[ { "id": 204466, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n87\n\nHeaven. In Canton itself there was a serious plot to seize the city in October 1894, which led Consul Fraser to write in his next report\n\nThere is little doubt that dissatisfaction with the administration of their native country is growing among the Southern Chinese, and if no attempt at reform is made, may result in a serious insurrection\". He mentioned the plot but remarked that its failure was due more to the ineptitude of its organisers than to the vigour of the local authorities.33 His colleague at Pakhoi, in the south-east of the province, was more critical.\n\nSuch as is Chinese civilisation, Pakhoi is of its outskirt only and shows a lower level than I have seen anywhere else in this country. Piracy is in the blood of the race. A glance through the year's diary shows a monotonous record of petty coast raids, hoverings of pirate junks (which still terrorise the neighbouring coastline) and robberies of every degree of dignity from the sacking of the larger pawnshops to the plunder of a returned emigrant from the Straits or Sumatra. Of Chinese local authorities at Pakhoi itself there are practically none, the highest native Civilian within 20 miles being an officer of the rank of sub-district deputy magistrate armed with an amount of authority that barely enables him to call in question the theft of a matchbox. It would be invidious to say this much of the Pakhoi neighbourhood without adding that most of the adjacent areas are worse.34\n\nWhilst these reports were confined to individual districts there can be little doubt that the general unrest was known and felt in the New Territory. It will be recalled that SUN Yat Sen was a Cantonese and some of his followers are credited with swelling the ranks of the village bands which offered resistance to the British troops who entered the New Territory in 1899.35 This tale of unrest and lawlessness, and weakness on the part of the civil authorities, provides a background to the unsuccessful reform movement of 1898, sponsored by the southern party at Peking, whose sequel was the incarceration of the emperor by his formidable aunt, the Empress Dowager, the stringent capital measures against the reform party and their dispersal overseas or in foreign concessions in China. The leader of the movement and adviser to the emperor was KANG Yue Wei, a prominent scholar and mandarin, and himself a Cantonese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 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": 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": 204638, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "106\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n30 The Tung Kwun association note book says that there was a Po On Wui Sor ★ ★ ƒ in the Ch'ing dynasty, but since this had always led to confusion their association (the Po On Shuc Shat) was renamed the Tung Kwun Wui Sor in the 12th year of the Chinese Republic (1923).\n\n31 A tablet (1953) in the Free School says that this institution dates back to 1921 and local leaders say that the kung sor was rebuilt at this time. The old kung sor was also known as the hon kaam lau ★ ★# or watchmen's building.\n\n** On the other hand it is unlikely that it predates the defence bureau (1863-70) as this would have been a suitable subject for the Kaifong to organise (there is no mention of it on the tablet).\n\n33 Mr. LEUNG Yau recalls that there were two Kaifong junks operating a daily service between Cheung Chau and Hong Kong before the lease (1898). One left Hong Kong (Sai Ying Pun) at 11 a.m., whilst the other left Cheung Chau at the same time. Both were sailing junks and took three hours to make the journey under good conditions and the whole day if otherwise. They were subscribed and run by a number of local gentlemen for public use. A steam Kaifong vessel was bought with public subscriptions in 1910. Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories, 1910.\n\n&\n\n34 There are now eight district associations on the island for natives of the districts of Po On; Tung Kwun; Wai-Chiu combined ✰✰ *#; Sei Yap (\"The Four Towns') i.e. Toi Shan 4, Sun Wui. Hoi Ping, Yan Ping; Ng Yap ♣ (“The Five Towns\") i.e. Hok Shan plus the towns of Sei Yap, Shun Tak: Chung Shan ✈ and Chiu Chau (separate), the four last named formed since 1945, all offering a variety of social, educational and charitable services to members.\n\n35 HSIAO, in his interesting and lengthy study of rural China in the 19th Century, does not deal specifically with the internal organisation of the market towns. The market town of Tai O at the south west end of Lantau island (land population 2248 in 1911) would provide an interesting local comparison, though material is not so readily available as for Cheung Chau. I hope to write a similar outline account at a later date.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204870, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1964", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "148\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nabandoned, broken-down, and over-grown with trees and scrub, probably because it lies in a more remote and less populous part of Lantau, so that there would be no use for it after the garrison left.\n\nAn interesting feature of the Tung Chung fort is the presence of six old muzzle-loading cannons on its walls, each fixed to a cement base. (There are now none at Fan Lau). How these were preserved at Tung Chung is told in the following extract from the 1918 Administrative Report of the District Officer, South:\n\nMiscellaneous Receipts show an increase of $5,000 odd, due to the sale of old cannon for $5,265 which had previously remained neglected in the district. In this connection, it may be noted that any specimens of interest were retained, and that six guns were selected for mounting upon the wall of the old Yamen — the present Police Station — at Tung Chung, Lantau. So the guns at Tung Chung may not always have been there, but may have come from elsewhere, some perhaps from Fan Lau.\n\nThe cannons vary in weight from 1,000 to 2,000 catties, i.e. between 12 and 24 cwts., and are quite large. An interesting comparison is the Ming cannon dredged from Kai Tak Bay in 1956 during the construction of the new runway, which weighs 500 catties and is now mounted outside the Colonial Secretariat. All six pieces carry inscriptions, of which only four are now legible. A typical description reads as follows (though there is room for dispute as to the precise translation):\n\nCannon; weight - 2,000 catties (23-8 cwts.) YIK, Border Pacification General by Imperial Appointment. CHAI, Minister of Constant Support, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi.\n\nLEUNG, Assistant Minister of Defence and Governor of Kwangtung.\n\nLAU, Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture.\n\nCHEONG, Hoi Fung District Magistrate, on Reserve, supervised its manufacture in the 21st year of Reign of To Kwong, 10th Moon (1842)\n\nby Cannon Artisans LI, CHAN & FOK.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204871, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n149\n\nAn expert could say what the ranges of such cannons were, but after you have landed at the pier and walked to the fort, you will appreciate that it is 1,200 yards from the coast. It is unlikely that guns in the fort could be really effective at this range, so that one questions the wisdom of its planners in placing it so far from the sea, if it was meant to be a work of coastal defence.\n\nWhat of the garrison? In the later Ching period there were at least three military installations on Lantau at Tung Chung, Tai O and Fan Lau, another on Cheung Chau, and a considerable number of troops in the Kowloon Walled City. These were all sedentary garrisons drawn from the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the Chinese regular forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts all over the eastern and southern part of the Sun On district, of which the present Crown Colony of Hong Kong formed the major part. The garrison at Tung Chung was commanded by a subordinate officer and probably consisted of a score or two men who were very likely without modern weapons. Writing in 1903 Dyer Ball said of the Chinese military forces that \"matchlocks, gingals, bows and arrows, spears and lances are still the weapons of many\". Their military efficiency was probably very slight. A missionary, who wrote an interesting account of the San On district for the last number of the transactions of the old Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1859, has an amusing description of the guard post at the Shatin Pass. However, they probably had a deterrent value, but owing to the poor state of local communications at that time, they were much too far away to assist if anything happened elsewhere on Lantau, particularly on the south side, though their influence was felt there. When the local leaders of the Pui O community (South Lantau) rebuilt the Hung Shing temple there in 1875, they persuaded the garrison commander at Tung Chung to make a contribution. In the commemorative tablet recording the event he is styled Fu Ye, a respectful form of address for this subordinate officer.\n\nTo bring these rather rambling notes to a close, the fort was used after 1898 as a police station. The District Officer who recovered the cannons for the fort has left a vivid picture of his occasional magisterial visits there about 1920:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205348, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 103\n\nmany Punti villages from \"squeezes\" formerly levied on them, \"especially the Hakkas\".\n\n13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63.\n\n14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, \"The Five Great Clans of the New Territories\" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist.\n\n15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration.\n\n16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98,\n\n17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon,\n\n18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century.\n\nWhere no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries,\n\nAddition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's \"The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911\", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205349, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "104\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nBy the REV. Mr. Krone\n\n(Editor's Note. Beginning with Vol. 5 (1965) the Society made a start with reprinting selected articles from the Transactions of the old China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society which existed in Hong Kong between 1846-59. The only known complete extant sets of the Transactions in the Colony are the microfilmed sets recently acquired by the Library of the University of Hong Kong and by the Society. The article reprinted below is taken from pp. 71-105 of the sixth and last volume of Transactions, published in Hong Kong in 1859. It is a valuable contemporary account of the north-western part of the San On (Hsin An) district (新安縣) and will be of special interest to readers of this Journal in that it describes something of the history and conditions of life in the area just beyond the present Sino-British frontier in the New Territories. Its re-appearance in print will also provide scholars with the text in a more accessible form than the microfilmed sets which are available here and elsewhere. The author was a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society which, according to the account of its history given in The China Mission Hand Book (Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1896) pp. 272-275 came to South China in 1847. From this account, Mr. Krone appears to have come to China about 1850 and worked there for upwards of ten years. He seems to have gone on leave thereafter and died in the Red Sea on his way back to China from Germany. The article is reprinted here exactly as it appears in the original, despite a few obvious errors and inconsistencies).\n\nA NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT 新安城:\n\nRead before the Society, February 24th, 1858\n\nTHE District of Sanon, to which the mainland opposite to the Island of Hongkong belongs, is one of the fourteen districts of the department of Canton. During the Han dynasty, and at the time of the Three States, the present Sanon District, together with those of Túng-kun and Pok-lo, formed only one large district, bearing the name of Pok-lo *.\n\nand Túng-kun\n\nUnder the following dynasties, Sanon ✯✯ constituted one district, which was denominated Túng-kun 東莞 ★, afterwards Po-on, and since the 2d year of the Emperor Chi-tok of the Tong dynasty, Túng-kun ✯ £. 東莞. Hung-mo, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1399 A.D.), found it necessary in the 27th year of his reign to appoint an officer with the title \"Shou-yu-sho\"-Protector of the region, in order to protect the population, which was rapidly increasing, against the bands of robbers and vagabonds which infested the district.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205350, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 112, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\nJ\n\n105\n\nThis officer established himself at a place then called Shak-tse-kong, the present Nam-tou, a part of which situated on a hill was surrounded by walls. But it was found that this officer was unable to rule efficiently the whole of the district, and some men of influence, supported by the high mandarins at Canton, demanded that the part of the country which they inhabited should be made a separate district.\n\nThe Emperor Wan-lik granted this petition in the first year of his reign; the new district was called \"Sanon,” new peace; and the walled part of Nam-tou rose to be the district town of Sanon, and accordingly received the name of Sanon Yuen-shing 新安城.\n\nThe Sanon district included the islands of Lan-tow, Hongkong, and all the small neighbouring islands. The mainland portion of the district was bounded to the North by the districts of Túng-kun 東莞 and Kwei-shin 歸善. The northern boundary is formed by the Pik-tau River, which flows into the estuary of the Canton River, and is navigable for small Chinese sea craft (such as passage-boats) for about 8 miles; and several chains of mountains further to the East. This boundary, however, is very arbitrarily drawn, as sometimes villages in the midst of Sanon belong to Túng-kun. The borders of the three districts join together in the neighbourhood of the mart of Kun-lan, a place notoriously unsafe, as being the abode of thieves and vagabonds, who can with facility escape from the jurisdiction of one mandarin to that of another.\n\nTo the East, the Sanon District is bounded by the estuary of the Canton River. This estuary is divided by the Chinese into several parts with different names: the part to the south of the Bocca Tigris into which the Pik-tow River falls, is called Hop-lan Hoi; the bay named by the English Lintin is designated by the Chinese Nam-low Bay, after the city of that name; Deep Bay is called Hau-hoi or Back-water Bay*. This bay is generally very shallow, a deep channel however running down the centre; the navigation is rendered more dangerous by the many oyster-beds which exist. The bay terminates in a considerable creek, which is navigable at high-tide for three or four miles, as far as the important mart of Sham-tsuen.\n\n&\n\nPA.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205718, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "18\n\nT. C. CHENG\n\nwatchmen being paid for with subscriptions from the Chinese community.* In 1893 a District Watch Force Committee was formed with the Registrar General (Protector of Chinese) as Chairman, and from that time onwards up to 1941 many prominent Chinese leaders served on that Committee. Indeed, for many years, it was more or less a tradition for prominent Chinese who wished to render public service to the Colony to begin their public career with this Committee and then, in the case of those who had a knowledge of English, to proceed to the Sanitary Board (which was replaced by the Urban Council in 1935) and thence to the Legislative Council.\n\nFor some years Wei Yuk was more or less an unofficial liaison officer between Hong Kong and the Manchu Government, and the latter was indebted to him in no small degree for the assistance he rendered in bringing to justice Chinese criminals who had fled from Chinese territory to Hong Kong. He was so respected by the Chinese in South China that, following the successful revolution in 1911, when Admiral Li Tsun, Commander of the Chinese Imperial Naval Detachments of Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces, declared his surrender to the revolutionary forces directed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen's deputy, Hu Han-min from Hong Kong, Mr. Wei Yuk was asked to act as the guarantor of good faith on both sides!\n\nIn 1894, a fierce bubonic plague broke out in Hong Kong which accounted for over 2,000 deaths mainly in the oldest Chinese section of Hong Kong, viz., Tai Ping Shan (the present Po Hing Fong). In 1896 and subsequent years the plague recurred to a greater or less degree every spring. As there was little scientific knowledge of the plague and as there was no western treatment for this, Government decided to take drastic measures including the cleansing and disinfecting of infected areas, compulsory removal of the sick and house-to-house visitation carried out generally by the military. As it was very un-Chinese to allow sick parents or relatives to be removed from their homes to die in strange hospital rooms, and as the Chinese looked upon house visitation as interference and intrusion upon their privacy and personal liberty, they adopted an attitude of passive resistance and often hid away the dead and the sick. Wei Yuk was able to do\n\nSee chapter 4, \"District Watchmen\" of Regulation of Chinese Ordinance, No. 13 of 1888.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "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": 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": 206094, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n169\n\nwhich had belonged to the last Emperor and in it the seal of the dynasty which was brought back as a token of the complete extinction of Sung. At Ch'ek Wan on the peninsula called Nam Shan just north-cast of our region there is a tomb which purports to be that of Ti Ping. It bears the inscription \"Grave of the Little Emperor Hsing Hsing24 of Sung\" and it is tended by a family named Chiu which was the surname of the Sung emperors. There are graves of both Tuan Tsung and Ti Ping in other places along the coast of Kwangtung province and it is not certain that this one is genuine. Most likely it was a \"garment grave\" containing some relic of the Emperor and made to deceive his enemies as to his real burial place.\n\nMany Chinese families in the district claim to be descended either from royal blood or from ministers and soldiers of Sung. These claims may be unsubstantiated individually but the fact that they are made in the mass points to a tradition that much of the Sung army settled in South China after their defeat. It may be asked whether the Tang family helped the Emperors whose kins-men they were. Tang Shou Tsu who lived about this time was a minor officer in the Yuan armies and probably fought against Sung. The Tang family nevertheless lost its paramount influence in Tung Kun district after these events, and this may be the reason why members of the elder branch settled more permanently at Kam Tin and in other parts of the region.\n\nVIII. T'UN MUN AND THE PORTUGUESE\n\nMention has been made in a previous section of the prevalence of pirates in the South China Seas in early times. The earliest record of any piratical action within the region is as early as the 10th century when a pirate named Wu Ling Kuang attacked T'un Mun but was defeated. A later event was a revolt of the population of Lantau Island in 1278 when the Yuan government attempted to enforce a monopoly of the salt production and arrested the private salt makers. It is recorded that soldiers tried to land on the island but were prevented by means of wooden stakes placed along the coast, and that the Tanka inhabitants then sailed up the estuary and attacked Canton. The civil population fled, but the sailors defending Canton, by using incendiary arrows\n\n24 The reign title of Ti Ping.", "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": 206414, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n205\n\nI was District Officer, South at the time and asked for a record to be made of the two ceremonies, which are known locally as Tun Fu (祭祀).* The first of them took place at Pak Wai village on Sunday, 17 January 1960. The second was performed on 23 March 1960. The same officer reported on each ceremony, and his reports are given verbatim. He was Mr. G. C. W. Grout, now retired. The second report was written up 19 months later, from field notes.\n\nHong Kong, April 1971.\n\nDETAILS OF A TUN FU CEREMONY PERFORMED AT\n\nPAK WAI VILLAGE, SUNDAY, 17TH JANUARY, 1960.\n\nInstruments used.\n\n1. Six 2 ft. lengths of split green bamboo about 2 inches wide.\n\n2. Three cups of wine.\n\n3. Three cups of tea.\n\n4. A rice bowl.\n\n5. A nail about four inches long.\n\n6. Packet containing money.\n\n7. Candles.\n\n8. Incense.\n\n9. A plate of steamed bread.\n\n10. A plate of oranges.\n\n11. An enamelled metal basin containing a whole chicken, a large piece of pork, pig and chicken innards, all steamed.\n\n12. Joss paper.\n\n13. Firecrackers.\n\n14. Gilt leaves, red cloth and red string.\n\n15. Two flower pots filled with sand.\n\n16. Book of incantations.\n\n17. A young live cockerel.\n\nThe geomancer started by placing the incense, the cups and the rice bowl and red packet on a table in the order shown in the sketch. The incense was then lit and water placed in the rice bowl. Two pieces of joss paper were then lit, placed in the rice bowl of water, and the nail put into it. He then took up one of the pieces of wet bamboo, passed it over the burning incense and wrote certain inscriptions on it, copying out of the book, and passed it over the incense again, the written side down.\n\nThis was repeated for each piece of bamboo. Then the red cloth was cut into strips and tied with red string and gilt leaves\n\n*The first character is doubtful,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206525, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n67\n\nthe charge of the North Division magistrate, who was also Secretary to Government. The Secretary held a dormant commission to administer the affairs of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division contained all the rest of the leased Territory, i.e., seventeen out of the twenty-six districts, and it was presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who also acted as District Officer. This gentleman controlled a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese; all his other staff were Chinese. Apart from the District Officer, there was only one other European official resident in the South Division, which contained 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory.\n\nUntil 1906, however, Lockhart as Commissioner could call upon the services of the Chinese Regiment in any emergency which the police were unable to cope with. This Regiment was raised in early 1899 and owed its origin to a suggestion made by Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, that Chinese troops could be organised at Weihaiwei for use in other places. According to R.F. Johnston: 'They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900, they behaved exceedingly well, both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.' Johnston, it seems, over-praised their contribution for between 1899 and 1901 over 800 deserted and many of them moved straight into Chinese service after having passed through what came to be known as \"the Wei Hai Wei Military School\". As the India Office pointed out, Great Britain was in effect furnishing a \"steady annual supply of trained soldiers\" to China. At its greatest strength the Chinese Regiment numbered 1,300 officers and men but in 1906, the year the Regiment was disbanded, their numbers had fallen to about 600. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. In 1910, therefore, the entire Territory was policed by only fifty-six Chinese constables and three inspectors. There was no permanent garrison of British troops.\n\nWeihaiwei was officially designated not as a Colony but as a Territory, which meant that Lockhart as Commissioner was head of the local government and subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206850, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 121\n\nis called Lo Foo Ts'z T'ong (老虎祠堂), Tiger Hall. The floor of the cave is quite smooth with a lot of small stones almost like a mosaic. Though the actual site of the school is not known, old tiles have been found from time to time on the hillside, and one of these can be seen in a house called Cheung Ch'un Yuen (祥泉園) of Shui Tau (水頭) village. In the same house is a flower vase of interest that was dug up on Hong Kong island about 30 years before the British settled there.\n\nAs mentioned before, four of the \"five Yuens\" eventually left Kam Tin and founded branches of the Tang family elsewhere, and it has even been said that Yuen Leung, the ancestor of the Kam Tin branch, moved to Mok Ka Tung (莫家洞) near Shek Lung, but this removal is generally attributed to Yuen Leung's daughter-in-law, a princess of Sung dynasty whose story reads almost like a romance. She was a daughter of the Emperor Ko Tsung (高宗) of Sung Dynasty, who before becoming emperor of China was Prince Hong Wong (康王). The Tartars at that time were attacking the North of China, and in the 2nd year of Tsing Hong (靖康) A.D. 1127 they entered the Sung capital, captured the two emperors Fai Tsung (徽宗) and Yam Tsung (欽宗) together with both the mother and wife of Hong Wong, who was himself away in another part of the kingdom fighting the Tartars as he held the appointment of Tin Ha Ping Ma Tai Yuen Sui (天下兵馬大元帥), the commander-in-chief of all the emperor's forces. Hong Wong's little daughter was only ten years old and she was protected by her women servants who fled with her to the South. In the 3rd year of Kin Yim (建炎) A.D. 1129 they arrived in the Kiangsi province where Yuen Leung was district officer of Kung Yuen (贛縣) district. He was very zealous to help the Emperor and had collected together an army of soldiers, with the intention of marching North. Kiangsi was full of the Tartar forces, and the princess found herself surrounded by enemies. One day she saw the Sung flag over the encampment of Yuen Leung's army and she went to him for protection. She stayed with Yuen Leung, moving about with his soldiers, and eventually when he returned to Kam Tin he brought her back with him. He did not know who she was, as the servants had told him only that she was the daughter of a high official in the North. The princess found happiness and security in Kam Tin. She was like a daughter in Yuen Leung's house, helped with the household duties and was quite content. Eventually she revealed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206982, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n47\n\nthe Chicago meat trade. Morès soon joined forces with Drumont,49 the brilliant anti-semitic editor of La Libre Parole, served as the paper's official duellist, and created a body of street fighters called 'Morès and His Friends'. These street fighters, the first 'storm-troopers', were recruited from among the butcher boys of the district of La Villette in northeastern Paris. Morès outfitted his 'friends' in cowboy hats, purple shirts and other Wild West accoutrements.\n\n51\n\nIn June 1890 Morès was sentenced to three months imprisonment50 for the publication of inflammatory writings; but this experience did not dampen his ardour as a fervent nationalist, socialist and anti-semite. He fought four duels, in one of which he killed Captain Armand Mayer, a Jewish officer in the French Army; but in 1893 his political position was compromised when Clemenceau revealed that the anti-semitic Morès had borrowed money from Cornelius Herz, a Jew associated with the notorious Panama scandal. In 1894 the impetuous Morès landed in Algeria and immediately embarked on a violent campaign to arouse the Moslems in North Africa.\n\nIn 1895, after a short visit to France, Morès returned to Algeria. His purpose was to create an alliance between Catholic France and Moslem Africa so as to block British expansion in the African continent. His scheme was visionary and it is not clear how he expected to unify Frenchmen and Arabs in a crusade against British imperialism; but we do know he planned an expedition from Tunis through Ghadames and Ghat across the Sahara Desert to Bahr el Ghazal, where the French would be in a strong position on the Upper Nile to throttle British power in Egypt and prevent complete British control of the route from Cape to Cairo.\n\nIn Tunis on 29 April 1896, Morès signed an agreement with a certain El Hadj Ali to guide a caravan from Gabes, Tunisia, to Ghat, a distance of some thousand miles. He left Gabes on the morning of 14 May with a small escort. On the journey south a party of Touaregs attached themselves to the caravan, claiming they would guide the party through the desert. In fact, they were the henchmen of the Touareg Bechaoui, who was waiting to plunder the caravan and kill Morès at a place on the Libyan frontier called Mechiguig.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207095, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES.\n\nKAM T'IN 4 (continued).\n\nSUNG HOK-P'ANG\n\n[4]\n\nAll the members of the Tang family living in Kam T'in now are the direct descendants of Hung Yee, so besides Hon Fat, whom they venerate as the first ancestor to settle in Kam T'in and Yuen Leung as the first ancestor for the new generations that dated back to the \"five Yuens”, they also venerate Hung Yee as their Hoi Tsuk Tso (*) “the ancestor who started the present clan\"; but no new series of generations was made dating from him and on his gravestone Hung Yee is named as the 15th generation ancestor after Hon Fat.\n\nAs Tang T'ing-Ching (***) a grandson of Hung Yee passed the Kui Yan (A) degree in the 7th year of Shing Fa (✯Ł) A.D. 1471, and was appointed the district officer of T'ang Yuen (B) Kwangsi province, Hung Yee, according to Chinese custom, received the honour of Man Lam Long (p). Both the graves of Hung Yee and his second wife Wong are to be found at Tung Haang Leng (*) about a mile away to the East of Kam T'in. According to Wong's gravestone she is supposed to have gone with Hung Yee to the place of his banishment, but this is different to the story in the Kam T'in family-tree book where it is stated that Hung Yee married Wong in Nanking after he was set free from his banishment. Hung Yee's original house was situated outside the North Gate of Kam T'in Market, but it no longer exists and the place where it stood is now called Naam Wai Tun () “South surround mound\". The ancestral hall in Kam T'in Market which is to be found there now, is the one that was built for Hung Yee by his descendants.\n\nThe three sections printed herein conclude the reissue of this article which first appeared in The Hong Kong Naturalist between December 1935-March 1938. The first three sections appeared between pp. 110-132 of the 1974 Journal, together with a memoir of the author. The photographs illustrating all six sections are printed in this issue.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207099, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "164 \n\nSUNG HOK-PANG \n\nOn picking up the coins it was found that one large one, bigger than the rest, had two characters on it (*) Shing Kwong. The villagers accounted for this by believing that the coins must have belonged to a man named Shing Kwong who in some time of trouble had buried them. After many years the spirit of the silver had caused it to fly away to be bestowed on some lucky man who deserved good fortune. Thus the money was collected together and handed over to the house. \n\nWhen the baby, who played such an important part in this story, was a month old, he received his first name which was Tang Naan. Later on, when he was old enough to go to school he was sent by his grandmother to a country school. It is a Chinese custom for a new pupil to ask his teacher to give him a new name \"shue meng” ✯ % (=a name for a pupil-book name) Tang Naam's teacher, who was not a Kam T'in man, and knew nothing about the story of \"Ngan t'au Laam” in Kam T’in, strangely enough gave him the name “Shing Kwong,” exactly the same as the two characters on the largest coin. When evening came and school lessons were finished, the boy went back to his house with his books and much surprised the village elders by showing them his new name written on all his books. \n\nAfter that they were quite convinced that the money was meant for him. When he grew up Tang became a merchant and because of his wealth he was able to subscribe liberally to public funds which resulted in his receiving the honour of being made Chau T'ung (#) assistant officer of Chau, which meant that he was higher than a district officer. His official name of Tang Sz Taan was recorded in the History of Sun On. He built himself a very big house called Naam Teng, the remains of which can still be seen on the south side of Kat Hing Wai. The round outside wall and the stone doorway with the three characters on it (1) Lin Hing Lei, \"Continuous Blessing Place\" are still there. \n\nTwo stories of this merchant have been handed down. One of his children married into a very prosperous family named To living at Ts'eng Chuen Wai, † near Castle Peak, and between Tang and the head of this family who was a farmer, owning several hundred acres, there existed a friendly rivalry. One day they were having a meal together in old Yuen Long market and both of them, heated with wine, contested that he was the richer. To declared", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "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": 208113, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "136 \n\nW. J. HINTON \n\non sanitation and the care of a little system of hill tracks which might serve as a model to the New Territories. Their King is the District Officer South, the \"Lord of the Isles,\" but Kaifong and Residents Association alike show a praiseworthy spirit of independence, and a capacity for governing themselves; moreover, the injunction “Agree with thine adversary quickly\" is well understood and followed in China, even under British rule. \n\nBut we have drifted from geography into politics, like better men before us, and it would be well to pass back to the native community, through the terraced fields dotted with blue-clad figures bowed over the hoe, or shuffling along the narrow paths with a yoke of watering buckets, or cutting and pulling the beetroots, carrots, and cabbages. We will go back to the Eastern end of the village and then traverse its length, completing our brief survey by passing out to our waiting boat over the harbour, and so back to Hongkong. On the stage thus set, it may be that we or someone more competent may stage scenes from the life of the island folk from time to time. There is a strange and interesting feast in the Spring, well worth describing, and at the New Year when the whole fishing fleet lies at anchor in the bay, the little town is all alive. A sitting in the Court of the District Magistrate would be worth describing too, and a meeting of the City Fathers, the Kaifong. We must write, for lack of better witnesses, yet how true it is that those who know do not say, and those who say do not know! \n\nBut to our walk. There lies our little yacht that brought us from Hongkong, white and strange among the high-sterned junks with their brown mat sails. We have all the afternoon to wander, and half the night to lie in the Harbour before the tide turns and we must up anchor and away. \n\nStrolling through the Town \n\nWe have landed on the beach near the Temple of Kwan Yin and find ourselves among the Hakka people who inhabit this end of the town. Their small, sturdy figures are to be seen clustered about the well where the women are drawing water, or bending over the boats in the boat-building yard that slopes to the water's edge. There is material for a whole study in the types of boat and the methods of building alone, but we cannot stop to watch for more than a few minutes while the skilful ship's carpenters fix the ribs and planking of a brand new sampan. A word of greeting to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208121, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nMy first introduction to the Southern District took the form of journeys by Water Police launches to various parts of it during the summer of 1919, when I lived for three months in the Water Police station quarters before my first leave. After it I sometimes repeated such voyages for purposes of geological research, on which I embarked with Government encouragement. A professional geological survey of the Colony was being planned in order to help in developing the resources of the Empire after the 1914-18 war, and to most people the Colony's geology was, quite understandably, a sealed book. The coasts and islands of the Southern District afforded many instructive sections, often showing the relations of different rock and mosses in a nearly undecayed state, which except in stream beds could hardly be seen anywhere else in the days before great motor roads cut the hills. This work enabled me to prepare a preliminary report on the Colony's sedimentary rocks and granite batholiths which was presented in 1923 not long before the Canadian geologists began their labours.\n\nIn 1922, while I was working as second assistant to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and deputy registrar of marriages, on the first floor of the Post Office building, Mr. Wynne-Jones, the D. O. South, whose office was just above mine on the second floor, went to hospital with appendicitis, and I was instructed at ten minutes' notice to go upstairs and do his job till he got better. As I had coveted the job for some time, and had told my chief so (then the late E. R. Hallifax), I was delighted.\n\nIn those days one of the D.O.'s duties was to sit in his office as magistrate for the Southern District, excluding New Kowloon and the Lyemun area.† This court usually functioned from 9 to 10 a.m.\n\n* 1888-1968, Cadet Officer, Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-38. This article was written in response to my request to Mr. Schofield and others for memories of their service in the Southern District of the New Territories for which I was then (1958) District Officer - Hon. Editor.\n\n† Place names may be found in the official publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Government Printer 1960, since reissued).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208124, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n147 \n\nkept the raiders under fire from the slope behind, but they got away with their plunder, including some arms and ammunition. The Captain Superintendent of Police at the time, F. J. Badeley, a cadet officer, retired soon after, and the story went that the Governor, Sir Henry May, who came in July 1912 after about eight years as Colonial Secretary and two years in Fiji, took this opportunity to get rid of him because he was 'persona non grata' to him. (There were said to be several such in the Service). The Government took the hint given by the pirates and built a new police station on a much more commanding site well inland, surrounded by barbed wire.\n\nTalking of New Territory police station siting, the Tai O station was originally to have been built close to the village, but the local elders put up representations against it, and the presence of mosquitoes in the village may have provided an argument for its present siting beyond Shek Tsai Po. Silting of the harbour may also have influenced the Government. But I have heard that what influenced the villagers was the existence of gambling houses which yielded them a good profit, and they knew that with the police among them the hope of their gains would be gone. In 1925 they had their reward. A boatload of 60 pirates from the Delta landed at Po Chu Tam, marched along the creek-side road and plundered the village, murdering a woman and kidnapping two men. They got away without interference. Government promptly 'locked the stable door' by stationing an armed Indian police guard - later replaced by village scouts in a matshed close to the mouth of Po Chu Tam creek for several months, about 50 yards from the site of an old Chinese stone-built guard station dating from the era of Japanese piracy in South China. Apparently the Police knew nothing of the raid till all was over. I think all that happened was that the sergeant in charge was transferred to another station.\n\nWhen I first took charge of the District Office, the 'black gold' rush had been over for three years, the bottom having dropped out of the tungsten market with the coming of peace; but the lime-burning and sand-digging boom was in full swing because of the roadmaking and building then going on in Hong Kong and Kowloon. (These were times of anarchy in China). Thus I had to deal with one or two applications for land for limekilns. These kilns were thickest on Ping Chau; but Nei Kwu Chau and Tsing Yi also had kilns, and another was put up at Hang Hau. This distribution is due partly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208127, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "150 \n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nmorning visiting Nei Kwu Chau to discuss the problem of their fifteen children. They had been taught by a private teacher in the ancestral temple: but he had left, and the Education Department were asked to find someone to replace him. They had replied that the children would have to go to Cheung Chau, thus raising in an acute form the problem common in villages all over England to-day. Few if any teachers would volunteer to teach fifteen children in so poor an island as Nei Kwu Chau in those days. The problem of providing one was then found insoluble, and as the only means of transport to Cheung Chau was by junk or sampan, I fear the rate of literacy on Nei Kwu Chau must have declined badly.\n\nAnother event which affected life in Cheung Chau in 1925-6 was the change of Governor in November 1925, during the great Communist-inspired but mainly Nationalist strike which started in June that year. Sir C. Clementi increased the D. O. South's public works vote from the absurdly small figure of $400 to $1000 or more. This made it possible to repave some of the chief streets of the village with granite blocks set in concrete, which cost about $800. He also paid a State visit to the island in the summer of 1926. Flags and decorations were put up, and practically all the proceedings were in Chinese, including a lengthy prepared speech by H.E., written out in characters by (I believe) Mr. Sung Hok Pang. He walked through the main streets, keeping up conversation with the Kaifongs, and showing that despite a long absence in British Guiana and elsewhere his Chinese scholarship had undergone no observable decline. The chief impression of the day that remained with me was the heat!\n\nWhile I was District Officer South I attended two other functions of importance, both in the Northern district. In 1925 the Government had had the imagination and sympathy to restore to the Tang clan the village gates of Kam Tin, removed in 1899 because of the clan's opposition to the original leasing of the New Territory and taken, as I heard, to Sir Henry Blake's estate in Ireland. The ceremony of reopening the restored gates took place in May, just before the big Strike began: its central point was to be the opening of the gates to admit H.E. Sir R. Stubbs. As he rose up from his seat the local band struck up, and this so startled a small pig rooting in the moat that he fled for shelter over the causeway to his sty in the village, just getting ahead of H.E. and bursting through the gates! The reward for the Government's attitude was seen in the autumn", "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": 208161, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "184\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n\"The burial ground is situated near Chai Wan Kok, Tsun Wan. Some time ago, about ten years after the Territory was leased to Great Britain, some natives of Tsun Wan village applied to the H.K. Govt. for a piece of land near the grave to erect some houses, but the proposed area affected the Fung Shui of the said grave. The village Elders of the various branches of the Tang family assembled, and a joint petition was submitted to the District Officer in the names of the descendants. Thanks to this Official the proposed sale was withdrawn. It was afterwards put on record that the site of the grave was to be preserved for ever. Subsequently new roads were constructed by the P.W.D. and the line of one proposed road was across the grave site. The Elders of the Tang family, fearing that this might affect the \"force of the movement of the green dragon,” again assembled and petitioned H.E. the Governor, praying that the line be moved to the foreshore of the site. This was done. In the 6th moon of the 12th year of the Chinese Republic, (1923) a villager of Tsun Wan dug earth on the right side of the ancestral grave, that is, in Chai Wan Kok village, thereby affecting the \"force of the movement of the coming dragon.\" Another petition was sent to the District Officer, who inspected the grave personally. After that earth cutting was prohibited, and the ancestral grave preserved.\"\n\nWe then proceeded to Kam Tin itself where, in front of the Kam Tin Rural Committee Office, we were greeted by an impressive body of lineage elders, treated to a dim sum (*) repast and shown a number of interesting relics handed down through the centuries. These included a painting with imperial calligraphy stated to date from Sung times, and a number of other paintings.*\n\nOur next stop was at Au Tau cross roads to see grave No. 5, that of TANG Wai-kap, the husband of the Sung refugee princess referred to in the Notes.\n\nFrom Au Tau cross roads we went on to the Pok Oi Hospital near Yuen Long and walked into an area of low hills, across a stream, where we inspected grave No. 2. This is located in what is obviously considered to be a very favourable fung shui area because the adjoining ground is thickly covered with graves.\n\nAfter returning to Pok Oi Hospital, we went by bus to Wang Chau behind Yuen Long where we walked through the village and across the fields to the foothills of an adjacent hill area. We went first to grave No. 1 and from there along a winding path to grave No. 4 which is located some 500 yards to the south. Both graves are in excellent positions, and like No. 3 have granite pillars with lion\n\n* These have been reproduced at pp. 112-115 of the Inauguration Publication of the Tang Clansmen Association (Inc. 1965), in Chinese, of which there is a copy in the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208450, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "158 \n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR \n\nby the police head, who was a government officer under direct control of the county police office. Thus very little self-government is apparent in this new system. \n\nAnother phase of activity where external pressure was brought to bear upon the traditional forms of organization in Ching Ho was in the establishment of a local branch of the Kuomintang party. In 1928 the county party organization appointed three men to organize a local party in the district. But because enough members could not be found to form a proper district party the organization was given the rank of branch association. In the meantime the directors attempted to form two organizations in competition with already established semi-political bodies. \n\nThe first of these was to be a Merchants' Union to displace the influential Chamber of Commerce composed of the leading shopkeepers of Ching Ho. The attempt to form a competitive Merchants' Union was not very successful. Although, the Chamber of Commerce suffered a setback, it followed a policy of passive resistance and its leaders are only waiting for a favorable opportunity to revive their own organization. \n\nThe second body which the local Kuomintang party tried to crowd out was the Farmers' Association for the Protection of Crops. This organization has a history of several hundred years in China, and in Ching Ho it was quite powerful. Its main purpose is to protect green crops in spring and autumn, but it enters into other activities for the benefit of the farmers. The local Kuomintang attempted to organize a Farmers' Union on the pattern of the successful organizations in South China. Although the party authorities worked quite hard to form such a union in the district, they were only successful in smaller villages, and could not get a foothold in Ching Ho itself, where the association was too powerful to be destroyed. \n\nAt the time the survey was made the fortunes of the party were under a cloud due to internal dissensions. All the party members had left town including the organizer and his associates. The organizations they had established continued to function in an uncertain way. \n\nIf Ching Ho were a typical rural village one might be able to infer what the results will be when the National Government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208991, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SOCIAL & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN N.T.\n\n121\n\nfew places in the world where genuine social enquiry is nearly completely free and, second, that, exactly as Dr. Wang Sung-hsing has just told us, the traditional ways of South Chinese rural life have been retained longer here than elsewhere. A simple example about marriage customs will show you what this can mean: In 1950, when I arrived here first, all rural weddings included the bride being carried to her husband's home in a red sedan chair (fa k’iu ##). I well remember the astonishment of a Mainland Chinese anthropologist friend when he saw this \"relic\" of what to him was an ancient, extinct custom of the remote past that he had never seen in his life before, and he had travelled almost all over China.\n\nAn interesting paper could be written about the paradox that the preservation of the traditional has been a direct result of colonialism. It happened in rather similar ways almost everywhere in the rural parts of the British colonial empire (and most parts were rural) but there is no time to discuss it this evening. Suffice it to say here that, contrary to popular opinion today, it was not usually the intention of the British colonial administrators (District Officers and the like) to impose alien ways and force change but to leave well alone (as long as in their eyes it was well) and interfere as little as possible. (The well-known book Myself a Mandarin by Austin Coates, once a District Officer in the New Territories, is a fairly representative account of common grass-roots administrative attitudes.) The result was that at least up to the time of the Second World War British colonialism almost everywhere tended to act in one sense rather like a refrigerator, \"freezing\" the local social and cultural systems at more or less the stage they had been when the British first arrived, and to a surprisingly large extent inhibiting changes that might otherwise have happened.\n\nThat something like this was certainly the case in the New Territories is obvious. Here, though rice is no longer grown, largely traditional villages can still be found, lineage and clan organisation still exists, formal ancestor worship in ancestral halls (ch'i t'ong: **) is still observed, and people still have a strong sense of local as well as cultural identification which is expressed in temple festivals, with Cantonese opera performances and fa p’aau (JE#) and kam chue (✯*), as well as in the continuance of old local rivalries in new political and administrative forms. Here, too, we can still talk with old people who remember the still recent more", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209043, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "BOOK LISTS\n\n173\n\nperhaps the case.* A list of Canton and Hong Kong newspapers is included in Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press 1800-1912 (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1933).\n\n(n) Subscription books\n\nThese are not strictly speaking “books,” but subscription lists bound in the same Chinese-style format. They either promote an object like the reconstruction, repair or extension of a temple, school or charitable hospital, the repair of a bridge or road, or in Republican times the financing of a militia or a self-managing local government or commercial or other association. Whatever the cause, a full subscription list was usually printed upon the conclusion of the work or the closing of the lists; or in the case of temples, buildings and public works often placed in the building or nearby, on a stone tablet. The short list which follows is merely a sample.\n\nThere were many more subscription books in handwritten format: I saw these when District Officer South 1957-62 as they were sometimes brought in for endorsement, and I have collected others.\n\nSection B BOOKS PROVIDED FOR AND BY SPECIALISTS\n\nI have not attempted to provide any listing of material in this huge field, save for the specialists in family rites and social etiquette, whose stock of knowledge seems mostly to have been derived from the hand-written volumes which researchers in Hong Kong have chosen to style “village hand-books”. If not actually derived from the printed books listed in sub-sections (b), (d), (f) and (g) above, their contents were similar in nature. A detailed comparison has yet to be made, and is an important scholarly task.\n\nI wish to thank Mr. Peter Yeung, Curator of the Hung On-To Memorial Library (Hong Kong Collection) of the University of Hong Kong for his great help in preparing these lists.\n\nHong Kong, 1982\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n* A fragment of a Hsuan-tung issue of a Canton newspaper (1909) was given me by a Tai O (Lantau) shopkeeper, and I recall seeing a newspaper that came to light at Pui O (also Lantau), behind the plaster of a decaying temple last repaired in 1914.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209663, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "298\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsubstantial amount, outside the offended party's door or, in the case of a whole lineage, its ancestral hall, and at the expense of the other. Justice was not only to be done but was to be seen (and heard!) to be done. As one informant has said, \"The act was intended to give back face, and so was done at the home of the wronged party but paid for by the other\". It thereby entailed an acknowledgement of guilt by the offender, and since houses and ancestral halls were set in the midst of each village, and the dispute was of course common knowledge, the shame and vexation of the party having to make such an atonement was complete. I suspect that this made settlements much more difficult where the aggrieved party insisted on his rights to fire-crackers perhaps to such an extent that sensible people would not insist on it, and the mediating elders would do their best to persuade parties to forego the provision, wherever possible.\n\nThis practice first came to my attention in 1957, when I was District Officer South. Two lineages in the villages of Tseng Lan Shue and Ho Chung were in dispute over damage to or interference with a grave belonging to the former, and its village representative (who was also an elder of the lineage in question) was demanding that the Ho Chung people should make due payment and, in addition, pay for ten thousand strings of fire-crackers to be let off at his clan's ancestral hall to show atonement and satisfactorily (for him) conclude the case. He was a difficult and determined person, and I was inexperienced and thought his claim extravagant. As the case was somehow settled or at any rate did not come up to me again, I thought no more about it, not realizing that the demand for firecrackers as part of the settlement was in line with old custom in the area.\n\nSince that time, the old rural society and its economic base have been changed out of all recognition, but my discussions with elders in different parts of the old Southern District, comprising the present Islands, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan administrative districts, at various times over the past twenty-five years have confirmed the practice in their areas in former days, and its time-honoured place in the settlement of disputes.\n\nFinding this practice to be an interesting, not to say intriguing, part of local custom, but being unable to spend time in gathering", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209854, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "THE ISLANDS AROUND HONG KONG\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nPresent Inhabitants of the Islands\n\nAt present, there are four races living in the Islands: they live very much mixed together.\n\n1. Tan Ka (literally \"egg people\"); these are boat-people who speak a dialect of Cantonese, they live a great part of their lives on the water, but sometimes settle on land.\n\n2. They are an outcast race, and in the old times they were not admitted to the civil service exams. They are usually quite illiterate. They sometimes live in boats hauled ashore, or in more or less boat-shaped huts, as at Shaukiwan and Tai O. All their chief centres are harbours: Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, Tai O, Potoi, Kau Sai, Yaumatei. They were formerly pirates.\n\nThey are the only modern people who might claim, perhaps, to be descended from the most ancient inhabitants.\n\nCantonese; these form the majority of the population in Lantua, Cheung Chau, and Lamma: their chief centres are Tai O, Tung Chung, and Cheung Chau. They speak various sub-dialects; a common one is the Po On dialect; this is widely spoken by the people both north and south of the frontier.\n\n* Mr. Walter Schofield (1888-1968) was a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service (1911-1938). Mr. Schofield was District Officer, South, during much of the inter-war period (see his Memories of District Office South, New Territories of Hong Kong, in Vol. 17 (1977) of this Journal, pages 144-156). This present paper is taken from the notes prepared by Mr. Schofield for a talk he gave in August 1937. It gives a useful glimpse of life in the Islands in the years before the coming of the Japanese as seen by a highly knowledgeable observer. In the paper Mr. Schofield gives translations of the place names listed. In many cases these translations were and are doubtful owing to lack of evidence of the original form of the name. These translations have been left in this version of the paper with notes added where present usage clearly differs from that given in the paper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209855, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "92\n\n3.\n\n4.\n\nThese speak a different language from the other three races. They have a history of having migrated ages ago from the Yangtse valley, and economically are pioneers, opening up inferior lands, and doing all quarry work. They occupy the eastern and northern islands, and are often called \"Chinese Scotchmen”. For this reason Scottish regiments here are called “Hakka ping\" (Hakka soldiers). Nearly all regimental servants here, I believe, are Hakkas: formerly the Hakkas were anti-Manchu and often joined Triad Societies. As such, they gave vigorous assistance to the British in 1857-61, and the connection with the Army has been kept up.\n\nHoklos, a Cantonese nickname for the coast peoples of Northeast Kwangtung; it means \"men of Hok1\", meaning Fukien. Most come from the area around Swatow and Swabue. Their language is very widely different from both Cantonese and Hakka: as different as German from English. They are fishermen, grasscutters, limekiln and saltpan workers. Their major settlements are at Tai O, Pingchau, Cheung Chau, Taipo (by the District Officer's island), and probably others. They are migrating here steadily, and many appear in court for offences of all sorts. A major reason behind the migration is probably that the coastal areas from which they come are suffering erosion and losing soil: the collapse of the Hoi Luk Fung Soviet Republic is another factor: finally, piracy is no longer as profitable as it was.\n\nPolitical divisions\n\nThe Ladrones or \"Pirate Islands\" of which Hong Kong and its outlying islands are part were so named by the Portuguese pioneers of sea trade to the East. They are shared unequally between China, Britain and Portugal. In China they are administered by the nearest district magistrates, of Hoifung, Po On, Chungshan, Sanwui, and Toishan districts. Macao has only two or three nearby isles. The British Islands are divided between the District Officer, North, and the District Officer, South, so that the latter is sometimes called \"Lord of the Isles\". I had that job for nearly 3 1/2 years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209864, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "101\n\nThe\n\nThere are two similar settlements nearer the Police Station. boatpeople's huts are designed on the model of a sampan or junk, it would seem. Almost certainly the boatpeople are a sign of a non-Chinese element in the population. Several fires have happened, the last in 1930, since when galvanised iron has become popular as roofing, replacing the older roofing of woven palm leaf matting.\n\nTemple funds are often applied to small public works, and in such cases the District Officer gives dollar for dollar from his vote. Works such as repairing tracks, or steps to the water, or paving streets in Tai O often use this source of funding. The District Officer often holds court in the charge room of the Police Station, which is one of the coolest and healthiest in the Territory.\n\nA little to the south of Tai O is Yi O (“Second Heaven\"), which is a mere village, and a little further south again Tsin Yu Wan (\"Arrow Fish Bay\") which has a beautiful sandy beach with a temple, but is otherwise deserted.\n\n1.1\n\n0\n\nOn the extreme south-west tip of Lantau is Shek Sun (“Stone Bamboo-shoots\") on a typical dumb-bell isthmus of sand between two bays. The isthmus connects Lantau proper with the low granite hills forming Fan Lau point which is the end of British territory in this direction. On one hill is an ancient fort, thought to be Dutch; if so, it was probably built and occupied at the time of their attack on Macao in 1622. (The failure of this attack led to the Dutch occupying Taiwan in Formosa, thus drawing Chinese settlers there, who expelled them about fifty years later.) The fort may, however, in fact be Chinese. The name of this village probably comes from the way the boulders stick out of the hills above it, like low pillars.\n\nThere are some fields on the hill above Shek Sun enclosed by dry-stone walls: evidently these were once used for dry crops, but they are now abandoned. They were not pastures: animals are never enclosed when grazing.\n\nTurning to the south coast of Lantau, and moving eastwards from Fan Lau Point, you see in succession three valleys each with a group of villages, all of which are purely agricultural and fishing.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209873, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "110\n\nThe very latest is that some enterprising folk of these parts have committed a piracy on a junk there, and five or six of them are up before the District Officer, South, on a committal charge.\n\nAt the northern end of High Island is the interesting feature called the Dry Channel or Kon Mun. It is a fiord formed by the sunken mouth of the valley running northwest by Lan Nai Wan, which is connected on the west with the other channels. Into it has poured the whole of the silt from the upper valley: and as this point is precisely where the two tidal waves sweeping round High Island meet, the silt is heaped up there without any chance of it getting carried away. Nothing bigger than a small sampan can traverse it, and then only at high water.3\n\nLeaving this fascinating island group by the often stormy route past Conic Island and Fung Head, we reach the mouth of Taipo Harbour, with Kang Chau (a little rock built up of volcanic ash beds), Grass Island, with the fishing village of Tap Mun on it, and Port Island. This last island is uninhabited.\n\nThe islands in Taipo Harbour are mostly of sandstone and shale, but are otherwise of little interest. They are Harbour Island, Centre Island, and lastly, the island near Taipo station where the District Officer, North, lives, though since the causeway carrying the road was built, this is no longer an island.\n\nGoing out again round Bluff Head, we come to another island-studded stretch of sea. Three large and sixteen small islands occupy it, and it is a most beautiful piece of water. Double Island, the first you come to, is in two halves joined by a low, narrow neck: the Crescent Island, beside it, is uninhabited, but Kat (\"Lucky Harbour\") Island, not being very lofty, has a good deal of its surface under cultivation.\n\nThere is yet one more island, and this is in some ways the most curious of all. It lies away across Mirs Bay, two miles from the Chinese coast, from which it draws a good deal of its drinking water by means of waterboats. It is called, very appropriately, Pingchau (\"Flat Island\"). When I was there, I did not see any paddy whatever; all cultivation was dry, and often the fields were unterraced and sloping, quite different from other parts of the New Territory, yet the island is populous, in", "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": 209980, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "217\n\nwas great and must have left them with little time or money to spare for their ruined temple. Finally, and almost certainly the most seriously, the influx of a new population, and immense schemes of redevelopment completely altered the generally rural background of village and market town life that still characterised pre-war East Kowloon.\n\nThus, in the Tung Shan Temple we can see a temple, founded for purely rural reasons slowly growing until it became the predominant community temple of the whole of rural East Kowloon. During this period its management changed from a purely private, clan-based system to a typical community temple structure of committee members and chairman of a type typical not only of the rural community temples in the rest of the New Territories but also of those in urban Hong Kong at this date.\n\nFounded in a rural community this temple could, and did, develop both physically and in its management structure to reflect the needs of that community. It could not, however, survive the complete destruction of that community, and its ruination directly reflects the collapse of its founding community in the face of massive urbanisation, and the establishment of the new urban communities created by that urbanisation. The new urban communities have formed their own shrines, and their flourishing condition, alongside the continued ruin of the main temple of the defunct rural community, show more clearly than anything else can the essentially community basis of the temples of this area and their management groups.\n\nNOTES\n\nIn the 1904 Block Crown Lease for Survey District No. 3, New Kowloon, the ownership is recorded in the monk's name Shing Kin (Hsing Star Bridge) and the property is listed under Lot 1101 as temple 0.7 acres, house 0.2 acres, and potato ground 0.33 acres. An entry \"Kwun Yam Temple, Ngau Chi Wan\" had been crossed out by the Assistant Land Officer who recommended that a lease for the temple buildings and site be given to the Registrar General, 28 April 1904.\n\nFrom south-east Kowloon, Ngau Tau Kok and Cha Kwo Ling; from east Kowloon, Ngau Chi Wan, Ping Shek, Sha Tei Yuen, Upper and Lower Yuen Ling and Chu Shi Liu; from central Kowloon, Tai Hom, Po Kong, Nga Tsin Wai, Upper and Lower Sha Po, Nga Tsin Long and Kak Hang; from Kowloon City, the commercial areas, Sai Tau, Tung Tau and Hoklo Village.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210318, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 289, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "268\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU\n\nfamily will produce enough tea from one stripping to last that family a year. Before the War, villager families would put in more time, stripping the trees up to four times in a year, to produce in addition a few baskets of tea for sale in the market towns, to supply those villages, mostly the large, lowland villages, who had no tea trees of their own. The villagers have no recollection of their tea ever being traded more widely than in the local market town.\" As well as at Mau Tso Ngam, several other hill villages in Shatin still prepare tea in this way (including Wong Chuk Yeung, and Kwun Yam Shan) and several others did until recently. Probably most hill villages of the New Territories used to prepare tea in this way.\n\nTraditionally, villagers drank tea out of their rice bowls at the end of the meal after the rice was finished. Special tea bowls were used in ritual contexts (e.g., when offering tea to gods or spirits or during weddings when tea is offered by the bride to her husband's mother) or when tea was offered to important visitors. The rice bowls were kept very carefully, and the owners would often scratch their names into the glaze inside the bowl to guard against loss.\"\n\nA set of rice bowls used for tea drinking in Mau Tso Ngam from about 1920 is now preserved in the Hong Kong Museum of Teaware, together with tealeaves produced at Mau Tso Ngam, and a full photographic record of the preparation processes.\n\n(2) Traditional Tea Growing in the Southern New Territories\n\n(JWH)\n\nMy recollections of local tea go back to 1957-58 when, newly appointed as District Officer, South, I visited all villages and hamlets in the district within a six months' period and much of it on foot! My recollection was that I drank hill tea in a number of places as well as ordinary tea or hot water in others. Referral to my notebooks has provided some information on tea growing in the villages of the Southern District but not as much as I had either thought or hoped.\n\nHill tea came to my attention when I was offered it to drink, and this was conspicuously the case in the Clear Water Bay villages.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210320, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 291, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "270\n\nP.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU\n\nIn the 1970s when District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan, my contacts with local village people established that there were families in Lo Wai which had tea bushes on the mountain slopes of Tai Mo Shan. The Hui (4) family of Lo Wai village collected tea from wild bushes near the present radar station at the very top of Tai Mo Shan. One old man, born in 1896, used to collect ten catties a week during the season, commenting that the best time for plucking the leaves was in the third lunar month: the leaves become older and coarser thereafter. This type of tea was described as wan mo (雲霧) (\"cloud mist\"). He began doing this when he was about 10 years old, selling to other villagers and not to shops or teahouses. He also collected medicinal herbs on the mountain. Another favourable location for wild tea trees on this mountain, he said, was Nam Tong To (南塘肚) where the Shing Mun villagers collected leaves from wild tea bushes there of the same type. Such trees could not be replanted and grown elsewhere, he stated. Separately, old Shing Mun villagers living in Kam Tin since their removal there in 1928 for construction of the Jubilee Reservoir, themselves confirmed their taking of leaves from trees in this locality. In the foothills west of Tsuen Wan, villagers of Yau Kam Tau also collected leaves from wild tea bushes.12\n\nLantau island possessed a rather special type of red \"tea\", with a brilliant red infusion, known as tsz pooi tin kwai (紫背天葵). Tsz pooi tin kwai was described to me as being “half herb half tea”. It was used as a kind of cooling tea (清熱茶) for “over-heating” from food or drink, sore throats and the like. The leaves came from a plant growing between cracks in rocks and stones in high gulleys where there was much moisture. The people of Tong Fuk village on south Lantau, at the foot of the Fung Wong mountain, used to collect these from upper slopes. It was also collected by the women inmates of the religious houses of Ngong Ping and others living at the Po Lin monastery there. Some of the produce found its way to shops in Tai O market where one of the leading shopkeepers, chairman of the Rural Committee, gave me some at intervals. According to Shiu-ying's Hu's An Enumeration of Chinese Materia Medica (Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1980) page 153, it is to be described in English as the Tea Begonia (Begonia fimbristipula) and in Chinese as (紅天葵/紫背天葵).13", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1986", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "87\n\nI did not record very much about the role of the Hoklo, Wai Chau, Chiu Chau newcomers. They were actually visible mainly through the flags in their honour and the Chiu Chau performers whom they hired to perform on the main day of the celebration. Their participation was more in contributing money to provide performances in their own dialect than in participation in the processions or in preparation of the offerings.\n\nThe number of persons present in the main-day procession and the procession with the Daai Si Wong was impressive. However, they were more sharing the fun and enjoying the novelty than making a collective, disciplined presence as in the case of the same processions in the New Territories jiu festivals, in which the participants wore special clothing and hats, excluded women and were in general more organized at least in appearance.\n\nI did not see many signs of nearby villagers (who did not live in the three participating villages) coming to the jiu to visit or to offer good wishes, as was the former custom. There was a flower basket on display outside the festival office at Shek O. It was presented by the chairman of the rural committee of Cheung Chau. The only fa-paai was from Ma Hang, Laan Lai Wan, Stanley and Tai Tam Tuk, which are nearby. Near noon time on the main day some guests did come. One of them was a police officer, probably the head of the Chai Wan Police Station. Another was the District Officer for South District, who came with some assistants.\n\nMarried-out daughters were expected to come back for the festival too. On the bus back to town on the main day of the celebration, I overheard a middle-aged woman telling someone that if a married-out daughter did not come back for the jiu, she could not come back until ten years later, presumably during the next celebration.\n\nOther than the villagers, participants at the jiu included the professionals, among whom the most important were the priests. The yn-sau, or his companion, explained to me that they had hired a team headed by the priest Chan Wa as they did for the last celebration. I had thought, when he explained this was because Chan was 'familiar', he had in mind familiarity with the local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "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": 210965, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "2\n\nserved under him for the next nine months until he was replaced by the late (Sir) Ronald Holmes. It was my first posting after language study, and I was inexperienced and ignorant. Ken was formidable by reason of bulk and intellect, and I was instinctively wary of him. He was, too, one of those rather \"larger than life\" personalities around whom legends and stories had already accumulated. However, he turned out to be both kindly and helpful. More, he was informative; and for a new District Officer anxious to know more about his charges it was fortunate that he had written about local history, something that had attracted insufficient attention from the Civil Service, or anyone else for that matter. I probably saw more of him than the other DOS, because of our joint preoccupation with the Shek Pik Reservoir investigations and the fact that his town office was in the District Office (South) building on Gascoigne Road, Kowloon.\n\nHe used to come in once a week, on set days, and I remember once being indignant upon hearing his booming voice on another day. “Oh well” I thought resignedly, for I was still very new, “he'll come in shortly”, and dismissed him from my mind. Some time later I heard his voice again, and realized it was a tape recording on which his secretary must have been working, a draft speech or something of the kind.\n\nAfter he left the N.T., our association was mostly personal. Through joint interests, including membership of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force, we met from time to time. The Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, to which he lectured occasionally, was another shared interest. After he left Hong Kong on retirement we exchanged letters periodically. I also saw him on his visits to his family here, and particularly remember the last occasion (1986) when, together with the then District Officer, Yuen Long, we arranged a visit to the border area including the Mai Po marshes. We began with a picnic lunch at Island House which had been his home when he was District Commissioner, New Territories. This was a particularly happy and relaxed family occasion, with his grandchildren, on which I look back with great pleasure.\n\nOne always got a lot out of Ken. Our mutual interest in local people and their history led me to send him copies of any draft", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211219, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 280, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "255\n\non, principally by David Faure (on my left) and his colleagues at the Chinese University, and their students, in researching local history.\n\nI came to Hong Kong in 1956 to work for the Hong Kong Government. After a year at the Hong Kong University's language school, where our RAS member Mr. Francis Sham was my teacher (in the audience), I was sent to the New Territories as a District Officer. It was the custom, then and long before, to send new administrative officers to the New Territories, and the unfortunate villagers and local leaders had to put up with them. The only benefit they might have had out of it was that these youngsters had not had time to get set in their ways as civil servants. In many of them, a spark of interest in local life was kindled by what they saw around them. This was certainly the case with me.\n\nI immediately became fascinated with the communities of the Southern District, which at that time took in Sai Kung and the Clearwater Bay area in the eastern New Territories and the present Islands District on the west and south. It was a wonderful life. I had a Marine Department launch every now and again, and was able to go out and see places, all as part of the job. Many people before me had also enjoyed it. There was only one snag about the work when I was there. The Government had decided to build the Shek Pik Reservoir on Lantau Island, and I had a good deal of extra toil and trouble on that account. In particular, two villages had to be resettled. However, when you move villagers for development, you are in a position to learn quite a bit about them. I made an effort at the time and collected as much information as I could about these villages, but I simply did not know enough about Chinese rural society to know what more I might have got by different questioning. Anyway, the reservoir was my main preoccupation when I was District Officer South, a post I held for five years, with an overseas leave in between.\n\nWhen I went around this fascinating part of the New Territories, I saw the villages, the market towns and the resident boat people, all very much as they must have been at the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty, up to 1911. I am not exaggerating: that's what they seemed like at that time, owing to the lack of development.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211395, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "87\n\nand when he died the following year 1662 his son Cheng King (4) continued his attacks on the south coast. The Ts'ing government eventually sent out their navy to engage Cheng's ships, but it is said that the Ts'ing sailors were prostrated by seasickness and were no match for their enemies.\n\nAbout that time an officer from Cheng's forces named Fong Sing Hoi (959) surrendered to the Ts'ing government, and it was from him that the plan of Ts'in Fuk originally came. Having full knowledge of how people living along the coast by their mere presence, apart from their willing help, aided the rebels, he suggested that villagers should be moved inland so that they should no longer be able, willingly or not, to supply Cheng's forces with food. This idea was approved by the Emperor Shun Chi, but the same year (18th year of Shun Chi, 1661) he died. His son, Hong Hei, however, followed up the plan by ordering a personal investigation of the coast to be made by government officials, with a view to finding out which part was most vulnerable to attack, and at the same time to arrange how the people were to be moved inland. The result of this was a report from the P'ing Naam Wong (#E) 平南王 (\"Prince who tranquilizes the South\") and the Viceroy, strongly advising that the people should not be moved. “All along the coast there are several millions of inhabitants\", the report said. \"If they are shifted they will all lose their livelihood, which will be a great affliction. We make this piteous appeal and request royal favour to allow them to stay.\" But this had no effect.\n\nThe following year in the spring an Imperial decree ordered that everyone living by the coast must move 50 Chinese miles inland. The P’ing Naam Wong with other officials were sent to inspect the coast, and in the 2nd month they arrived in San On district. A boundary on Foo Mun (J21) was set up, ending to the west at Tsun T'au Shaan (111) and to the east at Lin Fa Fung (TEE), the centre station of the boundary being at Ngai Kung Leng (42). At each of these places a flag was erected and more than eighty villages within the boundary were told to move and many lookout posts were built along the hills with soldiers stationed there to watch. Even the rivers had railings built across them to prevent boats going down to the sea. If any one disobeyed these orders they were to be put to death.\n\nA month later soldiers were sent to enforce the new regulations. Although notices had been posted up few people could read them and many villagers were quite ignorant of what they were to do. The arrival of the soldiers caused a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211419, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "111\n\nTwo other physicians, one Japanese trained in Japan and one American trained in the United States, were also denied entry. Butterfield and Swire contested this decision in court; the court not only ruled against the company, but also made it pay a fine. Uncle felt he had to return to private practice because he had a family to support, even though he would have liked to study for two more years, and decided to go back to Shanghai where Western medicine was becoming more accepted among the Chinese residents.\n\nAlthough Uncle was proficient in Chinese, in preparation for an imperial examination (I believe this was one of the last imperial examinations held) for students who had studied abroad, he sought tutoring in the language and in the use of interjections. He passed the examinations and, according to Toby, he was awarded the degree of chü-jen. However, as I recall it, Father told me that Uncle received the degree of chin-shih; but would have been awarded a higher honour if his Chinese had been a little better. We have a copy of a photograph of him and the other recipients in their ceremonial caps and gowns taken in Peking. For Uncle, his family and his clansmen, it was an honour indeed and there was much rejoicing when he returned to Shanghai. His one regret was that he could not see clearly the Kuang-hsu Emperor (1875-1908) during the ceremonial awards, for although near-sighted, he was not allowed to wear his glasses in the imperial presence.\n\nOut of a sense of civic duty, Uncle served as medical officer for both the Customs Service and the Post Office in Shanghai, from 1916 until 1925 when he retired. When we visited him in 1919, his home was on Hankow Road. He later invested in real estate in the Chapei district and moved to Darrock Road, but all of his real property was taken over by the Japanese, and then by the Communists. When the Japanese invaded Shanghai, Uncle and Aunt moved south to live in Macau where he had become a Portuguese citizen earlier, and also in Hong Kong where he owned another home. When the war ended, they returned to Shanghai to live with their second son, Ting Hing R (Charles), and in 1948 visited with Toby in Taiwan for several months. When the Communists took over, they did not dare venture out of their home. Uncle died in 1953 at the age of 83, and Aunt a half year later in 1954 at the age of 81.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211533, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 250, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "226\n\nto this one, although the bamboo arm-rest was a bit of a luxury not always found! This latrine was probably built early this century. Sheung Wo Hang had 30 latrines to service its approximately 100 families at the time of the Block Crown Lease in 1905; the great majority of them were very close in style and construction to this one.\n\nNOTES\n\nP. H. Hase\n\n2 Journal Vol. 23, 1983, p. 241-246.\n\nMy thanks are due to Mr. M.Y. Lee, of Sheung Wo Hang village, for drawing the latrine to my attention, and for helping me to measure it.\n\nSee plan attached, and plate 11.\n\n4 See plate 12.\n\nA NOTE ON RICE HULLERS (RE)\n\nIn March 1972, I visited the New Territories' village of Ma Yau Tong, situated off the Po Lam road leading to Rennie's Mill in Junk Bay. I knew the village representative, Mr. Li Tak (...) from my days as\n\nDistrict Officer South, 1957-60. He was aged 79 in 1972.\n\nWith friends from Ngau Tau Kok old village in East Kowloon, who knew the Ma Yau Tong people, I looked carefully round the houses, paying special attention to old ones and their contents.\n\nLike most N.T. villages, Ma Yau Tong had been a rice-growing settlement, but in their case they had stopped planting some 10 to 15 years before my visit. I was interested in the farming tools and equipment, and made notes on a pair of rice hullers that we saw. However, we were only able to learn the details about one of them. The other was much older, and had been in the house longer than the old lady who lived there. As she had already lived in the village for 48 years, after marrying into one of the village families when she was 20 years old, it had obviously been made before about 1920. “About 100 years\", they guessed, but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211709, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "99\n\nKong dates back only to 1898 when the New Territories were leased to Britain. At that date, there were at least six of these wheels operating in Tsuen Wan, as recorded by Lockhart on his tour of Britain's latest territorial acquisition,\n\nA large establishment exists near Tsun Wan for the manufacture of incense powder, out of which joss sticks, used in the worship of idols, are made. The powder is made from fragrant wood, which is pounded into dust by means of water wheels, six of which were seen at work,18\n\nThese six water-wheels were owned by a clan surnamed Cheung. Today, four sets of the hammer components are left in Lo Wai (E), Tsuen Wan. Two of them are mortars; one is larger, with an inner diameter measuring 33 cm, with a depth of 28 cm; the other being smaller with measurements of 28.5 cm and 21 cm. The other two pieces are granite supports for the cross beams.\n\nFrom the turn of the century to 1930, sandalwood continued to be one of the major commodities produced in the Tsuen Wan area. In 1905, Governor Sir Mathew Nathan noted that,\n\nTsun Wan two passenger boats ply daily between Hong Kong and Tsun Wan; the number of passengers carried each way averages over 60. The principal goods carried are rice, pineapples when in season, grass, and wood in connection with the 24 sandalwood mills, worked by water power and situated in the various valleys of the Tsun Wan district.19\n\nAfter the 1920s, the number of sandalwood mills in Tsuen Wan began to decline as water-wheels were replaced by electrically driven grinders. During this transitional period, the total output of incense powder fell. In 1925, the District Officer, South, Walter Schofield noted in the annual Administrative Reports that sandalwood powder showed “a slight decline in output though prices were maintained at last year's level”29 Following a general decline in business of the sandalwood mills in Tsuen Wan in 1931, “Hawkins reported “a further decline in the business done by the sandalwood mills” in 1932.22\n\nDespite this, incense wood milling continued to be a prominent feature of Tsuen Wan in the 1950s. Heywood observes that,", "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": 213475, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "38\n\n+ Pung Shan Land Case No. 24 of 1954. TANG LAP LEUNG »» TO SHU KAN (unreported) against which the appeal was similarly dismissed by Reynolds J-Civil Appeal No 24 of 1954 (unreported)\n\nWilson's Notes\n\n(1950) 34 HKLR 297\n\nVide Tenancy Tribunal Appeal No 40 of 1950, NG CHOW HING & OTHERS vs KAM WING CHAN & OTHERS, (1950) 34 HKLR 201\n\nTls Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, para 97 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1912 p. 58) General accounts of \"fung shui\" may also be found in Burkhardt, Chinese Creeds and Customs Hong Kong Vol I p 129 and Vol II p. 137\n\nReport DCNT 1959-60, para, 120\n\n120 Memorandum of District Officer, South, to DCNT, dated 22nd December 1959\n\n121 Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, paras 21(2) and 98 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers. 1912, pp 47 and 58), and Report, DCNT, 1959-60, paras 120 and 135\n\n12 Literally notification of the gods ceremony. Report DCNT, 1959-60 para. 125 and memorandum of District Officer, Yuen Long, to DCNT dated 30th October. 1959\n\nReport on the New Territories 1899-1912 para 98 (Hong Kong Sessional papers. 1912 p 58)\n\nDO Yuen Long, loc cit The District Commissioner's Report for the year 1951-52 contains an amusing account of how one village geomancer was confounded (at para, 19).\n\n25 Wilson Notes\n\n125 ibid\n\n127 Cap 97 viz ss. 27, 29, 30 part II, ss. 14 and 57, vide Committee Report, 1953. Chap II, para. 13 at p 7 and the preliminary point decided in the case of TANG CHU YI HONG vs TANG SHING MO and OTHERS (1949) 33 HKLR 58\n\n128\n\nFor which see Chinese Marriages in Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960, Greenfield. op cit, and Committee Report, 1953\n\n19 vide intra\n\n10 Things Chinese, 4th Edn 1903, p 424 cf MH Van der Valk. An Outline of Modern Chinese Family Law Peking, 1939, pp 82-83, regarding the position under the Nationalist", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213645, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 241, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "Book Review\n\n217\n\nJAMES HAYES (1996), Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and its People, 1953-87, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 11 chapters, appendix, glossary, index, 320 pages.\n\nJames Hayes needs little introduction to most members of the Society. He was a former editor of the Journal and President of the Council for many years. He is also an extraordinarily nice human being with a passion for bow-ties. He allegedly retired, to Bondi Beach, Australia, in 1987 but there is little evidence that he is taking this seriously. Au contraire, he continues to write prolifically for the Journal and has also added many new books to the Society's collection through his constant forays into used-book shops.\n\nAll-in-all, James spent 32 years in Hong Kong. He was a member of the Administrative Service of the Hong Kong Government from August, 1956 (he was here briefly in 1953 with the Army). Although he had the varied career that characterises the Service, he spent almost half his time in the New Territories as District Officer South (1957-62), District Officer (and Town Manager) Tsuen Wan (1975-82), and Regional Secretary, New Territories (1985-87). He was, and remains, a noted sinologist and accomplished in the Chinese language. Academically, he was very sound with a PhD from the University of London and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters bestowed by the University of Hong Kong in 1992.\n\nJames has decided to share his memories of his service in Hong Kong with us in a new book. Autobiographies by former Hong Kong Government civil servants, and by Hong Kong people generally for that matter, are relatively rare events, almost as if the majority are reluctant to write their memoirs for fear of criticism or ridicule, or have little in their careers worth writing about. James has no problem on either count. His career was rich and varied, filled with achievements and may truly be said to have added value to public life in Hong Kong. As for the telling of it, he has avoided the inclination to embark upon a literary ego trip although he is not averse to describing the highlights in detail. Few will be offended by the style.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213683, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "XV\n\nXVII\n\nXIX\n\nXIXa\n\nXXI\n\nXXVII\n\nXXVIIE\n\nXXX\n\nXXXV\n\nXXXVI\n\nXXXVIII\n\nChinese population of Old Kowloon villages\n\nChinese population of NT by districts\n\nChinese population of NT (North district) by villages\n\nChinese population of NT (South district) by villages\n\nThe ages of the Chinese population\n\nThe married state of the floating population The married state of the Chinese population of NT The degree of education of the Chinese population The occupations of the Chinese population of NT (Northern District) The occupations of the Chinese population of NT (Southern District)\n\nThe number of Chinese who described themselves as\n\nstudents\n\nGiven for males and females separately Given for males and females separately Given for males and females\n\nGiven for males and females\n\nBy district and sex\n\nNot broken down\n\nBy district and sex\n\nBy district and sex\n\nGiven for males and females separately\n\nGiven for males and females separately\n\nBy district and sex\n\n7\n\n21\n\nThe census officer was clearly satisfied with the success of this census He remarked on the greater detail included in the Census as compared with the previous Censuses (1901 and 1906). The methods of enumeration were \"superior,\" and “very favourably reported on.\" The work done was “excellent,” “admirable,” “brought to a successful finish.\" He considered that returns relating to family members were incomplete (this is clearly true for the New Territories, where young boys, and even more unmarried girls, were under-reported, as noted in greater detail below), but, in general, the census seems to have been reasonably well-conducted.**\n\nIt is clear that the care taken with the 1911 Census of the New Territories was due to the quite unsatisfactory nature of the 1901 Census of that area. In 1901, all that had been done was to ascertain the number of dwellings in a village, and then to guess the average number of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213748, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "71\n\nvillages and depopulated districts”, and by 1906 they were remarking on villages “with no adult males left at all.” As noted above, the district officer in 1912 also identified heavy temporary emigration of young adult males as a notable feature of the New Territories. Up to the 1870s, the emigration noted by the missionaries was of indentured coolies, leaving by ones and twos following inducements offered by more or less dubious emigration agents, and the missionaries castigated it as a \"slave trade.\" However, after the reforms of the coolie trade in the 1870s, emigration became more respectable, with elders of the villages arranging for the emigration for a few years of groups of youths from the village, through well-trusted contacts with particular shipping lines.\n\nA tablet of 1894 in the main temple of the Sha Tau Kok area (the Kwan Tai Temple at Shan Tsui), lists the donors to the temple rebuilding of that year. The elders decided to seek donations in the first place from residents of the Sha Tau Kok area living away from home. Over a thousand donated and are listed, with their place of residence given. Apart from a substantial group living in Hong Kong, villagers of the area were at that date living in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria in Australia, in New Zealand, in Hawaii, British Columbia, California, Peru, Panama, and many other places. Today, in villages of the area such as Shan Tsui or Sheung Wo Hang, elders will state that the best of the older surviving houses in the village were built by people who returned from emigration to marry and raise their families in the village in the period 1910-1930. In a few, portraits of these rich returned emigrants still hang on the walls of the houses they built. Similar tales are told of rich returned emigrants in Sha Tin; the village of San Tin there was founded by a returned emigrant of Au Pui Wan village about 1890-1895. For most of Tsuen Wan district, the 1911 Census does not give enough information to identify villages with abnormal population balances, but there is a further tablet recording donations to a temple rebuilding there, in this case of 1900, which demonstrates that some hundreds of the villagers of that area were abroad then. Those villages which can be shown to have had villagers living away from the village from the Shan Tsui tablet, or which have \"returned emigrant” houses, all have low male-female ratios in 1911. There can be no doubt that the information at Appendix I and Table 31 shows the degree to which, and the area where, early emigration was a significant social factor in the New Territories.\n\n100", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213767, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "90\n\n65\n\nCensus Report, 1971, Tables II and XIII. No detailed breakdown of Dialect Spoken in the Home by the floating population is included in the 1911 Census\n\n* Oral evidence suggests that the boat people did have larger families than the land people, and a higher rate of infant mortality, but these figures still suggest that the “35 per thousand\" figure given by the Census officer in 1921 may have been slightly under-estimated\n\n67 Census Report, 1921, Table XXVI\n\n68 Taken from the 1911 Table of Places of Birth (Northern District), and the 1921 Tables of\n\nPlaces of Birth (Northern District Southern District, Floating Population)\n\n69\n\nCensus Report, 1911, Table XXVIII\n\n70 The 1911 Census records 24,468 males of 10 years old and upward, and 22,460 of 15 years and upward, suggesting about 24,000 of 12 years and upward The married state of 24,378 males is recorded, of whom 881 were married before the age of 12 The corresponding figures for Northern District females are 27,926, and 24,378, suggesting about 26,000 aged 12 and upward, with the married state of 26,723 females actually recorded, of whom 902 were married before the age of 12\n\n* The corresponding figures in 1911 for the Southern District land population were 0.8% and 1.1%\n\n* In 1911 the Married State figures for Southern District are not broken down into the Islands and New Kowloon, and are therefore difficult to use\n\n* The \"Occupations\" Table of the 1921 Census (TABLE XVIII) shows 31 male, and 104 female religious in North District, and 14 male and 71 female religious in South District in 1921\n\n24 Census Report 1911, Table XXX\n\n75 Census Report 1921, Table XII See also Alice Ng Lun Nga-ba, \"Village Education in Transition The Case of Sheung Shui”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 82 (1982), pp 252-270 generally for this section of this article\n\n76 In 1931, the Census Officer stated that he felt the 1921 Census figures for educational attainments of the floating population were inaccurate. He suggested 34.04% of floating population males over 20, and 1.38% of females over 20 were literate These figures, however, are not broken down by district See Sessional Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1931, printed by Noronha and Co, Hong Kong, 1931, No 5/1931, \"Report on the Census of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1931\" (the Census Report, 1931), p [4]\n\n* See Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha, op cit p 266\n\nCensus Report, 1911, Tables XXXV and XXXVI", "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": 214872, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 287, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "256\n\nGetting to Tong Fuk at that time was a slow business. After taking a scheduled ferry from Hong Kong, and travelling along the new South Lantau Road to the road-end at Cheung Sha, half the distance to Shek Pik, we had still to walk along old country paths and ford large and small streams. One of these stream courses was wide and boulder-strewn, and crossing it in full flood after heavy rain, as well as several smaller ones, was guaranteed to give one a thorough soaking. However, being young and active, and in high spirits, we thought nothing of it. In fact, I positively enjoyed it! Nonetheless, when visits were so time-consuming and there was plenty of work to do in the office and elsewhere in the District, the need to go out so frequently in that short space of time was not appreciated.\n\nOn this occasion, local opposition was centred on one especially sensitive spot, where the villagers insisted that rock and boulders be broken up by hand instead of being removed by blasting with explosives. My reluctant acquiescence made the District Office unpopular with the government engineers from the Roads Office, who thought we were pandering to the villagers. So it might have seemed, but there was otherwise certain to be a conflict with people who were quite numerous, united in their opposition, and always capable of taking the law into their own hands, not omitting sabotage of contractors' equipment and installations. In this respect, I may add, they were no different from the majority of New Territories' villagers of the day.\n\nTo run such a risk was not advisable in circumstances where both the senior police and civil authorities were based in Kowloon, several hours' journey from the site. Violent confrontations would not have been acceptable to my seniors; and in any case, it was part of my personal responsibility as District Officer to avoid that kind of thing. Moreover, further, and more prolonged delays would be certain to ensue. This was unthinkable.\n\nNonetheless, our experiences on this particular occasion were certainly rather trying. The full story, on two and a half closely typed pages, was contained in a minute to the District Commissioner dated 27th May 1958. I do not know whether it has survived in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, but fortunately I kept the copy on which this account is based.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "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": 215848, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "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": 147, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "80\n\nAppendix:\n\nA Failed Scholar\n\nBy the late 1950s, degree men like Mr. Lo Sheung-fu were few, but it was still possible, by enquiry in the villages, to seek out some old men who, in the language of an earlier day, were failed scholars. By great good fortune, when District Officer, South, I was able to visit one of their number in Ho Chung, one of the larger villages of the Sai Kung area.\n\nBorn in 1876, old Mr. Chan Min-yue was already 86 years old. His house was still older, and its interior, blackened with soot, had like its owner seen better days. The dwelling was one of several within a large courtyard, approached from the outer village street by an entrance gate, and situated within his own clan's section of the village.\n\nBent and shuffling in his gait, Mr. Chan was rather deaf. He could not see very well, and his voice quavered, but he responded well to my enquiries and his memory was still good.\n\nHis education had been long and ultimately expensive: first, at little cost, in his own village school for seven years, then in Canton for another six or seven at a considerable annual outlay to his father. One hundred silver dollars was the figure mentioned, though this was probably an approximation intended to convey the sense of expense. Board and lodging had been required, as well as tuition fees. All in all, he had taken the prescribed examinations leading to the first degree five or six times, but always without success. His father had become reluctant to spend even more money, and the young man had to return to the village. He then went into business with a herbal and Chinese medicine firm in a market town, which (he told me) provided him with a pension when he retired.\n\nUnlike many other failed scholars, Mr. Chan had never taught school, but his proficiency in writing scrolls and couplets had been recognized and utilized in the village and neighbourhood. He carried on with his calligraphy until old age and increasing debility obliged him to stop. Men of this type were accustomed to meeting together for literary pursuits. They composed poetry and discussed its merits, held literary competitions, and wrote scrolls and couplets, replicating at the local level the more prestigious gatherings of senior officials, gentry and literati of the kind to be found in all the district and prefectural cities of China, and in the provincial capitals, like Canton.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]