[ { "id": 204473, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "94\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nland and the clan. The popular religion too, was but an ephemeral thing, something to meet the needs of the moment; something too that was not so respectable as the austere worship which fell within the Confucian canon. In short, the impression left by the brief excursion into the past which forms the basis of this article has left me with the firm impression that Confucianism was the dominant influence over people and government in the New Territory in 1898. I hasten to point out that in itself this is not in any way surprising: but in view of the remoteness of the area and its late settlement by Chinese of different race with their undoubted absorption of earlier inhabitants this impression of its pervasiveness and brooding presence everywhere in the Territory at this time is probably worth restating.\n\nNOTES\n\nAs far as possible the notes are designed to supplement the text and not to be a necessary part of it. I have used local source material which has come to my notice during a tour of duty as District Officer South (1957-60) and Islands (1961-62) when I have been in a favourable position to hear of, find and utilise whatever happened to come my way, besides the authorities cited in these notes. I have scarcely used the District History, the San On Yuen Chi (⛧人元誌, last edition 1820, but reprinted by Kwong Tung Printers, Canton, in 1933) nor Mr. Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its external communications before 1842 which uses the District History extensively. (It is good to know that a translation of the latter is in the Hong Kong University Press and will appear shortly, so making available in English part of the District History). I ought also to say here that this is my first excursion in the field of Oriental Studies, with all that this implies. I wish to thank Mr. Lo Chi Chung of the District Office for his valuable help. A Cantonese form of romanization has been used throughout.\n\n1 James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937) became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878. He was appointed Colonial Secretary in 1895, the post he held at the time of his Report (8th October 1898) for which he received the thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was created C.M.G. in 1898 and K.C.M.G. in 1908. In 1902 he became first Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei, a territory of 285 square miles on the coast of Shantung with an estimated 330 villages and a population of 124,000 which had been leased to Britain in 1898. He remained in this quiet backwater for the next twenty years. Lockhart was a sinologue of some note in his day and wrote a Manual of Chinese Quotations (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903), The Currency of the Far East, 3 vols (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1895, 1898) and a monograph, The Stewart Lockhart collection of Chinese copper coins, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1915).\n\nPage 105\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204476, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES \n\n97\n\nJ, FUNG Yiu Tsan, residing at No. 69 in this village, have a farm hut and a piece of waste threshing ground at Lot Nos. 94 and 95, which I hereby sell to a junior clansman FUNG Tak Yau, because I am old, have no son to support me and cannot make a living or obtain the money I need by borrowing. The price agreed upon is twenty-four silver dollars. This has been paid in full, after weighing, to me personally; the money is to be taken home for me to spend; hereafter the above-named payer will assume ownership of the farm hut and waste threshing ground, including the walls, tiles, ordure pit and boundary stones. From now on no arbitrary claims may be made, for this sale is voluntary and payment has been made in full and as agreed. This agreement is irrevocable. Should this property be found to have been acquired under suspicious circumstances, the vendor alone will be held responsible; the above payer is not liable. This written agreement is hereby prepared as proof and for retention by FUNG Tak Yau.\n\nAnother, drawn up during the difficult days of the Japanese occupation in 1942 reads,\n\nThis deed of sale on land is drawn up by the vendor CHAN Wan Shing. Because he has not money for purchasing provisions, he first offered to sell to his kinsfolk the nine plots of land, total area three dau chung, located at Nam Pei Tau in Shek Pik Village, bequeathed to him by his grandfather, but none of them are interested. Then, through the medium of a middleman, KWOK Lai Pai of Tai O was approached and he undertook to buy them at a current price of $165.00. Again, through the middleman, CHAN Wan Shing has received a sum of $165 for himself, and with effect from the date of this deed, the lots will become the permanent property of KWOK Lai Pai. For fear that verbal agreement may not constitute evidence, this deed is executed as a certificate to confirm the transaction.\n\nDuring a land court held during the Shek Pik settlement just as a case was being settled in the present possessor's favour in default of proof of the plaintiff's contention that the original document was a mortgage and not a sale (and therefore redeemable, according to custom, despite subsequent transactions) the defendant pulled out a new sheaf of papers for inspection. Among them was a white deed which proved to be the original mortgage of 1918. He thereby defeated his own case. It turned out that he had never bothered to read the papers handed over to him with the white deed of sale drawn up during the Japanese Occupation. Similarly, a sixty year old mortgage elsewhere on Lantau which was discovered in the land registers when succession was being determined, was honoured by the mortgagees, though grudgingly, the real point at issue being the amount of compensation and not the return of the land, as no figure was stated in the original entry.\n\n12 This is recognised in the provisions of the New Territories Ordinance Cap. 97 where the registration of a so manager in the Land Office is obligatory. A change of manager can only be secured after the vacancy has been filled at a properly advertised clan meeting and notices of election, posted by the District Office, have expired without objection, Prospective sales of two land have to be reported to the Assistant Land Officer (the D.O.) and advertised by him, again without objection, before a sale is allowed. Trustees, too, are not permitted to sell land belonging to minors unless the Land Officer has given his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "100\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nexerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence\". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati \"have hitherto lived by irregular \"squeezes\" from the people\" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to \"gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong\" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554.\n\n26 Papers 1899 p. 194.\n\n27 Papers 1899 p. 554.\n\n28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121.\n\n29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon.\n\nPiracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925.\n\n30 Papers 1899 p. 528.\n\n31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894.\n\n32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs.\n\n**F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895.\n\n34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896.\n\n33 Papers 1899, p. 540.\n\nBrenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly \"The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one\". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37.\n\n31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "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": 204885, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "163\n\nLECKIE, J, B. H.\n\nLEE, Harold W.\n\nLEE, J. S.\n\nLEE, Hon. R. C.*\n\nLEUNG, Kai-cheong\n\n+\n\nLI, Shi-yi\n\nLI, T. K.\n\nLI, Dr. Tsoo-yiu*\n\nLINDSAY, T. J.\n\nLINDSAY, Mrs. B. E.\n\nLIU, D. H.\n\nLIU, Dr. Tsun-yan\n\nLLEWELLYN, J.\n\nLO, Chin-tang\n\nLO, Hsiang-lin\n\nLO, T. S.*\n\nLOSEBY, Miss P.\n\nLOTHROP, F. B.*\n\nLUCAS, Col. E. S. S.\n\nLUM, Miss Ada*\n\nLUPTON, G. C. M.\n\nLYM, Miss R. M.\n\n-\n\nMA, Meng\n\nMCBAIN, E. B.\n\nMACCABE, Miss E.\n\nMCCABE, Mrs. S. J.\n\n+\n\n+\n\n+\n\n-\n\n+\n\nP. O. Box 94, H.K.\n\n604 Edinburgh House, H.K.\n\n74, Kennedy Road, H.K.\n\nLee Hysan Estate Co., Ltd., 604 Edinburgh House, H.K.\n\nc/o Registration Section, Education Dept., Battery Path, H.K.\n\n72, La Salle Road, 2nd floor, Kowloon.\n\n49, Village Road, Ground floor, H.K.\n\n1C-3C Broom Road, H.K.\n\nMessrs. Butterfield & Swire, Union House, H.K.\n\n26 Severn Road, H.K.\n\nc/o American Consulate-General, Garden Road, H.K.\n\nc/o Faculty of Oriental Studies, Australian National University, Box 197, Post Office, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia.\n\nDept. of Geography & Geology, H.K.U.\n\nDept. of Chinese, The University, H.K.\n\nDept. of Chinese, The University, H.K.\n\nc/o Lo and Lo, Jardine House, 7/F., Pedder St., H.K.\n\nc/o Russ & Co., Rooms 523/5 Gloucester Building, H.K.\n\nc/o Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass, USA.\n\n94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K.\n\n142, Boundary Street, Kowloon.\n\nThe District Officer, Taipo, N.T.\n\nPark Mansions, 4 Mile Taipo Road, 1st floor, Kowloon.\n\nInstitute of Oriental Studies, The University, H.K.\n\nc/o Geo. McBain & Co., S.C.M.P. Building, H.K.\n\nKing's Park House, Gascoigne Road, Kowloon.\n\nNew Tregunter Mansions, Old Peak Road, H.K.\n\n*Life Member\n\nPlease notify the Hon Secretary of any inaccuracy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205376, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 138, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n131\n\npeople. He afterwards rose to high honours, and the people erected temples to show their gratitude to him.\n\nThe chief merits for which the men whose names are mentioned in these tablets are praised, are thus specified. They were polite towards the literati, strict with their inferiors, improved the prisons, properly regulated the taxes, abolished all illegal imposts, and publicly explained the Four Books; they established schools and other benevolent institutions, and took with them but little pelf when they left office.\n\nIn the hall for the commemoration of the sages, there are five tablets containing the names of those who have been recognised as worthy of the honour by the emperors, and also some others with the names of those to whom the people thought this honour due.\n\nThe following is the history of one of the first class: In the time of the Sung dynasty, there lived in the present Sanon an inferior mandarin, who had a very diligent son; as regards filial piety, he was a model for the whole region. During the greatest heats, he would wait upon his parents at table in full dress. He was never guilty of disobedience, and when he was told to go a distance of a thousand miles, he would start immediately. When his father died, he became half mad from grief, and built a hut at the tomb, whence the sound of his weeping was heard at night at a far distance. This man occupies the first place among the sages of Sanon. Another of these heroes had the misfortune to have his father fall into the hands of robbers. Not having sufficient money to ransom his father, he followed the pirates, and offered himself to be their prisoner as his father's substitute. The pirates accepted his offer, and on taking leave he begged his father to forget him, as he had other sons remaining to him. He then cast himself into the sea.\n\nAnother of these worthies was a mandarin in another district. A change in the dynasty having been effected, he returned home, as he was unwilling to serve two masters. He was able to earn but a scanty livelihood. A high officer once visited him, and found him sitting on a dirty mat, and in very poor circumstances. He applied to him for instruction. \"A pure heart is all in all,\" was the answer of the sage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205399, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 161, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "154\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n1626 the Manchus were stopped in their tracks at Ning-yüan by the foreign artillery. But this setback was not to last very long. They saw the usefulness of these weapons and set about casting some themselves. These proved effective in the conquest of the northern frontier (1643-44) and in the years to follow as their armies plunged on down across both the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers to Kwangtung and Kweichow.\n\nColumbia University\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nNOTES\n\n1 In this I have consulted Mr. C. N. Tay of the American Museum of Numismatics, New York City.\n\n2 The inscription on the cannon is given below. This cannon was found lying on open ground in the Tsiu Keng sub-district in the northern part of the New Territories. It was reported by Mr. R. E. dos Remedios, Senior Land Assistant in the District Office, Taipo in August 1966. The cannon was completely exposed and must have been in this condition for a long time. It is not clear how it came to be there.\n\n* This cannon, which was mentioned in passing in the note on the Tung Chung Fort, at p. 148 of Vol. 4 of the Journal (1964), was dredged from the sea in 1956, either from Kowloon Bay in the course of work on the extension to Hong Kong airport or from Fat Tong Mun (otherwise called Joss House Bay) in the approaches to Hong Kong Harbour—sources differ. It is now mounted with a plaque in Chinese and English outside the Central Government Offices (East Wing), Hong Kong. It was heavier than the one recently discovered; 300 catties as compared with 300 catties. The Chinese inscription, which is much the same, is also given below.\n\n4 An insight into the happenings of these troubled times is preserved in the family record of the Tsui (徐) clan formerly of Shek Pik on Lantau island, to which their ancestor had removed in the 16th Century. The family came from Mong Ngau Tun (望牛墩) in Tung Kwun district (東莞) where they had settled in the Sung dynasty from Kiangsi province. There was fighting in Tung Kwun against the Manchus after their success in the North. The record which gives no precise date for this occurrence, though it must have been within a few years of the change of dynasty in 1644 — reads\n\n—\n\nSau Yeung-kap, a civil officer, and Li Shing-tung, a general, instigated an uprising against the new dynasty in Tung Kwun. As the revolt gathered momentum, oxen and horses were killed for food, and rice and corn became as expensive as pearls. For miles, one could see nothing animate; the fields were covered with dead bodies. In some places, human flesh was eaten by the starving people, and piles of human bones filled the ruined houses.\n\nA detachment of the Manchu army was sent to besiege the district city, then occupied by the rebels. In the conflict that ensued, human beings were massacred as though they were ants, and law-abiding people and bad characters alike were destroyed.\n\nFortunately, our clansmen, then living at Mong Ngau Tun, escaped this calamity. However, many of our former neighbours and fellow-natives in Ming Ka Lane lost their lives and [as the record says in another place] all the dispensations of the previous dynasty were regarded as scrap paper.\n\n(I am grateful to Mr. Gilbert Louie for this translation. Ed) Readers will note that Li Shing-tung (Li Ch'eng-tung) is mentioned in Prof. LO Hsiang-lin's Additional Note where he is described as Governor of Kwangtung.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205554, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "FAN LAU AND ITS FORT\n\n91\n\n11 A lorcha is a specialized fighting craft from Macau that combined a Western-style hull (for speed and maneuverability) with Chinese batten sails and rigging (for easier sail-handling and disguise).\n\n12 Charles F. Neumann, History of the Pirates (š), who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray, 1831) P. 58.\n\n13 J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide (Canton, Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848) pp. 70-71.\n\n14 The Last Year in China to the Peace of Nanking as sketched in Letters to his Friends by a Field Officer actively employed in that Country (2nd edition, revised, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1843) pp. 51-52.\n\n15 There is, in addition, the possibility that the fort had a temporary garrison in 1834 see the imperial directive given respecting defence and patrolling at Lantau and Macao quoted by J. L. Cranmer-Byng in his brief note \"An old fort at Tung Chung on Lantao Island” in J.H.K.B.R.A.S. Vol 3 (1963) pp. 144-145.\n\n16 Hong Kong Government. New Territories Administration. Block Crown Lease Demarcation Districts 322 and 327, Shek Sun village, Lantau Island.\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY CITED\n\nJ. J. L. Duyvendak, \"Sailing directions of Chinese voyages\", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 230-237,\n\n\"The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century\", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412.\n\nLuis B. Gomes, Monografia de Macau, Macau, 1951.\n\nHongkong Government. A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hongkong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, Hongkong, 1960.\n\nLo Hsing-lin, Hongkong and its External Communications before 1842. Hongkong, 1963.\n\nJ. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide, Canton, 1848.\n\nCharles F. Neumann, The History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, translated from the Chinese original, London, 1831.\n\nCh'ing dynasty work:\n\nChinese Sources\n\nMo Pei Chi (AA) A.D. 1621\n\nThe provincial Gazetteer of Kwangtung:\n\nKwong Tung Tung Chi (♬✯ ih sk) 1864 edition\n\nThe District Gazetteers for the following:\n\nSan On Yuen Chi (%) 1819 edition\n\nTung Kwun Yuen Chi ✯✯✯) 1797 edition\n\nHeung Shan Yuen Chi (3) 1827 edition\n\nO Mun Kei Leuk (39 1932) 1800 edition", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205571, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "108\n\nMORRIS I. BERKOWITZ\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Not to be discussed here but in future work,\n\n2 Some of it very generously made available by the District Officer's Office, Taipo, which had charge of the resettlement efforts.\n\n3 I must express gratitude to those students of mine at Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, who suffered all of the indignities of field work while gathering the basic interviews. Without their help this project never could have been accomplished.\n\n4 He was not included in Table I as a household head because of his unusually young age.\n\n5 We were fortunate in having outstanding cooperation from the Principal at Lok Heung School, Mr. Wong (†), as well as the teachers and children.\n\n6 Of course, the technique of saturating a neighborhood with interviewers which we used continually in this research program never works perfectly. In each status group some people were not home or could not be located and call-back was necessary in a few cases. We are still calling-back for some of these interviews.\n\n7 The quotation represented here was made in Hakka, translated into Cantonese, and then into English. Its literalness is open to question.\n\n8 To borrow Herbert Gans' term,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205821, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n121\n\nof the two should in fact have proportionately more empty houses than its poorer neighbour22; it is not impossible that the sort of inefficiencies in the descent system that I have described whereby the swelling of a descent line in one generation may leave the next with more house-property than it needs or can redistribute — may account for this anomaly.*\n\nH. G. H. NELSON.\n\nNOTES\n\n1. Göran Aijmer, \"Being Caught by a Fishnet: On Fengshui in South-eastern China\", J.H.K.B.R.A.S., Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 74-81.\n\n2. Field data drawn on in this paper are derived from a period of work in Sheung Tsuen, Pat Heung, from June 1967 to October 1968. I was employed as a Research Officer of the London School of Economics, on a project financed by a grant made to Professor Maurice Freedman by the Social Science Research Council. Much of the information from the Hong Kong Government's land records was collected by my wife, whose fare to Hong Kong was provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies, financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation. I am very glad to acknowledge their generosity.\n\n3. See for example J. E. Spenser, \"The Houses of the Chinese\", Geographical Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1947, pp. 254-273.\n\n4. Cf. J. W. Hayes, ‘A Chinese Village on Hong Kong Island Fifty Years Ago Tai Tam Tuk, Village Under the Water', in I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 33.\n\n5. Block Crown Lease, Demarcation Districts Nos. 112 and 114, 1905; various Memorials in Yuen Long District Office; and ‘A-Roll' volume X.14. I am most grateful to the New Territories Administration for their courtesy in allowing me access to the invaluable information contained in their Land Records.\n\n6. The current records conceal the difference between inhabited structures and \"house-lots' (Crown Rent being assessed on the site rather than the structure) - a difference of which the villagers are aware. Many of them, when asked how many houses they own, will say, \"so many houses and so many lots \"(uk-tel_£)\". It seems to me possible that some villagers may, in 1905, have been far-sighted ---or fortunate enough to register both their houses and their ruined lots, thereby avoiding the expense and complication of obtaining a New Grant Lot when they wanted to rebuild on an old site.\n\n* Groups of houses, bigger and more durable than usual, have also been built as a form of long-term investment (and prestige expenditure) by particularly wealthy men; but their hopes of producing enough sons and grandsons to justify this deliberate over-production of houses are often sadly unfulfilled.\n\n* On the subject of this article see also Mr. Hayes' note at pp. 158-160.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205822, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "122\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\n* Records covering 380 houses from 1905 to 1968 reveal 55 sales of houses. This includes sales within (the majority) and between surname groups of which Sheung Tsuen has seven, formerly eight -- but does not include sales to outsiders; these do not in any case become significant until after 1963. The 55 house-sales include 12 houses which were sold twice, which for reasons given below, may be regarded as a significant reduction of the total; and also include sales of empty sites, cowsheds, and latrines. These latter are sometimes, but not invariably, indicated in the Memorial of sale, so it is likely that there were more of this type than the records reveal: I estimate the total at about 10. The number of original sales of habitable houses in this 63 year period is therefore a little above thirty.\n\n9 I occasionally heard the term chinguk EA used to describe such a house; but strictly speaking this refers to the house which contains that version of the ancestral tablet which has been passed down the eldest son line.\n\nT\n\nT\n\n10 The question of the completeness of the records may be raised: in general, I think it is safe to say that in as important a matter as title to house-property, transactions are almost certain to be registered eventually at the local District Office. The only exception to this is the adjustment of property rights which may involve a sale between brothers after a division: this often occurs before the brothers' succession to their father is registered, so that the sale does not reach the Land Records. In one such case that I know of, however, the sale between the brothers was felt to be important enough for it to be documented and witnessed by \"the Village Representative and all the elders\". This took place in 1960 or 1961.\n\nThe Hon. Editor has drawn my attention to non-registration of transactions in the early years of the British administration of the New Territories, citing the District Officer's report for the Southern district (1912) which says:-\n\nEight hundred and sixty-five deeds were registered during the year. This is only slightly above the average for the last seven years during which the Land Ordinance has been in force. There is no doubt that much land changes hands without registration; and it is probable that not more than 10 per cent of mortgages on land in the less accessible parts of the district are registered. The journey from Lantao is an almost insuperable obstacle and a \"stamped paper\" is generally considered sufficient security.\n\nIn this case the principal reasons for non-registration were distance and poor communications. At Sheung Tsuen the main land office was at Tai Po until the Yuen Long District Office was established in 1947. (though it appears there was some kind of Land Office-cum-Court at Ping Shan pre-war). If people had to go all the way over Tai Mo Shan to Tai Po there would have been similar disincentives to registration here too.\n\n11 Cf. M. C. Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1965 edition, p. 40: although this instance comes from a very different part of China, and a village where domestic architecture is different from that in Hong Kong.\n\n12 The institution of k'ai-tsai ## often loosely translated as “godson' - is not relevant here.\n\n13 See for example H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, London, 1969, p. 49.\n\n14 Apart from its obvious restriction to a unilineal descent system, kwoh-kai also differs significantly from Western forms of adoption in that the initiative may come either from the adopter or the adoptee, as indicated below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205974, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 54, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n49\n\nThe staffing situation improved between 1897 and 1901 and 12 more cadets were recruited from England, the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States including Reginald Fleming Johnston, Cecil Clementi, A. G. M. Fletcher,50 and Geoffrey Norman Orme. The incorporation of the New Territories into the Colony meant that more recruits would be needed for district administration and as members of the Land Court set up to determine thorny problems of land ownership and tenancy.52 However, 17 cadets were recruited between 1901 and the end of 1914. There were losses of course: notably the gifted Stewart Lockhart who was transferred in 1902 to Wei-hai-wei as H.M.'s Commissioner, and the equally gifted R. F. Johnston who was also transferred to Wei-hai-wei as District Officer in 1904.\n\nA posting in the New Territories provided for some younger cadets an escape-hatch that removed them from office life in the Colonial Secretariat and other departments in the Central District. Service in the New Territories, a mainly agricultural area dotted with small village communities and small market towns, had more in common with colonial service in Africa and South-East Asia, and the cadet was left comparatively free to go his own way, lead an open-air life and exercise judicious authority. The job demanded initiative, stamina, and magisterial skills; and, if one is to believe Mr. Austin Coates,54 a cadet at a much later date, it was a deeply rewarding life which allowed a cadet to become involved in the lives of simple people, farmers and fishermen, small shopkeepers and craftsmen. Certainly, the report of the District Officers for the New Territories, such as those written by Stewart Carne Ross, have a little more colour than the stilted administrative reports presented annually by heads of departments.\n\nBy the 1920s cadets had become entrenched in most government departments and they filled all the senior posts in the Colonial Secretariat, the directing and co-ordinating agency of government. The exceptions were some departments, such as the Medical and Sanitary Services, Public Works, the Royal Observatory, and Marine Department, which necessitated at the top someone with specialist knowledge. The Inspector General of Police (also in charge of the Fire Brigade), the Director of Education, the Postmaster General, and the Superintendent of Imports and Exports, however, were all cadets, but not the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "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": 206002, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "# THE BEGINNINGS OF TAIPINGSHAN\n\n77\n\nOffice's records had fallen owing to non-registration of transactions (it being by then more or less necessary for a purchaser to take a chance on the title to land offered to him by a vendor), a strenuous effort was made to regularise the situation and much \"squatting\" without title and consequently, in most cases, non-payment of Crown Rent, came to light.\n\nThe end for old Taipingshan came not in the 1880's but in the 1890's when Bubonic Plague was brought to the Colony from West China. The most virulent reservoir of the bacillus turned out to be Taipingshan. The only solution, not only to the problem of stamping out the plague but also to other forms of social offence given by the district, was to remove the Chinese town physically. This was done by powers given in the Taipingshan Resumption Ordinance of 1894, and the result was wholesale demolition of much property and re-aligning of old and construction of new roads. Taipingshan had to be razed and, fortunately for Hong Kong, never rose again in its former glory.\n\nUniversity of London, 1968.\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS Evans\n\nMr. Evans is Professor of Law in the University of Hong Kong. Two of his earlier contributions to the early history of Hong Kong appeared in the Notes and Queries section of the 1968 Journal.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The area was known as Taipingshan from the early days of the colony and its name is not derived from its function as a refuge for T'ai Ping rebels in later years.\n\n2 See Gordon (Land Officer) to Pottinger, CO129/Vol II, f. 152,\n\n3 See Gordon to Malcolm (Colonial Secretary), CO129/Vol. II, f. 138 dated 6 July 1843.\n\n4 The rents for both the Upper and Lower Bazaar Lots represented the same rate per square foot as that charged by Johnston for Town Lots.\n\n5 But the Chinese were turning to the use of brick rather than wood by the end of 1841; see Canton Press, 19 February 1842.\n\n6 Gordon to Pottinger, 19 December 1843; CO129, Vol. II, p. 445.\n\n7 Davis to Stanley 26 July 1844; CO129, Vol. VI, p. 435.\n\n8 Woosnam (Pottinger's private secretary) to Gordon, 10 January 1844: CO129, Vol. V. p. 69.", "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": 206125, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "198\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nknown geologist and archaeologist. A few notes and articles from his pen on Hong Kong subjects appeared in Vols. 8 and 9 (1968 and 1969) of this Journal.\n\nThese pile houses are the habitation of Tanka,(4) the boat people of South China, and Tai O has long been a considerable fishing port and market town, indeed the principal and only one of any size on Lantau Island. At the 1911 census of the Colony the land population was 2248 persons and was probably outnumbered by the floating population which stood at 5413 for the whole of Lantau. The pile huts were probably there long before the British took over the New Territories in 1899 following the Convention of Peking, 9th June, 1898. One of the early administrative reports of the District Officer, South (1911) mentions taking over responsibility from the Harbour Office for issuing licences to pile dwellers at Tai O Creek, when 221 new matshed permits were issued at $1 p.a., and in 1916 it was stated that there were still as many as 350 matsheds there.\n\nFires were always a hazard to these dwellings of wood and palm leaves. A big fire was noted in the 1916 report and it is no surprise to read in a later report of a really big one in 1926 when 300 matsheds were destroyed. Fortunately there was no loss of life, due, it was related, to it being high tide at the time of the fire.\n\nTyphoons, too, were a constant menace to these frail structures and in 1927, the year after the big fire, the District Officer notes that a typhoon caused great damage to the matsheds.\n\nThe photographs at plates 26 to 29 are by Mr. Schofield, and the plans at Figs. 1 and 2 are re-drawn from his notebook. I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Katherine M. Schofield for permission to reproduce her husband's valuable notes. The italicised sentences are my additions. The aerial view of Tai O Creek at plate 25 is by courtesy of the Hong Kong Government.\n\nMr. Schofield's Text\n\nThe accompanying plan (Fig. 1) is of a typical shed at Yee Chung (二涌) Second Creek, Tai O. It measures 9′ in width and 29′ 2′′ in depth (32′ 5′′ including the 1 metre deep veranda) and is 7′ high. It is 8′ above the waters of the creek at mid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "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": 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": 206842, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 113\n\nof Shui Pin Ts'uen, and enlarged to the size of a temple very soon after. It remains almost unaltered since except for the written characters over the door which were put there by Tang P'ooi Ch'oh (**) in the 27th year of Kwong Sui (***) of Ts'ing ( ) dynasty A.D. 1901.\n\nIt is the custom in China for men to count back the generations to their \"first ancestor.\" Thus a man may speak of himself as being the twentieth or fortieth generation meaning that he belongs to the twentieth or fortieth generation after one particular family ancestor who, by being the most ancient known forbear, or the founder of a particular branch or even the first of a particular name to settle in a certain locality, is given the title of \"first ancestor\". In many families there are more than one \"first ancestor\", the Tang family have several whom they venerate equally.\n\nFirst they have Tang Yue ($) their earliest known ancestor. A native of San Ye (†) now Honan province, (i) he was born in the second year of Hon Ping Tai (+) A.D. 2 and died 52 years later in the 1st year of Wing P'ing (†) of Tung Hon (**) dynasty. He was a very famous and high officer, and a personal friend of the first emperor of Tung Hon, Kwong Mo (†). He was only twenty-four years of age when Kwong Mo became emperor, but he was given the high office of \"Tai Sz To,\" (✯a✯) equivalent to Prime Minister (during Tung Hon dynasty), for having helped him to rid the country of the numerous bandits that infested it. After Kwong Mo died his son Ming Tai (8) gave him the honour of “Taai Foo (AM), the second highest honour it was possible to receive from the Emperor, at that time, and he was created \"Ko Mat Hau\" ( 4 ) which means Marquis of Ko Mat, now Kiaochow (*) in Shan Tung (R) province. After the death of Tang Yue his portrait was placed first among those of twenty-eight generals in one of the Emperor's palaces called Wan Toi (雲臺)\n\nTang Hon Fat, forty-seventh generation after Tang Yue, is also venerated by his descendants. It is believed by some, that he was the first of the Tang family to settle in Kam Tin. He was a government officer holding the post of \"Shing Mo Long” (**) and was a native of Paak Sha Ts'uen ( & ††) of Kat Shui ( #7†) district in the province of Kiangsi ( ¿1). According to one old family history he was visiting Kwangtung (*) and coming by chance", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207552, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "312\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe Deputy Commander at Taipang was the highest ranking officer in the locality of Kowloon during the Ch'ing Dynasty. At that time, the headquarters was set up within the Kowloon Walled City. This office, which also served as a garrison, still existed before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, but had been converted into a Home for the Aged run by a Catholic Mission. In accordance with the [Kwangtung] military system adopted in Ch'ing Dynasty, there were altogether 6 battalions of armed forces under the Kowloon garrison commander. The reason why the Kowloon headquarters was named the Taipang Garrison is that the geographical name of Kowloon was once alternatively called Taipang Shan (⚟) and was politically under the sovereignty of Po On (then San On) District Magistracy.* Besides, there is also a very good harbour by the name of Taipang Bay located at the southeastern part of Po On District and east of Kowloon. In Taipang harbour the water runs to 5-10 fathoms deep where large warships can cast anchor. It was partly due to the importance of local coastal defence and partly due to the necessity of civil administration that such a garrison was established at Taipang Bay. The post of Deputy Commander was normally held in a 3 years' term; and among all the previous commanders, General Cheung was the most important in terms of historical significance.\n\nCheung Yuk-tong, alias Hon-sang,† was born in Wei Yeung District, Kwangtung, and for many generations the Cheung's family lived in the Peach Garden in the capital town of the Wai Yeung District. In the 4th year of Hsien Feng (A.D.) (1853) he was appointed as Deputy Commander at Taipang, being promoted from staff officer at the Chin Shan Checkpoint [near Macao]. For four successive tours of service, in all a total of 13 years Gen. Cheung had been holding this post, and in those days the local inhabitants enjoyed a very peaceful time.\n\nIt was not until the 5th year of Tung-chih reign (1866) that General Cheung retired from the military service at the age of 72. When the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to Britain as a consequence of the signing of the Peking Treaty he was still in office. As the Treaty was signed by the Imperial Court,\n\n*This is not so, but the Taipang garrison force served in and controlled Kowloon and district. Except where stated footnotes are supplied by James Hayes.\n\n†", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207613, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 1, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "# SAI KUNG, THE MAKING OF THE DISTRICT AND ITS EXPERIENCE DURING\n\n# WORLD WAR II\n\n## DAVID FAURE'* \n\n## INTRODUCTION\n\nThe traceable history of Sai Kung District begins in the eighteenth century. At that time, the whole of Hong Kong,\n\n* ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nThis article records and analyses the findings of a research project into the oral sources available for the history of Sai Kung, conducted by members of the Oral History Project Team of the Centre for East Asian Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nThanks are due to many people for the successful completion of this project. Mr. Colin Bosher, former District Officer, Sai Kung, suggested it in the first place, and Mr. S.J. Chan, the present District Officer, gave his advice and encouragement most generously. Professor Chen Ching-ho, former Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, took a most understanding attitude towards research on local history, and his kindness made possible not only this project, but also several other projects concerning the history of the New Territories.\n\nAt every stage, the staff of the Sai Kung District Office and members of the Sai Kung Rural Committee helped in many and varied ways. The kindness of Miss Carrie Tsang, Miss Joyce Nip, Mr. Lei Yun Shou, J.P., Mr. Chung P'oon, Chairman, Sai Kung Rural Committee, and Mr. William Wan, must be especially acknowledged. Between November 1980 and August 1981 many residents of Sai Kung and neighbouring districts kindly agreed to be interviewed by the research team and their student assistants. For the record, their names and the dates of these interviews are appended to this report.\n\nAs always, Dr. James Hayes and Dr. Patrick Hase offered kind and sound advice, and made available their own research notes for consultation. Father Sergio Ticozzi provided information on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Sai Kung. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett generously gave us his time to discuss numerous issues that arose in the interviews.\n\nThanks are also due to the Sai Kung Rural Committee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for providing financial support for this project, and to Mr. Deacon Chiu, whose generous donation to the University made its grant possible.\n\nAt different times, the following students at the Chinese University assisted: Cheng Shui Kwan, Kwok Po Nei, Lam Loi, Lau Kwan Yau, Lee Lai Mui, Lui Shuk Yee, Ngo Yin Ling, Tang Chan Yiu, Tsui Lai Yi, and Wong Yue Leung. Miss Cheng Shui Kwan and Miss Lee Lai Mui worked on this project from the start to its completion, and their contribution to the project is immense.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207674, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Teochiu ethnicity in urban Hong Kong\n\n47\n\nThere are no comparable local level organizations in the urban areas,* though the government has encouraged the development of local-level urban neighborhood associations (Kaifongs), which are presumed to reflect local opinion and to be effective in influencing government decisions affecting the local area. The Kaifongs in resettlement estates with which I am familiar currently fulfill neither of these functions and are hardly considered organizations worthy of much effort to control. Teochiu have primarily been \"isolationist\" in devoting attention and effort to developing their own associations into what are clearly the most active and representative organizations in the local area. The local Kaifongs have thus not become an important focus of interethnic competition. Kaifong associations in other areas of Hong Kong are at times more active in local affairs. They appear to be particularly active when organizing local protest against new governmental policy which would adversely affect local residents. Hong Kong's newspapers periodically carry stories telling of the efforts of particular Kaifongs to mobilize support of local residents against new policy.\n\nThe primary functions of Kaifongs have been to provide social welfare services, serve as a communication channel to government, and to provide prestigious positions for ambitious local leaders (Kan, 1970:95). Kan describes the general image of Kaifongs in the following manner:\n\nthe more 'generalistic' orientation of the Kaifongs is more amenable to the government than is the 'particularistic' orientation of the clan, district, and dialect associations. For this reason, the majority of the population as well as the government itself have believed that the Kaifongs may become the most effective intermediaries between government and people. (Kan, 1970:94).\n\n*The City District Office scheme, initiated in 1968, is intended to bridge the communication gulf between the masses of people in urban areas and government. City District Officers are charged with assessing the overall impact of government policy, and with maintaining contact with all local organizations. In effect, the purpose of the scheme is to \"provide the public with a local manifestation of the Government... (The City District Officer Scheme, 1969: title page).\n\nFor brief discussions of divergent government policy in the New Territories and urban area, see Report by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, The City District Officer Scheme, 1969; Wong, 1975; and Miners, 1975.\n\nSee Annual Departmental Reports of the District Commissioner, New Territories, for brief descriptions of the Rural Committees.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n23\n\nSpaniards. She worried about the presence of France in Indochina on the opposite side of the South China Sea at mid-century; and later on she suspected imperial Germany of coveting northern Borneo and the Philippines.\n\nThe British sphere was initiated by the private efforts of an English adventurer, James Brooke, a former officer in the Bengal Army. In 1840, he helped bring an end to an insurrection in the Sarawak River, in the southern-most area under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Brunei, and was rewarded by being granted the province. In 1845 Brooke was appointed diplomatic agent to Brunei and supervised the transfer of the island of Labuan to Britain as a colony and a naval station. He also, in 1847, negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan which effectively gave to Britain control over Brunei's foreign relations. The colony of Labuan languished but the quasi-protectorate over Brunei served as the de facto and legal base for Britain's sphere of influence in Borneo. Such a sphere was proclaimed in 1868 as a warning to all European nations to keep out.\n\nThe real carving-up of the carcass of Brunei began in earnest in 1878 with the founding of another private venture, that of a syndicate of City of London businessmen which later became the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company. The syndicate was under the control of Dent Brothers Company. Alfred and Edward Dent were sons of the owner of the former Hong Kong firm of Dent and Company. Raja Brooke had annexed, by treaty with the Sultan, additional chunks of territory before 1878. In 1853 he purchased northward to and including the large district of the Rajang River. And in 1861 he purchased the five so-called “sago rivers” as far north as Kidurong Point. When that point was reached, the Governor of Labuan objected to any further northward encroachment of Sarawak and Labuan's wishes were supported by Britain.\n\nWhen, however, the British North Borneo Company purchased the large area of Sabah, the whole of the island of Borneo to the northward of Brunei Town, with strong support from the Foreign Office, both Raja Brooke and the Colonial Office protested. It is interesting to note that the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office who midwifed the company charter through officialdom in Whitehall was Julian Pauncefote, who was a former attorney-general.", "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": 208130, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 169, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n153 \n\nOccasionally the D.O. was called on to do special jobs outside his district. One such job I did at the Land Officer's request in 1930 or 1931 was to enquire into the holdings in Stanley village, to discover who the various lot owners were; this meant a good deal of domiciliary visitation in searching for lot boundaries, and looking for owners who might turn out to be in Macao, Australia, or Panama, and were not infrequently in their graves. This was necessary because the Land Office had no demarcators, and the Land Officer knew law but not Chinese: and the village was to be replanned and modernised. I hope the right people got the compensation, whether in land or cash: I never heard anything over the arrangements.\n\nThe collection of revenue from the District, excluding lots held directly from the Government as Inland Lots granted through the Land Office, was always a most important duty of the District Officer. The Crown rent was collected both at the District Office and at various outstations, chiefly Tai O, Cheung Chau, Tsun Wan, and the small police quarters at Yung Shue Wan on Lamma. The outstation collections were done by a shroff accompanied by an Indian constable, and in the remotest places the Water Police gave their assistance. As a rule I believe the Water Police brought back the shroff and the money, though I think the ordinary ferry conveyed him to the scene of action. The collecting was done at the local police stations. It always began about the end of July, after the first rice crop, and went on at full blast till about October: defaulters were dealt with early the next year. Licence fees for forestry, squatters' fees, and pineapple plantation licence fees were usually paid before midsummer at the District Office.\n\nIn 1925, the year of the big Communist-inspired Nationalist general strike, the office shroff was transferred on promotion. His substitute was a young fellow fresh from the Treasury, who took advantage of the disturbance and the preoccupations of his superiors to embezzle part of the receipts, and finally absconded three months after the strike began. A former District Officer South remarked to me later that he had always been worried by the possibility of this kind of thing happening to him, and the almost total impossibility of keeping a tight check on shroffs when frequent absence from the office, sometimes all day, is part of the D.O's duty. Luckily his security just covered his defalcations: and another shroff in the same racket was caught out by me and part of his loot recovered.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208169, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "192\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nContinuously to the present, since elders in both communities were boys and reportedly before, worship of these heroes has been carried out twice a year, at the times of the first and second padi harvests (described as 春分*). It even continued throughout the Japanese Occupation, a hard time when traditional practices were sometimes dispensed with and not taken up again. Such practices, whilst tending to keep each community together, also had the effect of perpetuating a rift; and the existence of such shrines did nothing to reduce the endemic bickering that characterized much of local society at that time.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Sessional Papers 1928 (see the District Officer North's report which follows at Part C to the Notes for this Visit).\n\n2 See Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong Government Printer, n.d. but circa 1960): 148-152.\n\n3 Copies of genealogies of the Cheng (#) Tang (*) and some other local lineages have been recently deposited in the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong.\n\n4 They also went to Tai Po Market and to North West Kowloon.\n\n5 YEUNG Kwok-shui (#) of Yeung Uk, a small single lineage settled since the Ch'ien Lung period.\n\n6 Local place name of the district city of Hsin-an.\n\n7 Gazetteer: 154.\n\n* Gazetteer: 150. Lo Wai is claimed to be the oldest of the Tsuen Wan villages.\n\n9 See e.g. G. N. Orme's Report on the New Territory 1899-1912 in the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers 1912: paras 58-60; and the file CSD1903 Ext/17, minutes of 6 April and 5 May 1905 in Public Records Office of Hong Kong.\n\n10 Gazetteer: 150-151.\n\n11 GR.\n\n12 Shek Lei Pui (†) was the name of a village moved to Sha Tin in the 1920s to make way for an extension to the Kowloon Reservoir. See H.K. Government's Administrative Reports 1924, page Q146, para. 4.\n\n13 Gazetteer: 151.\n\n14 The Tin Hau Temple inscription says a wooden tablet, worshipped for 70 years.\n\n15 of Sam Tung Uk, Chairman of the Tsuen Wan Rural Committee and Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk, died 15th October, 1956: para. 119 of District Commissioner, New Territories' Annual Departmental Report 1956-57.\n\n16 From the names listed it seems likely that, as stated by informants, friends and relatives of the Shing Mun people from the Pat Heung (Gazetteer: 170) aided them in the war against Tsuen Wan.\n\n17 According to the Tsuen Wan tablet, the fighting took place with sharp weapons. (i).\n\n18 This name was a purely Shing Mun description and does not appear in Gazetteer which only refers to the other Pat Heung to the north.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208176, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n199\n\nTHE RURAL HISTORY PROJECT IN YUEN LONG DISTRICT, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG, 1973.\n\nIn 1973 Mr. John Kamm, a candidate for the A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies--East Asia Program, conducted field research in the N.T. The letter which follows explains how he cooperated with the District Office Yuen Long in a rural history project, and gives interesting details of how it was accomplished. The \"Field Notes on the Social History and Feng-shui of Kam Tin” which follow the letter were one result of the project. The two “Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-an, Kwangtung,” printed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, are another. Hon Ed.\n\nMr. Patrick Williamson, J.P.,\n\nDistrict Officer,\n\nYuen Long District Office, New Territories Administration.\n\nDear Mr. Williamson,\n\nI would like to take this opportunity to provide your office with a preliminary report on the Rural History Project. I also intend to include general thoughts on the advisability of expanding the current pilot project into a more-structured, government-sponsored operation of longer duration.\n\nAt our first meeting, on 31 May, we discussed the concern in Yuen Long District, shared by both Government and village leadership, over the deterioration of Chinese tradition and custom. One substantial portion of traditional culture, i.e. oral history, seemed threatened with especially rapid extinction. We decided to explore the possibility of setting up a summer project aimed at collecting and preserving the folk tradition of a specific area of Yuen Long District. Since I had been trained in social anthropology (having won University Scholar distinction in the structural analysis of Chinese myth and folk-tale), and since I was eager to begin field work in the New Territories, I readily accepted the offer of an unpaid attachment to your office.\n\nThroughout the early weeks of June, the project gradually took shape and became a reality. Government showed interest in the idea, and approved the project. Scholars at both universities pro-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209371, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "6\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nenlarged and redecorated. Described as \"semi-self-contained\" units, these blocks have inside kitchens but detached toilets, and have had their centre walls removed to enlarge the over-all space. Block #21, however, has self-contained toilets in each unit. Blocks #1-4, #10, #12, #22, and #23 can be referred to as \"tap and toilet improvement\" blocks as their communal toilets have been replaced by individual, key toilets for each household. Block #5 is a \"special\" block in so far as self-contained flats were built in at the time it was erected (1959). In that sense, Block #5 is already \"converted\". The remaining Mark II Blocks (#13-#20) have been targeted for improvement.\n\nThere are now twenty-one Mutual Aid Committees established in Lok Fu Estate: Blocks #1-8, #10-20, #22, and #23 have committees. From January of 1982 to April of 1983, I interviewed the chairmen of eighteen of these Mutual Aid Committees as part of a research project to explore more fully the opinions of male members towards participation and problems of committee functioning. Such interviewing also enabled me to collect additional information on other matters relating to committee organization. The discussion presented in this paper is taken from these interviews, with additional background information collected during the previous research period of 1976-1978.*\n\nGeneral Organization\n\nThe Mutual Aid Committees of Lok Fu Estate follow the general design of committees found in other parts of Hong Kong, where the basic arrangement is to establish one committee for one building or residential block. This arrangement is the most common because it creates a neat structure that is easy to understand and administer. As public housing estates are arranged in blocks, the basic arrangement used here is one block, one committee. However, a complicating factor is the large population.\n\n* The author wishes to express her gratitude to these chairmen, and to the staff of the Tung Tau sub-office, Wong Tai Sin District Office, for their generous help. Special thanks goes to Ms. Winnie Yeung, Liaison Officer, Tung Tau sub-office for her advice and assistance. The author also wishes to thank Mr. H. S. Leung, Housing Manager, Lok Fu Estate, for his help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209373, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "8\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nwhich it was established, so that one committee's renewal date is different from the renewal dates of committees in other blocks. While most MACs have their certificates automatically renewed, a few may be suspended or dissolved. The 1982 Model Rules states on page six (of Section XIV, rule 14a, i-ii) that an MAC can be dissolved “\n\nupon expiry or the withdrawal of approval by the District Officer/Assistant District Officer,\" or at a General Meeting of heads of household in which a simple majority present resolve that the MAC be dissolved, provided that this majority represents not less than 20% of the householders in the Block.\"12\n\n44\n\n■\n\nDiscussions at the District Office, however, made it clear that the deregistration procedure is more complicated. First, if there is no interest shown by the residents and if no new officeholders can be elected, the committee can be suspended. Suspension can be for an indefinite period, during which staff from the District Office survey the opinions of the residents. If a minimum of 20% of those surveyed twice vote not to have a committee, then the committee moves from suspension to dissolution, and its remaining funds and equipment are donated for charitable purposes or used for welfare or recreational purposes, according to the wishes of the residents and subject to the approval of the District Officer or Assistant District Officer (City and New Territories Administration 1982:6).\n\nWhile conducting research previously, I only learned of a handful of committees in my sample areas of Wong Tai Sin and Mong Kok Districts, mostly those formed during the early stages of the Mutual Aid Committee Scheme, that had ceased to exist. Most were disbanded, I was told, because there was absolutely no enthusiasm left for the committee, and because of that, it was doing nothing for the residents (Scott 1980:26). At present, Lok Fu Estate has two blocks without Mutual Aid Committees: Block #21 and Block #9.\n\nBlock #21 is still in the process of being converted. Prior to this conversion, it had a fully-functioning MAC, but this committee had to be dissolved when the residents were moved out. The resettling of this block is scheduled to be completed in about June 1983; at that time, staff from the District Office\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209380, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "15\n\nhave a great many other duties to do as well, and step in to work whenever necessary. The secretary, with the assistance of the vice-secretaries, if any, handles the correspondence, takes the minutes at meetings, and in general keeps the letters and correspondence received from outside, although in some committees this latter duty is performed by the chairman. Finally, the treasurer prepares the income and expenditure statements (in cooperation with the chairman and the auditor), issues the cheques (also bearing the signature of the chairman and/or secretary), checks the validity of payment vouchers, and supervises the collection of voluntary contributions and monthly fees (City and New Territories Administration 1982:4).\n\nThese distinctions look neat on paper and the division of labour seems clear, but the actual situation is a good deal less distinct. The lack of enthusiasm on the part of committee members often means that the officers of some committees carry out all the work themselves, and so take on additional duties beyond those formally listed for their offices. In addition, the distinctions between responsibilities often become blurred because officers must help each other perform their duties, especially if one is ill or away. This is especially true for the chairman, who in some committees becomes the only working office-holder. All the chairmen of Lok Fu Estate Mutual Aid Committees stressed the cooperation between the officers and the fact that they all could do each other's jobs when and if that became necessary.17\n\nHow long do officers serve? The Model Rules of August, 1982, stated clearly that, \"The tenure of an office-bearer shall be two years\" (City and New Territories Administration 1982:3). Before these rules were enacted, however, the officers of Mutual Aid Committees served terms of one year. The District Offices had many reasons for extending the term of office, but the most important was that the new officers needed more time to become acquainted with the block, its problems, and the duties of an officer. This was especially true if they were new to the block. In addition, the one-year term of office did not allow sufficient time for the officers to complete projects. The reason for this was that the last two months of a term were taken to prepare for the next election. Therefore, officers were serving, in effect, ten-month terms and it was felt that a longer term of office was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209391, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "26\n\nJANET LEE SCOTT\n\nNOTES\n\nIt might be mentioned that the adult population of Hong Kong was, at the time of Mutual Aid Committee formation, already well acquainted with the idea and work of urban organizations. While the Mutual Aid Committees had (and still retain) their own unique design, their structure (and their functions) were not unfamiliar and they were not viewed as mysterious committees having no resemblances to other, more traditional, Chinese organizations.\n\n* The other five subdivisions are: Kam Kwok Mansion, Luen Hop Building, Mei Tung Estate, Pui Man Tsuen Cottage Area, and Pok Oi Village (Wong Tai Sin District Report 1982:271).\n\n* The exact total, provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate, was 21,221 at the end of February, 1983.\n\n• At the end of 1982, the exact figure was 523,927.\n\n* The Mark I blocks include Blocks #1-5, #9, #10, and #12, and the Mark II group is made up of Blocks #13-20 and Blocks #22 and #23. The remaining blocks (#6-8, #11, and #21), already rebuilt, are now referred to as Converted Buildings (Wong Tai Sin District Report 1982:272).\n\n• This information was provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate.\n\n* At the end of February, 1983, there were 26 Mutual Aid Committees in the Lok Fu Area and 286 Mutual Aid Committees for the entire Wong Tai Sin District.\n\n* The selection of male members is because all but one of the chairmen of the Lok Fu Estate Mutual Aid Committees interviewed were male. In addition, the opinions of female members towards participation were investigated during the research period of 1976-1978.\n\n* Block #23 of Tung Tau Estate is still divided into floors for the purpose of MAC formation. In early 1983, it had five MACs, one for each three floors.\n\n10 In 1982 the old titles of City District Commissioner and City District Officer were changed to District Officer and Assistant District Officer respectively. At the same time the old Home Affairs Department and New Territories Administration were amalgamated into a new department known as the City and New Territories Administration.\n\n11 The official certificates of registration are framed and prominently displayed in the committee's office, or if the committee lacks an office, are kept by an officer, most often the chairman.\n\n19\n\nHowever, given the apathy of many residents and the low attendance at many MAC meetings, one might wonder if any committee has been dissolved by popular action, the second alternative.\n\n10 This is the schedule as described by the Wong Tai Sin District Office, Tung Tau Sub-office. The office of the Housing Manager, Lok Fu Estate, explained that the conversion has already been completed and that 114 families (the figure as of March, 1983) had already moved in.\n\n\"These figures have been provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate, and are accurate as to the end of March, 1983.\n\n16 The C.C.C. number is a code number found on the Hong Kong Identification Card and is written under the Chinese characters of the individual's name.\n\n10 According to the Tung Tau Sub-office of the Wong Tai Sin District Office, there are no instances of the mishandling of MAC funds known in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209526, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 183, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "# SAI KUNG, THE MAKING OF THE DISTRICT AND ITS EXPERIENCE DURING\n\n# WORLD WAR II\n\n## DAVID FAURE'*'\n\n## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nThis article records and analyses the findings of a research project into the oral sources available for the history of Sai Kung, conducted by members of the Oral History Project Team of the Centre for East Asian Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.\n\nThanks are due to many people for the successful completion of this project. Mr. Colin Bosher, former District Officer, Sai Kung, suggested it in the first place, and Mr. S.J. Chan, the present District Officer, gave his advice and encouragement most generously. Professor Chen Ching-ho, former Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, took a most understanding attitude towards research on local history, and his kindness made possible not only this project, but also several other projects concerning the history of the New Territories.\n\nAt every stage, the staff of the Sai Kung District Office and members of the Sai Kung Rural Committee helped in many and varied ways. The kindness of Miss Carrie Tsang, Miss Joyce Nip, Mr. Lei Yun Shou, J.P., Mr. Chung P'oon, Chairman, Sai Kung Rural Committee, and Mr. William Wan, must be especially acknowledged. Between November 1980 and August 1981 many residents of Sai Kung and neighbouring districts kindly agreed to be interviewed by the research team and their student assistants. For the record, their names and the dates of these interviews are appended to this report.\n\nAs always, Dr. James Hayes and Dr. Patrick Hase offered kind and sound advice, and made available their own research notes for consultation. Father Sergio Ticozzi provided information on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Sai Kung. Mr. K.M.A. Barnett generously gave us his time to discuss numerous issues that arose in the interviews.\n\nThanks are also due to the Sai Kung Rural Committee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for providing financial support for this project, and to Mr. Deacon Chiu, whose generous donation to the University made its grant possible.\n\nThe research team included David Faure (co-ordinator), Lai-hung Kwan, Bernard H.K. Luk, Yue-him Tam, and Barbara E. Ward. At different times, the following students at the Chinese University assisted: Cheng Shui Kwan, Kwok Po Nei, Lam Loi, Lau Kwan Yau, Lee Lai Mui, Lui Shuk Yee, Ngo Yin Ling, Tang Chan Yiu, Tsui Lai Yi, and Wong Yue Leung. Miss Cheng Shui Kwan and Miss Lee Lai Mui worked on this project from the start to its completion, and their contribution to the project is immense.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209622, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 279, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "257\n\napproximately between 1900 and 1915. We find that of the four born before 1898, three had attended class for an average of four years, one attended for only one year, and then worked first in the farm for a few years and then in the construction of the railway. Amongst the six born after 1898, however, three never went to school and one claimed that he learnt to read a little when he worked as a shop assistant in a small tea-house at Shamshuipo. Around 1900, at least two teachers are known to have given up teaching, one to work in the Land Office of the New Territories administration and the other to work for his brother-in-law at Taipo. Liao Chung-nan, the siu-tsai who formerly taught a small class at high fees in his own home as mentioned above, eventually had to move to teach at the Wan Shih Tang at a lower fee of about $5 per pupil.\n\nThree government schools providing an elementary English education were set up between 1905-1906, one being situated at Taipo, about six miles from Sheung Shui. Unlike in urban Hong Kong, response to this new educational provision was not great. The school at Ping Shan fared most badly and was closed in 1907 to be replaced by one set up in Cheung Chau. The average attendance throughout 1905-1912 in these three schools was twenty, out of a total of 224 schools in the whole Territories with an average attendance of sixteen each.15 The Report of the District Officer of 1912 states: “Government schools on a small scale have been opened at centres in the New Territories providing an elementary instruction in English, the fee for these is 50 cents per month. There is not, however, a great demand for this instruction of a more modern type in most of the districts, for the people still cling to the old-fashioned learning.”16 We have no record of village people from Sheung Shui attending the Taipo government English schools before 1913.\n\n1913. The social and economic changes resulting from the change of government were still small and the opportunities for new jobs were still limited, and the jobs were mostly confined to manual labour. New demands had not yet appeared to bring marked changes in popular literacy which remained basically rooted in the traditional and relatively confined village society, but it was perhaps beginning to lose its former hold both as a basic education for the masses and, at a more advanced level, as the avenue to position and wealth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209820, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "57\n\nEach party would then pray to the temple god affirming the truth of his statements in the dispute and inviting the god to do the supplicant an injury if he were not in fact telling the truth. Each party in turn would then attempt to strike off the head of a live cock (colour unimportant) with a single stroke of a chopper. If the head were severed cleanly, the party thereby proved his case. An incomplete severance would show the hollowness of the party's statements, probably because guilty knowledge caused his hand to shake.\n\n(b) In practice, it was seldom that both parties were required to chop off the cock's head. Usually the guilty party would feel himself unable to invite the god's wrath in the preliminary worshipping and would back out. This implied a perhaps greater belief in the omnipotence of the gods than is apparent nowadays when the modern age and Christianity have taken some of the edge off ancient traditions.\n\n(c) The custom is now quite rare, although a case occurred in Tai Po in 1948, under the auspices of the then District Officer.\n\n14. Money Loan Associations\n\n(a) Debt disputes frequently arise as a result of money loan associations. Without a clear idea of their workings, it is impossible to understand the inevitable ramifications of each case.\n\n(b) Such associations are normally formed by groups of persons in close daily contact with each other so as to create mutual trust and confidence. Examples are employees or clerks of a shop or even Government servants in the same office. The object of the association is to pool the financial resources of the members, with the gambling prospect of each member at some stage being able to use these resources for his own benefit. Each member will eventually get back roughly the same amount of money as he put into the association.\n\n(c) There are of course variations but generally the procedure is for a number of persons to club together for a set period which corresponds to the number of persons (e.g., 10 persons for 10 months). The period can begin at any time and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209972, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 231, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "209\n\nCHUE MO PENG (#Ł), A FEVER REPORTED FROM VILLAGES IN THE HONG KONG REGION, AND ITS CURE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER VILLAGE REMEDIES FOR EXCESS HEAT\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis note deals with chue mō pêng (Meyer-Wempe Cantonese but variously romanized below) the subject of a disease often complained of by local villagers, in my experience.\n\nEitel's Dictionary* mentions it under mo; ‘Chu mo ping or chut chu teng, a common disease in South China. It begins with high fever and after vigourously rubbing the chest, bristles an inch long appear through the skin, after their removal the fever goes down' (vol. 1, p. 619).\n\nA similar account, under \"Chu Mo Teng\", appears at pp. 171-2 of S.H. Peplow's Hong Kong Around and About, published in 1930 by the Commercial Press, Hong Kong. The author was a Land Bailiff with the District Office South, New Territories of Hong Kong and would have been well acquainted with village life.\n\n\"A common disease in South China. The translation is: chu—a pig. Mo—hair. Teng—nail. A disease where hairs, like pig's bristles or nails issue forth. It is purely a native fever.\"\n\nBy chance, I came across a dramatic instance of this disease in my early years as a government officer when engaged in compensating and rehousing villagers who were to be displaced for the Shek Pik reservoir on Lantau Island, 1957-60. The village people attributed a major epidemic that caused many deaths about the year 1936 to this disease (100 persons were said to have died, though this is probably an exaggeration).\n\n* A Chinese-English Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect by Dr. Ernest John Eitel, revised and enlarged by Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr of the Rhenish Missionary Society (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 2 vols., 1911 and 1912).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "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": 210450, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "38 \n\nBARBARA E. WARD \n\ngiven land, a new dwelling, a new pig-sty, free transport for himself, his family, livestock and all belongings, and an agreed sum of $50 per person per month to tide his family over the first six months until he could begin to get an income from his new land. It is important to stress that the negotiations, which were conducted by the District Office, were entirely correct, the enquiry meticulous and the terms most generous. Only the fishermen were left out of account. \n\nThe omission was, at the time, not unnatural. The stereotyped view of the Boat People as essentially mobile (“like gypsies” was a common English phrase) made it difficult even to imagine that some of them might be attached in any permanent sense to any particular place. It was assumed, too, that fishing could be carried on as well in one part of the water as another (or, if not, that it would be impossibly difficult with such a transitory population to determine who normally fished where) and that therefore only the land people of Kau Sai could be considered. \n\nThere were in fact two separate issues, affecting respectively two separable categories of fishermen. On the one hand were those who claimed that because firing practice interfered with their fishing operations and therefore reduced their income they were entitled to monetary compensation; on the other hand there were the others who did not want compensation but simply desired to be allowed to go on using Kau Sai as their permanent anchorage. The former group, mainly small long-liners and others engaged in day-time fishing, put in their claim to the District Office during the course of the negotiations with the land villagers. It was referred to the Fisheries Section of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and investigated by its officers together with those of the Fish Marketing Organisation. Finally, a list of claimants was drawn up, and a once-for-all payment agreed and handed over. The organisation of this claim and its significance are discussed more fully below. \n\nThe second group of fishermen were mostly, but not all, night-time operators, purse-seiners, who normally spent the days at anchor in Kau Sai bay. At first, they seem to have shared (though for different reasons) the District Officer's assumption that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210964, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "OBITUARY: K. M. A. BARNETT, O.B.E.\n\nThree contributions to the memory of a remarkable man, Fellow of the RAS of Great Britain and Ireland (1949) and a founding member of the Hong Kong Branch: from James Hayes, Derek Davies, Solomon Bard.\n\nThree weeks ago one of the most distinguished retired members of the Civil Service passed away in England. Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's death was noted in the South China Morning Post on 30 October 1987. A factual account of his services was provided, beginning with his posting here as a young Cadet Officer in 1932 and ending 37 years later with his retirement from Hong Kong, but with a further 10 years' service for the United Nations Organisation in Malawi and Bangladesh on duties connected with the census.\n\nIt is difficult to do justice to this exceptional man. Few friends of his own or a later generation could claim to have covered quite the same ground, or in the same way. For this reason, letters of appreciation have to come from several persons, and not from one pen alone. Dr. Bard's letter printed on 20 November is a case in point, (see pp. 8-10 below).\n\nAs a Hong Kong civil servant his greatest achievement was probably the 1961 Census, the first for nearly thirty years. He established the office (the present Census and Statistics Department) and was its guiding genius. The work suited him to a “T”, for he was able to bring to its organisation and subsequent reporting, all the knowledge, experience and intellectual qualities that make it a lasting and major landmark in the history of Hong Kong's post-war development. Each segment of the land and sea population, by origin and occupation, each type of dwelling place (and they were legion in those hard times), education, marriage and much else was covered in the 3 volume report, and he personally wrote the manuals for the field staff and supervisors. He conducted further investigatory work, including the 1966 By-census, before retirement in 1969.\n\nMy own association with Ken Barnett stemmed from our being colleagues in the Administrative Grade of the Civil Service, and from shared interests. He was District Commissioner, New Territories when I was posted to the District Office (South) in 1957, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211966, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 381, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "356\n\nvice-chairmen are the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives, and the other members of the committee the no. 16-60 ritual representatives.\n\nI saw parts of two of the Committee meetings, one before the festival and another before the Opera performance period. Both took place at the Jau and Wong Temple. There were about 60 men who attended the first meeting. At the end I noticed that a group of younger men (aged about forty) stayed on outside the temple and talked. They told one another that in this new era everything had to be done in accordance with the law. They also said that they should have invited the Governor of Hong Kong himself. But they should have made arrangements earlier. The second meeting was announced by notices on the village notice board as a meeting to discuss who was going to present \"coloured flags\" (formal tokens of thanks) on the main day of the opera performance. It mentioned that the original idea was to have the head of lineage do it, but he complained that he was too old to do so much walking. About 100 men were present. They first went through some ding-hau population records for each village, in all likelihood prepared for the festival. They probably used them for allocating seats in the theatre. Then they talked about the arrangements for Guests Seats on the main day of the performance.\n\nC. Leadership\n\nOne of the senior priests complained that in this festival nobody was able to take the responsibility for decisions, hence the confusion and additional trouble for the priests. I heard two of the ritual representatives making the same comment. I also have some firsthand experience of the state of near anarchy when I asked the chairman, Dang Saak-Luk, to whom the Museum's formal request for permission for video-taping should be addressed. He emphasized that the letter should be to all the members of the committee rather than to himself as Chairman.\n\nThe absence of authority probably had to do with the current situation of local politics rather than \"traditional ways\".\n\nBefore the opening ceremony a Liaison Officer from the District Office came with the Chairman of the Rural Committee to give an \"order\": seats reserved for the principal guest and nine other guests for the secular opening ceremony were to be labelled clearly. The Chairman of the Rural Committee, a man of about fifty, commented that now that he was", "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": 212878, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "172\n\nThis letter is both a classic of its kind and rather special—in its content warranting translation in full. It was composed in the literary style, and the writer's calligraphy is of a high standard. It is altogether a superior production, and of a kind now seldom seen. The writer was either an old village scholar or a retired schoolmaster, since the younger generation no longer has these literary skills or is trained in them. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the grave tablet erected in 1962 by the four branches descended from Ancestor Shui-tai, and by a list of all male descendants in the after generations, including mention of those who had gone abroad. It is beyond doubt that the clan took the government's notice to remove the grave very seriously indeed.\n\nAccidental Damage to Graves and Urns\n\nSuch statements by those concerned—and they can be many times multiplied since they were the rule—indicate how very concerned villagers became if an old grave, and especially a founding ancestor's grave, was likely to be interfered with by the authorities. Sometimes the files record damage by accident or even by intent. Where accidental damage to graves occurred in the early postwar years, when a large military garrison engaged in frequent exercises across the countryside, the British Army was sometimes the culprit. In 1963, the District Office received a letter from the Tangs of Kam Tin about one of their ancestral graves on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan. 'It has recently been discovered that this ancestral grave has been damaged by military trucks... We are anxious to have it repaired; and as we cannot afford to do so, shall be much obliged if you will sympathize with us and provide the cost of building materials, so that we may proceed to repair the grave as possible in order to pacify the souls of our ancestors and calm ourselves.'8\n\nOn another such occasion, the then District Commissioner, New Territories, upon learning that an ancestral grave had been damaged during a military exercise, arranged for a ceremonial visit to be paid to the village by the brigade commander, the command land agent, the district officer concerned and himself. This was done to show respect to the family and to acknowledge its concern, as well as to show the authorities' desire to make speedy reparation for the damage caused.9 The villagers no doubt appreciated this gesture.\n\nSuch actions could be two-way. Meritorious actions by officers of the District Administration were also recognized. I once received a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 183, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "166\n\nHai Journal, no 12 | August 1981, pp 191-201)\n\n1\n\nLo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and Its External Communications Before 1842 The History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival (Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963)\n\nBarbara Ward, \"Rediscovering our social and cultural heritage\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, (JHKBRAS) 20, pp 116-124, p 124\n\nSee Jack Potter Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant. Social and Economic Change in a Hong Kong Village (Berkeley, Calif University of California Press, 1968) He contradicts the theory that the industry and commerce of the treaty ports were the principal reasons for the bankruptcy of the Chinese countryside by showing how in Ping Shan, the effects of capitalism were beneficial to peasants.\n\nJames Hayes, The Hong Kong Region 1850-1911. Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside (Hamden, Connecticut Archon Books, 1972), The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983), Tsuen Wan Growth of a New Town and Its People (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1993)\n\n7 For the special nature of the District Officer's duties, see Austin Coates, Myself a Mandarin Memoirs of a Special Magistrate (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1975)\n\nSelina Ching Chan, \"Tradition Inherited, Traditional Reinterpreted. A Chinese Lineage in the 1990s\", (Unpublished Ph D thesis, Oxford University, 1995)\n\nAlan Birch and Martin Cole, Captive Years the Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45 (Hong Kong Heinemann, 1982) and Captive Christmas (Hong Kong. Heinemann, 1979)\n\n10 Most of the Rev Smith's work was published in articles in various, often obscure, journals, but more recently they have been collected in anthologies - Chinese Christians, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co, 1995)\n\nSee especially, DJ Dwyer (ed) The Changing Face of Hong Kong. Proceedings of a Weekend Symposium of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1971)\n\n12 Editorial, JHKBRAS, vol 7(1967)pp 1-3,p 2\n\n13 PH Hase and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Beyond the Metropolis Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd, 1995)\n\n14 Marjorie Topley, (comp) \"Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars\" Proceedings of a Symposium, February 8-9, 1969 (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969)\n\nSee Ian Diamond, \"The Paper Chase - Archives and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213579, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "145\n\n4000 acres. The creation of Government Forestry reserves would however probably involve considerable expenditure in the acquisition of the trees, and in watching and preserving the reserves. Hitherto funds have not been available to meet this expenditure\" (Dunn, 1907).\n\nIt was a delicate matter for graves to be sited within a village forestry area, even within a family's own portion. Agreements had to be forthcoming from village elders and from other families. Sometimes these areas had a secondary fung shui significance. For example, a fung shui hill on Tsing Yi island, consisted of a steep slope covered with pine trees, which was held under a forestry license by the Rural Committee on behalf of the villagers (Hayes 1983).\n\nTsing Yi seems to have been the exception with regard to the islands as Schofield (1983) comments, “Forestry is confined to the growing of firewood for use and sale. The plantations are generally near villages, but some on the islands belong to owners who live elsewhere. Nearly all Tsing Yi is divided between three forestry lots: yet on Lamma there are no forest lots, though there are trees all right. The biggest forestry lot is at Tung Chung. Very little planting is done except when encouraged by the District Officer: trees are allowed to sow themselves. Grass, growing thick in summer, is cut for fuel everywhere in autumn; it is the chief cooking fuel of the New Territories. Its cutting is women's work.” Coates (1968) observes that the natural regeneration of trees and shrubs was severely limited by this regular grass cutting, as young trees could not be seen in the long grass.\n\nThe problems of village forestry were described by Schofield (1977) from his time as a District Officer in the islands in the 1920s: \"During my periods in office I made an attempt to get the Chinese communities and villages owning forest lots to look after them and to plant trees. Free seed was distributed and planting instructions given, and a forest guard appointed to supervise and watch results. The difficulties of forest conservation in such scattered and isolated areas were certainly formidable: one was that the boat people could land almost anywhere and steal trees; another that the grass-cutters who annually collect fuel in the autumn are quite likely to cut and take young seedlings: to say nothing of true diseases and caterpillar infestation, often very serious. One bad case was at Tai O, where an entire hillside was laid bare at one swoop by its licensee instead of being cut in stages, and I told him", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213647, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 243, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "219\n\nwould have been rakish nonentities in their home country, and it is incontestable that there was an element of 'keeping the numbers up' in the recruitment of British expatriates by the Hong Kong Government.\n\nJames, though, was never to give anything less than a hundred per cent effort to his work and to Hong Kong in general. After a year's language training, he was posted to the Southern District Office as District Officer. His first assignment was to co-ordinate the clearing of villages soon to be immersed under the new Shek Pik Reservoir on Lantau Island. Thereafter he served with the Resettlement Department, the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, and the Commerce and Industry Department, in addition to his posts within the City & New Territories Administration. A notable posting was as Deputy Commissioner for Labour from 1982 to 1985. The apogee of his career was as Regional Secretary, New Territories, an area and whose inhabitants he had come to know and love. His postings are remarkable in that he spent almost all of his career outside the Government Secretariat, in contrast to the norm which is generally a mixture of work in the policy branches of government and, in James' words, 'key' departments. Generally, postings to the departments, other than to the most senior positions, are not sought after.\n\nThis book will make a good, informative read for people with little knowledge of Hong Kong and its government. It is written in an informal, pleasant style and there is no impaling of former colleagues or slagging of the system, although James does start drifting towards a characterisation of the political reforms of the eighties towards the end of the book, the impression being that he was not entirely enamoured of the new scheme of things. For 'insiders', there are few surprises and the book is not, therefore, riveting, although it will bring back memories for some, though.\n\nWell done, James, a good addition to the shelves from a former leading civil servant.\n\nPETER HALLIDAY", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213682, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "6\n\nIn New Kowloon, Tsuen Wan, and the Islands, enumeration was conducted by the police stationed there, or by the water police. The police were assisted by a headquarters team consisting of an experienced enumerator and translator. The enumerations undertaken by the police were conducted on the same house-to-house basis as those undertaken by the civilian enumerators, and the same books of schedules were used.\n\n7\n\nDetails of age, sex, place of birth, dialect spoken, occupation, religion, married state, degree of education, and infirmities, were recorded for each resident. The schedules were worked up into tables by experienced tabulators in the Census Office, this work being completed by October 28th. Table 1 below gives a summary of the 1911 census tables which refer to the New Territories. For the New Territories the population was tabulated for each village as well (broken down into male and female), as a single-handed contribution to the census by Mr. S.B.C. Ross, the district officer - this was not repeated for later censuses.\n\n20\n\nTable 1\n\nIX\n\n1911 Census Tables Referring to the New Territories\n\n \n Table\n Description of Table\n Comments\n \n \n XII\n The total population of the colony\n By district, age, and sex\n \n \n XIII\n Birth places of the Chinese population of the NT (Northern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n XIV\n Birth places of the Chinese population of the NT (Southern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Dialects spoken in the home (NT: North. District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Dialects spoken in the home (NT: Southern District)\n Given for males and females separately\n \n \n \n Chinese population of the villages of Hong Kong\n HK Island, Po Toi, etc. Given for males and females separately.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "Africa and South-east Asia to be suspicious of the pretensions of local leaders whose personal interests were not always easily identifiable with those of the common man—or, in their new surroundings, the worker in the plastics factory and his family. They had been conditioned by British policy and practice elsewhere to accept a goal of parliamentary democracy and self-determination as the norm; and while admitting that Hong Kong was, in the other cant phrase, “unique,” they saw no reason for it to be utterly different in ethos.\n\nSomeone who appreciated the subtle differences within colonies and between their officials was the last Colonial Service Governor, Sir David Clive Crosbie Trench GCMG MC. Trench had started his service in the Western Pacific, where as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands he had been a wartime \"coastwatcher\" in the mountains, reporting on Japanese activity, and had earned a military decoration during the Allies' reoccupation. He was one of the few Administrative Officers to benefit from the old Colonial Office's unspoken \"seven year rule.\" Under this, those who had spent that length of time in the supposedly enervating climate and mores of the Pacific should be sent to more politically and mentally bracing parts of the empire, the better to come back refreshed when more senior (determined Resident Commissioners in the Western Pacific, who thought seven years only just enough to train their juniors in the proper ways, usually managed to circumvent this best-laid plan.) Trench came to Hong Kong after the war, where he acquired a strong and popular reputation, notably in the Labour Department, as reorganiser of the Fire Brigade and as Deputy Colonial Secretary (DCS). It was no surprise when he went back to the Western Pacific as High Commissioner; there he presided over the creation for the egalitarian Melanesian society in the Solomon Islands of a novel democratic form of government based, via a constitution already adapted for Ceylon, on the pre-war London County Council, with committees instead of ministers (some of whose chairmen, however, inevitably assumed ministerial pretensions.) After three years, he returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1964.\n\nBefore he had left, Trench had naturally always shown greater sympathy with and understanding of the \"interlopers,\" as the aforesaid subset was vulgarly known, than did some of his senior colleagues. Although relations with a governor were inevitably more remote than those with a senior secretariat officer had been, he contrived not to be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213970, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 39, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "4\n\naloof on his return. The present writer can vouch for his active approval of an African-inspired experiment whereby departmental administrative officers in the urban areas would collect and transmit upwards a monthly 'intelligence digest' of local opinion, morale and responses to government action or inaction, and of attitudes to prominent local figures and to Chinese or foreign affairs: this was meant to supplement what was collected in their own specialist manners by the HK Police Special Branch (SB), the New Territories Administration (NTA), the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)'s Political Adviser (PA) and the Security Liaison Officer (SLO). Some of what was collected may have been too near the knuckle, some was rather too easily discounted as mere \"gossip,\" important though that might be as a reflection of influential belief at the grass roots, and some may have hurt the dignity of those who had the existing duty of intelligence-gathering. The governor was persuaded to drop the experiment as proving trivial.\n\nBut Trench also showed interest in another interloping proposal that, in the absence of any generalist government institutions to supplement the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (SCA)'s advisory staff (who liaised with the various kai fong (Neighbourhood) Welfare Associations, Clansmens' Associations and Residents' Associations, which were often self-perpetuating), District Officers (DOs) should be appointed in the urban areas; these should have certain executive functions, fewer than those of their colleagues in the New Territories so as not to encroach on the licensing prerogatives of the Urban Council, but sufficient to ensure that all should know of their existence and, above all, of where their offices were. Primarily they should oversee and co-ordinate the activities of the various professional and technical departments in their bailiwicks, but also, like paternalistic mandarins, inquire into, report upon and seek answers to the needs and concerns of the inhabitants. This suggestion was effectively smothered by a DCS who was unable to understand what such DOs might achieve in a city that existing institutions did not already adequately do: the concept of such junior, peripheral, government officers being responsive to people, as opposed to being mere executive agents responsible for essential infrastructural public services, was alien. Apart from the SCA's and District Commissioner New Territories (DCNT)'s contacts with often self-appointed élites, there was little by way of direct exchange with the man in the street: the same DCS once said, \"Government must, of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214043, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "78\n\n47\n\n#\n\nGovernment Press\n\nThe total land area of Fanling and Sheung Shui was 13,184 acres (20.6 square miles). See Heung Yee Kuk, Xin Jie Xiang Yi Ju Cheng Li Lu Shi Zhou Nian Jin Dian Te Kan (The Special Issue for the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk's 60th Anniversary [published in 1986]), p. 182\n\nA name list of successful applicants was posted on the village notice-board in 1991. A total of 69 ding houses were allowed to be built. But unsuccessful applicants tore down the list and then submitted objections to the District Office. They complained that some successful applicants were found to be living abroad, some came from the same family, and that most village council members of Fanling Wai (cun wei hui cheng yuan) were successful applicants. The result was considered unfair because many of these successful applicants were said to have bribed the Village Representatives for their applications. So the District Officer and Village Representatives had to set up new criteria for reconsidering the applications.\n\n\"The detail of the criterion is as follows (Data collected from the Fanling Wai village notice-board in 1994): (1) Villagers having large families and those whose present living conditions were comparatively less desirable. (1) Villagers who could afford the construction costs of the houses and were unlikely to dispose of the completed houses to outsiders. (11) Villagers who were enthusiastic towards serving fellow villagers and were benevolent towards the affairs of the village. (iv) Villagers who had submitted applications before June 1989. (v) Applicants who were or had been members of either the village committee, or Da Jiao Committee or Village Guard would be considered to have served their fellow villagers and to be benevolent towards the affairs of Fanling Wai. (Da Jiao is a lineage-based religious festival, see footnote 10). (vi) Where two or more applicants having a father and son relationship were successful in this selection exercise, only one application would be selected for allocation of a Small House site.\n\n\"Some villagers anticipated that their building rights would not be realized in their lifetime due to the keen competition or to their lack of money, so they decided to sell their \"right to build\" (ding quan) to land developers to profit. That is, land developers have offered villagers money to make use of their building rights to apply to build houses elsewhere. During my fieldwork, I found a total of seven Pangs who had successfully applied to build ding houses outside Fanling Wai. Six were built in San Wai of Lung Yeuk Tau (the Tang lineage settlement in Fanling), and one in Long Chai, Fanling. In fact, the phenomena of selling ding quan by villagers to make a profit has been a common one. For example, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, ten villagers living abroad who had no intention of returning to Hong Kong made a total profit of $500,000 by selling their ding quan to land developers (1982: 55, quoted in Allen Chun, op. cit., p. 222).\n\n* In 1976, in order to discourage villagers from making profits by selling their ding wu, the government amended the policy to pay the government full market value premium if houses are sold within five years of the end of construction work.\n\n27. The emigrant Mans also built new village houses in San Tin as the ultimate proof of their stake in the community of their birth. See James Watson, op. cit., p. 165", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214382, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 240, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "206 \n\nnot only recommended changes but tried to respect the sensibilities of the Chinese community. His hard-hitting report to the Colonial Office described how 'the dwellings of the Chinese working classes are inconvenient, filthy and unwholesome. Accumulations of filth occur in and around them, both above ground, and below ground, in the drains, especially in the latter.' In Chadwick's opinion it was unfair to condemn the Chinese as being 'a hopelessly filthy race till they have been provided with reasonable means for cleanliness. Furthermore, it was the Government's duty to see that these means were provided and applied. There was also 'the strongest necessity for inspection and supervision, especially whilst the new conditions are being introduced.' Chadwick had very definite opinions about the type of person who should perform these inspections. He noted that the existing sanitary staff, under the joint orders of the Colonial Surgeon and the Surveyor General, consisted of only one head and three sub-inspectors and, because these men were drawn from the same class as police sergeants, they commanded very little respect from the Chinese community. Additionally, their inability to speak Cantonese and the resulting reliance on interpreters caused frequent problems. Chadwick's solution was to introduce a post of Sanitary Officer under the control of the Registrar General. In Chadwick's view it was vital that this position was filled by a man who was not already engaged in other Government work and he considered an annual salary of £400-£500 to be appropriate.\n\nThere was another reason why the proposed Sanitary Officer should report to the Registrar General rather than either the Colonial Surgeon or the Surveyor General and that was the existence of the District Watch Force. Although Chadwick was well aware that the duties of the District Watchmen 'were connected with the preservation of order only,' he perceived the District Watch Force to be 'a powerful apparatus for enforcing sanitary law.' This would get around the problem of Chinese people objecting to foreigners entering their homes. He proposed that 'their powers should be extended to include cleanliness as well as order' and 'if necessary, their numbers might be increased, and an addition made by Government to their salary, which is now paid wholly by the people of the district.' In case any further justification was required, Chadwick also stated in his report that the idea of having the District Watchmen perform these duties 'was suggested to me by the Chinese.' He omitted to specify which particular Chinese made this suggestion. The notion that 'the Chinese' thought as one and had no individual\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215135, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "188\n\ncopy which was corrected in 1900. Earlier versions do not, apparently, show the two Obelisks. It seems then that the two Obelisks were erected in their present forms at the end of the 19th century. I was, however, told by a Chinese Chief Inspector of the Royal Hong Kong Police, at the informal meeting organised by Chatwin, that at one stage in his career the Chief Inspector had served in the Tai Tam district. There he had met an elderly, retired police officer who informed him that, before the two concrete Obelisks were constructed, two timber obelisks stood in about the same places. This is purely oral history and, although it may well be true, I have not been able to trace anything more about them. Joseph Aspdin did not invent artificial Portland cement until 1824, in Britain. It would take time for its use to spread around the world. This meant that if obelisks were erected in the middle of the 19th century, in Hong Kong, they would likely have been made of some material other than cement concrete.\n\nThe two beacons were probably used by shipping, then, as navigational aids when entering the Bay, and sailing on into the Harbour, to avoid hazards or for use in times of bad visibility. In a Government Antiquities and Monuments Office paper a master mariner, Mr A Davidson, is quoted as saying that following the courses of the two Obelisks, 'in line,' results in a course which clears a patch of rocks lying across the entrance to Tai Tam Bay. These rocks, he states, are now lighted (Antiquities and Monuments Office, 1980).\n\nBearing in mind that just about all useful records from the Government Harbour Master's Office and the Public Works Department were lost during the Japanese occupation (1941 to 1945), it has not been possible to trace who erected the two Obelisks although attempts have been made to do so (Lack, 1994). It could have been the Public Works Department. It could have been the Royal Navy itself through its Royal Naval Dockyard. Until the late 1950s this was situated where Admiralty is today, in Central District. If it was the Royal Navy one would have thought there would have been some marking on the Obelisks, such as the Admiralty fouled anchor. One would also perhaps have expected the concrete finish of the Obelisks to have been better although they have stood the test of time.\n\nCould the Obelisks have been used for other purposes? Sometimes two sets, each comprising two beacons, are erected to clock ships in a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215214, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 310, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "274\n\nowners who had lost their land and houses for the extension of the airfield. This is correct. When I became District Officer South in 1957, I found that the office registers listed a number of files dealing with the subject, among them DOS9/171/50 (1950), entitled 'Kai Tak Compensation - List of Property formerly owned by Squatters at Kowloon Tong (Kowloon Tsai) Model Village', and that my staff were still making payments to late applicants.\n\nModel Village itself was cleared for development in the early 1980s, removing an almost forgotten link with the wartime events, which had brought so much hardship to those village families directly involved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215664, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 441, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "393\n\nService and was posted to the British Consulate in Beijing. He was interned by the Japanese during World War II but was then exchanged for Japanese diplomatic staff and made his way to India. He spent the War serving in various capacities with the Indian Army. In 1940, he met the German photographer Hedda Hammer and they married in Beijing in 1946. Due to the increasing instability of the political situation in China, they left Beijing soon after. The Morrisons spent six months in Hong Kong before relocating to Sarawak, in the north-west of the island of Borneo, where Alastair was appointed to the British Colonial Service and later became a district officer. Throughout her 20-year residence in Sarawak, Hedda accompanied Alastair on all his official journeys and made numerous independent photographic tours. From 1960 to 1966 Hedda was employed by the Sarawak government to work part-time in the photographic section of the Information Office in Kuching. Her duties included taking photographs, establishing a photographic library and training government photographers. Hedda wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962).\n\nJennie Morrison, 1912, (Mitchell Library)\n\nIn 1967 the Morrisons settled in Canberra, Australia. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991, at the age of 82. Alastair lives in Hughes, Canberra. His Fair Land Sarawak: Some Recollections of an Expatriate Official (Ithaca, Cornell University) and The Road to Peking (Canberra, Highland Press, private distribution), both appeared in 1993.\n\nMr. Morrison's other brother, Colin Morrison was born in April 1917. He joined the Administrative Service in Hong Kong and was also a member of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which held out valiantly for 17 days against the Japanese in December 1941.2 He was interned by the Japanese at the Shamshuipo camp for the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215841, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 140, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "73\n\nin which the inauguration ceremony was being held. Plate 10 hints at the profusion of flags and banners in evidence on these occasions. Floral banners were also in use when farewelling one official and welcoming another in his place. The one shown in Plate 11 was erected at a street entrance on Cheung Chau in 1962, to mark my departure from office, and my successor's arrival to take up the District Officer's post.\n\nItems in use at ceremonial occasions\n\nBy time-honoured practice, various items were in common use in the course of the proceedings:\n\nIndividual rosettes\n\nFirstly, each of the principal guests was provided with an ornate rosette, on which his or her name and (if an official) his or her appointment was noted. This is often done with a Chinese writing brush, in black ink (see Plates 12, 13 and 14).\n\nScissors for ribbon-cutting\n\nAt all opening ceremonies, the officiating guest was invited to cut the ribbon stretched across the stage used (or especially erected) for the event, or across a doorway, as appropriate to the occasion. He or she was accompanied by other principal guests, who also participated in the ribbon-cutting. (Plate 14 shows the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Kam Tin Ta Chiu in 1985). For this purpose, the host body had usually to prepare special scissors, in gold or silver plate, inscribed with the name and date of the event, and in the case of the principal guest, his or her name.\n\nPresentation items\n\nIt was important at all ceremonies to make public acknowledgment of the persons and groups who had helped to finance or otherwise contributed to the particular event or project; not forgetting the boy scouts, girl guides, cubs and brownies or other organized youth groups who so often lined the official route to the site, or held the ground. Their assistance was duly recognized by the presentation of various kinds of commemorative items.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215860, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 159, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "92\n\n監誓官\n\n許\n\n先生\n\nPlate 12. Rosette for District Officer administering the oath to office bearers, first term, Chiu Chau Countrymen's Association, Cheung Chau, circa 1960. This rosette would have been in addition to one showing name and post.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]