960), pp. 294-306 for defence organisations in this period.\n\n19 His precise title was described on the Cheung Chau tablet as 城鎮 *which was probably the equivalent of colonel. A few years later he presented a large painted wooden commemorative tablet to the Hau Wong temple outside Kowloon City, on which his rank is described as tsung-ping or brigadier-general (see Ralph L. Powell The Rise of Chinese Military Power 1859-1912 (Princeton University Press, 1955) pp. 15 and 367). \"The brigadier-generals were semi-independent, yet their units were scattered and practically sedentary,\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204635, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHAU\n\n103\n\n20 See T'ung-tsu CH'U Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press 1962) chapter 9, especially pp. 161-164.\n\nI am indebted to Mr. W. Schofield, a former District Officer, and Cudet Officer, Hong Kong Government, for a reference to an inscription, now lost, relating to the foundation of the Lung Chun Yee Hok *** in 1847. The school, which is still standing inside the former Kowloon walled city, was opened by the district magistrate WONG Ming Ting after the sub-district deputy magistrate HUI Man Sham had reported that it was being built.\n\nOrme in his \"Report on the New Territories 1899-1912” in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63, Appendix G, gives a school census for April 1912, by which time there had apparently been little change since 1898. There were 10 schools on Cheung Chau, average attendance 20, average monthly fee 38 cents.\n\n21 See HSIAO op. cit. pp. 235-240 and CH'U, op. cit., pp. 161-162. Occasionally government-sponsored schools were granted land for their maintenance. In the 28th year of Kuang-hsü (1902-3) four years after the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, land inside the boundary, previously used for the purpose of aiding a school still in Chinese territory, was sold by order of the Commissioner of Education for San On district. Part of the proceeds had also been used for offerings at the Confucian temple (in Nam Tau).\n\n22 The group of titles on the defence bureau tablet is another demonstration of the widespread sale of degree titles and positions in the late Ch'ing period already remarked in several places. (see HSIAO Kung-Chuan Rural China p. 415 and chapter 10 of CH'U's Local Government in China under the Ch'ing op. cit., pp. 168-173 and notes and, in more detail, Chung-li CHANG, The Chinese Gentry. Studies on their Role in Nineteenth Century Chinese Society, (Seattle, University of Washington Press 1955) pp. 102-111. For contemporary notices see Rev. Krone \"A Notice of the Sanon District\" in Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong), Part VI (1859) p. 84 and Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier c. 1900 p. 121, amongst others.)\n\nNo fewer than twenty-one persons have titles prefixed to their names, many of them minor ones, of which three-quarters were probably purchased.\n\nthe first\n\nOf the purchased titles and posts five were chien-sheng degree by purchase, which was the prerequisite to purchasing any superior post, such as that of district magistrate or prefect. It was the most commonly purchased degree. Two others were styled chih-chien and chih-sheng. There were four chin-kung and four chih-yüan 職員。", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "104\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThere were also examination titles among the organisers and subscribers to the defence office. There were three scholars, who held higher grades of the hsiu-ts'ai or first degree by examination. One was a kung-sheng, another a sheng-yüan, and the third held the grade of lin-sheng, all normally obtained by additional examinations by a literary chancellor appointed from Peking to examine hsiu-ts'ai in the provinces, though occasionally granted for merit. Another was a wu-sheng ±, a military hsiu-ts'ai, an officer by examination, not purchase. These four were WONGs, almost certainly members of the Tong. A fifth, named TSUI, was a tu-szu or first captain and was probably a serving military officer in the locality. The final title is ching sheng #.\n\nOf these various degree and title holders sixteen were named WONG *. The coincidence is probably too great to be accidental and the number of purchases testifies to the Tong's wealth, whilst the presence of genuine scholars, probably from the Cheung Chau branch, and the genealogical record, confirm its gentry status in the late Ch'ing period. There is no doubt that the main Tong was well entrenched and able to exert an \"interest\" with the district ruler and perhaps also with the prefect and viceroy at Canton.\n\n23 HSIAO illustrates the slight degree of local control on another island, Ch'a K'eng, off the coast of Sun Wui district, Kwangtung, in Rural China, pp. 344-348. For his views on the effectiveness of imperial control see pp. 320-322 and pp. 316-320 for the role of the gentry in local affairs. CH'U, op. cit., chapter 10, also examines the problem in general. Krone's article (see note 22), apparently written from long, first-hand knowledge of the western part of San On shows that the district magistrate and his deputy and sub-magistrates had little control over the population (see especially p. 81), and perhaps wanted it less, e.g. \"... the Mandarin of Fuk Wing (a sub-magistrate) confided to me, in a conversation that I had with him that he had nothing to do but to eat, to drink and to smoke”, though over 200 villages were in his charge.\n\n24 The district association is of considerable antiquity in China. They were known in Sung times: see J. Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-76 (London, Allen and Unwin 1962) p. 222; see also Y. K. Leong and L. K. Tao Village and Town Life in China (London, Allen and Unwin 1915) pp. 78-9 for \"the guild of co-provincials\" and H. B. Morse, The Gilds of China (London, Longmans, Green 1909) pp. 35-48 for the provincial club with a mercantile bias.\n\n25 With consequent language difficulties. See R. A. D. Forrest (a former Hong Kong Cadet Officer) \"The Southern Dialects of Chinese\", Appendix No. 1 to V. Purcell The Chinese in South East Asia (Oxford University Press 1951).\n\n26 The word \"member\" may have too strong a connection with the modern club where one pays an entrance fee and monthly subscriptions. In fact, one was born into membership of these early district associations and participated in their activities by subscription, as required. Mr. LEUNG Yau (see note 28) confirms this for his own association, the Wai Chiu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204746, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "38\n\n10 Linguist purser.\n\nW. C. HUNTER\n\nSee note 39, (J.L.C-B)\n\n11 Elliot's last day. On 25 March Elliot formally requested the Viceroy that passports should be issued within three days for all the English ships and people at Canton and that if passports were not issued he would consider the men and ships of his country as forcibly detained and act accordingly. Blue Book, Correspondence relating to China, 1840, p. 367. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n12 Edward Elmslie. Secretary and Treasurer to the British Superintendents of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot and the Deputy Superintendent, A. R. Johnston, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n13 Houqua. Known to Westerners at Canton as Howqua 7. His family name was Wu Ch'ung-yüeh (1810-1863). He was the fifth son of the famous Hong merchant Wu Ping-chien whom he succeeded as head of the firm in 1843. For his biography see Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 867-8. (F.L.C-B.)\n\n14 Nam Hoe. Also written Nam Hoi. This means Nan Hai Hsien #i.e. the Magistrate having jurisdiction over the western part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included the area in which the foreign Factories lay. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n15 Kwang Hup. The author may be referring to the Kwangchou hsieh \"the Canton brigade\", and so to its commander. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n16 The Governor. The Governor of Kwangtung province at this time was I-liang (1791-1867). For his biography see Hummel, op. cit., I, 389. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n17 K'an-ch'o (J.L.C-B.)\n\n18 An-tsou (J.L.C-B)\n\n19 Columbia & John Adams. According to the Chinese Repository Vol. 8, p. 56 the Columbia was a U.S. frigate and the John Adams was classed as a sloop-of-war. The Columbia was commanded by Commodore George C. Read. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n20 Johnston, Alexander Robert Johnston, H.M. Deputy Superintendent of Trade. When the Government of Hong Kong was set up he was deputy first to Elliot and later to Sir Henry Pottinger and in this capacity he administered the Government of the Colony on various occasions from 1841 until 1843. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n21 Pwan Kei Kua. Probably the merchant whose name was also spelt by Westerners at Canton at that time Ponkhequa and Puan Khequa. This was P'an Chengwei (1791-1850). See Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, II, 605, (J.L.C-B.)\n\n22 Saoqua. His family name was Ma Tso-liang and the name of his Hong was Shun Tai Hong A. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n23 Sturgis. Russell Sturgis (1805-1887) of Boston was first named Nathaniel Russell Sturgis, Jr., but he was always known as Russell Sturgis after his name was changed by decree of the Middlesex County Court. He graduated from Harvard in 1823, married in 1828 but was widowed four months later. After an extended tour of Europe he returned to Boston and for a while practised law. He remarried and in 1833 took his family to the orient where he became a partner of Russell & Sturgis of Manila and Russell, Sturgis & Co. of Canton. Later in 1842 when the latter firm became incorporated with Russell & Co., China, he became a partner in 1842. In May 1844 he retired to Boston, his second wife having died in Manila in 1837. Being far too young to give up work altogether he decided to return to China in 1849 but while passing through London he", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204747, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "JOURNAL OF OCCURRANCES AT CANTON\n\n39\n\nwas persuaded to join the firm of Baring Brothers & Co. In 1873 he became senior partner of the house, finally retiring in 1882. (L.T.R.)\n\n24 Lin Tse-hsü's fate. Hunter long survived Commissioner Lin. Lin Tse-hsü was dismissed from office in 1840 and later sentenced to exile in Ili in Chinese Turkistan, where he remained for three years. He was allowed to return to Peking in 1845. He later served as Governor-General of Yunnan and Kweichow, and retired from office in 1849. He died in 1850 at the age of sixty-seven. (J.L.C.B.)\n\n25 Heang-shan (Heungshan). Former name of the District in which Macao lies. Re-named Chung-shan in honour of Sun Yat-sen. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n26 Morrison. John Robert Morrison (1814-1843) was born in Macao, the second son of Dr. Robert Morrison and his first wife Mary (née Morton). He had some schooling in England but at the age of twelve he came back to Canton with his father in 1826. He became a fluent Cantonese speaker as well as a Chinese scholar, and on the death of his father in 1834 was appointed Chinese Secretary to H.M.'s Commission in China. In 1838 he became, in addition, Interpreter, and in 1841 succeeded Elmslie as Secretary and Treasurer to the Superintendent of British Trade in China. In 1843 he was appointed Chinese Secretary and member of the Executive Council of the newly founded Colony of Hong Kong and was recommended for appointment, by the Governor, as Colonial Secretary. Before the appointment was approved, however, he died in Macao in August 1843, and was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery there. (L.T.R.)\n\n27 Kwang Chow Foo. Kuang-chou fu The Prefect of the Prefecture of which Canton was the chief city. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n28 Kam Hay Hue. No such title. But I suspect Hunter intended to indicate the Namhoi Hien which title was sometimes written Nam Hoy Hien. See note 14. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n29 Pwan Yu Hue. Also written Punyu Hien. The magistrate having jurisdiction over the eastern part of Canton city and the District lying to the westward of the walls which included Whampoa and the foreign shipping there. (J.L.C-B.)\n\n30 Fearon, Samuel Turner Fearon was the second son of Christopher Fearon and Elizabeth Noad who were married on 14 May 1818 at the Streatham Parish Church. His father served as a midshipman at the Battle of Trafalgar and after being discharged from the Royal Navy he joined the Honourable East India Company's marine service. In this service he made a number of voyages to Canton and when he decided to take a shore posting there he brought his wife and family out with him. Samuel became a fluent Cantonese speaker and in 1838 was appointed Interpreter to the Canton General Chamber of Commerce. After the cession of Hong Kong he was appointed interpreter and clerk of the Chief Magistrate's Court and a couple of months later were added the duties of Notary Public and Coroner. Three years later he was appointed Assistant Magistrate of Police and on 1st January 1845 he became Registrar General and Collector of Revenue. In July 1845 he was granted a year's sick leave and while in England he was appointed Professor of Chinese at King's College, London, an appointment which he held from December 1846 until December 1852. (L.T.R.)\n\n31 Van Basel. Magdalenus Jacobus Senn van Basel, born in Groningen, Holland on 27 September 1808, was appointed clerk in the Dutch Consulate at Canton in 1826, and Vice-Consul in November 1831. He was later in partnership with G. M. Toe Laer and P. Tiedenan in the firm of Senn van Basel & Toe Laer & Co. In 1848 he became Collector General of Taxes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204870, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 173, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "148\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nabandoned, broken-down, and over-grown with trees and scrub, probably because it lies in a more remote and less populous part of Lantau, so that there would be no use for it after the garrison left.\n\nAn interesting feature of the Tung Chung fort is the presence of six old muzzle-loading cannons on its walls, each fixed to a cement base. (There are now none at Fan Lau). How these were preserved at Tung Chung is told in the following extract from the 1918 Administrative Report of the District Officer, South:\n\nMiscellaneous Receipts show an increase of $5,000 odd, due to the sale of old cannon for $5,265 which had previously remained neglected in the district. In this connection, it may be noted that any specimens of interest were retained, and that six guns were selected for mounting upon the wall of the old Yamen — the present Police Station — at Tung Chung, Lantau. So the guns at Tung Chung may not always have been there, but may have come from elsewhere, some perhaps from Fan Lau.\n\nThe cannons vary in weight from 1,000 to 2,000 catties, i.e. between 12 and 24 cwts., and are quite large. An interesting comparison is the Ming cannon dredged from Kai Tak Bay in 1956 during the construction of the new runway, which weighs 500 catties and is now mounted outside the Colonial Secretariat. All six pieces carry inscriptions, of which only four are now legible. A typical description reads as follows (though there is room for dispute as to the precise translation):\n\nCannon; weight - 2,000 catties (23-8 cwts.) YIK, Border Pacification General by Imperial Appointment. CHAI, Minister of Constant Support, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi.\n\nLEUNG, Assistant Minister of Defence and Governor of Kwangtung.\n\nLAU, Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture.\n\nCHEONG, Hoi Fung District Magistrate, on Reserve, supervised its manufacture in the 21st year of Reign of To Kwong, 10th Moon (1842)\n\nby Cannon Artisans LI, CHAN & FOK.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "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": 205170, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n121\n\nunreliable information concerning land tenure in the ceded area received from the Chinese district authorities the British commissioners requested them to issue a proclamation calling on the proprietors and renters of land to surrender their title deeds for examination. This was done, and in the commissioners' words \"deeds of all kinds poured in\". On comparing these with the lists already furnished by the Chinese district magistrate little or no agreement existed. Moreover the commissioners considered that there was every reason to believe that the whole of the deeds were not in; particularly those of mortgage. An attempt to enquire into boundaries made it clear that the greater part of the inhabitants were squatters of longer or shorter periods who were consequently unwilling to give much information respecting their holdings. The largest group of deeds handed in for inspection pertained to these squatters, and the commissioners described them as:\n\nan extraordinary collection of sub-leases, mortgages, and unstamped documents, ... called white deeds. So numerous, complicated and unintelligible were these, and many of them so new in appearance, that the Commissioners concluded most of them had been manufactured for the occasion\".\n\nThere were many cross-claims of all kinds and after the most careful investigation they could make the commissioners came to the opinion that the actual rights of owners, lessees, mortgagees or cultivators could only be ascertained as the land was required for use, portion by portion.\n\nTen villages were named in the report. The houses in six of them were listed and valued. This was not considered necessary in the case of the other four which were situated in the inland portion of the peninsula and were not of immediate concern to government.\n\nThe population of Kowloon, then calculated at 5105 persons, was thus composed of diverse elements. This was recognised in the proclamation made by the Hong Kong Government on 24 March 1860 on first taking possession of Tsim Sha Tsui. It reads:\n\nBe it known to you that all the old inhabitants of this site, who are indeed orderly people, will be allowed to live there for the present and follow their various occupations as heretofore, but no new comers will be\n\n**\n\n+\n\n·", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205337, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "92\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\ndistrict city it was not under the district magistrate's direct rule but was under the charge of one of his deputies. This officer's yamen was in the walled city of Kowloon and he was responsible for many other villages besides those on Lantau Island. There was no civil officer actually resident on the island before 1898 though one imagines that runners would visit it from time to time to chase in taxes and, perhaps less frequently, to make an arrest. The military authorities were more in evidence. A captain commanded a detachment in the fort at Tung Chung, a large valley in the north-central part of the island, and a junior officer was in charge of another body of troops in the market town, Their presence was perhaps due more to European activities in the local seaways, and to pirates, than to any disturbances likely to take place on the island, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century when there is no remembrance of internal disturbances.4\n\nThe people of Lantau were left mainly to their own devices by the government, military and civil alike. From evidence collected locally it appears that as elsewhere in China the clan and village elders kept the peace in the villages, and the Kaifong (#) or Street Association did the same in the market town and paid for watchmen to bar and walk round the principal streets at night. Anything more serious than minor disturbance and petty crime, e.g. piracies or armed robberies, was reported to the military, though by that time it was usually too late for anything effective to be done. Disputes were settled locally as far as possible. Besides these, the elders handled a variety of duties which, irrespective of the size of the community, were sometimes arduous and complex since much depended on handling individuals so as to produce a fruitful result. They organised small public works of benefit to their communities, such as the digging of a well or the construction of an irrigation dam or a small pier: they managed the local temples and arranged the details and financing of all festivals: they were responsible for finding suitable premises for village schools and engaging teachers; and so on. These persons came forward by a combination of such factors as age, experience, ability, ambition, leisure, wealth, lack of anyone else willing to do the job and so on. However, it is also true to say that they had also to be acceptable in their communities, since without local support and goodwill they could hardly operate.5", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205346, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 101\n\nLockhart calls them in his 1898 report on the New Territories.18 He states that the council for the Eastern Tung embraced most of the leased territory and sat in the market town of Sham Chun just north of the 1898 boundary. One imagines that men such as the three who form the subject of this paper might have been members. Here I have had the benefit of conversations with a former mandarin, now deceased, who served as a Chou and then as a Fu magistrate in Hupeh for some years before the Revolution of 1911. He told me that the councils of the poorer districts were augmented by prominent non-literati of the type to be found on Lantau, the normal restrictions on scholar membership being waived in order to secure the presence of persons who carried weight in their localities. If practised in San On this realistic approach, in part occasioned by the need to obtain their help in chasing in and securing the payment of the land tax, would probably have brought in local leaders like Chan, Cheung and Kung.\n\nI must record that this is conjecture since no information on their participation in the council, their work there, and their relations with the district magistrate and the true gentry of the District has yet turned up though I am by no means sure, given local conditions, that it ever will. However an account of these men would be lacking unless one hinted at the possibility of their participation in local councils, especially as it is probable that the rural gentry of Lantau and similar fringe areas in South China and elsewhere in the Ching period were similar in origins to these three men.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The New Territories were ceded by the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June 1898; for the text see The Hong Kong Government Gazette for 8 April 1899, pp. 552-553—but were not occupied until the following year. The boundaries were not discussed until March 1899, and some hostilities took place in March and April of that year when the Hong Kong Government took possession of the New Territory. See Sessional Papers 1899, No. 32 \"Dispatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong\" and No. 35 \"Further Papers relating to Military Operations in Connection with the Disturbances On The Taking Over of the New Territory\".\n\nThe Romanisation used in this article is in the Cantonese form. For place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205348, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 103\n\nmany Punti villages from \"squeezes\" formerly levied on them, \"especially the Hakkas\".\n\n13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63.\n\n14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist.\n\n15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration.\n\n16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98,\n\n17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon,\n\n18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century.\n\nWhere no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries,\n\nAddition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's \"The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911\", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205360, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n115\n\nThe Wai are of two kinds: the one comparatively of small size, is used, as stated above, merely as a place of refuge in times of danger, and is not a permanent residence, except for a few of the poorer class who build in it as a waste place; it is in fact a fort. The other would more properly be called a fortified town; it is of much larger extent, containing within its walls many dwelling-houses, which are generally of a superior class, and are occupied by rich men, who esteem themselves more safely and more agreeably located here than in the open village.\n\nThe Cities (i.e., places fortified by government), are four in number, viz: The district town, San-on, ✯✯, also called Namtow; Tai-pung, at the eastern extremity; Kow-loong, opposite Hongkong; and Tung-chung, on the island of Lantao. It must not, however, be thought that these are the most important and populous places in the district. They are the seats of Mandarins, and with the exception of Sanon (which has about 8,000 inhabitants), the population within the walls is very small.\n\nThe Population of the entire district cannot be given with certainty.\n\nA census at the time when it was first created a district, gives only 34,000 inhabitants. In 1819 it was estimated to contain 240,000, of which number 150,000 were males, and only 80,000(7) females. To these must be added 13,000 strangers (with their wives and families) who served as soldiers, inferior officers, and as labourers in the Imperial rice and salt fields. When Sanon first became a district, about 3,000 king of land paid Imperial taxes. A king, is equal to from 13 to 15 acres. In 1662, the tax-paying lands had increased to 4,000 king. Their present number I have not been able to ascertain.\n\nThe district is governed by seven civil Mandarins. The chief of these is the Chi-yuen, or district magistrate, and he resides within the walls of Sanon. He is addressed by the title of \"Ti-ya” great or venerable father. Second to him is the sub-magistrate, \"Yuen-shing,\" who resides at Tai-pung. This office was first created in the first year of the Emperor Yung-ching. This magistrate's jurisdiction extends over 104 villages, besides the city of Tai-pung. Sixty of these villages have Pun-ti inhabitants, and 44 Hak-ka.\n\nThe two mandarins next in rank to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "116\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\n. \n\nThe preceding, are the \"Kau-yue\", and the \"Fan-to\". They have nothing to do with the government of the district, but may be called Inspectors of Education. They register the graduates of the district, and present them for examination at the provincial city, and they inspect and superintend the private schools of the villages and towns.\n\nThe fifth and sixth officials bear the title of \"Tsun-lin-tzu\", or chief officer of a township. One of them resides in the market-place called Fuk-wing-ak, on the shore of the Hap-lan-hoi. His jurisdiction extends over the whole plain of San-keaou, and comprises 185 villages; 31 only of these are inhabited by the Hak-kas.\n\nThe other officer resided, when history first makes mention of his office, in the neighbourhood of Kow-loong. Subsequently he transferred his residence to Chik-me, bordering on Deep Bay; but since the first war with England, his chief place of residence has been Kow-loong, except during the autumn of 1854, when his official residence having been burnt by the rebels, he was obliged to reside again at Chik-me.\n\nHe rules over 492 villages, of which 298 are Pun-ti, and 194 Hak-ka. Each of these two officers has a military force of two soldiers at his disposal.\n\nThe seventh officer, the lowest in rank, is the \"Teen-le\" — director of police. He resides with his superior the Che-yuen, and has under his jurisdiction 73 villages (of which only six are Hak-ka), in the immediate neighbourhood of Sanon.\n\nGlancing at the names of the mandarins, who, during the present dynasty, have been at the head of affairs in Sanon, we find that among thirty Chi-yuens, four only have been of Manchu extraction, and the rest all Chinese.\n\nOf these thirty, we find that, on first starting on their political career, ten held the rank of Tsin-tze-it, six that of Keu-jin-A, and nine that of Seu-tsai of the first degree, whilst the remaining five could only boast the title of Kam-shang, which is the lowest bestowed, and which was probably purchased by them.\n\nAmong these last there was only one Chinese, the other four being Manchu.\n\nThe office of Sub-magistrate has seldom been held by a Manchu; most of those who held it were either Seu-tsai or Kam-shang, and received the appointment for good services rendered to the State.\n\nNo Manchu ever held the office of Kau-yu or Fan-to in this district.\n\nThe office of Kau-yu - inspector of schools — is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205371, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "126\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nthese villages smaller hamlets were in league. The mandarins tried in vain to restore peace. At last the district magistrate himself repaired to Sha-tsing with a force of 1,000 men, but the inhabitants threatened to take up arms against him also, if he should show himself inimical to their party. The mandarin was at a loss what to do, till the people of San-keaou, who were not engaged in the quarrel, offered themselves as mediators between the mandarin and the inhabitants of Sha-tsing. Through their influence the magistrate was allowed to enter Sha-tsing with an unarmed body of his followers, and to pull down two old houses which belonged to the ringleaders in the quarrel. This was only to save the dignity of the mandarin, and had no influence at all upon the dispute, fighting being carried on afterwards just as before. The only way in which the government endeavours to put a stop to these disturbances, is by not allowing the fighting clans to send up their graduates for examination at Canton, a severe punishment, which not only deprives the graduates of the titles and honours they might gain, but hurts the pride of the clans, who are wont to boast of the number of successful candidates for literary honours which they have produced.\n\nLet us now direct our attention to the Schools, Teachers, and the class of Literati. There is no lack of schools; in the first place there are numerous elementary schools, in which boys in bodies of from ten to thirty, are taught to read and write the characters. The teacher in these schools receives an annual salary from the parents of his scholars, varying from 20,000 to 50,000 cash; besides this he is found in rice, and if he does his duty well, and makes himself popular, he receives presents in kind, and is also invited by turns to dinner. The places which serve for schoolrooms are generally the ancestral halls; but sometimes temples, and occasionally vacant private houses, are used for the purpose. Regular schoolrooms are scarce in the villages, but are found in towns and larger places. Each boy brings his own table to the school, and very often lives altogether at the place, so that he may continue his studies with less interruption. The pupils attend the school on an average for eight months of the year, the other four months being spent in field labour.\n\nThe books taught are, the Trimetrical Classic, Thousand Character Classic †††, and the Tau-hok *; after the boys have committed these to memory, they proceed to learn", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205372, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n127\n\nthe Four Books, and finally the Five Classics. All the boys however do not devote so much time to study; such as afterwards engage in trade or learn a handicraft usually only remain at school from two to four years, during which time they acquire sufficient knowledge of the characters to carry on business, write letters, and make out accounts, &c.\n\nIf a boy intends to devote himself entirely to study, he enters a higher school in which graduates train young men for the examinations. Such schools exist at Namtow, Sai-heong, Kap-shui-hau, San-keaou, and many other places. Kap-shui-hau ✯7k ¤, is famous for these schools, and, as the Chinese say, \"diffuses the fragrance of pen and ink.\" Many youths repair thither to study; many inhabitants of the village itself have succeeded in obtaining a degree; and several flag-staffs in it bear witness to the rank of the person over against whose dwelling they are erected.\n\nThe method of teaching observed in these schools is the following: The student is made thoroughly acquainted with the contents of the Four Books and the Five Classics. The teacher explains each passage, and the pupils are required to repeat the explanations on the following day. As the knowledge of the student increases, he is instructed to write essays on a given theme. To acquire expertness and fluency of style, the student obtains a large number of essays, which he must read and commit to memory. He is also instructed in versification. Writing essays and making verses are the two principal requirements in the examinations at Canton for the degree Sew-tsai. Arithmetic, geography, astronomy, or other sciences, are not taught, and are not considered necessary in education.\n\nThe first examination, by which no degree is obtained, is held in the district city by the \"Che yuen” ✯ ✯ — or district magistrate. About 300 young men attend this examination, and about one-half of these, who have some hope of obtaining a degree, proceed afterwards to Canton, to undergo the examination of the Foo under the superintendence of the Prefect. These examinations take place three times in two years. The number of graduates to be chosen at each examination from the applicants from the district of Sanon, amounts to ten persons, eight of whom must be Pun-ti, and two Hak-ka. There are in the district about 150 Seu-tsai† †, and the village of San-keaou boasts of having produced the largest number of them. There is a difference of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205373, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "128 \n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nrank among the Seu-tsai, twenty of the senior bearing the title of Nam-shang. These Nam-shang have a small pension from Government, and receive some fees from the aspirants to the examination at Canton, who have to procure from them a certificate in reference to their character and acquirements.\n\nThere are only four Keu-jin in the district; these are all Puntis, and from its western part. They are all engaged in teaching.\n\nThere is only one individual in the district who possesses the degree Tsin-tze +, the famous Chan-kwei-chik of Sha-tsing. This man held office in Peking, but was obliged to retire on account of the decease of his parents. One of his parents dying just as the time of mourning for the other had expired, his exclusion from office was protracted to the term of six years. During this period he led rather an indolent life, occasionally engaging in the healing art; but he was never much known till the time when the differences between the British and the Canton authorities commenced in 1856.\n\nHe then offered his services to the Governor General, promising to inflict severe injuries on the British. To effect this, he organised a force of village braves, and endeavoured to stop the supply of provisions to Hongkong. The district magistrate was not at all pleased with the ascendancy of this man, and in several instances showed his dissatisfaction and disapprobation of Chan-kwei-chik's plans. The latter, however, having been invested with dictatorial powers by the Viceroy, exercised them according to his own discretion, and cared nothing for the approbation of the district magistrate, who was at this time his inferior.\n\nThe measures which he adopted were however unpalatable to the people, who rose against him in the district city, and forced him to retire to his native place. It is said that he also got into the bad graces of the Viceroy, who accused him of having squandered public money, and drawn large sums without effecting anything against the enemy. Chan-kwei-chik is still in retirement in Sha-tsing, and amuses himself by playing on the seraphim which he stole from Mr. Genähr's house in Sai-heong.\n\nNo natives of the Sanon district at present hold any high office in other provinces. Since the commencement of the present dynasty (1644), six natives of this province have obtained the degree of Tsin-tze, and 54 that of Keu-jin.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205375, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 137, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "130\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\ntwenty-five feet in height, twenty feet thick at the base, and ten feet at the top, but they are in many places in a dilapidated condition. There are four gates, but one of these is built up with bricks, and its opening would be regarded as of calamitous import to the mandarin; for the story goes, that about 200 years ago, a party of rebels entered by that gate and put the mandarin to death; it has been closed up ever since, and the magistrate is very careful not to have it opened lest a similar misfortune should befall himself. On the sea face there is a deep moat, and this front is farther protected by an embankment close to the shore. It is to the suburbs of this city that the name of Nam-taou is more properly applied; they stretch along the sea shore and are much more populous than the city itself, containing nearly 20,000 inhabitants. Within the city walls are the dwellings and offices of the civil and military mandarins, the magazines, the temple of the tutelary deities of the city, the hall in commemoration of chaste women and dutiful children, and other temples of less importance and pretence.\n\nThe most spacious, best preserved, and most remarkable for architectural beauty, is the temple of the tutelary deities; opposite the eastern gate is the temple dedicated to Confucius, the dignity of which is shown by the yellow colour of the tiles; this is a notable and spacious building, and connected with it are several halls, in which the names of the ancestors of Confucius, the ancient sages, celebrated mandarins of the district, with other officers who have distinguished themselves, and the good and wise people of the district, are worshipped.\n\nIn the hall where the names of those mandarins who have distinguished themselves are worshipped, there are two tablets commemorating their names; their virtuous deeds are recorded in the Sanon-che, the work to which I have so often referred. We give some instances: Wong-fan was Tou-tai in the year 1520, when there arrived certain lawless FrenchmenM, who, under pretence of bringing tribute, committed depredations and plundered the district. Tun-mun, near Castlepeak, and Macao, are said to have been particularly infested by them. They are accused of having butchered and devoured young children. Wong-fan gathered together a force of braves, and, regardless of wind and weather, made his wise plans and vanquished them. He did not appropriate the spoil to himself, but distributed it among the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205377, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "132\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nTo the left of the temple of Confucius, is the temple of “Kwan-kung”關公—the God of War; and on the right another one dedicated to \"Man-tai\", the God of Literature. Behind the latter is the hall Ning-lun, in which the public examinations are held. The literati and elders meet here on special occasions. In the vicinity of these edifices is the temple of “Sha-nung”神農—the God of Agriculture; and before it extends a piece of ground, on which the chief magistrate has to plough a few furrows at the beginning of spring, in accordance with an ancient custom. Near the sea-shore is a large space of ground, which serves for drilling the military, and on which the military examinations are also held. On it also a hall is erected for the accommodation of the officers.\n\nNot far from this place is a Buddhist temple, which contains images of the three Buddhas, and of the eighteen Lo-hou, which are Buddhist demi-gods. In front of the three Buddhas is a tablet, before which the devotees worship the reigning dynasty. On this tablet is the inscription \"Ten Thousand years!\" Farther above this is another tablet with the characters \"Protect my black-haired people.\" The chief magistrate is obliged to repair here once a month, and to prostrate himself before these tablets.\n\nOther edifices worthy of notice are, a five-storied pagoda, a temple to the well-deserving mandarins Wong and Lau, and an altar to the Gods of Land and Grain. Outside the town is the execution ground, and here, in 1854, many rebels were decapitated, and there might be seen at times the heads hung up in baskets as a warning to the people.\n\nThe fort and city of Kowloong are sufficiently known, and there is but little to say of them. The low walls and miserable forts have often been visited by foreigners. The environs of Kowloong contain some curious mementoes of history, of which the rest of the district is destitute. Ping-tai, the last of the Southern Emperors of the Sung dynasty, fled with the remnant of his faithful adherents to the province of Canton. Near Kowloong he attempted to build himself a palace, which however he was unable to complete, and the situation is now marked by a temple to \"Pak-tai”北帝—the God of the North. One of his high officers died here, and his tomb is situated on a hill, which is called to this day Sung-wang-tai. These three characters are engraved on\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205553, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "90\n\nARMANDO M. DA SILVA\n\nIt will suffice here to say that the exterior defence of the Chu Kong estuary consisted of a series of forts, customs-stations and guard-posts in the Lo Man Shan 老萬山, Kai Pong 鷄澎, Sam Chau Mun 三洲門, Ngoi Ling Ting 外伶仃, and the Tam Kon ## groups of the outer off-shore islands. The civil administration ruled from Nam Tau, the district city of the San On district. The military administration was centred at Tai Pang, on the western arm enclosing Tai Pang Hoi (Mirs Bay). The civil administration operated on a north-south axis, as against the east-west axis of the military coastal defence system. This is understandable when one realizes that the military could facilitate their control of the coast-line by establishing easy communications by water running the length of the coast-line from strongpoints on strategic head-lands and the offshore islands.\n\n3 For the Chinese characters of place names of some locales in the vicinity of Tai Yu Shan see map 3. For names of places within the present territory of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960).\n\n4 So far as I know there has been no published study of this fort by Hongkong's local historians, except for a brief mention in one work which states that Kai Yik Kok fort was of Ch'ing dynasty date. Lo Hsiang-lin, Hongkong and its External Communication before 1842, (Hongkong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) p. 172.\n\n5 The principal ingredients of this cement are clam and oyster shells which are crushed and burnt to produce slaked lime. The lime is then mixed with fine sand to produce a holding cement. Shells and fine sand are common to many local beaches and are, apparently for this purpose, used in lime kilns.\n\n6 San On Yuen Chi, kuen 22, under section on Coastal Defence reads:\n\n看復界後海絮籹寧而設險更捻周密雖今之汎地 及設兵皆與舊制不同而大嶼山雞翼角炮臺南頭 炮臺赤濘炮蠱最為餓要\n\n7 Fan Lau is also known as Shek Sun meaning \"boulder growths\", a reference to the numerous residual boulders at Kai Yik Kok,\n\n8 Luis Gomes, Monografia de Macau (Macau, 1951), a Portuguese translation of the O Mun Kei Leuk p. 70. \"No 7° ano de long Tcheng (1730) construiram-se fortalezas nas duas montanhas, distribuiram-se as guarniçoes para a sua defensa e foram reforçadas as tropas que guarneciam Tai-U-San formando assim como que um angulo semelhante ao que e constituido pelos chifres dum boi, para servir de defensa exterior de Macau e o Boca Tigre\",\n\n9 J. J. L. Duyvendak, \"Sailing directions of Chinese voyages\" T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938) pp. 230-237; and \"The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century\", T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412.\n\n10 The district of San On (新安) was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing (隆慶) ie. 1572-73, Fourteen years later, in 1587, the San On district gazetteer was written by Yan Tai-kon (縣太君), the District Magistrate. Various editions followed. The latest edition was published in 1819. This gazetteer provides the best primary source of information on pre-British Hongkong. Chapters (kuen) XIV and XXII deal with Coastal Defence. These are chapters of special interest to historical geographers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205620, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n157 \n\nThe only study of the question which has any pretence to authority is that by Sayer in his work on the first 20 years of Hong Kong under British rule. In that study he makes use of various contemporary descriptions and accounts to fix the site of the first building to which the name 'Government House' has been given on the location of the Victoria District Court at the top of the present Battery Path. Though I do not contest that the site was so used for a period, it would appear that Sayer's conclusion is at variance with other contemporary material which should have been available to him. The problem stems partly from a failure to distinguish between the offices where the Governor performed his official functions and the residences where he lived. When Sir Henry Pottinger, the first Governor, arrived in 1841, he spent one night in a tent. When he returned to Hong Kong after the successful conclusion of the war against China, he lived in a number of houses, though there is positive evidence only about one of them. Though visual evidence from drawings of Hong Kong suggest that he may have resided in a house in the possession of Major Caine, the Chief Magistrate, there is no documentary evidence of the fact and I am not concerned with it; if he did so reside, he must have done so gratuitously, for the Government Accounts of the period do not record any rent payments which might be attributed to this.\n\nSayer is able to state confidently that \"the first Government House has disappeared without trace” as a preamble to his attempt to re-trace it. The Canton Press of January 1842 reported that “a public office to serve as a temporary residence for the head of the Government\" had just been finished. The same newspaper shortly after this referred to this building as \"Government House,\" but added that it had changed its name to the \"Record Office\" since \"the late Acting Governor has been metamorphosed into a Lieut.-Governor.\" The reference is to A. R. Johnston, who administered Hong Kong during Pottinger's absences from the Colony. Sayer concludes from this that the building referred to by the newspaper must have been the house undeniably built by Johnston at the top of Battery Path. He further supports this by pointing out that, on Collinson's Map of 1844, Johnston's House is marked 'Government House.' Lest, however, this should seem to answer the question beyond further argument, I have a few observations to offer.\n\nAs early as the end of 1841, Johnston was writing letters dated 'Government Hill' and there is no doubt that this was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205708, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 14, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "8\n\nT. C. CHENG\n\nIt was as late as February 1880 that an eligible Chinese took his seat as an unofficial member in the Legislative Council. He was Ng Choy, later known throughout China as Dr. Wu Ting-fang. Ng's parents went to Singapore from Chung Shan District,* Kwang-tung Province, and he himself was born in Singapore in 1842. He came to Hong Kong as a boy and was educated at St. Paul's College.2 Having served as an interpreter in the Magistrate's Court in Hong Kong from 1861 to 1874, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, London, to study law and was the first Chinese to qualify as a barrister-at-law in January 1877. He was admitted to practise as a barrister in the Supreme Court in Hong Kong in May the same year.\n\nNg Choy's appointment to the Legislative Council was entirely a result of the efforts of the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy (April 1877 - March 1882), an Irishman, and a great champion of the Chinese community which had changed a great deal since the 1850's.3\n\nIn 1880 when Hugh Gibb, a member of the Legislative Council, went on leave, Sir John took the opportunity to appoint Ng Choy to a provisional seat in the Council. When he addressed the Secretary of State on this subject, he quoted a memorial from leading Chinese in which they asked that since the Chinese out-numbered the foreigners by ten to one, they should be allowed a share in the management of public affairs. He then went further and suggested a reorganization of the Legislative Council so as to enable Ng Choy to have a more permanent seat. The Secretary of State was not sympathetic with Sir John's views but agreed to Ng's appointment only on a temporary basis until Gibb's return to Hong Kong, or for three years. One view expressed in the Colonial Office was that should the Governor want to consult the Legislative Council secretly or should relations with China become strained, the presence of a Chinese member on the Council might be awkward.4\n\nIn any case, when Ng Choy took his seat in the Legislative Council for the first time on 19th February 1880, it was a great occasion for rejoicings among the Chinese community and a deputation of leading Chinese members called at Government House to congratulate the Governor and themselves on the appointment.5\n\n* Then known as Heung Shan District.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "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": 205737, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE\n\n37\n\nHow were such composite forces recruited? Wakeman stresses three factors: gentry leadership, the she-hsüeh (local school) as an organisational node, and agnatic kinship. Let us consider them in turn. \"Usually a gentry organizer would form a cohesive t'uan-lien around one town\n\nWhen he had assembled his men, he persuaded the elders of neighbouring villages to enroll their banners under his . . . From such integral nuclei, other, less tightly organized 'banners' could be extended: but gentry leadership was the essential factor.\"29\n\nShe-hsüeh were often resurrected or founded to serve as headquarters for militia forces: \"in 1836 . . . village leaders near Whampoa had become alarmed by secret society activity. Twenty-four of the villages built a common hall under the guise of a 'local school' at a market town on the south side of Honam island. There the elders met to try miscreants and bind them over to the district magistrate.\"30 During the period discussed by Wakeman (1839-61), the she-hsüeh served as \"recruiting depots, treasuries, meeting halls, posting places, and drill grounds.\"\n\nKinship was also significant in the formation of militia: \"clan and t'uan-lien were mutually intermingled in Kwangtung during the 1840's and '50's. The militia of a uniclan village was nothing more than a clan organization.\"32 Kinship ties might constitute an important organizational element even in the case of more widely based militia. Wakeman has shown that, of the twenty-five leaders of the Tung-p'ing militia, 60 percent shared surnames.33\n\nThe possible relationship between these factors and Skinner's analysis of marketing systems is striking. The most obvious instance is that of the twenty-four villages which combined to establish a she-hsüeh at a market town on Honam island. Skinner says of this association that it \"can only be interpreted as a formalization of structure within a standard marketing community.”34 To take another example, Wakeman reports that one of the leaders of militia in the San-yuan-li area combined the \"twelve local schools\" of his region (En-chou) into a defence command.35 En-chou lies within the area classified by Skinner as the central region of Kwangtung province. In the 1890's the average number of villages per market town in this region was 17.9.36 Could this also have been a “formalization of structure within a standard marketing community\"?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205978, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n53\n\n19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937.\n\n21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health.\n\n22 James Legge \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173.\n\n23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: \"The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”.\n\n24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912.\n\n25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: \"Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings\".\n\n26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5.\n\n27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6,\n\n-55", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "56\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nunder the Captain Superintendent in Hong Kong. The islands, and later, an outlying part of the mainland, were organised separately as the Southern District, with an assistant land officer appointed on 1 January 1905; he became an Assistant District Officer in 191054. G. B. Endacott Government and People in Hong Kong, pp. 134-5, Stewart Lockhart's Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong, 1900, says: \"Since Mr. Lockhart's return to Hong Kong in July (1899) the work of the New Territory has been carried on by Messrs. Messer, Kemp and Hallifax, three cadets who are carrying out their instructions in a most satisfactory manner\". The tradition developed of sending newly passed cadets to be \"blooded\" in the New Territory before they took up more sedentary duties in the Central Government Departments.\n\n54 Austin Coates Myself a Magistrate. London, 1968, p. 13; speaking of his appointment as a Magistrate in the New Territories, Mr. Coates writes: \"It was a job which would demand a complete change of thought and attitude after the Secretariat, occupied as I had been there with the doings of the modern world. Yet in this older world, bypassed by time, might I not find the roots—perhaps even the soul of the people who, met with in the city, held in their hearts something that everlastingly eluded me?”\n\n55 G. B. Endacott Government and People in Hong Kong, p. 169.\n\n56 Ibid., p. 169.\n\n57 A particularly acidulous, but fictional, portrait of an Assistant Colonial Secretary is presented in Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil (London, 1925). This so enraged the then Assistant Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong, A. G. M. Fletcher, that he threatened an action against the publishers, Heinemann. The name Hong Kong was replaced in the second issue of the book by \"Tching Yen\".\n\n58 Richard Symonds The British and Their Successors, London, 1966, p. 16.\n\n59 G. B. Sayer Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age, London, 1937, p.15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 204, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n197\n\ntook place locally, in the areas just across the Sino-British border at Sha Tau Kok. The villagers of these three places became alarmed for the fate of their cherished Tin Hau image and brought it into British territory for safety. They also brought back two incense burners (†) dated in the 2nd and 3rd years of Kuang Hsü (1876-78) that had been donated by local shops and fishermen in one case and by Lin Ma Hang (A) natives then in Australia (J).\n\nThe leaders of the three villages then combined to form the Sha Tau Kok Three Villages Tin Hau Temple Building Committee (沙頭角三鄉籌建天后廟委員會) and obtained a temporary building permit from the Tai Po District Office to erect a temple for the image. The temple is situated at map reference KV 140962 at the west end of Kong Ha Village in the Frontier Closed Area. It is under the management of a special trust, the Sam Wo Tong (*) constituting one manager each from Tong To, Tan Shui Hang and Sha Tsui villages.\n\nPhotographs of this new temple and of the Tin Hau image which inspired such devotion can be seen at Plates 30 and 31.\n\nPlace names used in this note can be found in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (H.K. Govt. Printer, n.d. but 1960) pp. 216-218.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nPILE HOUSES AT TAI O, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG,\n\n7TH JANUARY 1937\n\nEditor's Note\n\nThe following details of some of the interesting pile houses or matsheds on stilts that survive in considerable numbers in Tai O Creek to the present day are taken from one of Mr. Walter Schofield's notebooks, under the date given in the heading. Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) served in the Hong Kong Cadet (Administrative) Service between 1911-1938 in various posts, including those of District Officer South, Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs and First Police Magistrate. He was also a well-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206323, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "134\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nof its history64. The Hong Kong government utilised a number of Chinese associations that had developed independently, gave official status to a few and drew them for the convenience of administration into its orbit. In doing so, to some degree it had to forego total control over the Chinese population and share such control with a small number of Chinese notables. Both benefited from the arrangement. This system has been called one of 'indirect rule' but I feel the phrase conceals more than it reveals, for a committee such as the District Watch could on occasion shape government policy. Government had to play along with a number of Chinese committees for without their support the regulation of the Chinese masses would have been at best an uncertain matter. The heaping of honours on a small number of Chinese notables was, surely, a recognition of the key part they played in promoting stability rather than prizes given for their alienation from Chinese society. Such prominent Chinese, as I have suggested, were as much watchdogs for the Chinese community, and especially the Chinese bourgeoisie, as barking dogs for the colonial government.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Lennox A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, London, Oxford University Press, 1942, p. 398.\n\n2 i.e., Sir Shouson Chow, Sir Robert Kotewall, Lo Man-kam, Dr. Li Shu-fan, and William Ngartsee Thomas Tam.\n\n3 S. F. Balfour states that Hong Kong Island was owned originally by the Tang (Têng) clan of the New Territories: 'Hong Kong Before the British', Tien Hsia Monthly, vol. xi, 1941, p. 464. A translation of a Chinese notice printed in the Friend of China, 24 July 1858, reads: Tung Wing-Fook-Tong (sic) of the Sun-on district, was formerly sole proprietor of the Island of Hong Kong, and of the hills and coast of the North Side of the Harbour under the general name of Tsin Shat-Choy.... Lately Tung Wing-Fook-Tong petitioned the Magistrate of Sun-on to examine Tung's claim to Tsin Shat-Choy and the Magistrate issued a proclamation declaring that Tung Wing-Fook-Tong is the real owner of the Property. The editor asseverated 'as to his having been a Lord of this Isle, as well as of Tsim-shat-choy, —in a word, we do not believe a word of it'. Barbara Ward writes of fishermen that for reasons probably mainly connected with their spatial mobility and the lack of land, these fishermen do not have a developed lineage system nor any real concept of one'. See Barbara Ward, 'Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: Their Post-peasant economy', in Maurice Freedman, ed., Social Organisation: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, London, Frank Cass, 1967, p. 278.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206325, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "136 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\ncensus 13 of the 76 Chinese enumerators were district watchmen; in the 1901 census 5 out of 107 were. In the 1906 census the 120 enumerators were shown round the blocks (census sub-divisions) by district watchmen. They also gave help in the 1911 census, and in the 1921 one the bulk of the force was placed at the disposal of the commissioner of census, who wrote 'each Chinese watchman engaged was in charge of two sections; they helped clear up misunderstandings and kept a check on enumerators'. The Committee was thanked on many occasions by government for its public service; it was praised for the help it rendered to the police during the riots which occurred in 1894 during the great epidemic of plague. The Committee did all it could to help its sister organizations the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk. Thus district watchmen were always employed on special duties at the Tung Wah Hospital during outbreaks of plague and the Chinese Public Dispensary Committee used Watchmen to prevent the dumping of bodies in the streets. The Po Leung Kuk's two principal detectives were serving district watchmen at the turn of the century. Co-operation was easy because most members of the District Watch Committee had served or were serving on the committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk. In 1895 head district watchmen were paid $240 a year, assistant head district watchmen $180 and watchmen from $84 to $96. \n\n18 For examples of police corruption in nineteenth century Hong Kong see numerous references in Norton-Kyshe, op. cit. \n\n19 After a distinguished academic career at Edinburgh University, J. H. Stewart Lockhart became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878; Registrar General in 1887; Colonial Secretary in 1895. In 1902 he was appointed first Civil Commissioner of Weihaiwei and retired from this post in 1921. Among his numerous publications there are several of sinological value. See particularly: 'Contributions to the Folklore of China', China Review, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 352-353 and vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 37-39; also 'Some Chinese Folk-lore', Folk-lore, vol. 14, 1903, pp. 292-298. Lockhart was local secretary in Hong Kong of the International Folk-lore Society. \n\n20 In 1892 new rules were drawn up under Ordinance No. 13 of 1888, with the advice of the Committee, for the regulation and guidance of the watchmen. 'Copies of these rules have been distributed among the contributors of the District Watchmen's Fund, by whom more interest seems to be evinced in and more assistance asked from the force than formerly': See Report of the Registrar General for 1892. Lockhart also persuaded two Chinese newspapers—the Tsun Wan Yat Po and the Wai San Yat Po—to publish weekly lists of cases brought before the magistrate by the District watchmen for the information of subscribers to the District Watchmen's Fund. Lockhart realised that publicity was good for the Committee: he saw that they got it. The report of the Registrar General/Secretary for Chinese Affairs always contained a section on the District Watch and news about members was given: deaths, resignations, appointments, etc. \n\n21 Wei Yuk (1849-1921) was the son of Wei Kwong, compradore to the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China. He was educated at the Government Central School in Hong Kong and in 1867, at the age of 18, became a pupil at the Leicester Stoneygate School and in 1868 of the Dollar Institution, Scotland. He returned to Hong Kong in 1872 to become assistant compradore in the Chartered Mercantile Bank. He succeeded his father on the latter's death in 1879. Wei Yuk married the eldest daughter of Wong Shing (Huang Shêng). He was the fourth Chinese to be appointed to the Legislative Council, the other three being Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang), Wong Shing and Ho Kai. He was knighted in 1919. During his public career he served on all the commissions appointed by government to inquire into matters affecting the Chinese. Ho Fook (1863-1926) was the younger half-brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung, reputed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206539, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 87, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n81\n\n21 'Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong', Sessional Papers, no. 32 of 1899, p. 13.\n\n22 Ibid., p. 36.\n\n23 Ibid., p. 65.\n\n24 Ibid., p. 69.\n\n25 'Report on the New Territory during the first year of British Administration', Sessional Papers, no. 15 of 1900, p. 252.\n\n26 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901', Sessional Papers, no. 22 of 1902, p. 4.\n\n27 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921.\n\n28 Alfred Hancock and his brother Sydney were partners in the firm of A. and S. Hancock of Queen's Road, Hong Kong. In 1906 Alfred Hancock had resided for over fifty years in Amoy and Hong Kong. In the 1920s the firm had moved to Des Voeux Road and the chief partner was H. R. B. Hancock, Lockhart's brother-in-law. The firm was still active in 1940.\n\n29 The walled city of Weihaiwei, captured by the Japanese in 1894, by the terms of the 1898 Convention was not under British jurisdiction but nominally under a Chinese sub-district deputy magistrate. The British sphere of influence extended for an area of 1,500 square miles east of the Leased Territory.\n\n30 On the Chinese Regiment see: Captain A. A. S. Barnes, On Active Service with the Chinese Regiment, London, 1902; C. E. Bruce-Mitford, The Territory of Wei-Hai-Wei, Shanghai, 1902, pp. 22-24; R. F. Johnston, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, London, 1910, pp. 82-3; and Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1906. The only servicemen left in Weihaiwei after 1906 were the small body of Royal Marines of the Island Guard,\n\n31 Johnston, op. cit., p. 82.\n\n32 L. K. Young, British Policy in China 1895-1902, London, 1970, p. 73.\n\n33 Johnston, op. cit., p. 80.\n\n34 The Weihaiwei School was opened with only four pupils in 1901 by a Mr. H. J. L. Beer. In 1903 a new school house was built near Port Edward, partly with the aid of a debenture loan subscribed by British subjects in Shanghai. The new school had dormitories for forty boys. The school, which took boys between ages of 8 to 14, was mainly for the sons of British expatriates. Pupils came from places as far apart as Mukden, Canton, Kobe, and Chungking. The school closed in 1925 when it became apparent that the rendition of Weihaiwei was close at hand. Weihaiwei's fine climate contributed to the school's success with expatriate parents.\n\n35 Johnston, op. cit., p. 96.\n\n36 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, K.C.M.G. (1874-1938). Johnston was educated at Edinburgh University and Oxford. He arrived in Hong Kong as an Eastern Cadet, fresh from Magdalen, on Christmas Day, 1898. In 1904, Robert Walter, Secretary to Government and Magistrate at Weihaiwei, was seconded for service as Emigration Agent at Ch'iu-wang-tao for the Transvaal Government and Johnston was appointed to take his place. In 1906 he was appointed District Officer and Magistrate and resided in the heart of the Territory. In 1919 when he took up his appointment as tutor he was Senior District Officer. In 1927 he returned to Weihaiwei as Commissioner. After the rendition of Weihaiwei in 1930 he became Professor of Chinese, University of London, and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Studies, 1931-37.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206540, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "82\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nIt is an interesting comment on Johnston that he visited England only twice in twenty-eight years of residence in China. See Johnston's obituary in the Times of 8 March, 1938.\n\n37 R. F. Johnston's, Twilight in the Forbidden City, London, 1934, describes his experiences as an Imperial tutor.\n\n38 Much information on Johnston's experiences as District Officer and Magistrate are given in his book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China.\n\n39 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921, p. 3.\n\n40 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1903, p. 5. From time to time the Magistrate's office issued proclamations in Chinese, notifying the people of the wishes of the Government. All the villages of the Territory were provided with large notice boards on which such proclamations were posted. The style of governing in Weihaiwei owed much to Chinese example.\n\n41 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1904, p. 26. The statement is taken from Johnston's 'Report of the Secretary to Government for the Year 1904'. This is a most interesting report on Chinese society in Weihaiwei,\n\n42 The China Review was founded in 1872 by N. B. Dennys. The publication terminated with vol. xxv, 1901. It was published bi-monthly.\n\n43 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1937, pp. 391-3.\n\n44 In his obituary notice of E. H. Parker, E. T. C. Werner wrote: \"The editor's request to write this notice puts me in a rather awkward position, for I cannot but refer to the very great amount of valuable sinological work which has been done by members of the British Consular Service in China. Considering its relatively small size, the Service has produced proportionately more brilliant sinologists than any body connected with the Far East.” See Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (henceforth cited as JNCBRAS), vol. lvii, 1926, p. vi.\n\n45 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at Oxford. Hong Kong cadet in 1899. Governor of Hong Kong 1925-30. He published, among other books, The Chinese in British Guiana, Georgetown, 1915, Cantonese Love-Songs, Oxford, 1904, and Summary of Geographical Observations taken during a Journey from Kashgar to Kowloon, 1907-8, Hong Kong, 1911.\n\n46 Lockhart's interest in the Chinese language is recognised in the dedication to him of Mok Man-cheung's Tah Tsz Anglo-Chinese Dictionary, 2nd edition (Chinese foreword dated 9th October, 1914). Mok had served in the Registrar-General's department with Lockhart, and moved to the Supreme Court as an interpreter in 1891. See also note 71 below.\n\n47 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 405.\n\n48 Vols. xx to xxii. The disputants included E. J. Eitel, E. H. Parker, E. D. H. Fraser, H. A. Giles, and Lockhart. The first edition of Lockhart's book was dedicated to Dr. John Chalmers, the distinguished sinologue, and the second to Dr. James Legge as well. Lockhart spoke of them as 'two famous Aberdonians'.\n\n49 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 412.\n\n50 China Review, vol. xxii, 1893/94, p. 547,\n\n51 T'oung Pao, vol. viii, 1897, pp. 412-430.\n\n52 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6, 1930-32, p. 812.\n\n53 Chinese Recorder, Sept. 1903, p. 464.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206840, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE \n\nNEW TERRITORIES \n\nKAM T'IN 錦田 \n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG \n\nKam T'in is one of the oldest villages in the New Territories. During the dynasty of Hau Chau (後周) A.D. 951-959 most of the villagers belonged to the family of Ch'an (陳) and the place was called Ch'an Tin (陳田) meaning Chan's field. In the 6th year of Hoi Po (開寶) A.D. 973 of Sung (宋) dynasty Tang Hon Fat (鄧漢黻) who is said to be the first Tang (鄧) ancestor to come to Kwangtung (廣東) settled in the village, and built the first house at the bottom of a hill called Kwai Kok Shaan (龜角山) about ¼ of a mile away from the present Kam T'in. It was at first called Sham Lei (岑里), but later on they cultivated the surrounding country and the name was changed to Sham Lei T'in (岑里田) which was soon shortened to Sham T'in (岑田) meaning fields surrounding a small hill. The present name of Kam T'in (錦田) or ornamental fields, was given to the village in the 15th year of Maan Lik (萬曆) A.D. 1587 of Ming dynasty (明朝), and it came about in this way. \n\nAt that time there was a very bad famine in the San On district (新安縣), and the district magistrate Yau T'ai K’în (游大乾) was obliged to open the government granaries and distribute the rice to relieve the people. But when it was finished they were still in need, and the magistrate then sent his officers to all the rich men in the district asking them for donations to help the poor. Most of them contributed a few piculs of rice, but none of them more than a hundred. Then Tang Yuen Fan (鄧元藩) of Sham T'in was visited. He was the richest man in San On district, and was noted for his generosity. He owned over 10,000 Chinese acres of cultivated \n\n*There are six sections to this long article, each printed in different numbers of The Hong Kong Naturalist. In this reissue the separate parts will be indicated by figures within square brackets. The first three sections, given here, appeared in the issues for December 1935 and April and June 1936. The rest will follow in the next issue of this Journal. \n\nThe romanizations used in the original included figures to indicate tone values. These are now excluded. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "112\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nland, distributed in various parts of the mainland, and on the island, having fields in Kowloon, Ch'eung Sha Wan (*) Kw'an Taai Lo (###) (where the city of Victoria now stands) Causeway Bay, Pokfulum and Aberdeen. He immediately promised to give one thousand piculs. When Yau Tai K'in heard of it he thought there must be some mistake, but the officer said, “At first I also thought he made a mistake, so I asked him again, and he said quite plainly, one thousand piculs!” So Yau T'ai K'in was very pleased, and he at once went off to visit Tang Yuen Fan, who said, “My rice is quite ready in the granary.” The magistrate sent off word to the \"Yamen\" to have junks sent to collect the rice, and on the day it was collected the river was so covered with the junks that the water could not be seen, and all the people gathered to watch shouted for joy. Yau remained with Tang several days and spent much time walking about the country admiring the scenery. He was much impressed by the fine buildings, open fields and pleasant woods, and exclaimed, “Why should the village have such a name? Sham T'in, it should be called Kam T'in instead!” The villagers were delighted with the new name, and it has remained till the present day.\n\nThe name, however, now embraces quite a large collection of villages each with its own name, but most of the villagers still belong to the Tang family and the name of Ch'an has disappeared. There are a certain number of people with other surnames to be found among the Tangs, but they have come in from other places at different times and are not really native to the place in the same way as the Tangs are. A new village which goes by the name of San Ts'uen (††††) new village, has been built very recently for the Cheng (*) family who had to move from the Shing Moon (M¶) district when the reservoir was started.\n\nThe only trace of the old Ch'an T'in village that remains is the temple known as Hung Shing Kung (g) in Shui Pin Ts'uen (k). This temple which was built by the Tangs is known in the village as the Big Temple although small, because formerly it was merely a shrine and was enlarged to its present size at a later date. The exact date of the temple is not known. Some say it was built when the first Tang came to Kwai Kok Shaan; others, that it was built first as a small shrine in the time of Shing Fa (✯ft) A.D. 1465-1487 of Ming dynasty when the Tang family built the village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "116\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\nTang Foo's own grave is well known, as it was mentioned in the \"To Shue Tsap Shing\" (4) a large encyclopaedia of 10,000 volumes written in the 4th year of Yung Ching (£) A.D. 1726 of Tsing dynasty, by order of the Emperor. The volume which refers to the grave is known \"Chik Fong Tin” (*) and it says, \"Tang Foo's grave is in Ab Kai 鄧符墓在横洲丫髻山 Shaan, Wang Chau\".\n\nEven if it is accepted that Tang Foo was the pioneer in settling at Kam Tin, or Kwai Kok Shaan as it was then called, there is very conflicting evidence as to when he actually went there. Although his grave-stone records that he passed the Tsun Sz (±) degree, Government civil examination in the 2nd year of Sung Ning (##) A.D. 1103 of Sung dynasty, there is no record of it in the lists of people who passed the Government examinations (Suen Kui Piu ***), in the annals of Canton, Kwong Chau Foo Chi (✯✯), Tung Kwoon, Tung Koon Yuen Chi (4) or San On, San On Yuen Chi (##) which points to the fact that Tang Foo passed his examinations in Kiangsi before coming to Kwang-tung.\n\nEach of the three books mentioned above has a biography of Tang Foo. On the other hand, it is known that after Tang Foo had held the office of district magistrate of Yueng Ch'un (1★-) district and had been promoted to \"Naam Hung Sui\" ( ) he retired to live in Kwai Kok Shaan, and built a famous school there called Lik Ying Tsai () which was mentioned among “The hundred poems of Po On (Po On Paak Wing (*)\" by Yung Ping(), where it was stated that during Sung Ling time A.D. 1102-1106 Tang Foo lived in Kwai Kok Shaan and founded a school called Lik Ying Tsaai (A) and kept a lot of books in the library.\n\nThis book has unfortunately been lost, and only two poems are still in existence, neither of which deal with the school. Yung Ping was a native of Tung Koon. He was \"Tak Tsau Ming Tsun Sz” (*★21) in the 8th year of K’in To ($) A‚D, 1172 of Sung dynasty.\n\nAnother learned scholar, Fok Wai () of Naam Hoi () district, wrote a long article named Lik Ying Tsaai Kei (4) giving an account of the school. During the reign of Shun Hei ( # ) A.D. 1174-1189 the emperor caused Fok Wai to be admitted to the T'aai Hok (*) (Imperial College) as being a \"man possessing the eight virtues.\" Paat Hang Aff.\n\nOnly one other scholar...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "126\n\nSUNG HOK-P’ANG\n\nThe history of the three younger sons is not known, but of Lam, who was born some time during the reign of Shun Hei (FR) A.D. 1174-1189, it is recorded that he held the office of Ts'im P'oon (僉判) and received honour as Tik Kung Long (迪功郎). He was rich and very charitable and he contributed a lot of money towards the building of T’ung Tsai (通濟) and Tak Shaang (得勝) bridges. He also built a pagoda called Ngaan Taap (雁塔) for the public; a house called Ling Yuen Kok (靈隱閣) and gave liberally towards the repairing of a main road which was formerly the haunt of robbers. The Tung Tsai bridge is still in use in Tung Kwun (東莞) and is at Woo Sha (烏沙) in the South-west part of the district. Though the record stone of the Tak Shaang bridge is lost, fortunately there is a copy of it written by Leung Koi (梁楷) the district magistrate of Lai Ling Yuen (東莞縣), a famous scholar and “Tsun Sz” (進士) of the 7th year of Ka Ting (嘉定) A.D. 1214, of Sung dynasty. He knew so much that his nickname was Shue Sz (書廚) \"book case\"! Tak Shaang bridge was a very old bridge over the stream Foong Shaang K'iu Ho (放生橋河). This stream was originally called Chaak Mut (釋物) “kindness to creatures\". It was the custom on the birthday of the Emperor for the magistrate and elders to come to the bridge and there set free birds from cages and put living fish in the stream. This was to show the Emperor's love for living things, and the name of the ceremony was Foong Shaang (放生), \"to set free living creatures\". The bridge was situated at the South gate of the district city of Tung Kwun, and there were many well-built houses by it. The date of when it was originally built is not known, but it was first repaired by Cheung Fan (張範) the district magistrate of Tung Kwun in the 2nd year of Shui Hei (紹熙) A.D. 1191, of Sung dynasty. This repair was done in wood, but later, in the 2nd year of Shiu Ting (淳祐) A.D. 1229 of Sung dynasty, it was rebuilt in stone. This was carried out by Chiu Yue Hon (趙與諴) the district magistrate, who did his best to meet the expenses incurred with money from his government funds. This he found impossible to do, so he appealed to Tang Lam and another wealthy man named Ng Hak Foon (吳學文) who between them promised to pay all the expenses themselves. It is still the most famous bridge in Tung Kwun district.\n\nThe Ngaan Taap or “wild goose\" pagoda was built on To Ka Shaan (道家山) in FL on the western side of Tung Kwun city. The original Ngaan Taap pagoda was built in A.D. 652, the Wing Fai (永徽)...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207043, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region: Its Place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573\n\nJames Hayes*\n\nHsin-an is a coastal county\n\nThe edge of a coat is called pien, edge or border. A coat always starts to get worn at the edge: an article begins to wear at the edge. In the same fashion, if an officer is posted to a border district, his responsibilities are ten or a hundred times as heavy as his colleague's in an interior district. It is therefore very difficult to understand people who belittle such government posts,\n\nThese lines are taken from an inscribed tablet dated autumn 1847 commemorating the opening of the Lung-ching charitable school (i-hsüeh) in the Kowloon walled city. They were from the brush of the then magistrate of Hsin-an, Wong Ming-ting, an officer who believed in the burden of his responsibilities.\n\nThis article seeks to examine the historical background of the Hong Kong region as seen in Chinese traditional historiography,1 and to describe the main events of the local situation over the course of some three hundred years. A recapitulation of this kind may be useful, because Hong Kong's past is still inadequately recorded in English (or yet in Chinese), and is too easily imagined, or glossed over, as being of no consequence. The region does possess a considerable and interesting history; though to gain the necessary perspective this has also to be seen in the context of the historiography of the neighbouring counties of this part of Kwang-tung.\n\nIdeally, this statement should be set against an account of the peoples and settlement of the area, but to provide an authoritative description here would be to lengthen this article to double its size if anything like justice were to be done to the course and com-\n\n*Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service since 1956 and is a Vice President and Hon. Editor of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S.\n\n1 As defined in Chapter VII, 'Formal Classification' of Charles S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional Historiography, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961). The full references to other works cited in the footnotes will be found at the end of the article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207047, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "112\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis recital tells its own story. Hsin-an hsien was not one of the glories of the prefecture. In that useful compendium on the Kwangtung province, the Kuang-tung K’ao-ku Chi-yao of 1893, only the counties of Nan-hai, P'an-yu and Tung-kuan were singled out for mention in the section dealing with the customs and traditions of the Kuang-chou prefecture. These entries speak of the elegant dress and manners of Nan-hai, of its literary and cultured atmosphere, and of how every palace examination brought forth the names of successful local candidates; of the profusion of foreign and local products, and the native and foreign merchants, stationery and itinerant, and the immense shipping of the port.1 Tung-kuan found fame as the ancient examination centre for the province; but no other place is mentioned. In scholars' eyes, the two metropolitan districts of Nan-hai and P'an-yu completely eclipsed the country and coastal districts of the prefecture like Hsin-an and another late creation, Hsin-ning, established in 1498-1499.2 As late as 1745 the district magistrate of Hsin-an when composing an inscription for the repair of the Chau Wong memorial school at Kam Tin, styled it as a place where the Book of Poetry was read as early as sunrise; and culture had spread even to this remote place near the sea.\n\nThe Kuang-tung K’ao-ku Chi-yao, a typical work of Chinese historiography, lovingly compiled, was the work of four Hunanese who had long been employed in the province as huan or officials and mu-fu or private secretaries to senior mandarins. It deals, in 46 chuan, with the wide variety of subjects usually found in district gazetteers and other works on administrative geography. Those chüan dealing with subjects on a geographical basis included material, arranged by prefecture and district. Hsin-an is included whenever, in the opinion of the compilers, there was anything in its records that warranted an entry.4\n\nAs in the chuan on customs and tradition the entries for Hsin-an in other chüan are much fewer than for the older hsien of the\n\n1 KTKKCY 4/1,\n\n2 KTKKCY 1/1 and KCFC 7/4.\n\n3 Tablet dated Ch'ien Lung 10th year, 1st moon, lucky day, inside the building.\n\n4 There is, of course, no shortage of books dealing with Kwangtung and its many localities under similar heads, and in providing their Hsin-an material the compilers did not set out to provide a compendium of all that had ever been included in the successive editions of the standard works on the Kuang-chou prefecture and the hsien of Tung-kuan and Hsin-an, but rather a selection of important material. The KTKKCY seldom provides material after the end of Ming (1644),", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207063, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "128\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nbe feared, but internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages: and these wars, although often arising from trivial causes, are not mere temporary quarrels, but are often long-continued and sanguinary'.1 He gives a description of these feuds, and relates one example in which the District Magistrate, even with a force of 1,000 men, was unable to restore peace, and could not even save his face without the mediation of a neighbouring village. The device that secured this, Krone comments, had no influence at all upon the dispute, fighting being carried on afterwards just as before\".2\n\nThere are several documented examples of intervillage and clan wars from the mainland New Territories at this time which indicate that Krone was not exaggerating the situation in mid century. Halls to 'martyrs' killed in these struggles were provided in at least four local temples, each containing memorials to slain heroes. These are to be found in the temples at Shek Kong (Pat Heung), Miu Kong (Tsuen Wan), Lam Tsuen, and Yuen Long (Shap-pat Heung). The Tsuen Wan memorial tells of a three year feud between the Tsuen Wan villagers and Shing Mun Pat Heung, beginning in the first year of the Tung Chih reign (1862-1863) and ended only after eventually successful mediation by elders of neighbouring villages. During this time, the Tsuen Wan villages—their men being outnumbered according to the tablet—were invaded and left in ruins, and 17 local men were killed in the prolonged struggle.3\n\nBaker gives other local and contemporary examples of these clan wars taken from genealogies and village tradition in the northern New Territories. He also draws attention to the feuds that occurred within local lineages, including frequent fights between the Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen branches of the Tang lineage. These persisted into the British period. In 1921, in his administrative report for that year, the District Officer North mentions trouble that 'assumed very serious proportions' over water rights between\n\n1 Krone, p. 114.\n\n2 Krone, pp. 125-126.\n\n3 The hall at Miu Kong is entitled the I-yung Tz'u (義勇祠) and that at Yuen Long the Ying-yung Tz'u (英勇祠). In the Pat Heung temple the tablet is in the Ching-chung Tz'u (清忠祠). At Lam Tsuen there is no named hall, but a side room contains a tablet bearing the characters jang hsiang ch'ang sheng lu wei (...).\n\n4 Baker, 1968, pp. 167, 183 and 187.\n\n5 Baker, 1968, p. 188 and Baker 1965, pp. 39-41.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n129\n\nthe Kam Tin and Ping Shan branches of the Tang lineage, mediated by the Tai Po and Yuen Long branches of the same clan.1\n\nThe chronic warfare inside Hsin-an and other districts of Kwangtung was perhaps not too well known to the Hong Kong authorities, but was all too plain to the mandarins. The Viceroy of Liang-kuang, commenting on representations from the British about the alleged help given by the provincial military forces to the village bands that were opposing the occupation of the New Territories, wrote:\n\nThe Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety.2\n\nThe less populated parts of the district do not seem to have experienced trouble on this scale, probably because pressure on the land was less great and there were no large lineages competing for power and struggling to retain or improve their position. However, disputes did occur and are remembered by older villagers. On Lantau, fighting between Shek Pik people and villagers from Sha Lo Wan over a grave has been mentioned to me; relations between Tong Fuk and its neighbour Shui Hau were never very good; and a fight between Pui O villagers from San Tsuen and adjoining Lo Wai took place pre-war over the mining of kaolin in a spot behind the two villages that the Lo Wai people held was disturbing the local feng shui3 It appears that in days when communications were poor and the officials at a distance, such disputes would not always come to the attention of the authorities, even if deaths occurred. This must often have been the case in the 19th century.\n\nIt was thus not without good reason that the Hsin-an magistrate of 1847, quoted at the beginning of this article, considered that his difficulties were many and real, and that they were not always appreciated as such by his colleagues and superiors.\n\n1 ARDONT, 1921, J2; with some background at J2 of his 1920 Report.\n\n2 Quoted by Groves, p. 63, note 65. Balfour shows 23 Punti villages with outer walls at Plate 16 in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970. Many other villages, including Hakka ones, had lesser defences, as at Pui O (Lo Wai), Lantau, pp. 14-15 above.\n\n* Information secured from local elders.\n\nPage 130 is missing, directly followed by \n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207096, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n161\n\nAnother ancestral hall, built by the Tang family was less fortunate. The story goes that in the 1st year of Ka Hing (✯✯) A.D. 1796 of Ts'ing dynasty, the sons of Tang Yue Cheung (**) decided to build an ancestral hall worthy to house the tablet of their illustrious ancestress, the princess. So they built a house of “kak muk” (**) in T’aai Họng (✯✯✯) village, and in shape the house was like a king's palace. At that time the district magistrate of Sun On was a man nicknamed “Hungry Bug\" on account of his habit of collecting \"squeeze\" wherever he could. When he heard of the new building being erected in Kam T'in, and how magnificent it was, he scented a chance to make money. So he sent a message to the Tangs to say he would like to inspect their new acquisition.\n\nThe Tangs were much dismayed; being familiar with the character of their district officer they knew quite well the object of his visit, they did not want to pull down the house yet its very existence was an indication of their wealth and prosperity. In the village of Lung Kwat T'au (#) where the villagers are Tangs too, being descendants of the first son of the princess, there was a portrait of the princess and the Tangs of Kam T'in borrowed it and hung it up in the entrance of the hall. When the district officer saw it he was filled with awe, and hastily made obeisance to it. He was so impressed that he dared not demand money from the descendants of so distinguished a lady, and after making a show of being pleased he stayed one night, and then took his departure.\n\nEventually the picture had to be returned to its rightful owners, and the Kam T’in men fearing further trouble, pulled the hall down, but the foundation stones, overgrown with weeds and grass can still be seen.\n\nThe legends of Kam T'in are curiously mixed up with tales of buried treasure. One story tells how at the end of the Ming dynasty the Tangs wished to build an ancestral hall for the tablet of their eleventh ancestor, Tang Kwong Yue ( ). Tang Ping Yee (*) (a grandson of Tang Kwong Yue) and eight of Tang Ping Yee's cousins chose what was, according to one \"Fung shui\" man, a very lucky day to put up the central beam of the house, but a few days later they found that the beam was putting forth shoots. The people considered this to be a bad omen, so they consulted a more reliable fortune-teller, who declared that the day had been a lucky day, but for building boats, not houses! The people at once pulled down the beam, the time happened to be the season of the dragon boat festival, and the villages decided to make the discarded", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207105, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "170\n\nSUNG HOK-PANG\n\nShui T'au village in the Shing Fa years of Ming dynasty, and at the same time, Tang Wan Kuk #Tang Shuk Lun and Tang Kwai Yin started the village of Shui Mei, while Tang Chung, Tang Shue and eight others formed the village Ying Lung Waai near Yuen Long Market. When these villages were built on the advice of “fung shui\" men a pagoda was also erected to the west of them, called Man Ch'eung Kok. In the 30th year of To Kwong, A.D. 1850, of Ts'ing dynasty the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them had passed the highest government examination and a census taken in that year shewed that there were more than eighteen hundred males living, belonging to the family. Not content, the elders consulted with ignorant \"fung shui\" men as to how to increase their numbers even more. They were advised to pull down the pagoda, to alter the course of the river, making three ponds, and to build a school that would hide part of the river from the view of the village. From that time the family decreased considerably, and many of them regretted having taken the advice of the \"fung shui\" men. In 1930, however, they repaired the banks of the river and built houses called Ch'eung Ch'un Lei near where the pagoda had stood, and since then the Kam T'in people declare that more male children have been born and family is once again on the increase.\n\n[5]\n\nDuring and since the Ming dynasty Kam T'in has been able to boast of many scholarly and notable sons. Tang T'ing Ching who passed the Kui-yan degree in the 7th year of Shing Fat of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1471, of Maan On was appointed to the office of Kau Yue district in Kiangsi province, promoted later to District Magistrate of T'ang Yuen Kwangsi. He was a great friend of Hau Kui, a well-known poet of the New Territories. His poems are included in an anthology named \"Ling Naam Chue Yuk\" and also in the Record book of San On and among them is a poem written as a farewell to Tang T'ing Ching when he left to take up his new official post. The oldest family tree book of the Tang family of Kam T'in in existence now was compiled by Tang T'ing Ching.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "172 \n\nSUNG HOK-PANG \n\nHe then returned to the capital, and stayed in General Ngai's house where he was able to make friends with many famous scholars. He wrote a book named \"Yin t’oi san ngai” \n\nwhich had a preface written by Ts'oi Shing Yuen ## Noi Kok Hok Sz a political minister of high rank. Three years later Tang passed his Tsun sz degree, and was appointed district magistrate of Lung Yau Yuen in Chekiang province. \n\nTang Man Wai was of a kind-hearted disposition and some say that through this the wall of T'aai Hong Wai was built. The story goes that when Tang passed his Sau Tsoi degree he was sent to Kwai Shin district, now Wai Yeung, to collect the rent due on cultivated lands, belonging to his family property. While there he came across a young man named Lei Maan Wing * hanging upside down as a punishment. On asking the reason why, Tang learnt that Lei had contracted gambling debts and was unable to pay them. Tang was sorry for the young man, paid all his debts and was able to use his influence in obtaining a military post for him. This happened during the end of the Ming Dynasty. Later on when the Manchus drove out the Mings in the North and the Ming Emperor Wing Lik✯✯ had retreated to Kwangtung, Lei was a colonel under Cheung Ka Yuk ✯ who was fighting against the Manchus. When Cheung was defeated in battle in the 4th year of Shun Chi A.D., 1647 of Ts'ing dynasty, and drowned himself, Lei, who was with him, fled with about a hundred soldiers. Gradually many of Cheung's soldiers were able to rejoin him, and with a strong army he attacked both Tung Kwun ✯✯ and San On ✯* districts. He drove out the Manchus, and made his headquarters in what is now known as the New Territories. One of Lei's camps was situated in the district round K'ei Lun Wai LP'ing Shan A and T'sing Leung Fat Yuen ****. Before the latter, which is a nunnery, was built, the locality had been known as Ying P'oon Tei, \"The ground of the camp,\" and while the building was in progress the workmen dug up many old coffins which were supposed to be those of Lei's soldiers. Among them was found a general's sword, broken in many pieces. Anyone going to Kwun Yam Shaan to visit the Ling Wan monastery would notice half way up Taai Mo Shaan, far above the cultivated land, a stretch of hillside that has been terraced and flattened out in some former time. This is supposed to have been another of Lei's encampments. Lei burned and pillaged, and most of the \n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207109, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "174 \n\nSUNG HOK-PANG \n\nused to help his grandfather in the fields, working like the farm labourers and he was much beloved in Kam Tin. In the 15th year of Ka Hing A.D. 1810 the coast of San On was repeatedly attacked by a large fleet of pirate ships, and the district magistrate asked for sanction from the throne to move the fortress then existing at Fat T'ong Moon near Lyemun to Kau Lung (Kowloon) city. This was granted, but money to do the work was scarce. The magistrate went to Tang in his difficulty: Tang said, \"The hill round Kau Lung are full of large stones. Why not explain to the local masons that they should work on such an important matter for their country, for low wages.\" The magistrate, knowing that Tang had a great gift of persuasion with the country people, begged him to undertake the task. Tang was successful, the stone masons agreed to do what he suggested and when the fort was finished Tang wrote four big characters Chan Hoi Kam Tong. Chan to guard, Hoi the sea, Kam the city was built by strong metal, T'ong hot water; i.e. the water in the city moat is like boiling water that no enemy would dare to cross. These characters were carved on a large stone tablet which was built in the wall of the fort; unfortunately it is no longer to be seen. The public dispensary outside the Kowloon city wall now occupies the original site.\n\nAnother useful public work that Tang Yin Yuen was responsible for, was the rebuilding of Man Kong Shue Yuen, the high grade school for San On district. This building was originally inside the West gate of the capital city of San On, and owing to the low-lying ground it was most unhealthy for the teachers and students. A desirable site was inside the South gate but objections were raised by a native of the town who declared the land to be his own property. Tang went to law on his own responsibility, and when the district magistrate declared himself unable to give judgment he took the case to a higher court. He won and the new building was completed in the 11th year of Ka Hing A.D. 1806. A new name was given to the school, Fung Kong Shue Yuen, and Tang carved yat ch'an pat yim, \"not soiled by a particle of dust” over the top of the main door. Before he died Tang wrote in his will that he hoped one day one of his descendants would teach in the school and help to train good citizens. This wish was granted in 1904 when his great grandson Tang Wai Man went to teach in the school where he stayed seven years.\n\nTang Ying Yuen helped to compile the \"History of San On,\" and his house is still to be \n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207111, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "176\n\nSUNG HOK-PANG\n\ndants, a picture of this is shown on plate. Tang Kuen Hin was very rich and was very proud of his family. He had four sons and twenty-four grandsons and the number of his family and servants together are said to have totalled two hundred. To the northwest of Yuen Long market are some very fine fish ponds situated in particularly pleasing scenery. This land was Tang Kuen Hin's property, it now forms part of the \"Ching Sheung\" * entailed property, the proceeds of which are applied to ancestral worship.\n\nNotes on Some of the Government Examinations of China.\n\nThe Sau-ts'oi was the first examination and in many respects could be likened to that which is held for the Bachelor of Arts degree. The Candidates for this examination, which was held in the capital and several other towns of each province, were very numerous, as all with any pretence to education, were anxious to graduate in Sau Ts'oi. In consequence it was necessary for each candidate to be guaranteed by a man specially appointed to the office called \"Lam Shang,\" whose duty it was to stand as surety for the identity of each of his examinees.\n\nAnother examination, Heung Shi, to be attempted was for the Kui Yan degree which was also held in the capital of each Province. Possessed of this degree a man was eligible to hold the office of District Magistrate, etc. Between Sau Ts'oi and Kui Yan were five different titles of Kung Shaang the holders of which could be appointed as District Magistrates, etc.\n\nWui Shi was a higher examination held in the Capital of China. The degree which was known as Tsun Sz, was instituted in A.D. 606, and could be compared with a Doctorate. Candidates who failed in this examination, and yet had written papers of a high standard could have their names put on a list called Ming T'ung Pong \", which made them eligible for holding the posts of Hok Ching, the Director of studies in a “Chau” or department, or in the Imperial Academy, and Kau Yue, the Director of studies attached to a District.\n\nAfter a man passed Tsun Sz degree he attended an examination in the Imperial Palace. This was called Ch'iu Haau, Court examination. If he passed he then obtained the title of Shue Kat Sz 庶吉士, He then went to the Hon Lam Yuen 翰林院 where he stayed for several years drafting documents for the Emperor and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207274, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 42, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "34 \n\nWELLINGTON K. K. CHAN \n\ncharitable halls were not merely institutions in which merchants participated; they were merchant institutions initiated and dominated by merchants. In Canton, Governor-general Chang Jen-chün once observed that charitable halls were particularly numerous in Kwangtung because there were a large number of rich merchants.24 \n\nSeveral factors contributed to these developments. The first was a change in the composition of the merchant class by 1900. By turning themselves into entrepreneurs, a number of officials and gentry members had joined the merchant class. Men like Yen Hou-hsin and Chou Chin-piao who came from official backgrounds took the lead in the formation of the Shanghai Commercial Consultative Association and later the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. The founders of Ai-yü shan-t’ang in Canton probably had official backgrounds as well. Two had taotai rank and the house they bought had belonged to their friend, an official salt merchant who had gone bankrupt. \n\nA second factor was these merchant founders' conscious borrowing from the West. It is not enough to argue that they started charitable halls because as a group they commanded great wealth. For then the question arises: Why had the rich salt merchants or the cotton merchants not done the same before? Insofar as the merchants who sponsored charitable halls came from the treaty port areas, it seems that these merchants had been influenced by the work of the Christian missionaries. In one case, an orphanage was founded in Shanghai in 1892 by merchants and the district magistrate after there were reports of alleged cruelty to orphans in the missionary orphanage.22 Indeed, Po Leung Kuk's emphasis on tracking down kidnappers was in response to complaints of a similar sort, while Tung Wah Hospital's emphasis on healing and hospital care paralleled the activities of missionaries like Peter Parker in Canton. This in no way means that works of philanthropy were alien to the Chinese merchant's ethos. The merchant's traditional justification for acquiring wealth was in order to benefit the rest of society. What was new was not the attitude, but the organisational mechanism they now employed to further their ends. \n\nA third factor was the local officials' increasing reliance upon the leaders of the trade and handicraft guilds from the 1860's. They were asked to help conduct tax farming, and to organise contributions in money and labour towards the reconstruction of public", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207614, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 2, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "162\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nincluding the New Territories, was part of San On county. The magistrate governed from the county seat at Nam T'au, across what is now Deep Bay. There were also sub-county offices, at Tai P'ang on the northern shore of Mirs Bay, and at Koon Foo, later renamed Kowloon City. These, with Nam T'au, were responsible for the southern part of San On county, that is, the area which includes the present-day Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories.\n\nThe officials hardly ever visited the villages. By default, these villages were for the most part left to conduct their own affairs. Taxes were often collected with the co-operation of the rich and influential families in Yuen Long and Sheung Shui. Litigation could be conducted at Nam T'au, but lawsuits were rare. The principal markets on the mainland in this area were Tai Po, Sheung Shui, Yuen Long, and Sham Chun, and understandably, the main trade routes in the eastern New Territories went north-south, linking Kowloon City, Sha Tin, Tai Po, Sheung Shui, and Sham Chun, from where there were ferries to Nam T'au. Cut off from these trade routes by Ma On Shan, the Sai Kung villages were very much in the backwaters of the county. The history of the development of these villages is the story of a backward area slowly pulling itself up by its bootstraps.1\n\nDevelopment came in two stages. From the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, population increased steadily. In the late seventeenth century, only three villages in the entire district merited entry in the San On Gazetteer, i.e., the Punti-speaking villages of Ho Chung, Pak Kong, and Sha Kok Mei. Not surprisingly, all three were located in well-watered valleys that were close to the footpaths leading to Sha Tin and Kowloon. By 1819, the next edition of the gazetteer recorded, in addition to these three, the Punti villages of Wong Chuk Yeung, Tai Long, Chek Keng, Ko Tong, Pak Tam, and Cheung Sheung, as well as the Hakka villages of Mang Kung Uk, Tseng Lan Shue, Sha Kok Mei (sic), Pan Long Wan, and Lan Nei Wan (later Man Yee Wan). The listing is not complete, but it accords with the general pattern of Hakka immigration into the Hong Kong region throughout the eighteenth century.\n\nThere must have been a substantial boat population in the eighteenth century. There was, in fact, a larger boat population", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207617, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 5, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "165\n\nOriginally, many Sai Kung villagers owned their land only indirectly. In a system of multiple ownership, the Lius of Sheung Shui and the Tangs of Lung Yeuk Tau, as registered land-owners, collected rent in many places in Sai Kung. Sai Kung villagers who paid rent to them nonetheless held their right to the land in perpetuity, and the registered land-owners merely paid the tax and kept the balance from the rent. When the land was registered by the Hong Kong Government, the Lius and the Tangs lost their tax collection rights, and the Crown Rent that was collected by the Hong Kong Government was usually smaller than the former rent that had been paid. For many villagers, then, this must have meant an increase in income.12\n\nElderly villagers in Sai Kung still remember the \"taxlords\". Eighty-seven year old Mr. Wong of Tam Wat had heard of the \"great red hats\", and Mr. Lam Kaap Shau of Tai Long of the \"Koreans\" who came here to collect the tax. Mr. Cheung Kau of Ping Tun had heard of the Sheung Shui people collecting rent here, and elderly Mr. Cheung of Tai Po Tsai (near Tai Mong Tsai) of the Lius and the Tangs doing so. Mr. Cheng Yung of Uk Tau called them the \"Heung Shui Lo\", and knew that they collected rent in his village in his grandfather's days, while Mr. Yau T'aam Shang of Wong Keng Tei actually saw his father among a group of villagers who drove out the rent-collectors from Sheung Shui after the villagers started to pay Crown Rent directly to the Hong Kong Government.13\n\nYet another influence that affected some villages, although it left no impact on Sai Kung District as a whole (except in the field of education), was the introduction of Christianity. As early as 1861, a Roman Catholic priest had reached Wun Yiu in Tai Po. In 1873, the records of the Roman Catholic Church noted that a priest from Sai Kung visited the San On magistrate. In the 1870's, Sai Kung was noted as one of three centres of the Church in the New Territories, the Sai Kung church being responsible not only for the eastern New Territories but also for Wai Chau and Hoi Fung. By 1934-35, Roman Catholic communities were established in Sai Kung Market, Yim Tin Tsai, Wong Mo Ying, Pak Tam Chung, Long Ke, Leung Shuen Wan, and Kei Ling Ha. There were also converts in the 1930's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207843, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "216\n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN\n\nFor the time being disputes in the New Territories continue to be essentially a matter for mediation by the District Officers, the Rural Committees, and the ‘elders', and if in default of settlement a case drags on, no effective and generally accepted machinery can at the moment be brought into action to force it to a conclusion. (A number of important aspects of the legal situation have necessarily been ignored in this brief discussion. Some civil cases involving large sums of money fall within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The kinds of cases dealt with by the New Territories Magistrate would be an interesting matter to look into. The whole realm of family law—marriage, divorce, maintenance of wives and children, adoption, and inheritance—requires to be treated in detail).\n\n43. I come now to a point made by this discussion of some aspects of the political and legal situation in the New Territories. An approach to the study of leadership could conveniently be made by collecting some basic information on the Village Representatives. This task, it seems to me, might be discharged by the District Officers if they have the time to undertake it. A sample of Village Representatives could be drawn by a simple statistical procedure and the following data collected in respect of each of the men selected: his age; his birthplace; where he lives; where he lived before he became a Village Representative; whether he has ever lived outside the New Territories, and if so where and for how long; the length of time he has been in office; whether he was elected, and if so on what franchise; his occupations, main and subsidiary, past and present; his education (kinds and where acquired); the number of people living in the area he represents; the number of households in this area; the numbers of 'new population' in these last two figures; details (surnames and numbers of members) of the clans in the area represented; the number of men in the most senior surviving generation in his own clan; the age of the oldest man in this generation; the ages of the ten oldest men in the clan; the names of the previous Village Representatives, including the man appointed under the Japanese and any men acknowledged to be 'headmen' before the war; his precise kinship relation to these men; the number of his brothers; his birth order among them; their occupation; the ages of his sons and daughters; the education they are receiving or have received; their occupations, if any. The answers to these questions (some of which must already be known to the District Officers) would provide an indication of the position", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208044, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n67\n\n12 Lockhart lists 255 villages occupied by Hakkas, with a total population of 36,070 in the Tung Lo in 1898. Assuming a population of 250,000 for the total district in 1900, Hsin-An probably had a Hakka population of around 90,000.\n\n13 Rawski's bibliography in Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China offers the most complete listing of works bearing on perpetual tenancy.\n\np. 64.\n\n14 CSO280/04 Extension. See note 4, Essay 2.\n\n15 Hsu T'ien-tai, Fu Chien Wen Hua (福建文化), Vol. 1, No. 1, (1941),\n\n16 Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China, March 1898-September 1900. \"Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong,\" (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November 1900) p. 19.\n\n17 The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u (世鑑堂家譜), a collection of genealogies from Kam Tin, gives the following settlements of lineal descendants in Tung Kuan: Chuh Yuan (竹園), Yen Tien (燕田), Fu Lung (福龍), Huai Te (懷德), Shih Ching (石井), Tu Kao (土高), and Ping Hu (平湖).\n\n18 \"These clans gain their local influence, not through numbers alone, but owing to the fact that certain of their numbers have official rank, gained through competitive examinations, or obtained by purchase, which keeps them in touch with the Magistrate and even higher officials.\" Correspondence Respecting Affairs of China ibid., p. 20. The Shih Chien T'ang Chia P'u records that, from Cheng Hua (Ming Dynasty) to Tao Kwang (Ch'ing Dynasty)—that is, from roughly 1470-1820—fourteen Kam Tin Tangs passed the state examination. Several of these became office holders. Another indicator of gentry connections with officialdom was the construction, in Kam Tin, of a temple (祠堂) dedicated to the two officials (Chou Yu-te (周有德) and Wang Lai-jen (王來任)) who petitioned the Emperor, on behalf of the inhabitants of the coastal areas, to allow resettlement.\n\n19 Introduction to the Nan Yang Tang Shih Tsu P'u (南陽堂世族譜), compiled by the Ping Shan Tangs.\n\n20 Sung Hok-P'ang, in his articles on the Kam Tin Tangs in the Hong Kong Naturalist, claims to have seen references to Tang lands on Hong Kong in the Land Register (土地冊) of Tung Kuan. \"One may judge that the land was owned by the Tangs before the first year of Maan Lik, AD 1525, (sic) as after that the San On District was formed” (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 and 4).\n\n21 HKTCSMTC, \"Details of Cultivated Land” (耕地詳情).\n\n22 ibid.\n\n23 The landlord clans were often referred to by the British as \"first cultivators.\" See, for instance, CSO3172/1915 cited in the essay on tax-lordism.\n\n24 Correspondence Respecting Affairs in China, ibid., p. 16.\n\n25 Hsin-An Hsien-chih, ch'uan 8.\n\n26 In this regard, note the high degree of correlation among the different \"tax-burdens\" in Table II. One is tempted to speculate that a native formula for the conversion of rent rates from tax-rates existed.\n\n27 In the 1934 edition of the Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-chi Nien-chien (中國經濟年鑑), chapter 7 (Chinese Tenancy Systems), contains the following description of the Fen Chih Chih (分種制) system, a form of perpetual lease found in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture: \"This", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208049, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "72\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nFor the purposes of land registration, tu constituted the highest-order unit in the tax system; p'i were essentially equivalent to li. For other purposes, however, notably the collection of the land tax and the policing of the district, tu was subordinated to still higher administrative divisions. Baker (1968), who has studied the 1689 edition of the Hsin-An Hsien-chih (**), mentions the existence of hsiang (*) units superordinate to tu; these are undoubtedly the same units mentioned in the chapter on Administrative Divisions (#) of the 1759 edition of the Kwangchow Fu-chih (✯✯✯✯). In this account, both Tung-Kuan and Hsin-An are divided into hsiang with jurisdiction over discrete tu. The distribution of rural administrative divisions is schematized below; the approximate locations of Hsin-An's seven tu are given in the map on page 28.\n\n文顺歸城 延福\n\n歸化\n\n1 2 3 4 5 6 14 15 16 17 18 19 20\n\n粜\n\n莞\n\n1 2 3 5\n\n新\n\n延福歸城\n\nDiagram I: Administration Divisions of Tung Kuan and Hsin-An, 1759.\n\nBy 1819, the hsiang-tu-li system had given way to the ssu-tu-ts'un (]*††) system in official correspondence relating to civil administration.13 Our most complete description of this system appears in the chapter on Hsin-An from the Kwangtung T'u-shuo (✯✯ER). This work, which lists 429 registered villages throughout the county, breaks Hsin-An into four \"jurisdictions\" for purposes of general administration (excluding defence). The assistant magistrate (**) resided at Tai-Pang (**) and was responsible for sections of the 4th and 7th tu. One deputy magistrate (*) was located at Fuk-Wing (*), and was responsible for parts of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th tu. Another deputy magistrate resided in Kowloon, and was delegated authority over significant portions of all seven tu. Finally, a police master (#), who operated out of Nam Tau, watched over relatively small, apparently remote, portions of five tu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208051, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "74 \n\nJ. T. KAMM \n\nwrites: \"When the Mandarins intend to levy the taxes, they announce their intention to the gentry of the villages, one or two weeks, or sometimes a month, before their arrival. They then make a progress through the district, accompanied by a sufficient force to protect themselves against large bands of robbers...\" This situation engendered the rise of local \"magnates\" (大家) who gained monopolization of collection responsibilities within whole districts. The magnates, in most cases local gentry, typically extracted sizable commissions from the revenue collected. This form of tax farming, known as pao-laan (包攬) in Chinese and referred to as \"tax-lordism\" by the British, was particularly widespread in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture. The 1797 edition of the Tung-Kuan Gazetteer gives the following account of conditions in that county:\n\nPreviously, the collection of the grain tax was regulated by li-chang who rotated the responsibility on an annual basis. These li-chang were local magnates who practiced pao-laan by manipulating the rotation. The neighboring households, moreover, would each take bribes by turns in exchange for shouldering the blame (for not paying their grain tax). For these two reasons, they (the magnates) were able to hoard great amounts. During the Yung-Cheng period (1723-1736), the District Magistrate, Chou T'ien-ch'eng (周天成), first attempted to rectify this situation. He ordered the inhabitants of each p'i to register the amounts of tax due under their household names. Thus, it was a simple matter to check who had paid their taxes and who had avoided payment. The policy was very good, and crafty methods could no longer be used. After a few decades, however, this method of registration gradually fell out of use, to the extent that it is no longer possible to investigate p'i by reference to the book,\n\nThe author goes on to note that the current situation has reverted to the previous one, and proposes the reinstitution of the registration policy.\n\nThe process by which local gentry of large landlord villages gradually gained monopolization of the land tax was closely related to the complimentary process by which smaller, less powerful villages placed themselves under the protection of more powerful villages. Both Krone and Lockhart take note of the practice in\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208056, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "## TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\ngovernment in his Discussion of the Official System (￥##): \n\n79 \n\n(咸豐: \n\nDuring the troubled years of the Hsien-Feng period (: 1851-1862), the gentry of the various villages formed t'uan-lien (*) for the purpose of self-defence. If a village was weak, then it united with other villages to form one large district. In this way, all of the villages within one geographically distinct area were united under one committee of gentry, referred to as chu. These organizations were responsible for collecting taxes, and were managed by a staff of local administrators.34 \n\nThe similarity between these developments, which transpired in Nan-Hai Hsien (南海縣), and the description of the collapse of li-chia in Tung-Kuan is remarkable. There was an unquestionable link between the presence of taxlordism and chu throughout South China in the nineteenth century. Kuhn (1970) cites evidence from Hunan which demonstrates that the primary function of chu in that province was the collection of the land tax; in some areas, chu effectively coupled the monopolization of land tax collection with the early administration of likin.35 In Hsin-An itself, it is quite clear that the services performed by taxlords were often coordinated by gentry committees; moreover, the services performed by these groups were essentially identical to those performed by the chu of Nan-Hai (these include: dispute-settlement, maintenance of irrigation works, temples, schools, roads, bridges, and the provision of sacrifices.)36 \n\nI propose that chu were essentially bodies of taxlords which regulated the collection and expenditure of revenue from agricultural production within the boundaries of tung or similar areas.37 The collection of revenue was greatly facilitated by 1) the location of chu in the major market town of the tung, and 2) its recognized status as overseer of the affairs of the tung, with the right to petition the magistrate in the name of the inhabitants.38 After collection of the land tax, a certain amount was extracted and set aside as public funds to meet \"fixed costs.\" For extraordinary expenses, such as those incurred by the resistance campaign, the taxlord-gentry would either petition the magistrate to temporarily forego collection of the land tax, or would levy supplementary taxes of their own on the established rent and tax quotas of villages within the tung.39\n\n## TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\ngovernment in his Discussion of the Official System (￥##):\n\n79\n\n(咸豐:\n\nDuring the troubled years of the Hsien-Feng period (: 1851-1862), the gentry of the various villages formed t'uan-lien (*) for the purpose of self-defence. If a village was weak, then it united with other villages to form one large district. In this way, all of the villages within one geographically distinct area were united under one committee of gentry, referred to as chu. These organizations were responsible for collecting taxes, and were managed by a staff of local administrators.34\n\nThe similarity between these developments, which transpired in Nan-Hai Hsien (南海縣), and the description of the collapse of li-chia in Tung-Kuan is remarkable. There was an unquestionable link between the presence of taxlordism and chu throughout South China in the nineteenth century. Kuhn (1970) cites evidence from Hunan which demonstrates that the primary function of chu in that province was the collection of the land tax; in some areas, chu effectively coupled the monopolization of land tax collection with the early administration of likin.35 In Hsin-An itself, it is quite clear that the services performed by taxlords were often coordinated by gentry committees; moreover, the services performed by these groups were essentially identical to those performed by the chu of Nan-Hai (these include: dispute-settlement, maintenance of irrigation works, temples, schools, roads, bridges, and the provision of sacrifices.)36\n\nI propose that chu were essentially bodies of taxlords which regulated the collection and expenditure of revenue from agricultural production within the boundaries of tung or similar areas.37 The collection of revenue was greatly facilitated by 1) the location of chu in the major market town of the tung, and 2) its recognized status as overseer of the affairs of the tung, with the right to petition the magistrate in the name of the inhabitants.38 After collection of the land tax, a certain amount was extracted and set aside as public funds to meet \"fixed costs.\" For extraordinary expenses, such as those incurred by the resistance campaign, the taxlord-gentry would either petition the magistrate to temporarily forego collection of the land tax, or would levy supplementary taxes of their own on the established rent and tax quotas of villages within the tung.39", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208058, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n81\n\nbuyers and sellers of commodities and to effect a transaction between them.” By the late 1920's, \"its importance to the Hopei provincial finance was only second to that of the land tax.\" It is difficult to weigh the relative importances of the various taxes in Hsin-An, but we do have figures on the revenue collected on trade between local markets in November 1911, which indicate a relatively low volume of local trade (see Imperial Maritime Customs, 1902-1911, Volume II, p.156). Also, refer to Appendix II, which Lockhart credits as a reliable source. The Tangs of Kam Tin and Lung Kwat Tau (A) were apparently farmed the monopolies of collecting market taxes in Un Long Kau Hui (±##4) and Tai Po Kau Hui (£# #). The Tongs who oversaw the markets in turn \"sub-leased\" the brokerages to traders, merchants, and shop-owners.\n\n4 The CSO files held in the Government Archives of Hong Kong constitute one of the richest stores of first-hand knowledge about local political economy and society in Hsin-An during the period 1890-1910. I am very grateful to Mr. Ian Diamond, Government Archivist, and his staff for their assistance in helping with my research.\n\n5 C. M. Chang, op. cit., pp. 826-828.\n\n6 Lien-sheng Yang, \"Buddhist Monasteries and Four Money-Raising Institutions in Chinese History,\" in his Studies in Chinese Institutional History, pp. 198-199n.\n\n7 Yeh-chien Wang draws heavily on the Ts'ai-cheng Shuo-ming-shu for his research on the land tax in China (Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750-1911). On the basis of the material presented in this paper, Hsin-An conforms to his general thesis of the declining relative importance of the land tax throughout late Ch'ing.\n\n8 Correspondence Respecting the Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony (hereafter Extension Papers), p. 60.\n\n9 For a fuller discussion of li-chia, see Kung-chuan Hsiao's Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 84-143.\n\n10 The annual rotation of these positions (44) constituted the primary mechanism whereby the local magistrate attempted to maintain some measure of centralized power by restricting the excesses of local magnates.\n\n11 Hsiang-kang Teng-ch'u-shui-mau Ts'ung-ch'eng (44¥Æ#*# Z), p. 2: \"All together the cultivated land measured 8 ch'ing 3 mau 6 fen 1 li 9 hau 2 ssu 5 hu (i.e., 803.61925 mau) and was registered under the name of Tang Tin-luk, 6th tu, 7th p'i, 2nd chia. In addition, Tang Chi-cheung and others had purchased from Ho Ch'iu-ping and others plots of land at Wong Nei Chung... having a total area of 1 ch'ing 89 mau registered in Tung-Kuan under the name of Tang Chi-fu of the 2nd tụ, 18th p'i, last chia.\" The formula is often repeated in the land memorials held at the Land Office of the Registrar General in Hong Kong.\n\n12 Kwangchow Fu-chih (1759), ch'uan 4: 43a-b, 46b.\n\n13 Hsin-An Hsien-chih (1819), ch'uan 2.\n\n14 Kwangtung T'u-shuo, Hsin-An Hsien-t'u.\n\n15 Krone, \"A Notice of the Sunon District\", originally published in the Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 6:5, 41-105. This quote, as all the others, is from the reprinted copy in the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society V: p. 119.\n\n16 Tung-Kuan Hsien-chih (1797), 10:10b-11.\n\n17 Lockhart, in the Correspondence Respecting the Affairs in China, writes: \"Small villages and hamlets often place themselves under the protection of large and influential clans to which they refer all complaints and from which they expect assistance in case of attack, robbery, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208060, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 99, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN\n\n83\n\ninto Tung or Divisions. Each council of a Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section, which is practically that portion of the district of San On contained in the map attached to the Convention. This general council is styled the Tung Ping Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its council chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section.\n\nIf the decision of the council of the Tung or of the General Council is not regarded as satisfactory, an appeal lies to the magistrate of the district.\" (pp. 55-56, Extension Papers.).\n\n32 Extension Papers, p. 34.\n\n33 Ibid., p. 174.\n\n34 K'ang Nan-hai Kuan-chih I (***T**), pp. 15-16.\n\n35 Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China, pp. 91-92.\n\n36 K'ang Nan-hai, op. cit., p. 15.\n\n37 Other evidence which supports this hypothesis is drawn from the fact that the production and distribution of agricultural produce within the tung tends to be regulated by specific and unique processes. Hence, the tau chung (#), or local measures for payment of rent in kind, differs from tung to tung. Lockhart, in his Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong (Presented to both Houses of Parliament, November, 1900), relates the problems encountered in rationalizing land tenure: \"But even this tau varies in different localities. The Kun Tau, or Chinese official standard measure of 10 shing, is adopted at Tai Po, in the Sheung Yu District, and at Shat'aukok. The Ts'ong Tau, or grain measure of 11 shing, is used throughout the Un Long District. The Ts'in Tau of 8 shing is employed in the Ts'un Wan (ed. previously Kowloon District) and some other Districts. (p. 6). Moreover, the schedules of periodic markets within tung tend to complement each other, while they often clash with the schedules of markets in a neighboring tung.\n\n38 See petition from Tung Wo Kuk (\"i.e., the Committee appointed to deal with the affairs of the Shataukok Division\"). pp. 318-320.\n\n39 In a rough translation of a pamphlet obtained by the German missionary Schaub in Tung-Kuan, local gentry propose a strategy for obtaining funds for fighting the British: \"It is the best plan that the six confederations (six market places) keep together as we hear. But the outlay for the soldiers should not be collected by an extraordinary field tax. It is not right that the various confederations should pay the costs.... We should use the usual field tax. Let first the six confederations come together and ask our Government for help. Will the soldiers not come to help us, then let us ask the Mandarin for the present not to collect the field tax, that we can use the money to meet the barbarians. This would not be rebellious. Afterwards in peaceful times, we could pay our duties to the Government. (Extension Papers, p. 347.) See also, K'ang Nan-hai, op cit., p. 15.\n\n40 CSO433 in 1899,\n\n41 The British often experienced great difficulty in distinguishing landlords from taxlords, especially since members of large, gentry clans like the Tangs were one and the same. In a memorandum on the work of the Land Court, Lockhart writes: \"The most serious matter of all, however, is the stand taken by the farmers against the clans, their former landlords.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208113, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "136 \n\nW. J. HINTON \n\non sanitation and the care of a little system of hill tracks which might serve as a model to the New Territories. Their King is the District Officer South, the \"Lord of the Isles,\" but Kaifong and Residents Association alike show a praiseworthy spirit of independence, and a capacity for governing themselves; moreover, the injunction “Agree with thine adversary quickly\" is well understood and followed in China, even under British rule. \n\nBut we have drifted from geography into politics, like better men before us, and it would be well to pass back to the native community, through the terraced fields dotted with blue-clad figures bowed over the hoe, or shuffling along the narrow paths with a yoke of watering buckets, or cutting and pulling the beetroots, carrots, and cabbages. We will go back to the Eastern end of the village and then traverse its length, completing our brief survey by passing out to our waiting boat over the harbour, and so back to Hongkong. On the stage thus set, it may be that we or someone more competent may stage scenes from the life of the island folk from time to time. There is a strange and interesting feast in the Spring, well worth describing, and at the New Year when the whole fishing fleet lies at anchor in the bay, the little town is all alive. A sitting in the Court of the District Magistrate would be worth describing too, and a meeting of the City Fathers, the Kaifong. We must write, for lack of better witnesses, yet how true it is that those who know do not say, and those who say do not know! \n\nBut to our walk. There lies our little yacht that brought us from Hongkong, white and strange among the high-sterned junks with their brown mat sails. We have all the afternoon to wander, and half the night to lie in the Harbour before the tide turns and we must up anchor and away. \n\nStrolling through the Town \n\nWe have landed on the beach near the Temple of Kwan Yin and find ourselves among the Hakka people who inhabit this end of the town. Their small, sturdy figures are to be seen clustered about the well where the women are drawing water, or bending over the boats in the boat-building yard that slopes to the water's edge. There is material for a whole study in the types of boat and the methods of building alone, but we cannot stop to watch for more than a few minutes while the skilful ship's carpenters fix the ribs and planking of a brand new sampan. A word of greeting to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208121, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nMy first introduction to the Southern District took the form of journeys by Water Police launches to various parts of it during the summer of 1919, when I lived for three months in the Water Police station quarters before my first leave. After it I sometimes repeated such voyages for purposes of geological research, on which I embarked with Government encouragement. A professional geological survey of the Colony was being planned in order to help in developing the resources of the Empire after the 1914-18 war, and to most people the Colony's geology was, quite understandably, a sealed book. The coasts and islands of the Southern District afforded many instructive sections, often showing the relations of different rock and mosses in a nearly undecayed state, which except in stream beds could hardly be seen anywhere else in the days before great motor roads cut the hills. This work enabled me to prepare a preliminary report on the Colony's sedimentary rocks and granite batholiths which was presented in 1923 not long before the Canadian geologists began their labours.\n\nIn 1922, while I was working as second assistant to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and deputy registrar of marriages, on the first floor of the Post Office building, Mr. Wynne-Jones, the D. O. South, whose office was just above mine on the second floor, went to hospital with appendicitis, and I was instructed at ten minutes' notice to go upstairs and do his job till he got better. As I had coveted the job for some time, and had told my chief so (then the late E. R. Hallifax), I was delighted.\n\nIn those days one of the D.O.'s duties was to sit in his office as magistrate for the Southern District, excluding New Kowloon and the Lyemun area.† This court usually functioned from 9 to 10 a.m.\n\n* 1888-1968, Cadet Officer, Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-38. This article was written in response to my request to Mr. Schofield and others for memories of their service in the Southern District of the New Territories for which I was then (1958) District Officer - Hon. Editor.\n\n† Place names may be found in the official publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer 1960, since reissued).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208122, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n145\n\nand might bring anything from a complicated murder to a petty assault case: the former, with its formalities, always ticklish for an inexperienced lay magistrate. The next job was to interview people sent for by the D.O., deal with any disputes brought up by the parties or the Police, and hear any land cases fixed for that morning. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons the longer cases could be heard: failing these, there were always land deeds and registers to sign, files to deal with, or minutes to write. At the end of the day the ledger, cash books and receipts would come in for checking.\n\nIn my time most of the cases that came to my office were from the nearer islands, New Kowloon, and the Tsun Wan district. Another class of case nearly always taken there was Resumptions, which I always considered the most distasteful and unpleasant task a D.O. can be expected to perform: for though resumptions in 1917 were usually paid for at cent a square foot, and those in 1926 at 34 cents a foot, I never felt that money could in any way make up to a peasant for the loss of most or all of his land. Nearly always they wanted land in exchange, which it was rarely possible to find. I may remark here that when Mr. Ruttonjee started the brewery at Sham Tseng about 1926 he secured the land for it partly by leasing a piece of foreshore from Government and reclaiming, and partly by leasing agricultural land from the villagers who were mostly surnamed Fu (— should be a Chinese character, possibly 祖 or 夫, but as per rule 1, it is preserved as is, assuming it was (4)) for a fixed term at a yearly rent, thus giving them a regular income and a right of re-entry on their land in default of payment, which seemed to me a very fair arrangement, though the raising of foreshore levels made a terrible mess of the fields.\n\nMy first spell at the D.O. South ended in about four weeks; but in March 1923 I left the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs for good, and became 'Lord of the Isles', and not a mere substitute. This gave me the chance to carry out researches without applying for Police launches, so I expect the appointment pleased the Water Police! It was the custom for the D.O. South to hire a big launch from a Chinese firm to take him, his bailiff, and his Chinese demarcator to Cheung Chau and Tai O on alternate Wednesdays if business there demanded his presence, or there were enquiries to make, or local applications for land to consider. For this he got a large travelling allowance, I think $1200 a year, which I believe I nearly used up every year, though I don't remember asking for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208157, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "180\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA visit will be made by coach to five of the oldest graves belonging to the family and, in addition, to a school in Kat Hing Wai at Kam Tin to see some of its heirlooms.\n\nQuite a bit of walking is involved and lady members are advised to wear flat shoes for comfort and ease of movement over hill paths. The visit will start from the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier at 11 a.m. Members are advised to catch the regular ferry from the Central Terminus, Hong Kong (35 minutes by ordinary ferry, 20 by hover ferry). Please check ferry times with HK Yaumatei Ferry Co. (Tel. 5-220393) and make your own arrangements. Otherwise, come by car and park locally, allowing plenty of time to find parking space (try the western end of Yeung Uk Road, in the area of the Yeung Uk Road Sports Ground, in the same road as the pier).\n\nMembers are advised to bring a picnic lunch. The visit should end between 5--6 p.m., back at the Tsuen Wan Ferry Pier.\n\nThe tour will be limited to two buses and members and their friends are invited on a first-come-first-served basis. Please telephone names to Mrs. Kam at 12-403396 (District Office, Tsuen Wan).\n\nProgramme notes will be available on the day.\n\nDAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES\n\nJoint Organizers\n\n29.11.76\n\nTHE TANG (4) CLAN IN THE NEW TERRITORIES AND ITS OLDEST GRAVES\n\nAccording to the genealogical record kept by the Tang clan at Kam Tin, it originated from a branch settled in Kut Shui County (*) of Kiangsi Province during the northern Sung period (960-1126).* \n\nIt all started when one of the ancestors by the name of TANG Fu-hip (###) passed through this part of Kwangtung on his way to his new official assignment as the magistrate of Yeung Chun County () after he had successfully passed the imperial examination and was awarded the chin-shih degree during the reign of Hsi Ning (1068-1077).\n\n* With the exception of \"Kiangsi” romanizations used in this Note are in Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208168, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 207, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n191 \n\nspot in the fields near Kam Tin, beside one of the new villages built by the Shing Mun people with funds provided by the Hong Kong Government. This temple (Plate 40) contains a tablet bearing the names of 17 Shing Mun villagers who died in the struggle.16 (Plate 41).\n\n(b) Tsuen Wan The Tin Hau Temple, which likewise is the community temple for the Tsuen Wan villagers, also contains a tablet to the 17 Tsuen Wan villagers who died in the war. (Plate 42). We shall also see the memorial recording the war according to the Tsuen Wan viewpoint.\n\n(c) One of the local weapons, estimated to be over 100 years old, and likely to have been in use at the time, is preserved in Muk Min Ha Village, one of the Tsuen Wan group, and I have permission to bring it with me on the visit. In the quaint phraseology of the past it is of the type known locally as 'Little Duck-bill', no doubt on account of its shape. (Plate 43),17\n\n7. Comment\n\nThis episode in local history is interesting for several reasons:\n\n(a) It took place between persons of the same language group.\n\n(b) All the contesting villages were small and their inhabitants closely related by intermarriage and other links over the preceding one to two hundred years of local settlement.\n\n(c) The Shing Mun villages were known locally as the Pak Heung18 or 8 Villages. Their one major and several minor lineages banded together to oppose Tsuen Wan. The latter, even more diversely settled than Shing Mun, also closed ranks to deal with the enemy.\n\n(d) It was purely a local struggle: no outside factors or participants were seemingly involved, other than the group from the other Pat Heung.\n\n(e) The district magistrate and local military forces apparently did not interpose themselves between the contestants: at least not on the local memory of these events.\n\n(f) Such incidents throw light on the war-like nature of local villagers, and the obligations of lineage groups to each other in offence and defence: they are typical of the Hong Kong region and other areas of S.E. China at this time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208434, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "142\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThis individual is particularly interesting to the student of self-government in China, for he is almost the personification of that very thin tie which links the government of the village with that of the nation. Moreover, this Ti-pao takes on attributes and authority from both sources, being a semi-governmental official at least approved by the Hsien magistrate, and performing certain very definite governmental duties; yet being one of the members of the village in which he works, theoretically chosen by the people themselves, and performing for them many duties of purely local significance. Although the agent of the central government in all local matters in which the government interests itself, yet the Ti-pao is in some sense the representative of the people to hold the central government away. On close analysis his position seems to be a compromise between the government, which was interested in the people at least to the extent of taxes and peace, and the people, who wished for nothing better than to be left alone.\n\nThere are degrees of disharmony in this compromise, however, either the government stepping further into the precincts of village administration through the Ti-pao than the people desire, or, on the other hand, the villagers disregarding the Ti-pao as completely as they dare. The general opinion one receives from all reporters is that through the Ti-pao the government is succeeding in going more and more into the life of the village; in other words it is the present trend for the position of the Ti-pao as a petty government official to become fixed and to bulk larger than his function as a representative of the people. Whether this analysis is correct cannot be affirmed, however, and must remain a hypothesis.\n\nJamieson traces the rise of the position of the Ti-pao to the ancient system of tithing,1 a system which seems to have originated late in Chou times. Starting with the people as an aggregation of families, they are grouped first by tens into Chia (十) and then by hundreds of families into pao (保) or Li (里), although these numbers are merely theoretical, and the terms for the grouping differ in various regions, and through recorded history.2 Usually the Pao or Li is the only grouping which is kept at all, and this unit is the single one between the family and the Hsien, or magistral district.\n\n1 Jamieson; op. cit., p. 67 ff.\n\n2 See Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology, p. 105 ff: for a chronological citation of the system from Chou times to the present with the successive manners of grouping and the different names applied.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208435, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\n143\n\nAccording to the theory, each Chia or Pao should select one of its members to serve as a headman, and this headman, when approved by the magistrate, becomes Ti-pao. In practice, however, the Ti-pao will stand at the head of a whole village, or of several small ones, as the agent of the magistrate.\n\nHow the Ti-pao is selected is not a matter of agreement. The official government view is well expressed by the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien: \"The scholars and people shall elect to this office men of probity, education and property.” Or, in the Ta Ch'ing Lü Li:\n\n\"In every District 100 Families shall elect one Headborough (or Hundred man) Li chang, and ten Tithing men Chia shou, who shall be charged for the year with the collection of the revenue and the arranging of other public matters. Any person who without warrant assumes the title of Chu-pao, Li-chang, Pao-chang or other title of authority, and takes advantage of that to exact levies from the people, shall be liable to 100 blows and banishment for two years. The elders from among whom the above elections are to be made, must be men of mature years and known merit, belonging to the locality, as approved by the majority, and no one who has held office or been employed as a Yamen underling, or been convicted of offence, shall be eligible. A breach of this law shall entail a punishment of 60 blows upon the offender, who shall also be deposed from office, and any official sanctioning such illegal election shall be liable to 40 blows, and in case of bribery to such severer penalty as the law against bribery for an illegal purpose may entail.”\n\nThus it will be seen that in theory the Ti-pao is chosen freely by the people, without interference from the magistrate. Hsieh is authority for the statement that the government even issued orders to the magistrate not to interfere in these elections.3 A dissenting view is expressed by Morse, who states that the Ti-pao is nominated\n\n1 Jamieson; op. cit., p. 68.\n\n2 Ta Ch'ing Lü Li (division of Hu Pu), Sec. 83, Lü. Translated by Jamieson, ibid., p. 63. Most of this passage has also been translated into French by Bazin and by Boulais, who also give the text: Bazin; op. cit., I, p. 25 ff.; Boulais; op. cit., p. 183-184. Also cf. Staunton, G.; Ta Tsing Leu Lee, p. 88-89, According to Dr. C. H. Peake the text should be broken after the words; \"banishment for two years.\" The further discussion would then apply not to the Ti-pao, but only to the village elders. This distinction is not clearly brought out in any of the Western texts cited.\n\n3 Hsieh, Pao Chao; The Government of China, p. 309.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "150\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nBefore the sale can be considered official it must be stamped by the Ti-pao, and it is then registered at the office of the district magistrate. This process is called kuo kê (#1), \"passing the cutting off\", meaning the transference of the tax liability of the old owner to the new; or, cutting off the slip showing the tax liability from the old deed and pasting it on the new. Since registration costs to the amount of five or six percent of the purchase price, excluding extras, it is common, and perhaps universal, to understate the sale price on the copy of the deed sent in to the magistrate. Thus do the people do their part to equalize the excess taxation to which they are subjected on all occasions. For his part in the deal, the Ti-pao gets a small fee.\n\nIII\n\nBeyond its interest in collecting taxes the central government feels in some measure bound to preserve peace and prevent crimes in the villages. To affect these aims it works both through the Ti-pao and through the recognized village elders (when the two are not synonymous). The Ti-pao is the accredited police chief of the village. A good idea of the multifarious nature of his duties is given by a description of them in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien:\n\nIf any of the undermentioned offences are committed within the Tithing, the Tithing man shall be specially responsible for making the necessary inquiries and reporting the fact, viz: theft, corrupt teaching, gambling, hiding and absconding from justice, kidnapping, coining, establishing secret society, and so on. He shall also be required to report all suspicious characters arriving within his bounds, and see that the necessary alterations are made from time to time in the Register of Individuals in each family. If constables from a neighboring jurisdiction come in pursuit of offenders in virtue of a warrant, he shall assist in arresting, but if any of the Yâmen constables wrongfully arrests an innocent man, he may lay the facts before the district Magistrate.\n\n1 Jamieson, op. cit., p. 97.\n\n2 Ibid., p. 98.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 167, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933\n\ntrate for investigation.'\n\n151\n\nHe has the position, therefore, of chief investigator of and informer against anything suspicious or evil. But his powers of arrest seem to be limited. Meadows reports that while it is his duty to point out any person to police (Yâmen) runners who may be looking for a man, he is not called upon to execute a summons; and likewise that in grave cases of robbery he is not held responsible, but must report to the magistrate as soon as such a case occurs.2 The Ti-pao organizes part of the militia in his district for the use of the magistrate in protecting public granaries and treasuries, or for dispersing bandits.3\n\nAlthough the agent of the central government in preserving peace and order, the Ti-pao is also the defender of the people. In case of wrongful arrest he should inform the magistrate, giving circumstances, and has the right of bailing out citizens of his own district who are held in the magistrate's gaol. If any of his constituents presents a petition or otherwise has dealings with the magistrate's court it is the Ti-pao's duty to be able to identify him. For this purpose he has a wooden stamp which he must affix to such an application before it will be accepted at the Yamen.4\n\nWhile it is thus the Ti-pao who is the chief agent of the central government in the rural village, it is the village elders themselves who are held by the government to be responsible for the village as a whole. The village peace and morality is in their hands, and the proper subject of their supervision. This resting of authority in the hands of a few responsible individuals is founded upon several sensible considerations. Firstly, the plan is practicable: villages are compact and coalescent units due to their relative isolation,\n\n1 Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, Chuan 134, sec. (1% T) translated by Jamieson; ibid., p. 68. \"Tithing man\" means in Jamieson's translation the Ti-pao. Hsieh seems also to use this passage to describe the duties of the Ti-pao, and cites one or two more malpractices which the officer must report against, such as transport of counterfeit goods and swindling, though he does not mention his source. Hsieh, Pao Chao; The Government of China, p. 309. An ordinance by Hsien Feng (41) in 1852 gives an even fuller account of what was expected of the Pao-chia (T), (presumably Ti-pao). Boulais; op. cit., 162-163.\n\n2 Meadows, Thomas T.; Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China, p. 118, 119.\n\n3 Hsieh; op. cit., p. 309.\n\n4 Meadows; op. cit., p. 117.\n\n5 Leong and Tao; op. cit., p. 36.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208448, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "156\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nThe plans of the Nationalist Government call for the organization of local self-government in rural districts along republican lines which will fit into the scheme of a thoroughly democratized state. The years between 1930 and 1935 have been designated as a period of political tutelage during which the new organization is to be effected.\n\nThe smallest unit of organization is to be the Lin (鄰), composed of five families. This unit will be controlled by a president and vice president elected by the citizens. Five Lin constitute a Lü (閭), which will have similar officers. Villages, Hsiang (鄉), and market towns, Chên (鎮) are composed of at least 100 families or four Lü. From twenty to fifty of these villages, in turn, form a county, Ch'u (區), while an undetermined number of counties form a Hsien (縣) or district under a district magistrate or Hsien-chang (縣長). This whole system of organization, it will be seen, is based upon very ancient Chinese forms. What is different is the democratic and republican form which the government is supposed to assume.\n\nThe machinery of rural self-government is supposed to operate from the smallest unit, the Lin, upwards to the district or Hsien. The rights of election, recall, initiative and referendum are conferred first upon the smallest units. Because of an untrained citizenry, however, the attack has been made first upon the largest unit. And District magistrates, during the period of tutelage, are not to be elected by the people but are first to be examined and then recommended by the provincial Government and appointed by the National government. In the meantime, the plan of the Central Government calls for training schools for county chairmen, and provinces and districts are supposed to form training schools for preparing the personnel of the smaller units of local government.\n\nThe only available report as to how this process of organization works in practice is that given in the survey of Ching Ho, and unfortunately this village is not typical of rural districts. Ching Ho is a town composed of a number of villages, and has a population\n\nFor the statement of the plan for rural government as given here, see: China Year Book 1932; p. 687, and Tyau, Min-ch'ien; Two Years of Nationalist China, p. 76-78.\n\n2 Ching Ho: a Sociological Analysis. This study was made during 1928 and 1929, and therefore is by several years too early to give a picture of the situation at present under the slowly strengthening National Government. But it is valuable because it indicates the reaction of a town on which the new, external forces of change are operating.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208460, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "168\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nSu, Sing Ging; The Chinese Family System. New York, International Press, 1922.\n\nTang, Chi-yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture. No place, no pub., 1924. (Cornell University Ph.D. Thesis.)\n\nTayler, J. B.; See: Malone, C. B., and Tayler, J. B.\n\nTsu, Yu-yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy; a Study in Mutual Aid. New York, Columbia, 1912.\n\nTyau, Min-ch'ien (Ed); Two Years of Nationalist China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1930.\n\nWerner, E. T. C.; China of the Chinese. London, Pitman, 1920. Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology: or Groups of Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer. Chinese; Compiled and Abstracted upon the Plan Organized by Herbert Spencer. London, Williams and Norgate, 1910. (Folio no. 9 of series).\n\nWilhelm, Richard; A Short History of Chinese Civilization. (Translated by Joan Joshua). New York, Viking, 1929.\n\nWilliams, Edward T.; China Yesterday and Today. New York, Crowell, 1923.\n\nWilliams, Edward T.; A Short History of China. New York, Harpers, 1928.\n\nYen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China. No place, Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement, 1929 (Reprint. Yale Review, vol. 18, No. 2)\n\nII. USEFUL WORKS NOT CITED.\n\nBrenan, Bryon; \"The Office of District Magistrate in China\" (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, 1897-98, p. 36-65).\n\nChen, Ta; \"Socio-economic Conditions in Two Chinese Villages” (Chinese Economic Monthly, vol. 2, no. 5, 1925, p. 11-23).\n\nChiao, C. M. and Buck, John L.; \"The Composition and Growth of Population Groups in China\" (Chinese Economic Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 1928, p. 219-235),\n\n\"Chinese Clans and Their Customs\" (Chinese and Japanese Repository, vol. 3, no. 23, 1865, p. 281-284).\n\nDickinson, Jean; Observations on the Social Life of a North China Village. (Chien Ying, Wu Ching Hsien) Oct.-Dec. 1924. Peking, Yenching, no date.\n\nFang, Fu-an; Chinese Labour; an Economic and Statistical Survey of the Labour Conditions and Labour Movement in China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1931.\n\nGamble, Sidney D., and Burgess, John S.; Peking; a Social Survey. New York, Doran, 1921.\n\nHalhoun, Gustov; \"Contributions to the History of Clan Settlement in Ancient China” (Asia Major, vol. 1, 1924, p. 76-111, 587-623).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208461, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN China, 1933\n\n169\n\nHsu, Leonard S.; Study of a Typical Chinese Town. Peiping, Leader, 1929.\n\nHsu, Leonard S.; Poverty and Population in China. Rome, Instituto Poligrafico Dello Stato, 1932.\n\nJamieson, George; \"Tenure of Land in China and the Condition of Rural Population\" (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 23, 1888, p. 59-174).\n\nJernigan, Thomas R.; China in Law and Commerce. New York, Macmillan, 1905.\n\nKiang, Kang-hu; \"The Chinese Family System\" (The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 152, 1930, p. 39-48).\n\nKou, Ki-young; La Sous Prefecture Chinoise; Etude de son Administration Actuelle, Origine — Organization — Services. Shanghai, Aurore University, 1930.\n\nKuo, Wen-kuen; \"A Critical Exposition of the Essence of Chinese Family Law\" (Chinese Social and Political Science Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1916, p. 21-36).\n\nLee, F. C. H. and Chin, T.; Village Families in the Vicinity of Peiping. Peiping, China Foundation, Social Research Department (Bull. no. 2) 1929.\n\nLi, Chuan-shih; Central and Local Finance in China. New York, Columbia, 1922.\n\nLiu, D. K. and Chen, Chung-min; \"Statistics of Farm Land in China\" (Chinese Economic Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 1928, p. 181-213).\n\nMaspero, Henri; \"The Origins of the Chinese Civilizations\" (in Smithsonian Institution. Annual Report for 1927, p. 433-452. (Bishop, Carl W., translator.))\n\nTao, L. K.; \"The Chinese District Magistrate\" (Chinese Social and Political Science Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1916, p. 56-68; no. 2, 1916, p. 48-61).\n\nTao, L. K.; \"A Chinese Village Community\" (Journal of the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Bureau, vol. 2, no. 3, 1917, p. 25-35).\n\nTawney, R. H.; Land and Labor in China. London, Allen and Unwin, 1932.\n\nWilliams, S. Wells; The Middle Kingdom. Revised ed., 2 vols.; New York, Scribners, 1883.\n\nYen, James Y. C.; The Mass Education Movement in China. Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1925.\n\nYen, Kia-lok; \"The Basis of Democracy in China\" (International Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, 1918, p. 197-219).\n\nA SELECT LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS IN CHINESE TEXT ON RURAL GOVERNMENT (關於“村治”之中文新書目錄選)\n\nThis bibliography was drawn up by the National Library of Peiping. In order to get both a smooth and an accurate translation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208500, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "208 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nThe westermost cannon has an inscription showing that it was cast in the 1st moon of the 10th year of the reign of Chia Ching (1805), weighing 1,200 catties (嘉慶十年正月造,重一千二百斤). Again, this cannon and some others were probably cast for the defence of the region against pirates.4 The cannon which lies next to it had been severely weathered, and the inscription is illegible. \n\nTwo cannons on the east wall bear the same inscriptions. These read as follows:-- \n\nCannon: weight 2,000 catties. \n\nYik: General of Border Pacification, by Imperial Appointment (欽命靖逆將軍奕(山)). \n\nChoi: Minister of Constant Support. Kay: Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi (太子少保廣東總督都堂祁(墳)). Leung: Assistant Minister of Defence, and Governor of Kwangtung (兵部侍郎廣東巡撫部院(寶常)). \n\nLau: Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture. Cheong: Reserve Magistrate of Hoi Fung District, supervised its manufacture (海豐縣丞即補縣昌、監造). \n\nIn the 10th moon of the 21st year of the reign of Tao Kwang (1841) (道光二十一年十月吉日). \n\nCast by Cannon Artisans Li, Chan, and Fok. \n\nDuring that time, British influence in this area was strong. Viceroy Lin Tse-hsü ordered the casting of cannons from Fat Shan for the fortification of the coast of Kwangtung. These two cannons must be two of those that Viceroy Lin had ordered to be cast, and they were placed in this region for defence purposes. \n\nThe cannon which lies next to these two is again illegible, because of severe weathering. \n\nThese six cannons were selected from elsewhere, some perhaps from the Kai Yik Kok Fort, others from the Shek Se Fort, and were mounted there. Though they were not cast at the same time, they had the same purpose: they were used to defend the region against pirates and foreign invasions. They are now preserved at Tung Chung and help to commemorate these events.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208503, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 227, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n211 \n\nChing period of the Ming Dynasty (1553). From this, we can see that, at that time, there was no fort nor guard-station at Fat Tong Mun. \n\n4 See my article \"A Short History of the Pirates of Hong Kong before 1842,\" published in Volume 8, No. 4, of the Kwong Tung Man Hin 早期海盜略，原載廣東文獻第八卷，第四期。. \n\n5 Chapter 4 of the San On Yuen Chi, Ch'ia Ching edition, ★★★✰ recorded, \"North Fat Tong is an isolated island, A fort is erected during the K'ang Hsi period, for the protection of the waterway against the pirates.\" This proves that the fort on Tung Lung Island was erected during the K'ang Hsi reign. \n\n6 See Chapter 13 of the Kwong Tung Hoi Tu Shuet. 1889 edition ★***, and Chapter 73 of the Kwong Chow Fu Chi, 1879 edition 廣州府志。 \n\n7 Chapter 125 of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition £ A records, \"In the 15th year of the Ch'ia Ching rule, Viceroy Chin Mun Fu ✰✰ suggested to have the Fat Tong Mun Fort abandoned, and rebuilt near the Kowloon Walled City, Viceroy Pak Ling ordered the Magistrate of the San On District 4 to carry out the suggestion. The Fat Tong Mun Fort was under the command of the officer commanding of the Tai Pang Battalion ***. The fort stood on an isolated island, two hundred li from the Tai Pang Walled City, and forty li from the Kowloon guard-station. There were no villages on the island that could assist in protecting the region. Thus the fort had to be removed to the Kowloon City Region.\" \n\nChapter 14 of the Kwong Chow Fu Chi, 1879 edition АЯ, and the Genealogy of Tang's of Kam Tin, New Territories of Hong Kong, 香港新界錦田鄧氏族譜 have the same record. \n\n8 See Note 6, Chapter 8 of Professor LO Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chinese edition, 1959 -AS- 一八四二年以前之香港及其對外交通，羅香林著. \n\nFIRST RECORD OF THE PELOBATID FROG \n\nLEPTOBRACHIUM PELODYTOIDES BOULENGER \n\nIN HONG KONG \n\nIt is indeed gratifying to find-in an area as small and zoologically well studied as Hong Kong-any amphibian not previously known to be part of our fauna. Not only does the discovery of Leptobrachium pelodytoides add another species, but represents a genus new to the known fauna of Hong Kong. \n\nThe first specimens found here, and subsequently identified, are nine tadpoles collected by Dr. Frank F. Reitinger and Mr. Jerry K. S. Lee at an altitude of about 853 metres on Tai Mo Shan in the New Territories on 30 November and 7 December 1974. However, it was not until two adult frogs were found by Mr. Phillip J. Bishop", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209024, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 186, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "154\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nnumerous minor grades excel those of other places in their colour, fragrance and taste. Chu Yi-chuen of Sau Shui remarks, \"There is no fixed standard as to which place in Fukien and Kwangtung produces the best quality of lychee, but in my opinion “Kwa Luk” from Kwangtung tops all.\" The three most outstanding selections of \"Kwa Luk” are \"Siu Fa Shan”, “Luk Law Yi” and \"Kau Kei Wan”.\n\nA species named \"Sheung Shu Wai\", literally \"being carried (wai) by the Minister (Sheung Shu)\", originated from a minister Cham Man-kang who brought back a pip of lychee from Windy Pavilion. Most lychees fall into this category. The most valuable lychee tree whose fruit is priced scores of times more than others is the one growing in the West Garden located outside West Gate of the County Seat. In fact, there were other lychee trees which were as good as, or even better than, that tree. Another species called “Crystal Ball\" of Cha Kong is of the same grade as \"Kwa Luk”, and also on the list of the delicious lychees are \"Sai Kok\" (rhino's horn), \"Kwai Mei” (taste of osmanthus), \"Nor Mai Chee\" (like glutinous rice), \"Sung Ka Heung\" (fragrance of Sung Family), \"Chun Fung Yuk” (jade offered to emperor) and Ho Pau (wallet).\n\n(translation by District Office, Tsuen Wan)\n\n3. By chance, I heard recently of the existence of at least one tree of the special type of “Kwa Luk” mentioned in the opening paragraph from the father of a friend. This gentleman, a Hakka from Ng Wah District, served pre-war in the provincial administration of Kwangtung at Canton. He had a friend Mr. Wong Ping-kwan (*A), who was the district magistrate (*) of Tsang Shing at that time (about 1937-38). This official used to send a parcel of this special lychee to his superiors in Canton. The fruit came from trees in the courtyard and gardens of his office in Tsang Shing. It was not for sale, and although my friend said he had heard of some being available on the market in recent times, he was sure they were not the genuine article.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nDecember, 1979.\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209713, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "348\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nChina. Inevitably, and by intention, such persons were ignorant of the local scene and background, and usually did not speak its dialect.\n\nThe contents of district gazetteers were usually fairly uniform, taking in the principal subjects such as history, geography, the economy and government, and providing extended or contracted accounts of these and other topics according to the interest and degree of industry shown by the compilers. The gazetteer also provided much information about the worthies of the district whether scholars, aged persons, religious figures, chaste widows and other females, or meritorious officials who had served there in past centuries. Interesting works on the district or by its natives were also included. Our Hsinan Gazetteer is a fairly typical product of the scholar-gentry's contribution to the writing of local history, albeit far from being the best example of the kind.\n\nBaker and Ng's work is well-done. The chapters are concise and the notes and complementary material are comprehensive, useful, wide-ranging and enlightening. The material itself is varied and interesting. The book includes useful tables showing the contents of the 1688 and 1819 editions of the gazetteer (pp 5-16 and 128-130), and there are also maps reproduced from the two editions, showing the county, the district city, and coastal defences, all typical of those found in local histories of the Ch'ing period and before. Useful additional features are a reproduction of the Italian missionary Volonteri's bilingual map of 1866 (map 9) and Dr. Baker's production of two special maps (Nos. 7 and 8). The latter show the dynamics of local settlement and population growth, and their geographical variation, and greatly assist the reader in making sense of what would otherwise be a mere listing of administrative divisions and place names.\n\nWhat then is there to be criticised? In general, any omissions are those of the gazetteer itself, being things which were largely taken for granted by the magistrate and local scholar-gentry who produced the 1819 edition. They expected that local villages and market towns would supply their own self-management and did not describe its workings, but owing to the distance in time and the vastly changed circumstances of the last eighty years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "42\n\nattempt to see if the customs were general throughout the New Territories.1\n\nThe Communist army reached Canton in October 1949. Shortly before and after that date, floods of refugees poured into the New Territories, many of them later engaging in agriculture, mostly vegetable farming. Up until then, natives of the New Territories were primarily rice farmers, living in long-established villages with customs and practices that regulated their lives. The only land available for cultivation by refugees tended to be marginal land without water. The refugees dug wells, made new paths, leased land from New Territories natives, and erected shacks all over the place (before October 1949 there were virtually no temporary structures in the Tai Po district). The energy, initiative and desperate attempts by the refugees to earn a living in new communities where neighbours seldom knew each other resulted in their following a way of life without traditional rules of conduct. To some extent, this washed off on the traditional New Territories natives, aggravated by the movement from 1951 onwards of New Territories men to emigrate overseas and to the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. This movement tended to break down the old indigenous customs.\n\nIn 1953-55, in Yuen Long, I used to have regular discussions with certain village elders who were locally acknowledged as experts on traditional customs; they proved most co-operative when they appreciated my interest in the subject. I always cross-checked the information with other local informants, but had neither the opportunity nor the need at the time to cross-check further afield so as to ascertain how widespread the custom was or the extent to which it applied to both Punti and Hakka communities. It must be accepted therefore that, in the absence of further proof, these customs may not necessarily have been uniformly observed throughout the New Territories or elsewhere in Kwangtung.\n\nFrom September 1953 to early 1954, in addition to my work as District Officer, I was also Police Court Magistrate (in Ping Shan), Assistant Land Officer (holding Land Courts), and Small Debts Court Magistrate. These had always been the functions of the District Officers at Tai Po and Yuen Long. But, during my", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 115, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "Chinese call District Officers \"father and mother officers\" because they are in direct contact with the people, and in China carry on nearly every function of Government, except the making of laws. In Hong Kong the District Officer is a land court judge, magistrate, public auctioneer of land and property, director of small public works, county judge for small debts, land tax collector, registrar of land deeds, rates collector, matrimonial disputes officer, forestry officer, agricultural \"expert\" (so called), land resumptions officer, and six or seven other things I can't now remember.\n\nThe District Officer's chief function is certainly to adapt the new 20th century conditions to the ancient agricultural environment of the people he rules. More clearly than anyone he sees the need of going slowly, so as not to break up the rural economy and the whole social order with it, in the name of a badly-thought-out \"progress\".\n\nEconomics of the Islands\n\nFarming, fishing and forestry are the three chief occupations. Rice is the main crop. Owing to the rainfall coming in summer, two crops a year are raised on most fields, with a third crop of sweet potatoes or vegetables in the winter: the first seedlings are planted in February; in March they are planted out; in July this crop is reaped and the second crop sown; in August that is planted out, and in October and November it is reaped and the winter crop planted.\n\nHeavy manuring with everything available alone keeps the soil fertile, and as there is neither meadow nor pasture as we understand it, there is not much animal manure to be had. Milk is not produced except in modern dairy farms, so that very little land is used to support animals. All the conditions favour the production of a dense human population; and this in fact is the object of the whole of Chinese civilisation: not the making of money, but having enough sons to ensure that the father's ghost, and the ancestors, shall always receive due honour and offerings, and so will send prosperity and good luck to their descendants; they can if neglected send the reverse.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209988, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 247, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "225\n\nHayes, James, The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911, Hamden, Conn., 1977.\n\nHerrman, Albert, An Historical Atlas of China, Edinburgh, 1966.\n\nHook, Brian (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China, Cambridge, 1982.\n\nHsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1961.\n\nLethbridge, H. J., Hong Kong: Stability and Change, Hong Kong, 1978.\n\nNeedham, J., Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge, (series still in progress). 1953-\n\n+\n\nNg, Peter Y. L., New Peace County: a Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region, Hong Kong, 1983.\n\nWatt, John R., The District Magistrate in Late Imperial China, New York, 1972.\n\nWu Ching-tzu, The Scholars, Peking, 1957.\n\nOf all the books I have quoted from, three stand out as my clear favourites. J. J. M. De Groot's Religious System of China is such a mine of information and so well supported with Chinese quotations that it could, I think, have supplied almost everything I wanted on the religious side. J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese, with its idiosyncratic treatment of Chinese culture under such headings as 'Topsyturvydom', 'Forfeits', 'Mendicants' and 'Lighthouses', betrays a sound knowledge and excellent if cynical understanding. And the Rev. Justus Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese, based mainly on observations in Fukien province, gives a broad coverage of Chinese society in a systematic and very readable way. Happily, all three of these books have recently been reprinted, two of them in Taiwan, and Ball in Hong Kong. Between them they have delighted readers for over 270 years and there seems no reason to suppose that they will not continue to do so for centuries to come. I dare to hope that all the titles listed in this note will serve to spread that delight even further, by encouraging the reader to wander further into the mysteries of Chineseness.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210171, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "121\n\nBritish ignorance of their position under Chinese law and practice, and incoming Chinese settlers' disregard of it. In 1858, their land at Tsim Sha Tsui, on account of its proximity to Hong Kong and its fine position on the harbour, was being occupied for all manner of business by persons who gave no thought to paying rent to the Tangs. They caused a public notice to be prepared, which found its way in translation into the English language paper the Friend of China on 24th July 1858. This was two years before this part of Kowloon was first leased, then ceded, to Britain in the course of the year 1860. The printed version was as follows:\n\n\"Tung Wing-Fook-Tong [sic] of the Sun On district, was formerly sole proprietor of the Island of Hong Kong, and of the hills and coast of the North Side of the Harbour under the general name of Tsin Shat-Choy\n\nLately Tung Wing-Fook-Tong petitioned the Magistrate of Sun-On to examine Tung's claim to Tsin Shat-Choy and the Magistrate issued a proclamation declaring that Tung Wing-Fook-Tong is the real owner of the Property.\n\n51\n\nThe editor of the newspaper was not sympathetic, being downright sceptical of the Tung (Tang) claims to Hong Kong:\n\n\"As to his having been a Lord of this Isle, as well as of Tsim-shat-choy,\" he wrote, \"in a word, we do not believe a word of it\".\n\nIndeed, he went further, dismissing the unfortunate Tangs as being 'mythical as the Hong Kong agents for Holloway's pills' 52\n\nYet the fact remains that the Chinese records corroborate the Tang family's claims to Hong Kong and much else, and their exchanges with the various Chinese authorities at the district, prefectural and provincial level in the 1840s reveal some essential characteristics both as to their own situation as owners of Hong Kong and as to the mind and operation of the imperial bureaucracy. The Tangs were essentially absentee owners, entitled through the registered ownership to be regarded as the true owners of the sub-soil and eligible to exact a rent charge from tenants on it.\"3 The officials with whom they dealt in the course of pressing their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210172, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "122\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nclaims, besides being initially ignorant of their position, were as sceptical and cautious as can be expected. Ultimately, however, they were quite prepared to find precedents for a solution after confirming the situation, leisurely, and to their own satisfaction.\n\nThe exchange began with a petition dated 8th day of the 4th lunar month of Tao Kuang 21st year (28 May 1841) to the magistrate of Hsin-an district:\n\n\"We inherited from our forefathers the taxable lands in the following places [named severally]. There are official registration records in respect of our ownership of the aforesaid lands which are collectively known as Kwan Tai Lo (#) of Hong Kong Island (). These areas have previously been leased to farmers Pang Shun-yau () and Chow Ah-yau (A) for cultivation. The situation had always been peaceful and quiet until they came to us and complained of forcible occupation of the lands around Kwan Tai Lo area by English barbarians () whose ships were anchored in the neighbouring bay. These barbarians destroyed their crops to make way for roads and built huts on the unploughed fields. Knowing the fierce and violent nature of these barbarians, our tenant-farmers dared not negotiate with them.\n\nWe depend on the rents collected to pay our tax and support our families. Now that we have been robbed of our vital resources, where are we to turn to for our livelihood? Faced with such stringent circumstances, we feel obliged to bring the case to your attention. Should we be exempted from the payment of land tax for the ravaged areas or are we to join forces to expel the barbarians? We should be most grateful if you would give us advice on this urgent matter at your earliest convenience.\"54\n\nOfficial instructions, presumably to a subordinate, were given as follows:\n\n\"With reference to the case of the Tangs, please furnish us with a full account of the individual areas, the amounts of tax payable and the names of the registered owners of the forcibly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210173, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "123\n\noccupied lands. We shall carry out investigation of the case when the barbarians are somewhat pacified. Advice on the proper course of action to be taken will then be sought from the higher authorities.'\n\nThus far the complaint was against the English barbarians. But two years later, in another petition to the district magistrate dated 28th day of the fifth moon of Tao Kuang 23rd year (25 June 1843) there entered a new aspect, the behaviour of the Tangs' tenants on the land in question. The petitioner wrote,\n\n\"It happened that the treacherous barbarians have usurped these lands for building purposes and the crops in the area are destroyed. Following this the dishonest tenant Yip Shin-tak (#) and others made use of this chance and declared their own the field behind the houses at Wong Nei Chung, which was the same piece of land leased to them [by the Tangs], and sold it to the English barbarians. Thus my land was usurped and sold. I have lost this piece of land, together with the rent and grain that I should receive from my tenants. I have reported this case to the former magistrate begging him to defer my payment of taxes, and he had granted permission to investigate my case. I also beg your excellency to order the arrest of the treacherous tenant Yip Shin-tak and help me to recover my land.”56\n\nThe authorities were sceptical of this charge against the Tangs' tenants and commented in reply:\n\n\"You do not seem to have considered the fact that when these barbarians were making troubles on your land, they would not possibly be willing to pay for it. This is not logical. Moreover, we have checked the various letters you sent to the officials concerned, and in them you have never mentioned this Yip Shin-tak case, but had said only that the English barbarians have usurped your land for building purposes. Now you have added this new plaint, your intention is indeed dubious. This will not be permitted. Enclosed are the deeds and bills you have submitted.\"57", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210179, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "129\n\n3. E.J. Eitel (Europe in China, (Hong Kong 1895) p 190) states that this temple was built “75 to 100 years\" before 1841. However, a detailed large-scale survey of the Wanchai area of 1843 shows no building on the site, although the temple building is shown on maps from 1846. The temple site is adjacent to the tiny village of Wanchai, shown on the 1843 map but removed in 1845. The villagers received new lots in compensation for the village, and it seems entirely likely that the present temple was built in 1845-46 on one of these compensation lots (personal comment from Rev. Carl J. Smith). Probably, before 1845, there was a small shrine at the foot of the fung shui rock against which the temple now stands rather than a full-scale temple; this is suggested also by Eitel's referring to the temple as Taiwongkung (Earthgod shrine) rather than by its present title of Hung Shing Temple, suggesting a lowly origin.\n\n4. This temple was demolished late in the nineteenth century, and rebuilt at its present Ventris Road site in 1901. There seems to have been a delay between the demolition and reconstruction (see Temple Directory, unpub., Temple Section, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government 1980, p.30) and no datable items from the old temple were transferred to the new temple. The temple is shown on maps from the 1860s, but it is not clear if it is shown on Collinson's survey. It was probably built before 1841.\n\n5. This temple was founded in 1845, but the tablet recording this mentions a previous “altar” (19) on the site. The other Shau Kei Wan temples are all later (To Ti, 1877; Tin Hau, 1872; Tam Kung, 1905), although the Tam Kung Temple was also preceded by a simple shrine on or near the site.\n\nThe governance of the Hong Kong community was in the hands of the Hsin-an magistrate from his yamen at Nam Tau on Deep Bay just outside the present Sino-British boundary. He had assistant magistrates at several places in the district. The officer responsible for the good order of the Hong Kong villages was located at Kwun Fu Shih (17). This sub-magistracy had\n\nPage 150\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210180, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "130\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\npreviously been located near Sham Chun, but, shortly after the cession of Hong Kong the sub-magistracy was moved to Kowloon, known as Kowloon City after a wall was built around it in 1847. A military garrison was transferred to Kowloon City from Tai Pang in north-east San On, at about the same time.\n\n73\n\nThere had been a few small military posts on the island of Hong Kong established long before 1841. These were manned by soldiers and ratings of the Tai Pang battalion which served as a kind of military marine constabulary, sailing war junks and manning small posts scattered across this part of the district. However, they may have been discontinued before 1841 as there does not seem to have been any civil or military establishment on Hong Kong island when it was taken over. Johnston wrote in 1843\n\n\"no public buildings were found on any part of the Island of Hong Kong when it was first occupied by the English, except a small tumble-down Chinese house at Chek-choo (now Stanley) and another at Shek-pie-wan (now Aberdeen) where the petty mandarins stopped occasionally\n\n76\n\n+74\n\nIt seems, then, that the magistrate sent collectors and runners to the island in connection with the land tax and that a clerk was sent in a boat to issue licences to the boat people. There are reports of the district magistrate's officers still attempting to collect land taxes at Stanley as late as 1844 and the boat people may have been subject to the annual charge of 400 cash said to be levied on the 150 boats privileged to fish in local waters. The San On magistrate was still trying to collect this in 1844. Such visitations were being reported by the inhabitants in the few years following the British occupation of Hong Kong, and the British official correspondence gives the impression that this had been a regular practice in past days. However, it was not to be tolerated after the cession, and after representations by the Hong Kong Government, the provincial treasurer of the Canton province indicated that any claims to the former land tax would now be relinquished.\n\n77\n\nOtherwise, the inhabitants were left to their own devices. In common with other communities of the region, large and small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210188, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "138\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n37\n\nCO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864.\n\n38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45.\n\n39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149.\n\n40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308.\n\n41\n\ne.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there.\n\n42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258.\n\n43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151.\n\n44\n\n**科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78.\n\n45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12.\n\n46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132.\n\n47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11).\n\n48\n\nUnpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17.\n\n49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983).\n\n50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3\n\n51\n\n52\n\n53\n\nFriend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith),\n\nIbid.\n\nSee J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10.\n\n54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill.\n\n55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above.\n\n56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843.\n\n57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210189, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "139\n\n58\n\nPetition dated 23rd day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang 24th year i.e. 8th June 1844.\n\n59\n\n60\n\nSee notes 19-20 above and relevant text.\n\nResponse or comment, presumably again by the District Magistrate, following the petition of 8th June 1844.\n\n61 Instruction dated sometime in Tao Kuang 24th year, but date and originator not clear to me.\n\n62\n\nCommunication dated 15th day of 11th month, Tao Kuang 24th Year, i.e. 24th December 1844 (from Series CO129/7/9807, p. 326). See also Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit., p. 57.\n\n64\n\nPublic Records Series CO129 and FO233.\n\nCopies of this deed, together with a few other papers from Chai Wan, belonging to Mr Law Wan-yeung(c) of Chai Wan, are available in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong.\n\n65 See note 26 for the Wong holdings. The Tangs leased out similar properties on Tsing Yi Island in the present New Territories, where they apparently did hold the sole rights to the sub-soil up to 1899.\n\n66\n\nSee the account given in J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op cit, p 32 and in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong op. cit., pp. 34-37 and 244-246.\n\n67 For accounts of these places see chapters 2 and 3 of J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region, op. cit.\n\n6. See J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., pp 68-9 and relevant notes on p. 254.\n\n69 See the information on settlement in north-west Kowloon and Tsuen Wan in J.W. Hayes The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, op. cit., chapters 5 and 7.\n\n70 Kuo Fei(部) Yueh Ta Chi 與天記三十三政事類渗防廣東沿潮閣\n\n71 This is perhaps misleading and more information is required. The list of places where land was claimed to be in the private ownership of the Tangs, with dates of purchases and names of sellers is given in a petition to the Hsin-an District Magistrate dated 18th day of the 10th moon in Tao Kuang 24th year, i.e. 25 November 1844. This shows that part of those Hong Kong lands registered in the Tung-kwun district yamen, presumably before 1573, had been purchased by the Tangs from another family in the Ch'ien-lung reign, and therefore cannot be used to show Tang ownership in or before the Ming dynasty, although they do suggest that the lands were cultivated and of value in the Ming. Nor do we know whether land registered in what later became Hsin-an had earlier been registered in the Tung-kwun yamen but with the relevant registers transferred to the new district yamen in 1573.\n\n72 For the dates of these temples, and especially for the items mentioned in the Table, see 陸鴻基, 吳偏霞霞, 合编, “香港伸銘彝術 op. cit. (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng, The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong), passim.\n\nI\n\n71 See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. chapter 7.\n\n74\n\n**\n\nA.R. Johnston “Note on the Island of Hong Kong” in London Geographical Journal, XIV, reprinted in the Hong Kong Almanack and Directory, 1846,\n\n75 Endacott, op cit., p. 59\n\n76 E.J. Eitel, Europe in China op. cit. p. 215.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211016, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "53\n\nhowever, it is interesting to note that Mok's universe of persons and occupations encompasses such categories, as well as the more pragmatically justified \"Broker\", \"Interpreter\", \"Agent\", \"Magistrate\", \"Justice of the Peace\", \"Compradore\", \"Stone-cutter\", \"Tin-smith\", \"Shroff\", \"Coolie Agent\", et al. It is also interesting to note that the dramatis personae of this section of the book include \"Schoolmaster\", \"Teacher\", \"Horse-boy\", \"Bad man\", \"Fool\", \"Watchman\", \"Porter\", \"Deaf\", \"Convent Sister\", \"Midwife\", various family relations, \"Tenant\", \"Kidnapper\", \"Geomancer\", \"District watchmen\", \"Juggler\", and \"Priest\".\n\nA similar ambivalence, between traditional and modern as well as between East and West, may be detected in other sections of the book. Under \"Stores and Business Shops\", for example, one finds a Bank, Foreign goods shop, Factory, Dispensary, Tobacco store, Hardware dealers, Ship Chandler's store, as well as a Compradore shop, Opium divan, Pawn-broker's shop, and Chinese Bank. Under \"Clothing and Wearing Apparel\", the reader could discover a way to pronounce \"Pyjama\", \"Silk stockings\", \"Breeches\", \"Chemise\", \"Mosquito net\", \"Knickerbockers\", \"Cholera belt\", \"Combination\", \"Pantaloons\", and \"Swallow Tail coat\", while the separate section on \"Chinese Clothes\" introduced him to the pronunciation of such objects as \"Wadded Coat\", \"Mandarin robe\", and \"Queue string\". The section on \"Crockery and Household Articles\" and the separate section on \"Household Articles\" provide an interesting glimpse of some of the personal belongings which Mok Man Cheung assumed would be characteristic of his readership. Such items include \"Wine bottle\", \"Scissors\", \"Tea cup\", \"Tea saucers\", various other pieces of crockery (including a \"Mustard cup\"), \"Nut cracker\", \"Cheese scoop\", \"Pickle fork\", \"Candle stand\", \"Soy stand\", \"Bamboo broom\", \"Feather brush\", \"Red tape\", \"Bay Rum\", \"Hair oil\", \"Powder horn\", \"Bullets\", \"Horse saddle\", \"Dagger\", \"Tooth brush\", \"Tooth pick\", \"Chessmen\", \"Thimble\", \"Gramophone\", \"Telephone\", \"Looking glass\", \"Lamp chimney\", \"Scissors\", and \"Horse whip\". Under \"Court Matters\" and \"Punishments\", the reader could also find traditional modern, Eastern and Western practices intermingled. For example, in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211220, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 281, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "256\n\nI had been interested in social history in England and started to look for books about the New Territories, in particular on the Southern District, but soon found there was practically nothing. After a while, I realized that papers had been written but they were usually in journals that were not easy to get hold of in Hong Kong; and there was not very much anyway in English. I suppose that spurred me on to do more than I might have done. I was rather cross about it, I recall, because I gathered that many of the local settlements had been there for many centuries. The Shek Pik village alone was established in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in the 15th century, and possibly before that.\n\nFaced with a challenge, I began to look around for materials that would tell me more about the district and its people. I soon noticed that the temples and some other buildings contained inscribed tablets, sometimes about the repair of the building and sometimes about law cases in the long ago when the District Magistrate, or the local people after asking the Magistrate, had stone tablets put there commemorating legal decisions. I collected copies of these inscriptions and other documentary material, like land deeds, family papers, account books and genealogies (a point to which I will return later in this talk). I interviewed persons in their homes, and they were nervous for reasons not connected with the impositions of research. Once some people were very fidgety, and I couldn't understand why. This was in a fishing village on the shores of Junk Bay. I looked down, and saw that I was sitting on what I hoped was an expended tin of explosives! They liked fishing with dynamite, and they still do. In fact, there was a letter from a lady from Tolo Harbour in the South China Morning Post only the other day asking 'how come they are still dynamiting?' This goes right back to 1904 and probably earlier, when the reports of the Alice Memorial Hospital contained reports about fishermen coming in with missing hands or legs.\n\nI persuaded other District Officers to get their staff to record these tablets, too, and built up a collection of inscriptions with other people's help of about 30 or 40 of them. However, I couldn't do anything with them. My Chinese was not good enough to handle that material. In any case, some of the tablets were defaced and some characters were hard to read or even missing. It required", "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": 211381, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "73\n\nAt first Maang's father refused to go, but Maang said to the pirate, \"My father is old and half mad, do not listen to him\", and then turning to his father, he said, “Do not weep for me. Go home and look after our family. My younger brother will serve you in my stead as a good son, and he will grow up and rear more sons for you.\" So the father was hustled back to the shore and the ship sailed away with Maang on board. Then Maang was filled with grief, and crying, “I will never serve these wicked men”, he jumped overboard and was drowned. His body was subsequently washed up at Taipo and buried near by.\n\nIn the fourteenth year of Maan Lik A.D. 1586 when the district Magistrate Yau T'ai Kin (游太卿) wrote the \"History of the Sun On District' he included the story of Maang in it. Twenty-seven years later the then district magistrate Wong Ting Yuet (黃廷越) petitioned the emperor for leave to put Maang's spirit table in the \"Heung Yin Ts'z” (鄉賢祠) Temple for worthy villagers, and later on the descendants of Maang's family Tang (鄧) collected enough money to build a special temple at the place where he was buried. This temple has since been destroyed but the grave still remains and a tablet about 5 feet high and 4 feet wide can be seen with the following inscription on it “[written in large characters] Grave of Tang Sz Maang, devoted son of Ming dynasty [then in smaller characters] repaired in the seventeenth year of Kin Lung (乾隆) 1752, the eighth month, lucky day\".\n\nIn the eleventh year of Hong Hei A.D. 1672, two descendants of the Tang family bought from the government enough land round the temple to make a market there. Shops were built and sub-let and the proceeds went to the upkeep of the temple. Thus old Taipo market was started. During the reign of Ka Hing of Ts'ing dynasty 1796-1820 a man named Man Yuen Chue (文元柱) of Man Uk village (文屋村) (See Note 4) wanted to build some shops for himself in old Taipo market. The Tang family objected and a lawsuit followed. The magistrate who judged the case finally gave leave to the Man family to build dwelling houses only, in the village, not shops. In the twelfth year of Tung Chi (同治) 1873 of Ts'ing dynasty a typhoon destroyed the whole of Man Uk village, and the Man family again wanted to build shops in old Taipo market. Another lawsuit resulted, as the Tang family again objected. On the fourteenth day of the fifth month of the eighteenth year of Kwong Sui (光緒) A.D. 1892 of Ts'ing dynasty it was finally settled that only the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211382, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "74\n\nTang family had the right of building shops there, and a stone with an inscription to that effect, was put up in the temple of T'in Hau Kung(g) which can still be seen in old Tai Po market.\n\nWhen the Man family lost their case a wealthy friend called a big meeting of the elders of the seven districts round about Taai Haang (林村), Fan Ling(K), Lam Ts'un(#1), Yip Woh(), Sheung Wan(), Ting Kok(TM) and Cheung Shue Tan(). At his suggestion, and financed by him, they built a new market where the present market now stands. It was called Taai Woh Shei (utmost friendship market)(★Fifi) and was officially opened on the twenty-third day of the 6th month of the twentieth year of Kwong Sui, A.D. 1894. All the trade at once went to the new market and the old one gradually fell into disuse and can now be seen as a very poor and derelict village.\n\nNote. 1. The district of Sun On was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing() A.D. 1572 of Ming dynasty. Fourteen years later the **History of Sun On District** was written by Yau Tai Kin the district magistrate. It was revised for the first time in the eighth year of Sung Ching(), but this edition was not published until eight years later when a third magistrate Chau Hei Yiu(2) added slightly to it. A second edition was published in the eleventh year of Hong Hei(E) A.D. 1672 of Ts'ing dynasty, a third appeared sixteen years later, and the present edition was published in A.D. 1819.\n\nNote. 2. The second character(W) is read yeuk in Cantonese but in the New Territories dialect it is read as Kwat.\n\n#\n\nNote. 3. Lam Fung is \"Limahong\" (= Lim a hong, not Li ma hong) whose name is already mentioned in the history of the Philippine Islands. It is also translated as in some Japanese books, and Limahong or Lin Ah Hong in some of the European books.\n\n=\n\nLam Fung\n\nLimahong was a native of Raoping district(ATM) In the 10th month of the 2nd year of Lung Hing(), A.D. 1568 of Ming dynasty, he took sixty-two battleships with 2,000 sea-soldiers, 1,500 women, and a large store of food and ammunition to attack the Philippines. He was defeated and his fleet dispersed by the soldiers of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "88\n\npanic; many of the people abandoned their homes without taking food or money, and with their wives and children were driven towards the boundary. Destitute, many of them died on the road, while a few managed to escape to Kwai Shin district and other places as far away as they could.\n\nA year later the boundary was moved a further 30 Chinese miles inland. The new boundary ended to the west at Taai Ch'ung Hau and Sha T'ong Fong and to the east at Taai Shaan Ha and Paak T'au Shaan, a flag being put up at each of these places. Almost immediately the district magistrate of Tung Kwun made a personal inspection of the places where the flags were erected and he reported that the people in Taai Chung Hau had not moved so the flag was taken from Sha Tong Fong and hoisted on top of Shek Shaan. Thus the six villages Ch'ung Hau, Lau Ka Haang, Chaak Mei, K'iu T'au and Tau Ch'ung all had to be moved, but at Kiu T'au a rope was put between it and the boundary and half only of the village was shifted. The Viceroy Lo Shung Tsun quite sympathized with the people, and joined with other high officials in sending a memorial to the throne, stating how miserable the people were, and begging that fewer villages should be caused to move.\n\nIn the 10th month of the same year (1663) two head boatmen, Chau Yuk and Lei Wing revolted against the Ts'ing Government in Kwangtung. These two men were the owners of fleets of several hundreds of junks that usually fished in the rivers of Poon Yue district. All the junks had long oars as well as three sails so they were very fast. In addition they stored a lot of arms on board. Both Lei and Chau had a military title of Yau Kik bestowed on them by the P'ing Naam Wong, as their sailors had proved themselves of great assistance in fighting sea-battles against the Ming soldiers. When, however, the order was issued preventing boats from putting out to sea the junks of Chau and Lei were detained in the rivers and their families forced to live in Canton city. Chau and Lei pretended to get leave to go home and bury the bones of their ancestors. Secretly they took their families away from Canton, and collecting all the boatmen they put out to sea. Then openly they attacked the Ts'ing forces, capturing many of their ships and burning the guard stations along the coast. They never", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211400, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "44\n\n+\n\nheard it they shouted for joy, and started off to their homes at once, full of hope. But when they found their houses half fallen down, some villages entirely hidden by the long grasses, and the paddy fields covered with weeds, they were much dishearted, realizing that they were not any better off when they were inside the boundary. San On district had in the meanwhile been re-established and Lei Hoh Shing (5) the district magistrate gives a pitiful picture of the condition of the land and people. ... I arrived as district magistrate and found many old and young lying in ditches, having died from hunger. The strong young men are gone to other places to earn their livings. When I look down from a height all is dense undergrowth and fallen walls and I cannot hear the voice of a single wild goose in the distance . . . . so I get oxen trained to plough..... and every so often I collect one or two lucky-to-be-alive people and try to encourage them to develop the barren land. We stand about and talk, but when the talking is not half finished each of us cannot help sobbing with grief. . . .\n\n++\n\nThus gradually the land was worked back to its old state, and to perpetuate the memory of the two men who had done so much to help the people, a hall was built in Shek Woo Market (M) by the Sheung Shui (E) villagers and their neighbours. The name of the hall was **Tuk Foo I Kung Ts'z** (A) \"The Viceroy and the Governor, these two Sirs Hall\". Over the front door three characters were written Po Tak Ts'z \"Return thanks for the Bounty Hall\". The hall was used for the village council for many years and every year on the birthdays of Governor Wong and Viceroy Chau a feast is held in the hall by the village elders. Another such hall is in Kam Tin (see H.K.N. VIII, page 207 and plate 20(2))* and has been used as a school for many years. It is situated on Taai Sha Chau (7) amidst beautiful scenery and near it is the Kam Shui (*) “ornamental stream\", with a big lawn like a tennis court in front of it. A large lichee orchard is on the left-hand side of the hill.\n\nSince the 10th year of Kin Lung (#), 1745, each Yuet Chau (ZE) year, which occurs every ten years [sic], the Kam Tin people have a matshed erected for Kin Tsiu ( ), the festival of the Dead. Two water colour paintings of the Governor and Viceroy are displayed\n\n* Vol. 14, of the Journal, plate 41.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211995, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 410, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "385\n\nOne of the books concerned was copied out in 1897, and the other somewhen during the Kuang Hsü reign (1874-1908), but the original date of composition is probably significantly earlier the copies were in collections of exemplars, and were, therefore, by definition taken from some earlier writer. The words Shing Ping, 昇平, “Rises in Peace”, in the last sentence may suggest the Shing Ping She, 約, the formal name of the Ta Kwu Ling Luk Yeuk: if so, the document presumably dates from about 1850, when that inter-village alliance was set up.\n\nAssociated with this document is another, an exemplar of a notification by a village that it had apprehended a robber and had punished him themselves on his confession, rather than send him to the Magistrate for interrogation. I attach a copy and translation of this document, also, since it would seem that the notification was posted on the village walls as a warning to other robbers that the Yeuk was in existence, and active.\n\nIt will be seen that the document constituting the Yeuk stresses very fully the mutual defence aspect of the Yeuk, but does not mention the communal religious aspect which was also of importance in the Yeuk as it developed. It will also be noted that, in both documents, it seems that, to the writer, “Yeuk”(約, \"Village Mutual Defence Alliance\"), and“Heung”(鄉, “Rural District”), had the same meaning, and that that meaning was more or less the same as 'Tsung” (衆, “Community'').\n\nThe first document is written in a very formal style, in phrases mostly of six or four characters, with phrases of five or seven or three characters only in the part of the document supposedly recording direct speech, or where particular emphasis was wanted. In the transcription, punctuation has been added.\n\n合約捉贼\n\n從來崇正黜邪, 朝廷既明賞罰, 除凶剪暴, 鄉黨亦設章程。蓋世道之盛也, 治休隆, 禮讓行乎草野。而世風之下也, 僥偶刻薄,盜竊遍及鄉里。賊風自熾, 擾攘何如, 鳳擊心傷, 何堪忍比。緬想自我^約, 安居百有餘年, 出入相友, 守望相助。王道平平,門絕盜路之跡, 民懷皐皐, 巷無犬吠之聲。何至於今時, 食可慨矣。嘆世風之不古。人心懷變, 竊盜多端。日則或登山牽牛, 夕則或刮穿牆。甚則將來明失夜却, 種種情弊, 難以勝箕。如非種之不鋤, 安知後專, 禍歸胡底乎。於是我約人等, 齊集會議,協同心, 立貼長紅, 並設練丁, 以禦盜寇, 以肅規條。倘或有", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212085, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "4 \n\nmodernity has been, on the whole, so successful.\n\n2. Traditional Self-Management in the New Territories\n\nThe large, indigenous, long-settled population of the New Territories possessed managerial talents in abundance, and, after 1898, the new British officials were willing to let their leaders continue to exercise them, though within a more effective framework of law and order than had been possible under Chinese rule. In the 1920s, an experienced District Officer South, Walter Schofield, saw this self-management in action among the larger communities in his District (it included Tsuen Wan) and commented on local leadership and the prevailing official attitude to it as follows:\n\n\"We never went closely into details of how or why so and so acquired the status and duties of village elder; we just accepted the natural leaders we found.\"7\n\nDecades later, in the mid 1950s, the same capabilities were still to be found among the people of Tsuen Wan. This was indeed very fortunate. Although the town's population had risen to around 80,000, it was yet without a local management office. The District Office Tsuen Wan was not established until 1959, and, in the interim, the local people had had to cope with many problems, initially at least by themselves and largely unaided. Austin Coates, the District Officer responsible for the area a few years earlier, has given a vivid account of the burden carried by the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee, the only local body that was able to fill the yawning gap between the Hong Kong government's responsibilities and its then capabilities:\n\n\"As can be seen, their [Rural Committee's] duties are varied and, if done properly, heavy. In Tsuen Wan, these duties have become overwhelming, and the same may happen elsewhere. The Chairman of Tsuen Wan Rural Committee is in effect a sort of magistrate and mayor rolled into one. All day long he has a stream of problems to attend to. He is obliged to work a full day from nine to five and maintain his own clerical staff in addition to what is paid for by the Committee. ... There is no time whatever for the running of his own business, so great are the demands made on his public services.\"8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212159, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "78\n\nicon form on minor altars in Taiwan. These icons are understandable as portraits of Sun the 'Father of the Nation' appear with those of Chiang Kai-shek in offices, schools, barracks etc. where they were bowed to each morning as a sign of respect. Among the less literate and more superstitious it is not difficult to see how this has led to such icons appearing on altars with incense burnt before them.\n\nIn the mid-1960s, the Kuomintang organised a political demonstration in Cambodia on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the middle of the month during which Hungry Spirits return to the human world for thirty days. During the demonstration public sacrifices to the spirits of the victims of the communists in China were performed. There was also talk of deification of one or two but this came to nothing.\n\nIt has not been unknown for outstanding living persons to have a sanctuary built in their honour. The magistrate of Ch'ing-ho district in Hopei was such a man. He brought about a substantial reduction in taxes and other government levies and thus lightened the financial burden on a hard pressed people. In 1886, two years after he had been transferred to administer another district, the grateful populace of Ch'ing-ho built a shrine in his honour.\n\nIn Singapore in 1970 a new cult was founded near Woodlands on the northern tip of the island when the deity, Wu T'ien Chu, appeared to a Singapore Fukienese man in a dream. The deity explained to the Fukienese that he, Wu T'ien-chu [The Military Master of Heaven], was a mighty deity who had chosen the Fukienese man to become the 'Master Warrior' of his cult. He required a new bungalow to be converted into accommodation for the founder with the lounge becoming the altar hall. He told the Fukienese man that he would protect his devotees, cure their illnesses and bring them good fortune. A statue of the deity was carved in the likeness of the spirit as he appeared in the founder's dream and placed on the altar. The founder, the Fukienese man, explained that with his wide knowledge of all religions he encourages devotees from every nation and creed to worship in his temple. He explained that the world's most powerful deity is the Jade Emperor, with Sakyamuni, The Buddha, as his deputy. Next in seniority is Kuan Yin followed by Wu T'ien-chu who has a great many assistants and warriors under his charge, none of whom is ever portrayed in image form. He continued that the four pillars of the cult are \"the four gods (shen) of other religions, Buddha, Christ, the Pope and Mohammed”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212170, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "89\n\nCHINA ON THE BRINK OF WAR*\n\nNanking 1937\n\nP. H. MUNRO-FAURE\n\nIn 1937 my business took me to Nanking, to which the government of General Chiang Kai Shek had some time previously removed the capital. His government was now known as the \"Central\" government, not so much to distinguish it from other governments which might pretend to a share of control at the fringes, but rather to identify it with all China; for the character \"chung\", which in the past had been translated \"middle\", as in \"Middle Kingdom\", was used by the Chinese to represent their country. Thus historically the translation \"China\" government would have been more accurate than \"Central\" government.\n\nThis government in the ten short years from 1927 had achieved the most astonishing improvements. It had certainly not attained standards of nation-wide control, justice, individual freedom, fair taxation, or even public works, of the excellence taken for granted in the more advanced democracies of the west, but it had given ample proof of a capacity for progress.\n\nOne weakness in the Chinese administrative system had been the failure to separate the judicature from the executive. The magistrate who tried a case also prosecuted, and then carried out the sentence. The system, of course, gave rise to many abuses. But now a beginning was made with the establishment of independent courts, known as \"Modern\" courts, whose officials had purely judicial functions. These courts were still few in number, the judges were inexperienced, and because they were very poorly paid they were open to corruption; but it was a sound beginning.\n\nSimilarly the lack of a stable civil service had meant that whenever an official was changed, whether, for instance, the magistrate of a country district, or the Commissioner in charge of the former Concession at Kiu Kiang, or the Minister for War, the new man\n\n* This is the second extract of Col. P.H. Munro-Faure's Memoirs. See the Editor's Note at p 61, Vol. 29. [Editor]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212209, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "128\n\nis an immense shortage of persons qualified to fill the professions; doctors, engineers, chemists, and even lawyers. In the interests of the future all students are automatically exempt from conscription; so are all those of whatever station in life who have escaped from Japanese occupied territory. There would be no inducement to escape otherwise. Under the circumstances we can appreciate the necessity for these exemptions. When recruits are required for the army, a quota is allocated to each district: the magistrate in turn calls for a levy from each village to fill his quota. Those with money or influence can buy off their sons; it is the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden who are taken. They are roped together, with a loop round the left forearm, so that they can still use the bamboo pole to carry a load, and marched off to the training centre. There many die, and others desert. Indeed, there is now a class of professional deserter. If recruiting is going on in a district, these men will turn up and offer to serve in the place of anyone who has the price. They collect their money, march off with the conscripts, and desert at the first opportunity, to repeat the performance elsewhere. There are means in China of tracing missing men back to their families, but amidst the confusion caused by years of war it is easy for the vagabond to give a false name and address.\n\nThere are so many millions of displaced, homeless, nameless people in China now; we should not be too critical of these methods. The wonder is that the Chinese government has been able to carry on at all under such immense difficulties. Instead of an insistence on saving face, and thus misleading world opinion, had there been a reasonable relaxation of the iron censorship in order that the world could learn of the prodigious efforts the Chinese have made, there would, I think, be a better understanding of, and greater sympathy for, China's problems.\n\nThe afternoon of the third day we rolled over the iron bridge that spans the North river, a tributary of the West river, into bomb-shattered Kukong. Here I waited for the train and was fortunate to find a carriage, which had been reserved for a party of British sailors from the crews of the gunboats at Hankow; they were being evacuated to Hongkong, and kindly made room for me in their compartment. The track near Canton had been broken during a recent raid. We had to alight there and make our way to the city as best we could; riding through in a rickshaw I had leisure to observe the extent of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212341, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 283, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "260\n\nHappily, however, when you, our Provincial Governor, entered Kwangtung, your policy was to develop roads. We the gentry and others read your brilliant proclamation. We took the opportunity to put proposals to So (**), the previous Head of the Sub-District, asking him to forward them to the County Magistrate for consideration. The matter for consideration was to build a bridge at Kim Hau. We did this because it would lead to happiness and security. And yet, unexpectedly, that clan of local bullies, because the bridge construction would damage their economic interests, unreasonably obstructed and interfered with the work, using continuous blackmail.\n\nWe the gentry and others say that this river is public land, and a bridge would be a public bridge. We should pay no attention to those who obstruct it. They know their crafty plans will fail.\n\nThey have responded by absurdly pointing to somewhere downstream, about one li distant, a place called Tsuk Pok Ha (T), as a substitute. We the gentry and others are peace-loving people and wish to bring this affair to an end. We propose that the local military and police officials, with the gentry and the people, bringing an engineer with them, come and inspect the site. They will find that there is no road to be used on either bank at Tsuk Pok Ha, the first problem. The site is low-lying and subject to frequent flooding when the river rises: it is inadvisable to have a bridge there, the second problem. The water there is deep and wide, the work would be massive, the third problem. The two banks there are overgrown with shrubs and thorny plants which would have to be cleared at huge expense to build a road, the fourth problem. Further, to divert the existing road about one li will introduce a large bend into it. By our estimation, taking both banks into consideration, the road would have to be lengthened by three li of useless detour, the fifth problem. Roads must be constructed on direct lines before they are useful to foot passengers everyone says that.\n\nNow the bulk of the people at Upper Wong Pui Ling.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212349, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 291, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "In the Ming, it may have been the Wongs of Fuk Tin who dominated the area, with their market at Lung Tsun Hui. It was at Chek Mei (赤尾, Chimei) within this village cluster that the sub-Magistracy for the area was established in 1370. By the nineteenth century, however, the dominant position in the district had been secured by the Cheungs. Sham Chun was essentially their market, built on their land, in that part of the district most closely controlled by them. The market stood, as a result, at an economically less than ideal site. It was built away from the Sham Chun River and the landing place, about half a mile down the Ching Shui River, at a point navigable even by the smallest skiffs only at the highest tides. Goods exported from the market had to be carried by coolies the half mile to the landing place at the junction of the rivers before being loaded onto the boats. Politically, however, the site was ideal for the Cheungs. The landing place, however, was within the area of dominance of the Yuens. The landing place was built on their land, in the centre of their village area.\n\nDistrict politics throughout most of the nineteenth century centred on attempts by the Cheungs to bring the landing place within their area of control, and by the Yuens to preserve their independence. The other clans of the district tended to be brought into the conflict as allies of one side or the other. The document translated below suggests that conflicts over control of the landing place broke out in 1836, 1856, and 1875.\n\nControl of the landing place brought with it, effectively, the right to collect the tolls charged for the movement of people and goods there. There were two theories on the collection of toll. The one was that toll was the right of the people who owned the land behind the landing site: they had had to give up land to build a road to service the landing stage, and the toll was the compensatory payment for the loss of income from the land thus rendered useless for agriculture. The other was that the landing place was outside the area privately owned: it lay on the riverbank muds, and was \"Government Waste\". Toll was the right of the Government to levy or grant away, and the adjacent owners of agricultural land had no rights over it. Travellers had the right to pass freely along the field-bunds as elsewhere. The Yuens, as the owners of the adjacent land, naturally tended to consider the first view was the correct one: the District Magistrate, and usually the Cheungs, tended to believe the second.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212354, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 296, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "whom the whole district trembles. He is certainly a somewhat uneducated man, not only without fine manners, but a man who actually insults with the coarsest expressions when he sits to do justice. Yet it was nonetheless he alone who was ready for these obstinate clans, who broke their year-long overweening clannishness, and who brought the issue to a full and satisfactory solution. May it remain a successful conclusion to this affair in Sham Chun!\n\nOn his arrival he first of all required that all the weapons and armour of the allied clans be handed over to him. We heard that the Cheung clan had also made a delivery of their weapons, so that they could make an immediate appearance before Tin On-pong's seat of justice. Several houses of the Tsoi clan were burnt as a punishment. The Yuen clan were threatened in a similar way. The latter clan had among its members three graduates of the second rank (counting up from the bottom), and these were called before the Magistrate to defend their clan's claims.\n\nThis was so far successful that when the final decision was read out, it was that the \"Transit Toll\" should be divided, with four parts going to the Yuen clan, and six parts to the Sham Chun she hok.” (The she hok is a public building where, when disputes or other matters arise, the elders of the clans, the graduates, and the title-holders of the surrounding district meet together to take council on them.) However, since the Cheung clan is closest to the she hok it is likely that it will get the major share of the she hok's six parts. Furthermore, to conclude peace between the parties, it was decreed that the Yuen clan should sell the site of the landing place, and the rights over it, to the Cheung clan. This decision clearly favours the Cheung clan, since the people of the Yuen clan will lose all their rights to the matter under dispute. The Cheung clan will never again allow them to intrude into what is now to be the Cheungs' portion, whether the time be short or long.\n\nFinally, the Yuen clan were required to surrender one\n\nPage 273", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212356, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 298, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "275\n\nfew fishermens' houses, and a newly-built hotel.\n\nThis dispute in 1875 did not end the matter. It broke out again between 1902 and 1905. The documents which discuss this last conflict make it clear that the decisions of Tin On-pong in 1875 had not been fully implemented. In 1902, all the land behind the landing stage, which Tin On-pong had ordered to be sold by the Yuens to the Cheungs, was still in the hands of the Yuens. The right to collect toll, however, was wholly in the hands of the Tung Ping Kuk, and the Yuens were not collecting their four-tenths. Presumably the Yuens had passed this right to the Kuk, so long as their land-owning rights were left untouched. The Cheungs seem to have been left with nothing, other than what they could get by their dominance of the Tung Ping Kuk of the “Transit Toll\" income.\n\nBetween 1875 and 1902 conditions on the Sham Chun River had changed. Firstly, from the mid-1890s steam launches had begun to trade with Sham Chun. These vessels were less dependent on the tide than were the junks, since they were more manoeuvrable, so that they could turn within the river. They were, therefore, less dependent on the landing place behind the Ching Shui River island. They had come to dominate the local trade by 1902: by 1904 the Wa Lu company had achieved a virtual monopoly in the steam launch business here.\n\nIn addition, in 1898 the New Territories lease had included within the territory of Hong Kong all the waters of the Sham Chun River up to the high water mark on the north bank.\n\nThe Yuens saw in these circumstances the opportunity to regain their position. They sought a lease from the Hong Kong Government of a 2,000-foot-long strip of the main river bed on which to erect a wooden wharf. This would connect with their agricultural land by a wooden bridge which would pass over the wastes of the river banks, thereby side-stepping any claims to ownership of the tolls put forward by the District Magistrate on the grounds of imperial ownership of the wastes. The wharf so built would have blocked the exit from the channel behind the island at the mouth of the Ching Shui River. The Yuens produced this plan in conjunction with the Wa Lu steam-launch company. The plan would have ended at one stroke the use of the old landing place, and would have rendered all sailing junks using", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212357, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 299, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "276\n\nthe river more or less helpless unless a steam launch either towed them out, or at least assisted in turning them round. The wharf proposed was to be built very close to the Imperial Maritime Customs station: the Customs supported the proposal since it would make their anti-smuggling work in the area far easier.\n\n―\n\nA lease (for a smaller area of 850 feet not so obviously blocking the channel) was granted by the Hong Kong Government. The Tung Ping Kuk, however, (represented by two Cheungs and a Wong; by this date the Wongs were normally allies of the Cheungs, being united by their mutual antagonism to the Tsois whose land lay between them) complained to the San On Magistrate, who promptly had the Yuen elders imprisoned for the \"fraudulent attempt to divert the toll from the Kuk to themselves\". The District Magistrate also made a strong statement of the rights to take toll being a Government right, founded on Government ownership of the wastes of the river bank. The Kuk sent young men to tear the new wharf down. The affair then petered out - the Magistrate was willing to take a far more active role in 1903-1905 than in 1875 or earlier, and the opening of the railway a couple of years later made all discussions of rights to toll somewhat academic, since trade now began to flow in different directions altogether.\n\nThese documents show three points of interest: the ineffectiveness of the Magistrate in settling affairs of this sort in the mid/late-nineteenth century; the critical importance of control of markets, roads, ferries, bridges and other nodal points of the traffic system in local politics; and the blood-thirsty and implacable nature which inter-village disputes could assume.\n\nThe disputes over the ownership of the landing place at Sham Chun lasted some seventy years, from the 1830s to 1905. Effective action by the District Magistrate seems to have been limited to the period 1903-1905: the actions of the Magistrate in 1875 were ineffective in the extreme, and there seems to have been no action at all in earlier disputes. In 1875, it was only when the dispute had escalated to such a state that the army was forced to intervene that any effective Government action was seen but it came very late. In other inter-village disputes in the area in this period the same ineffective inaction by the District Magistrate can be seen. There seems to have been no action taken by the District Magistrate in the bloody fighting (about 1850-1860) between Wong Pui Ling and Ta...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212358, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 300, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "Kwu Ling, for instance,\" and official action is not remembered in the fighting between Tsuen Wan and Shing Mun, or in that between Tai Wai and Cheung Sha Wan, at about the same dates. Between 1850 and 1880 it would seem that the policy of the District Magistrate was to turn a blind eye to inter-village disputes unless this was impossible.\n\nKrone, in his 1858 \"Notice of the Sanon District\"2 speaks at some length on inter-village warfare in the area and the ineffectiveness of the District Magistrate in responding to it. The District was \"troubled and insecure... internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages, and these wars ... are often long-continued and sanguinary. The people are of a quarrelsome nature, and fond of rapine [and, in the sub-mandarin's view,] depraved and so drowned in all manner of wickedness as to have lost their human nature. ... The Mandarins have very little power.\n\nThe people do not allow the Mandarins to interfere with their own local government. Law suits, differences and offences are seldom brought before the Mandarins. The disputes between villages and clans are settled by the gentry. If they cannot come to an agreement, all connection is broken off, and without any declaration of hostilities, the disputants commence a predatory war on each other; in these quarrels, many a bloody battle is fought, hundreds of men perish, and whole villages are destroyed. Men of neutral villages or clans are generally well distinguished, and their rights respected.... etc'. Krone notes particularly a long-fought inter-village war at Sha Tsing (7 JP, Shajing). Here, the District Magistrate eventually came with 1,000 soldiers to make peace (this was probably in 1852 or 1853), and was not only ignored, but threatened by both combatants; intervention by neutral clans allowed the Magistrate to retreat with his \"face\" intact, but his intervention had no effect on the course of the dispute.\n\nThe Basel Missionaries also had a low opinion of the District Magistrate in this period. One said, in 1861, “The San On Magistrate is a miserable, dirty fraud and hypocrite. He demands outward respect, but does no justice. Hence differences, by being denied a hearing, grow to quarrels, then to blows, then to war, while he sits at home and does nothing”.13\n\nThis ineffectiveness may not have been the normal situation of the district. The military posts which Krone found empty and ruinous\n\nPage 300\n\nPage 301", "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": 213107, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "157\n\nThe villagers in the central part of the northern New Territories, accustomed to marketing at Sham Chun, were able to make do after 1899. They had the old satellite market of Shek Wu Hui (Sheung Shui) within British territory; as soon as the new frontier came into effect, Sheung Shui saw its business boom - it quickly replaced Sham Chun as the primary market for this area. At Sha Tau Kok the population within British territory accustomed to shop at Sha Tau Kok had no alternative but to continue to do so. Problems abounded. Village memories of the Customs are uniformly bad.\n\nThe Customs officials caused the goods of the merchants to be seized unless bribes were paid. They demanded a payment of 18 bushels of rice from each merchant. The villagers from the New Territories would come to the market to have their cloth dyed. Even if the amount of cloth was very small, 25 or £10 would be charged as a licence fee - if it was not paid, the goods would be seized and the villagers penalized. As for the merchants, if they sold a pig, or if a seed-pig was bought for rearing in the villages, when they went to the Customs they would have to pay $40 per tan as registration fee for the pig. At festivals, the village ladies would come to the market to buy oil or local sugar in small quantities. They would have to pay 50 or 60, or even 120 or 130 cash (#5 - #13) as fee before they could get an export licence. For cattle, for every cow crossing the frontier - in either direction for farm work, a Certificate had to be issued, at $20 Haikwan.\n\nAnd, if the Certificate was lost, there was heavy punishment, and a replacement had to be taken out, to avoid confiscation of the cow. Further, at the harvest, if the crop was carried across the frontier, you had to pay what was demanded - it is said that a percentage of the crop was taken. The Customs swallowed money whatever purchases were made. These sorts of evil practices caused the villagers to hate the Customs to the very pit of their stomachs.\n\n12\n\nIt is unlikely that the Customs were as corrupt as they are often portrayed by the villagers. The payments complained of were all reasonable, if it was accepted that the transactions were \"imports\" or \"exports\". The villagers could never see that their day-to-day marketing should be so regarded - they were only doing what their ancestors had always done.\n\nThe elders of the Shap Yeuk petitioned the District Magistrate on 19 April 1899, begging that the lease of the New Territories be not proceeded with. Their concern was, essentially, that if it did proceed, then they would be faced with “excessive taxation\", especially Harbour Dues and Marine Fees, given that the waters off Sha Tau Kok would become Hong...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "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": 213449, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "12\n\nOrdinances of Hong Kong is the governing law unless its application would be unjust or oppressive when Chinese customary law may be let in. It is fortunate, therefore that there is available a most comprehensive and authoritative memorandum describing the land tenure found in the New Territories when the area was taken over from the Chinese authorities in 1899. I refer to the \"Memorandum of Land” which forms an appendix to the Report of Mr. J. H. Stewart Lockhart, Colonial Secretary and Registrar General of Hong Kong, dated 7th February 1900.\n\nChinese law regarding land is there stated to be as follows:-\n\n“Land according to Chinese tenure is held as freehold by grant from the Crown. The land comprised in the original grant can be sold by the proprietors in sub-divisions and is most usually sold in perpetuity or for 1,000 years. The proprietors record their names in the district registry as responsible for the tax, and their possession is legally secure so long as that is paid. Deeds of absolute sale have been brought in from the New Territory for registration which were made in the reign of the Emperor KA TSING and of subsequent Emperors of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1519 to 1626) and which have been recognised by the present dynasty. Strictly, a grant issued by the present dynasty should be attached to all grants made by the previous dynasty. The present owners under such grants are all the existing male descendants of the original grantee and in one case the proprietors now number over 700.\n\nAll land under cultivation is supposed to pay a land tax and... must be registered or is liable to confiscation. On registration stamped title deeds are issued by the District Magistrate.\n\nOfficially registered title deeds are called \"red deeds” (Hung K’ai) because they are stamped with the official stamp in red.\n\nPrivate deeds of sale are called “white deeds\" (Pak K’ai) because they are simply written on plain paper and do not bear the official red stamp; but the purchaser has the right to register his purchase and obtain a red deed.\n\nThere are also mortgages, operating as deeds of sale, redeemable\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214379, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "203\n\n'it is not paid by the European community. The chief object of the Chinese in paying these Watchmen is to drive away thieves, the cardinal evil of a Shop-keeping population.' The success of the Watchmen was 'not only in arresting actual offenders, but also in keeping away those who live by pilfering.'\n\nDue to an administrative oversight 'no records were kept of the doings of the Watchmen until 27th August 1867. Thereafter data was collected and in the following six months the Watchmen were involved in the prosecution of fifty-three cases some of which were serious. By the end of 1868 another ninety-eight cases had been prosecuted due to the actions of the Watchmen and these resulted in the conviction of 117 defendants. Although the number of cases dropped to forty-one in 1869, data collected for the following two years showed that there were eighty-one and seventy-nine cases in 1870 and 1871 respectively. These returns compare favourably with similar data from the following century. As an example, in 1914 there were 109 convictions when the strength of District Watchmen had risen to one hundred.\n\nThe difference of opinion which had existed in Government circles in 1866 when the Watchmen scheme was introduced continued as the Watchmen went about their business. Cecil Smith was unstinting in his praise but, since he had been responsible for introducing the scheme, he could hardly be regarded as an impartial witness. Others, however, like the Police Magistrate Mr J. Russell and the Coroner Mr F. Stewart commended the Watchmen for their actions. At the other end of the spectrum were political heavyweights such as the perennial Mr Charles May and Chief Justice Smale. May had served as Captain Superintendent of Police between 1845 and 1862 before being appointed Police Magistrate and his low opinion of Chinese constables, whom he considered to be 'utterly untrustworthy,' was well known. His opinion of the Watchmen was similar and, according to Smith in December 1871, May showed 'an antipathy to the Corps which has had a very unfortunate effect.' This unfortunate effect manifested itself in a decline in the Watchmen's activity and energy with a corresponding decrease in the number of arrests. Smith maintained that the Chief Justice, who should have known better because of his legal background, objected not so much to the individual watchmen who appeared before him in Court, as to the whole system which apparently he did not know was established by law.\"9", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214401, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 259, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "225\n\npositing night-soil, house-slops, dry rubbish, building debris, or other refuse matters on any of the aforesaid places, and as soon after as possible the watchman who has apprehended such offender shall report the circumstance to the Nuisance Inspector of the district, who shall conjointly with the said watchman charge the offender before a Police Magistrate.\n\n§8.\n\nThe Watchmen shall report to the Inspectors of Nuisances the existence of any broken, choked, or defective house drains or downspouts, and any nuisances arising therefrom, or from any other cause which may come under their observation.\n\n§9. The Watchmen shall report to the Inspector of Nuisances any streets in their beats which shall have remained unswept over one day by the Government Scavenging Contractor.\n\n§10. The Watchmen must at all times implicitly obey the instructions of the Head Watchmen, and both Watchmen and Head Watchmen must understand that their sanitary duties are of equal importance with their police duties, and that they must at all times use their best endeavours to prevent, detect and abate nuisances arising from the dirty habits of the people, and if the Government does not receive from them that hearty co-operation and assistance in the detection of nuisances which it has the right to expect, such of them as may be found neglectful of their duties or otherwise inefficient shall be reported to the Registrar General for dismissal.\n\n§11. The Head Watchmen shall once a day at a fixed hour meet the Inspector of Nuisances of their Districts at the office of the Sanitary Inspector, and there make their reports, and receive such instructions as the Inspector of Nuisances may have to communicate to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214649, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "28\n\nof Cheung Yuk-tong (E) arrived (presumably this relieving force came from the garrison at the County City of Nam Tau), and retook the Walled City after a day of very heavy fighting, in which two of the Government soldiers died, and \"over 30\" bandits. Presumably, the successful defence of Nga Tsin Wai took place during this same seven-day period, in September - October 1854.\n\nThere were probably other occasions when bandits were forced away. For instance, the villagers of the Siu Lek Yuen inter-village alliance in Sha Tin have a story of a heroic fight by their combined manpower against a gang of bandits in the 1860s or 1870s. The Siu Lek Yuen villagers, having killed a number of the bandits, forced the rest to flee over the mountains to Nga Tsin Wai, where the Siu Lek Yuen villagers left them to the further attentions of the men of the League of Seven27.\n\nThe Nga Tsin Wai villagers also remember an attempt by the Tang clan (probably of Kam Tin) to impose Tang clan political control on this area. They relate that the elders of the League of Seven met the Tangs, and showed them the bags in which the silver which had been gathered by the League as a defence fund was kept, and the guns and gunpowder at their gate. \"Every tsin of silver, and every grain of gunpowder will be spent to fight you off\", the elders said, and the Tangs eventually left, with their tails between their legs2.\n\nThe last time the Nga Tsin Wai villagers closed and barred their gates against attack was in 1967, during the Riots. When the Riots broke out in San Po Kong, the villagers closed their gate, and put themselves into a position of defence, although their valour was not then put to the test.\n\nNga Tsin Wai's position at the head of the League of Seven put it into a very important position in the traditional politics of the Kowloon area. The Chief Elder of the League of Seven - usually the Chief Elder of Nga Tsin Wai - was one of the two or three most important figures in the district. The Sub-Magistrate would certainly have included him whenever he needed to consult the gentry of the district. As noted further below, Nga Tsin Wai village trusts were the subsoil land-owners of a good deal of the land in the area, especially in the Market, and at Sha Po, thus reinforcing their predominant local political position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215974, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 273, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "207\n\nCh'ea was also in the \"habit of going about with a board on his back,\" announcing by this means certain \"striking sentences of the New Testament\" written in large Chinese characters. One can imagine that if these \"striking sentences\" were considered offensive by neighbours and acquaintances, a complaint would also travel back quickly to the civil leadership.\n\nLegge himself recorded numbers of comments about Ch'ëa's evangelistic zeal and preaching as they travelled together in the Poklo district in May, 1861. Since several weeks were spent together on boats travelling up and down the East River, there was much time to reflect on their shared missionary project, pray over problems, and work together during various periods of literature distribution and preaching. Overall, Legge was impressed with Ch'ea's consistency in character and genuine interest in others. In addition, Ch'ëa acted as their interpreter before the Poklo magistrate, Wang Shouren, causing \"astonishment and exaltation among the people,\" because the \"gauntlet of scorn\" he had often passed through in other settings was now surprisingly forgotten, even to the point that he was given a position of relative honour.67\n\n66\n\nOften Ch'ea and Leung Man-shing (Liáng Wenchéng), one of the Chinese colporteur-evangelists, went into a new town first to present the cards and map-sized travel documents of the foreign missionaries to the local mandarin, facing any threats that might come their way for associating with British citizens. This was a very sensitive problem because, although new treaty provisions promised free and safe travel for all foreigners entering China, there were still at this time British and French troops bivouacked in the city of Canton. In fact, they had remained in Canton for more than three years, maintaining their military posts since taking the city after a major offensive move in 1857. In addition, the British attack on the emperor's Summer Palace in Beijing during the summer of 1860 only heightened fears and resentment, even though it squashed Qing opposition and brought about their compliance at the treaty table. Undoubtedly all of this was common knowledge among the Cantonese citizens, a warrant for making any attacks on foreigners or their associates in spite of the treaty conditions.68 Besides, these signs of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215980, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 279, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "213\n\n81\n\nperson named \"Soo Hoy-ü.\" Once again Legge insisted that Soo be dealt with \"in some way which should mark their sense of the enormity of his conduct.\" Both conditions were acknowledged and accepted by all of the officials Legge spoke to. Things went so smoothly, both in ritual form and placid acceptance of what must have been very difficult conditions for the officials, that Legge was both elated and disgusted. In his own mind at the time, the officials' display of timely submissiveness under pressure appeared only little more than blatant bathos.\" Cohen rightly points out how this kind of situation in the decade of the 1860s placed any Qing official between the Scylla of imperial duties to follow the treaty stipulations and the Charybdis of the anti-foreignism of local gentry who carried much popular support.82 Having bent over backwards for months previous to Legge's arrival, trying to use more humane means to obtain compliance from the literatus Soo and his supporters, the district magistrate had to battle at cross purposes with the popular demonology supporting anti-foreignism and the additional shame of recent military defeats. To act too abruptly or harshly would earn the magistrate the epithet of being a “friend of foreigners,” and so even risk his imperial role as an appointed civil authority. On the other hand, any blatant refusal to respond to the treaty conditions would merit imperial disfavour and severe reprimand, possibly including imprisonment. The double bind working on officials in this Guangdong setting could not have been any stronger.\n\n83\n\nEarly in the morning after the handover ceremonies Legge was woken by the River Superintendent (\"Hoppo\") and urged him to get an early start in his boat headed toward Canton. After the ceremonies the day before Legge had left the keys of the house in Ch'ea's hands, nominating the former keeper of the temple of Master Kong now the keeper of the new chapel dedicated to shangdi. When Legge mentioned to the Hoppo that he wanted to leave parting words with Ch'ea, the Hoppo apparently promised to pass on any message, and so Legge compliantly entered the waiting boat and headed off before sunrise.\n\nWhat motivated the Hoppo to treat Legge in this manner is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215981, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 280, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "214\n\nnot fully known. There was apparently some disturbing news passed along unseen lines of communication that a large group of unruly men, nearly 5,000 in all, had been rounded up in Wye-chow and urged on by Soo and another gentry collaborator, Wong Chik-wai, to sneak into Poklo and capture the district magistrate, Legge, and Ch'êa. Their intentions were apparently malevolent, fully inclined toward \"punishing\" all three if they were found. In fact, their progress toward Poklo was slower than the Hoppo anticipated. On October 10th, the day Legge left to return to Canton and then on to his young family in Hong Kong, the vigilantes had already \"made prisoners\" of the Prefect of Wye-chow and the District Magistrate of Kwye-sheen, capturing them as they returned from the previous day's festivities in Poklo.\n\n1584\n\nCh'êa himself, Legge reflected, \"was full of joy, as I was, and unsuspicious of danger.\" Apparently sometime during the evening of the 12th or 13th, a group of men surrounded the London Mission's house in Poklo and provoked Ch'êa to come to the door by having a small child knock on it. Having tricked him by this means, they grabbed him, beating him till they could control him by other means. Soon afterwards this kind of aggressive physical persecution spread to all the places where residents had become Christians, neighbours saving themselves by becoming informants, causing a desperate exodus from many places. News that finally did filter down to Hong Kong came from the mouths of a handful of refugees who managed to escape from the area.\n\nLegge's daughter, Helen Edith Legge, put together a series of letters including translations of notes and verbal news received by Chalmers in Canton as well as passages from letters of her father to reconstruct the final days of Ch'êa's persecution. Even though one local Christian named Wong Shan Yen, possibly a wealthy farmer Ch'êa had often met over the years, offered a large ransom to have Ch'êa released, the vigilantes had other purposes in mind.85 First tortured with fire,86 and then later moved to another hamlet where he was hung overnight to a beam by his thumbs and big toes, reawakened into the consciousness of his pain by water dashed in the face, Ch'êa's enemies were merciless. Only if he promised to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]